In the latest example of a U.S. technology giant potentially being called on the carpet in Europe, Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing data on its users for up to two years, according to a report in the International Herold Tribune.  An advisory panel of data protection chiefs from the 27 EU countries sent a letter last week to the Internet search engine company asking Google to justify its policy of retaining data on Internet addresses and individual search habits, said Friso Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for European Union’s justice commissioner, Franco Frattini.  Privacy experts said the letter was the first salvo in what could become a determined effort by the European Commission to force Google to change how it does business in the EU, whose 400 million consumers outnumber the United States.   Any EU effort to impose limits on Google, which as a U.S.-based company operates under U.S. law, would be the latest in a series of increasingly aggressive actions taken by European policy makers to rein in global technology companies.

“California, Arizona, Utah and Virginia agreed to incorporate lines of computer code into their Web sites to increase the information that can be found through Google searches. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement Monday that “California state government provides tremendous resources online for the public to learn about our great state. Our partnership with Google will empower Californians to know more about our government and provide better access to services and helpful information. The move will help search engines like Mountain View-based Google Inc. or Sunnyvale-based Yahoo Inc. tap into information that was only in state databases before.”

“Google has bought online video-conferencing software company, Marratech, the latest in a barrage of software application announcements by the online giant. Google announced the acquisition on its blog, saying the Sweden-based Marratech will be great for Google’s own workplace because Googlers ‘thrive on casual interactions and spontaneous collaboration.’ Video-conferencing is a logical next move for Google, given its dive into online video recently with the acquisition of YouTube. It’s just the latest front in its battle against Microsoft, which has its own web conferencing software Live Meeting. Cisco, meanwhile, just acquired another major player in the industry, WebEx, for $3.2 billion. The difference, of course, is that Google paid pennies relative to what Cisco paid. As a consumer oriented company, Google can presumably distribute the software easily and perhaps even for free. Marratech, founded in 1998, raised at least the equivalent of $10 million. Investors include Slottbacken Venture Capital, the investment unit of Telia Sonera, the Sixth Swedish National Pension Fund, Emano, Hagstromer, and Qviberg.”

“EBay Inc., the world’s largest online auction company, said first-quarter profit climbed 52 percent as it raised fees and held more auctions overseas. The company boosted its earnings and sales forecast for the year. Net income surged to $377.2 million, or 27 cents a share, San Jose, California-based EBay said today in a statement. Excluding some expenses, it earned 33 cents, 3 cents more than analysts’ estimates. Revenue rose 27 percent to $1.77 billion. Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman last year more than doubled fees for merchants selling goods at fixed prices to reduce clutter on its site. A higher percentage of listings are leading to sales as a result. Revenue from its PayPal payment division surged 31 percent while sales at its Skype Internet phone unit more than doubled… Overseas revenue climbed 38 percent on demand in Western Europe, outpacing an 18 percent gain in the U.S. and helping lower the company’s tax rate. A weaker dollar boosted earnings by 2 cents a share, Chief Financial Oficer Robert Swan said in an interview… `We’ve continued to try to expand our international footprint,’ said Swan.”

“Reunion.com, the leader in helping adults find, reconnect and keep in touch with their friends and family, today announced it has completed a $25M round of funding from Oak Investment Partners, a top-tier Silicon Valley Venture Capital firm with a 30-year history. This investment represents one of the largest in a social networking company to date. Reunion.com has been a profitable online business since its inception, with revenue growth of over 100% annually. Today the company boasts 28 million users and is adding nearly one million new members each month. With almost 8 million unique visitors conducting 60 million searches for people monthly, Reunion.com is now one of the top-ranked social networking sites according to Media Metrix, with others in the category including Friendster, Xanga, Bebo, LinkedIn, and Hi5.”

The State of California, which has an almost unbelievable record of failure on big information technology projects, is planning to spend billions more on upgrades to its information technology infrastructure. While California Chief Information Officer Clark Kelso credits the forward momentum to “California’s political leadership” the practice of sole source contracts, cronyism and small business lock-outs has continued under the Schwarzenegger administration. A recent special report in Washington Technology covered some of their most recent plans:

According to California Chief Information Officer Clark Kelso, some 177 information technology projects worth roughly $5 billion are already under way throughout the state. The projects are in various stages of development. Within the next 12 to 24 months, California will be conducting an additional 60 or 70 procurements, large and small. In aggregate, Kelso estimates, potential contract value should amount to at least another $2 billion.

“We have a series of modernizations that have to take place,” Kelso said. Kelso credits the forward momentum to California’s political leadership, which has come to a consensus that a patchwork approach to IT won’t work. The new emphasis is on shared architectures and infrastructure. Although complex and initially expensive, these solutions avoid the pricier alternative and compounding costs of the status quo.

One such example is a project for a statewide, integrated financial and administrative system based on enterprise resource planning software. Once it is fully implemented, the project, named FI$Cal, will manage resources and dollars for a wide array of administrative processes, from budgeting and procurement to cost accounting and human resources activities.

Later this year, the state will draw up a request for proposals, with a contract awarded sometime in 2008. Its value could run as high as $1.4 billion in eight to 10 years.

Jens Egerland, managing director for California state and local government with Accenture Ltd., said two major trends are at work in the state. One trend involves modernizing and updating longtime legacy systems, and the other concerns enterprise initiatives like the FI$Cal project. “California is a great marketplace to be in for IT right now,” he said.

California also will be implementing what it is calling a Spatial Data Infrastructure, comprising framework geospatial datasets, systems, standards, policies and practices. By this summer, the state plans to set up a Geospatial Services Office. By integrating the state’s extensive datasets on human enterprises with maps of California’s natural terrain and geography, leaders hope to optimize economic development and other business-related activities.

Microsoft has announced lawsuits in California and five other States against companies it accuses of participating in the gray market software trade. Microsoft said the companies named in the suits were importing low-cost, educational versions of its products from Jordan and other countries and reselling them at full commercial prices. The companies look at how gray market software finds its way into the United States from foreign countries was an international operation. The Jordanian government, among others, assisted with the investigation. “Companies that break Jordan’s intellectual property laws will be prosecuted,” said His Excellency Eng. Basem Rousan, Jordan’s minister of information and communications technology.

“Actuate Corp., a provider of business intelligence, performance management and reporting applications, said Wednesday its flagship product is now available with German-language support. South San Francisco-based Actuate said German-speaking countries are a key market for performance management in general and software specifically. The company said its German version offers the same functionality as the English version, including performance maps and briefing books.”

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a California-based NGO responsible for the Internet’s naming and numbering system, has rejected the idea of a special “xxx” domain name suffix for adult entertainment websites. As reported in the International Herold Tribune, a “strange bedfellows” arrangement of opponents emerged and the change was opposed by both religious groups and the adult entertainment industry.

A longstanding proposal to create a specialized .xxx suffix for adult entertainment Web sites received a final rejection Friday by the agency governing the Internet address system. The plan, first introduced seven years ago by ICM Registry, was rejected by a vote of nine to five by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, at a meeting in Lisbon. The issue will not be brought for further discussion by Icann, but ICM Registry, the Florida company that was also applying to manage the address, said it would continue to pursue the issue.

“We are extremely disappointed by the board’s action today,” Stuart Lawley, chairman of ICM Registry, said Friday. “It is not supportable for any of the reasons articulated by the board.” Board members who voted against the plan expressed concern that it would compel Icann to get involved in regulating content, among other issues.

To alleviate concerns over promoting adult content, ICM had said that .xxx Web sites would only be issued to adult entertainment providers identifying themselves as complying with a set of business practices that included a ban on child pornography and warnings about content. ICM had argued that creation of the domain would enhance safety for young users by clearly defining .xxx sites as a no-go zone.

Described last week by Paul Twomey, Icann’s chief executive, as “clearly controversial, clearly polarizing,” the issue has been discussed among Internet aficionados and on blogs. Some who objected to the proposal included companies in the adult entertainment industry as well as religious groups. Adult entertainment executives raised fears that use of the domain, although voluntary, could open the way for governments to isolate adult Web sites into a single part of the Internet.

Religious groups expressed concern that creation of a .xxx domain would only serve to encourage creation of more adult content. Others warned the move would create an instant bonanza for ICM Registry, since companies with existing Web sites would be compelled to buy .xxx domain names to prevent someone else from creating a site using their company name.

Supporters of the .xxx proposal on the Icann board argued that the agency’s proper role is to serve as a technical arbiter about the feasibility of new domain names, not to discriminate on the basis of content. The decision to reject .xxx was “weak and unprincipled,” according to one board member, Susan Crawford. “No centralized authority should set itself up as the arbiter of what people may do together online,” Crawford said in a statement to the board Friday, adding that political pressures played an undue role. “This is not a technical stability and security question.“

“Oracle Corp. sued its archrival SAP on Thursday, alleging that its German competitor secretly and illegally obtained proprietary materials from the Redwood City giant’s customer support Web site The legal action highlights what has become an increasingly bitter rivalry between the two makers of business software. Oracle accused SAP of using its customers’ log-in information to obtain more than 10,000 unauthorized downloads of software and supporter materials related to hundreds of programs. ‘This case is about corporate theft on a grand scale, committed by the largest German software company,’ the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco said. SAP is the world’s No. 1 seller of business applications known as enterprise resource planning software, which companies use to perform such tasks as keeping track of financial transactions and monitoring inventory. Oracle, the world’s No. 1 seller of database systems, has been trying to expand into that market, mainly by buying other players, including onetime Bay Area technology firms such as PeopleSoft and Siebel Systems.”

“Google has acquired Swedish non-profit company Gapminder that produces visually attractive graphics to display facts, figures, and statistics in presentations.”

“Microsoft is negotiating to buy Tellme Networks, a Mountain View, Calif. company that offers voice-recognition technology, and could sign something as early as this week, according to multiple news reports. A Microsoft agreement to buy Tellme could value the company at up to $800 million.”

“The San Francisco Business Times reports that Software company FrontRange Solutions Inc. will buy German software maker Enteo Software Inc. Dublin-based FrontRange didn’t say what it will pay in the deal. Enteo is based in Filderstadt, Germany. FrontRange used to be called GoldMine Software Corp. Michael McCloskey is its CEO. Stephan Glathe is CEO of Enteo.”

The Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal reports: “GlobalRoads Inc., which focuses on sales automation services and open source for businesses, said Wednesday it launched a new product engineering center in India. Sunnyvale-based GlobalRoads said the center in Hyderabad is expected to employ up to 70 percent of the company’s engineering resources over the next three years” “We strongly believe that all our planned investments in India will help deliver at an accelerated pace on the company’s product and services commitments while enabling economies of scale and desired cost advantages,” company president and co-founder Bradford Newton said in a prepared statement.”

“Meru Networks (of Sunnyvale), the leader in infrastructure solutions that enable the All-Wireless Enterprise, today announced that it has closed its latest round of venture funding, raising $27.6M in a Series D round led by leading global investment and technology development firm the D. E. Shaw group. Other investors in this round include existing Meru investors Lehman Brothers, Clearstone Venture Partners, NeoCarta Ventures, BlueStream Ventures, Evercore Ventures and JumpStartUp Venture Fund.”

“In remarks prepared for delivery today to the Association of American Publishers, and carefully passed out to selected media outlets ahead of time, Microsoft attorney Thomas C. Rubin ripped into Google as a bunch of copyright cowboys and parasites. ‘Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people’s content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue,’ Rubin said.”

“Four years after realigning itself as a designer of RFID systems for wireless Internet networks, AeroScout has received a $21 million third round of venture capital that brings its total funding to $41 million. Two new Silicon Valley firms joined AeroScout’s investor syndicate for the new round, with Menlo Ventures of Menlo Park, Calif., leading the round. Greylock Partners of San Mateo, Calif., was the other first-time investor. The new money will support continued sales, marketing and development of San Mateo-based AeroScout’s product line, a system of radio frequency identification tags and sensors that operates on networks using the Wi-Fi wireless standard.”

“Officials from the United Nations met on Wednesday with Silicon Valley executives to discuss the ‘digital divide’ _ the growing gap between the world’s wealthiest and most computer literate people and the impoverished masses without Internet access. The meeting, organized by Intel Corp. and the U.N.’s Global Alliance for Information and Communications Technology and Development, was billed as the first between U.N. officials and technology executives and venture capitalists. More than 100 executives and officials from more than 30 countries attended the half-day conference. They discussed low-cost ways to get broadband Internet access to Africa, build computer centers throughout the developing world and encourage entrepreneurship. “

“Intel Corp, the world’s largest chip maker, will invest 65 million US dollar in Taiwan’s Powertech Technology to boost its flash memory business. Intel will make the investment in Powertech, a memory-chip packaging and testing company, through its venture capital arm, Intel Capital, the companies said today. The agreement was confirmed by Intel Capital Singapore-based spokesman. The acquisition is aimed at expanding Santa Clara, California-based Intel’s Nand flash memory business, giving it access to components and the supply chain, he said. Nand flash is used to store data such as music and photos in MP3 players, digital cameras and other consumer electronics.”

“Oracle Corp. said today it has signed a $3.3 billion deal to buy Hyperion Solutions Corp. in a move that underscores CEO Larry Ellison’s aggressive bid to dominate the business software industry. Hyperion is a key player in the roughly $10 billion market for business intelligence software that companies use to get detailed reports on how a business is doing and to forecast how it would perform in the near future. The company is also known for software used for managing a company’s finances. Oracle, which has bought more than two dozen companies over the past two years, made clear that buying the company was a competitive move meant to undercut a major rival, SAP of Germany.” Both companies are headquartered in the Bay area: Oracle in Redwood Shoresand Hyperion in Sunnyvale.