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11:55 AM ET, January 12, 2012

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
MG Siegler / TechCrunch:
Google And The Monopoly Paradox  —  We've been over this.  A lot.  And this story is going to continue for some time to come.  It sure looks like Google is almost asking for an inquiry into potentially anti-competitive practices (and it's coming).  Which is insane.  So the next logical question is why?
RELATED:
Jessica Guynn / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Google likely to face FTC complaint over ‘Search Plus Your World’  —  A privacy watchdog group probably will complain to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that a new Google search feature raises privacy and antitrust concerns.  —  Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy …
Danny Sullivan / Search Engine Land:
Real-Life Examples Of How Google's “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy
Mike Masnick / Techdirt:
If SOPA's Main Target Is The Pirate Bay, It's Worth Pointing Out That ThePirateBay.org Is Immune From SOPA  —  In looking over Eric Goldman's excellent “linkwrap” of a bunch of recent SOPA/PIPA stories, it pointed me to a News.com article from last month, about how SOPA was really about going after one single site: The Pirate Bay.
RELATED:
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
LG signs Android, Chrome OS patent deal with Microsoft  —  Summary: LG Electronics is the latest Android vendor to license Microsoft patents in order to head off potential legal issues.  —  It's been a couple of months since Microsoft has touted any new Android/Chrome OS vendors agreeing to license its patents.
RELATED:
Ashlee Vance / Business Week:
Steve Ballmer Reboots  —  Cooler tech, more energy, higher profit—the Microsoft CEO is out to prove Steve Jobs wrong and make Redmond relevant again  —  They had his dining room waiting.  Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive and one of the richest men in the world …
Discussion: Computerworld and AllThingsD
RELATED:
Farhad Manjoo / Slate:
The Year of Microsoft  —  How the former tech giant can reclaim its throne in 2012.
Stephen Rosenman / Seeking Alpha:
Apple's Foreign Cash Hoard  —  Apple (AAPL) is piling up boatloads of cash: just not here.  —  Those boatloads are increasing becoming docked in Apple's foreign subsidiaries and cannot be repatriated without incurring additional hefty U.S. taxes.  A whopping $54 billion of Apple's $82 billion cash …
Discussion: Techie Buzz, TUAW and PhoneArena
Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:
Microsoft: Windows Phone will not battle Android on specs, will instead fight for ‘quality’  —  In an interview today at CES, Microsoft's Joe Belfiore told The Verge that Windows Phone will not fight the Android ecosystem of handsets on a specification by specification basis.
Discussion: WMPoweruser and The Verge
RELATED:
John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:
Nokia Could Sell 37 Million Windows Phones This Year
Cade Metz / Wired Enterprise:
Google's Data Center Engineer Shares Secrets of ‘Warehouse’ Computing  —  Luiz André Barroso doesn't see Google's data centers as data centers.  He sees them as computers the size of warehouses.  Barroso is a distinguished engineer at Google and a former researcher at the once …
Walter S. Mossberg / AllThingsD:
Working In Word, Excel, PowerPoint On an iPad  —  Although Apple's popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn't a big hit with folks who'd like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.  —  [ See post to watch video ]
Enigmax / TorrentFreak:
EMI Sues Irish State For Not Implementing Piracy Blocking Provisions  —  The place where breaking news, BitTorrent and copyright collide  —  EMI Sues Irish State For Not Implementing Piracy Blocking Provisions  —  After failing last year in its attempt to force a local Internet service provider …
Discussion: Inquirer, PC Magazine and TechEye
Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
First numbers: How successful are Spotify's apps?  —  Are Spotify's new apps the missing piece to the social music puzzle, or merely gimmicks that are ignored by the majority of the company's users?  It's been a month this week since Spotify rolled out its app platform to all of its users …
Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:
The MacBook Air Samsung SSD is about to get twice as fast  —  I had a chance to meet with Samsung Storage solutions at CES 2012 this week and got the low down on its new OEM SSDs that Apple tends to buy in large numbers.  Samsung and Toshiba are the OEMs that provide the SSDs in MacBook Airs.
Discussion: SlashGear
John Biggs / TechCrunch:
Why Samsung Is The Next Apple  —  For most of the ten years I've been coming to CES, every presentation, every booth, has had one goal: to create an ecosystem in order to encourage consumer to lock in.  Year after year, presentation after presentation, someone has come out to show how the phone …
Wall Street Journal:
Google Renews Push in China  —  Two Years After Censorship Clash, Company Renews Push to Expand in World's Biggest Internet Market  —  Google Inc., which pulled its Web-search engine out of mainland China two years ago after a confrontation with Chinese authorities over censorship …
Gregory Lyons / iCrossing:
Facebook to Hit a Billion Users in the Summer  —  Last summer we took a look at Facebook usage around the world, and with Facebook recently announcing that they're currently at over 800 million active users we thought it would be interesting to extrapolate their current grown rate and estimate …
Julie Bort / Business Insider:
Amazon Web Services Now Available Without That Messy ‘Web’ Part  —  Data doesn't have to travel over the messy, dangerous public Internet to use Amazon's cloud.  —  Amazon today expanded its AWS “direct connect” service to Northern California and three other global locations.
Discussion: Computerworld
Eric Slivka / MacRumors:
Target Confirms Plans to Bring Dedicated Apple Shops to 25 Stores  —  Reuters reports that Target has confirmed its plans to launch “store-within-a-store” concepts for Apple products in 25 of its stores around the United States.  The announcement comes alongside a broader effort called …
Jamie Keene / The Verge:
Boxee's Live TV joins the Facebook Open Graph party  —  Boxee has announced a new level of Facebook integration to its service, using the Open Graph auto-sharing feature to post what you're watching in Live TV dongle direct to your Timeline.  The integration runs a little deeper than this …
Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:
MPAA attacks Ars for “challenging efforts to curb content theft”  —  The Motion Picture Association of America doesn't like us.  According to the MPAA blog on Tuesday, “Arts Technica” is a “tech blog with a long history of challenging efforts to curb content theft.”
Discussion: MPAA Blog
 
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 More Items: 
ICANN:
New gTLDs Update: Applications Accepted Today; New Guidebook Posted; Financial Assistance for Qualifying Applicants
Eric Eldon / TechCrunch:
NewsGator Has Quietly Built An Enterprise Social Networking Business On Top Of SharePoint
Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:
Sharp is Reportedly Out of the Race for iPad 3 Display Production
Jenna Wortham / Bits:
Beyond Siri: Voice Recognition Pops Up in More Gadgets
Chris Foresman / Ars Technica:
Will 2012 be Thunderbolt's year? Devices arrive in force at CES
 Earlier Items: 
Alicia Eler / ReadWriteWeb:
Study: Your Facebook Personality Is The Real You
Discussion: TechCrunch
Mark Hosenball / Reuters:
Homeland Security watches Twitter, social media
Chris Ziegler / The Verge:
Motorola's Sanjay Jha: 'Verizon and AT&T don't want seven stock Android devices on their shelves'
Devindra Hardawar / VentureBeat:
Sony is bringing its Music Unlimited streaming service to iOS soon
Facebook:
Bringing Facebook Comments to Mobile