During a webcast from the firm's Palo Alto, Calif.,-headquarters, Zuckerberg announced Facebook would be adding two other new features to the site in addition to the new Groups settings, which will allow users to share information among a smaller group of Facebook friends.

"Some people talk about it as a privacy problem," Zuckerberg said of the inability up until now to share information with just some Facebook friends. "But a lot of time it's an annoying problem," in that users don't want to annoy some of their friends by posting pictures or other information that only some of their Facebook friends will want to see.

The other changes include allowing users to more easily download all their Facebook information - messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information - to their computer in one file. Most likely sensing the potential security and privacy implications, Facebook Product Manager David Recordon urged users to take their "security seriously" and said Facebook would take steps to ensure that it is the actual Facebook user who is asking to have their information downloaded.

The other change announced by Zuckerberg includes the creation of a dashboard that will display a Facebook user's privacy settings and the applications that are using the user's data and allow users to manage those settings.

In a blog post, Center for Democracy and Technology Policy Analyst Erica Newland said the changes to Facebook's Groups settings in particular represent "a revolution in approach for Facebook. The company that over the past year has repeatedly used questionable means to encourage users to share more of their information with the general public has finally returned to its roots and acknowledged that people use Facebook for different types of interactions with different types of people, be they friends, coworkers, or relatives."

"Today's announcement is a great first step in ensuring that the mobile device market remains vibrant and competitive," Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., chairman of the Courts and Competition Policy Subcommittee, said in a statement.

He said his subcommittee is set to hold a hearing next week on competition in the digital marketplace. Among the issues the panel planned to examine was whether Apple "was intentionally making it difficult for developers to create applications across a variety of operating systems, thus trying to choke off competition from Android phones and Blackberry devices, among others," Johnson added.

In a press release, Apple said it was "relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need."

After coming under fire from the groups and 18 state attorneys general who claim the company's adult ads help promote prostitution, Craigslist this weekend abruptly shut down its adult services ads section on its U.S. website and replaced it with the words "censored."

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster told Tech Daily Dose late last month that the company wanted to work with the state attorneys general to address their concerns, saying that failing to do so "would encourage the notion that government censorship can address complex societal challenges that will be met only through thoughtful, sustained investment in our communities."

In a statement, Courtney's House, the FAIR Fund, the Polaris Project and the Rebecca Project for Human Rights said Craigslist's decision to shut down its adult services ads in the United States "sends a clear signal to sexual predators that it will not stand for them using the site to sexually enslave children and young women."

They added despite making a "good first step in the U.S., there are still more than 250 other Craigslist 'erotic' pages around the world where children and young women are still being sold for sex through Craigslist. Craigslist is a global company, and it has a global responsibility. It should immediately shut down the 'erotic' services sections across the globe."

The groups also said they hoped Craigslist's decision to shut down the U.S adult services ads wasn't "simply a PR move" ahead of a tentative House Judiciary Committee hearing next week on sex trafficking on the Web.

A Craigslist spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on the allegation but in the past the company has denied any link to other firms' complaints againt Google.

"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.

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.

"We want to work with the attorneys general to address all of their concerns, which we share," Buckmaster said in an e-mail response to Tech Daily Dose. "Abdicating our responsibilities in the face of this demand would be a disaster for the very societal issues the AGs hope to address. It would encourage the notion that government censorship can
address complex societal challenges that will be met only through thoughtful, sustained investment in our communities."

Attorneys general from 17 states wrote Buckmaster and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark on Tuesday calling on the firm to drop adult services section from the online classified ads offered on the site.

"The increasingly sharp public criticism of Craigslist's adult services section reflects a growing recognition that ads for prostitution -- including ads trafficking children -- are rampant on it," the attorneys general wrote. "Because Craigslist cannot, or will not, adequately screen these ads, it should stop accepting them altogether and shut down the adult services section."

Under the non-exclusive deal formally announced Tuesday, Google will provide both search and search-related advertising platform services to Yahoo Japan, which will license some of its Japanese search content to Google for use in its Japanese search results. Yahoo Inc. owns a minority stake in Yahoo Japan, which is a subsidiary of Softbank.

"Both companies will remain independent search and advertising providers, will not share any customer or pricing information and will continue to vigorously compete in Japan," Daniel Alegre, vice president of sales for Google Japan and Asia-Pacific, wrote in his blog post Tuesday. "Our hope is that through this deal we can drive further innovation in ads and search and spur each other--and other companies--towards greater competition."

But Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner argued that the Google-Yahoo Japan deal is even more anticompetitive than a U.S. advertising agreement, Google and Yahoo Inc. had to abandon in 2008 because of antitrust concerns raised by the Justice Department.

Heiner also questioned whether Japan's antitrust authorities had approved the deal, as Google claimed.

According to a translated version of a news report from Japan's Yomiuri Online, Japan's trade commission minister said Wednesday that as long as the two firms continue to compete for advertisers, the deal does not raise antitrust issues. But the official pledged to continue to monitor the agreement.

In a blog post, Microsoft Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner argued that the deal will "eliminate search competition in Japan--in paid advertising and natural search results." He noted that Google accounts for about 51 percent of paid search advertising in Japan, while Yahoo Japan accounts for 47 percent, with their natural search results "almost as high. ... If Google is permitted to proceed with its plan, it would gain nearly complete control over search and search advertising in Japan through contract, not organic growth."

Heiner said this deal is bigger than the 2008 deal Google and Yahoo, which owns part of Yahoo Japan, abandoned after the Justice Department said it would file an antitrust lawsuit to block it. While he notes that Google has said the latest deal already has been approved by Japanese authorities, Heiner said, "It will be interesting to see over the next few weeks if that is really accurate."

Google confirmed the deal with a blog post Tuesday on its Google Japan blog that was in Japanese. While the Google translation service's English text of the post was hard to understand, it did say the deal was aimed at bringing "better services for users and partners."

Microsoft gained regulatory approval in February for its own search alliance with Yahoo, which the firms said was aimed at helping them better compete against Google.

These are the latest changes launched by Facebook in recent weeks in response to criticisms from some users, privacy advocates and lawmakers who had complained the social networking site's settings and privacy polices undermined user privacy.

The new settings will only allow Web sites or third-party applications that run on Facebook to access public data about users, such as their names, profile pictures, gender and networks, and require them to obtain permission from users before accessing private data from a user's profile, Facebook Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor said in a blog post.

"Last month, we announced a number of changes to make privacy simpler and to give you more control over the information you share with other people," Taylor said. "Today, we're taking the next step by providing more transparency and control over the information you share with third party applications and Web sites with a new, simpler application authorization process."

While President Obama already has Google CEO Eric Schmidt on speed dial, the California-based search giant is moving quickly to expand its influence in the capital in ways that are starting to bear fruit. Google increased the money it spends on lobbying in the first quarter by 57 percent over the previous year, paying $1.4 million to influence lawmakers and regulators, according to Consumer Watchdog, a nonpartisan, nonprofit public interest group that has been critical of Google's activities

Moreover, while Google's lobbying expenses for 2009 totaled $4.03 million, first-quarter spending this year jumped 23 percent, from the $1.12 million the company spent in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to the interest group. It's a far cry from the paltry $80,000 that Google spent lobbying the federal government just seven years ago, shortly after the tech bubble burst and Silicon Valley was forced to seek greater cooperation from the federal government.

The computer and Internet industry as a whole spent $38.8 million on federal lobbying in 1998. Two years later, at the height of the bubble, it spent $56 million. By contrast, in 2009, the industry spent nearly $120 million.

Along the way, Google has dramatically expanded its D.C. staff and government affairs operations. In 2009, the computer and Internet industry employed the third-most lobbyists of any industry -- only the pharmaceutical and education industries had more, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Industry lobbyists outnumber members of Congress more than 2-to-1.

"We established a Washington presence because we felt like it was important to give our users a voice in Washington," Google spokeswoman Mistique Cano told the CRP recently. "Technology can be complicated. We absolutely believe taking the time to help people understand our business is a worthy investment. Technology is only going to become a bigger part of our lives and the economy."

Campaign finance experts said Google's activities represent the "next wave" of the computer industry's inevitable arrival as a Washington power player. "The computer industry, by virtue of its personality, has always wanted to keep Washington at arm's length," Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, told me this week. "They've found they can't, so they have jumped in." To read more, click here.

Facebook has been come under fire in recent months for making changes that users, privacy advocates and some lawmakers say undermine user privacy.

Zuckerberg outlined the latest changes in a blog post in which he noted that users have told the firm that its privacy controls are too complicated. " We've always offered a lot of controls, but if you find them too hard to use then you won't feel like you have control," he said. "Unless you feel in control, then you won't be comfortable sharing and our service will be less useful for you."

The changes include providing Facebook users with a single control for all their content, which will allow them to select who can see the content they post to include "everyone," "friends of friends," or "just friends." The second major change involves reducing the amount of basic information that must be visible to everyone.

In addition, Facebook users will now have a simpler way to control which applications or Web sites can access user information. Currently, Facebook's partner sites can see information that users make available to everyone, but Facebook will now allow users to prevent such third-party sites from seeing user information.

"There have been a lot of changes over the years as we've continued to innovate, and I appreciate that you have all stuck with us," Zuckerberg said. "Each time we make a change we try to learn from past lessons, and each time we make new mistakes too."

Critics of Facebook's privacy policies praised the firm for attempting to fix its mistakes but said the social networking site still has more work to do.

The firm released the report at a Capitol Hill news conference during National Small Business Week in an effort to show how Google services such as AdWords, text ads that appear along side or at the top of Google search results, and AdSense, which shares profits from ads that appear on content creators' Web sites, benefit small businesses.

The $54 billion total was derived by adding the profits companies get from Google services such as AdWords, the revenues Google paid out to Web sites that use its AdSense program and the in-kind grants Google provides to nonprofits in each state, according to Google Vice President of Global Online Sales Claire Hughes Johnson.

The report provides a state-by-state breakdown of the economic value Google estimated its services have in each state. California, where Google is headquartered, had the biggest total of $14.1 billion, while Alaska had the smallest at $15.9 million. Three entrepreneurs were at the news conference to discuss how their business have grown with the help of Google services such as AdWords and AdSense. Ross Twiddy, director of marketing for vacation home provider Twiddy & Company Realtors of Duck, N.C., said AdWords helped take the company from the "dark ages" into the "Renaissance."

"These Businesses are growing and Google is thrilled to play a role," Hughes Johnson said.

Senate Small Business Chairmwoman Mary Landrieu, D-La., said one way the federal government is helping small businesses is by promoting broadband deployment and adoption and touted the Obama administration's push to include $7 billion in last year's economic stimulus for these efforts.

During a hearing on the incident before a Senate Banking subcommittee, Warner noted that some new technologies allow traders to execute orders in nano or milliseconds. "Have we seen on May 6th what may be the first kind of warning shot of what may be the next potential systemic crisis because of technology run amuck," he asked federal regulators.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Schapiro noted the agency solicited comments in January on the impact that "high-frequency" trading has on retail investors, the health of the markets and "the ability of public companies to raise capital, the whole reason our markets exist at the end of the day."

As far as what may have caused the flash crash, an initial study from the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission "suggests the occurrence of a very severe temporary liquidity failure than the effect of any economic factor," Schapiro said.

Warner responded in directing the same question to CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler, "how do we get to that level of confidence when it seems like certain institutions are using not greater investigatory knowledge, but really just technology in a sense to game the market?"

Gensler noted Warner's reference to practices known as "sniping and sniffing" when a computer puts in a very small order, maybe just one futures contract, to see "whether it is addressed or hit and lifted. And then it will put in more and so forth. We don't know yet whether that was a piece of what was happening May 6th," but added the commission is examining the issue. He also said that "we can't stop technology. But I think that we have to update our regulations to stay abreast of this."

Schapiro added that "we've got to get that balance right between when the technology, which provides benefits, is allowed to run and when it's not allowed to run because it's run amuck. And ... we can put the human factor back into it".

The FTC is currently weighing whether to approve Google's $750 million purchase of AdMob. In a post on Google's public policy blog, Google Group Product Manager Paul Feng noted that, "We've told the FTC about how new and highly competitive the mobile advertising space is, and the FTC has been talking to others in the industry about their views as well."

He quoted mobile application provider Wertago as telling the FTC that the deal "will have little if any effect on the competitiveness of the mobile advertising market space." In a long blog post on its Web site, Wertago said "there is no way the FTC knows enough to support a decision to block the deal. The staff members we spoke to were not particularly knowledgeable about the mobile ad space they are considering interfering in."

A group of House Energy and Commerce Committee members raised concerns about the deal and urged Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., last week to ask the FTC to brief the panel on its probe of the merger. "The need for thorough review is particularly pressing given Google's dominant position in search advertising including mobile search advertising and its growing influence over other forms of online advertising," the lawmakers wrote.

In the letter, Reps. John Barrow, D-Ga., Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, Frank Pallone, D-N.J., Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Steve Scalise, R-La., note recent press reports that indicate the FTC may impose conditions on the Google-Admob deal and of calls for the commission to provide close scrutiny of the deal.

"The need for thorough review is particularly pressing given Google's dominant position in search advertising including mobile search advertising and its growing influence over other forms of online advertising," they wrote.

The five lawmakers, along with several other committee members, sent a letter to the FTC in March urging it to investigate privacy concerns raised about Google's new social networking service Buzz and also about Google's purchase of AdMob and its impact on competition in the mobile advertising market.

In Friday's letter, the lawmakers asked that the FTC brief the committee on whether Google and AdMob are the leading providers of ads to mobile devices and whether combining their mobile ad services would "control a substantially greater share" of the market than their closest competitor. They also asked the FTC for information on whether the deal would allow Google to leverage its control over pc-based Internet advertising to the mobile ad market; lead to Google's "entrenched dominance" in the mobile and search advertising markets; and result in higher prices. In addition, they asked that the FTC indicate whether it has been assured that adequate privacy safeguards will be in place if the deal is approved and whether the mobile ad market is too "nascent" to justify antitrust attention.

"Given the huge economic potential of the mobile Internet and the critical role that mobile advertising will play in its growth, we believe these issues merit serious attention," they added.

Google has defended its proposed $750 million acquisition of AdMob, saying it will give "advertisers and publishers more choice in this growing new area." It also notes that the two firms currently specialize in different areas. "Though Google offers many forms of mobile advertising, its focus to date has been on mobile search ads, while AdMob's focus has been mobile display ads and in-application ads," it noted.