Google revealed Friday that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conducting an antitrust probe of the Internet firm, focusing on whether the company manipulates its search results.

The probe appears similar to one launched by the European Union, which is investigating similar claims made by Google competitors, including the British price comparison site Foundem, which filed a complaint with the EU against Google earlier this year. According to Google Deputy General Counsel Don Harrison, Abbott has asked for information about Foundem as well as SourceTool, a business-to-business search engine owned by TradeComet, and price comparison site myTriggers, which claims its business has suffered because Google reduced its ad quality ratings, Harrison said in a blog post.

Google defended its search results saying they are based on providing the most relevant and useful search results and ads for users. "Given that not every Web site can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it's unsurprising that some less relevant, lower quality Web sites will be unhappy with their ranking," Harrison added.

He also alleged that Microsoft may have a connection to the companies that have complained that Google has engaged in anti-competitive practices.

"We're looking forward to working cooperatively with the Texas Attorney General's office, and we strongly believe our business practices reflect our commitment to build great products for the benefit of users everywhere," Harrison said.

Google said Friday that it is "simplifying and updating" its privacy policies to make them more understandable for users.

The Internet giant said while most of its products and services are covered by Google's main privacy policy, some fall under supplemental invididual privacy policies. The company said it would delete 12 product-specific privacy policies.

"These changes are also in line with the way information is used between certain products--for example, since contacts are shared between services like Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Docs, it makes sense for those services to be governed by one privacy policy as well," Google Associate General Counsel Mike Yang said in a blog post.

Yang said the company also is cutting down on redundant provisions in its main Google privacy policy and rewriting others that are too legalistic "so people can understand them more easily."

Google's privacy practices made headlines Thursday after Consumer Watchdog, a frequent and vocal critic of the company, announced it had placed an animated ad in New York's Times Square promoting a video that mocks Google CEO Eric Schmidt and the company on the issue of privacy.

Broadcasters have been working to mitigate an expected final decision by the FCC at a meeting later this month on a proposal to allow unused parts of television spectrum known as white spaces to be used for wireless broadband and other advanced Wi-Fi technologies.

The FCC announced Thursday that it would vote on taking final action on the white spaces proposal at its Sept. 23 meeting. The National Association of Broadcasters and the Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV), a group that focuses on engineering and technical issues related to television, have been urging the FCC to ensure the proposal will not lead to intereference with broadcast television. In 2009, NAB and MSTV filed a lawsuit, which is still pending, to block the FCC's whitespaces proposal.

While the NAB declined to comment on the FCC's decision to act on the white spaces issue at its next meeting, NAB and MSTV urged the commission in letters last month not to eliminate "spectrum sensing protections" as requested by some device manufacturers.

"We urge the commission to adhere to its decision that spectrum sensing is a necessary companion to the geolocation/database requirement," lawyers for the groups wrote in an Aug. 12 filing with the FCC. "The two together are essential to achieving the commission's stated goal of avoiding harmful interference to the public's television service."

The FCC's decision to take final action on the white space issue was praised by Microsoft and others. "If the FCC adopts the right policy framework interesting user experiences can emerge," Microsoft Regulatory Affairs Counsel Paula Boyd wrote in a blog post early Friday. "TV white spaces can facilitate the emerging 'Internet of Things' in which devices in the home and office share data more seamlessly."

Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld said the FCC's move was an important step in helping to meet the growing demand for wireless broadband and in promoting what he and others describe as "Wi-Fi on steroids."

"The FCC's decision will also unleash millions of dollars in investment that will create new jobs and help American maintain its technology edge in wireless," Feld added in a statement.

The Customs and Border Patrol bureau failed to properly set computer controls that allow only authorized users to view financial data, and to certify networks complied with security standards, according to an audit released earlier this week by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general.

A number of problems the inspector general found in 2008 still were not fixed in fiscal 2009, according to the audit, which analyzed CBP's financial systems and was conducted by the accounting firm KPMG, Nextgov.com reported.

"Although we noted improvement, CBP still faces challenges related to the merging of numerous IT functions, controls, processes and organizational resource shortages," the report stated.

Specifically, administrators didn't regularly review changes to employees' access rights or enforce stringent password requirements. Also, systems were not configured to refuse a user to log on after failing a predetermined number of times, and the bureau didn't disable accounts after 45 days of inactivity, as required by department policy. CBP officials also failed to restrict what employees could access on the network to the least number of files required to perform their duties. To read more, click here.

A FCC report released Thursday examining Internet access subscriptions found that less than half of U.S. subscribers currently get broadband service that meets or exceeds speed targets set by the commission in its national broadband plan.

The broadband plan released in March set the "universal availability target" at 4 megabits per second downstream and 1 megabits per second upstream. But the Internet subscription report found that only 44 percent of the 71 million fixed Internet connections to households met this target as of June 2009.

The report found that the number of mobile wireless subscribers with Internet access plans increased by 40 percent during the first six months of 2009 to 35 million.

While mobile Internet access appears to be soaring, fixed broadband subscriptions grew at a much slower rate of 3 percent, to 41 million, for cable broadband and 1 percent for DSL, to 31 million, according to the report. Satellite Internet connections grew at a faster rate of 6 percent but still only number 1 million subscribers.

While encouraging the two sides to continue to engage in constructive talks on the issue, Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., Thursday renewed his call for the FCC to use the authority it currently has to ensure the openness of the Internet.

"I remain open to and am actively working on a legislative solution to ensure that law reflects the growing consensus that the open Internet must be preserved and promoted, but I also believe that the FCC has the authority, ability, and responsibility to use its regulatory authority under existing law to preserve Internet freedom with or without a new law," Kerry said in a statement.

His comments come one day after the FCC issued a public notice Wednesday seeking additional comment on its open Internet proceeding. The notice asks for comment on whether open Internet rules should apply to mobile broadband and "specialized" services. Last month, Verizon and Google released a proposed legislative framework that calls for exempting both services from open Internet rules, which would bar network providers from discriminating against or prioritizing Internet content or applications, while applying such rules only to wireline broadband.

Kerry along with other key congressional Democrats and public interest groups have urged the FCC to move to strengthen its authority over broadband providers by reclassifying some aspects of broadband as a telecommunication service - a move that would allow the agency to move forward on open Internet rules. The commission's authority over broadband providers was put in doubt after an April federal appeals court ruling. The FCC took the first step in June toward reclassifying broadband.

If Kerry was looking for further FCC action in the near term on the issue he'll have to wait. The FCC did not include the reclassification issue on the agenda for its next meeting on Sept 23.

Instead, the commission will act on such matters as allowing unlicensed wireless devices to use unused parts of television spectrum known as white spaces and updating the E-rate program that provides subsidies for Internet access in schools and libraries.

New cybersecurity mandates are certain to drive tech spending for the next several years. What's less certain is the kind of products and services federal agencies will be buying, as well as which agencies will be doing the buying, Nextgov.com reports.

In April, the Office of Management and Budget directed agencies to start monitoring continuously and automatically the status of their security controls in the fall. And Congress is pushing to update the oft-maligned 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act to eliminate its burdensome reporting, require real-time monitoring and build security into all technology acquisitions.

"At the end of the day, compliance with cybersecurity goals and initiatives will represent a multibillion-dollar opportunity for the contractor community," says Rishi Sood, a vice president at research firm Gartner Inc.

Estimates on how much the government spends on cybersecurity range from roughly $2 billion to $8 billion a year, depending on how one defines cybersecurity and its range of applications. Some analysts predict costs could grow 5 percent to 8 percent annually during the next several years.

Security concerns are affecting just about every federal information technology initiative from social networking to cloud computing, in which users subscribe to products and services on demand and online from a third party. To read more, click here.

Consumer Watchdog has launched a rather unique effort in its bid to highlight its concerns over Google's privacy policies and to push Congress to allow consumers to opt out of having their Web activities tracked by online firms.

The group has launched a 540-square-foot animated ad, which is running twice an hour in New York's Times Square, promoting a cartoon video that mocks Google's privacy practices by showing the firm's CEO Eric Schmidt offering free ice cream to children while he secretly collects information about them. The public interest group has been a loud and frequent critic of Google, launching a Web site focused on the Internet giant called Inside Google.

In the cartoon video, Schmidt is seen driving around in a Google ice cream truck and tells a group of children who run up to get the free ice cream he is offering that, "I already know your favorite flavors. Hold still while we collect some of your secrets. And if there is anything you don't want anyone to know, well you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," the cartoonish Schmidt says with a sinister laugh refrencing a famous quote from the real Google CEO. "Remember kids you can't believe everything your parents say about privacy," as he goes on to tell each child what their parents have been doing on the Web.

The video ends with a voice telling viewers to call Congress and urge lawmakers to establish a "do not track" list. Consumer advocates have promoted the idea of such a list, which would be similar to the FTC's Do-Not-Call Registry aimed at stopping unwanted telemarketing calls, to allow Internet users to block firms from tracking their Web activities. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz has said the agency is considering proposing such a list, but it would have to be mandated by Congress.

Schmidt raised eyebrows for comments he made to the Wall Street Journal last month when he suggested that children may want to change their names when they grow up to escape the mistakes of their youth that will have been recorded on social networking sites. He also predicted that Google one day will know so much about its users that they will want the firm "to tell them what they should be doing next."

Google has argued that it allows consumers to protect their privacy by giving them more control over their information with such products as Google Dashboard, which provides users with a control panel for the information they store with their Google accounts, and its ad preferences manager that allows users to edit the categories used to target Internet ads at them or to opt-out of receiving such ads.

Whether the Internet is truly a democratic forum was called into question this week in a dispute about Internet traffic management between AT&T and the consumer advocacy group Free Press, National Journal.com reported.

The feud boiled down to what it means to have "paid prioritization," a phenomenon viewed as anathema by advocates of Internet openness, and to what extent preferential treatment of content already takes place. The issue is at the very heart of a broader debate about what regulatory steps are necessary, if any, to ensure the Internet remains an engine of economic growth and a platform of equal value to people across the socioeconomic spectrum.

AT&T, in a letter filed with the Federal Communications Commission on Monday, argued that paid prioritization of Internet traffic, contrary to claims made by Free Press, is already a common practice of Web management and consistent with protocols set by the Internet Engineering Task Force. Largely unknown to people outside the technology field, IETF is a professional organization composed of engineers that develop standards for the Internet; for over two decades, it has played an integral role in the management of the Internet.

The current chair of the IETF, Russ Housley, disagrees with AT&T's assessment.

"AT&T's characterization is misleading," Housley said. "IETF prioritization technology is geared toward letting network users indicate how they want network providers to handle their traffic, and there is no implication in the IETF about payment based on any prioritization."

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Nextgov.com reports that most congressional Web sites lack input from constituents, are not created with the visitor in mind and are at most a second priority in politicians' offices, according to a report the Brookings Institution recently released.

"The extent to which legislators fail to better exploit these technologies reflects a failure of our democratic institutions themselves," said the study's authors, Kevin Esterling, an associate professor at the University of California at Riverside; David Lazer, an associate professor at Northeastern University; and Michael Neblo, an assistant professor at Ohio State University.

The researchers interviewed 99 congressional staffers who had responsibility for their office's Web site in 2006. The researchers also ranked all House and Senate sites for nearly 100 points of operational criteria, including tracking issue information, constituency services and use of technology such as blogs. The criteria were developed in collaboration with the Congressional Management Foundation, a nonpartisan advocacy group that works to make Congress more effective.

Although much of the research was conducted nearly four years ago, Esterling said the results are still valid and the sites "don't change that much." Congressional staff in 2006 did not think it was worthwhile to communicate with each other, an attitude that continues today, he added. While the sites have improved, they still are not as well-designed, user friendly or interactive as Web sites operated by some news organizations and e-commerce, Esterling said.

"Congressional Web sites lag the ones you find elsewhere," he said. To read more, click here.