Google Teams Up with NSA, Monster Buys hotJobs & More

Google Teams Up With NSA

After cyber attacks on its company in December, Google has been working with government agencies to improve security methods and further investigate their claims, which include the belief that the attacks originated in China.

Google has been partnered with the National Security Agency (NSA) for weeks now, sharing pertinent information and details about the attacks on their company, as well as twenty other companies who were affected.  Spokespeople from Google and NSA have been reserved on the issue, stating that they are “working with the relevant U.S. authorities” and that “NSA works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associates,” in order to ensure security within the government’s computer networks, as well as to protect individual privacy.

Although it’s common for tech companies to work with NSA, they usually keep quiet in fear of public relations anxiety.  And more recently, companies have been cautious to work with them after the Terrorist Surveillance Program during the George W. Bush administration, when it leaked that the NSA had engaged in domestic surveillance without a warrant – an operation Google strongly defended their exclusion from.

Also before starting with Google’s high-profile case, NSA had to draft a legal document, known as a cooperative research and development agreement.  While the agreement was finalized within 24 hours, information flow was still limited and intelligence officers were rumored to be tapping their own contacts and twisting arms to get more useful information.

Eight Years Later, Monster Finally Owns HotJobs

After being out-bid by Yahoo in 2002, Monster’s acquisition of HotJobs should now put them ahead of rival CareerBuilder in market share, increasing its U.S. business by 20-25%.  Yahoo acquired the company eight years ago for $436 million; Monster now bought it for nearly half that at $225 million.

In the three-year traffic deal, Monster will remain the exclusive provider of jobs listing services across Yahoo’s properties in the U.S. and Canada, as well as the right to negotiate exclusively in other international territories.  The sale by Yahoo comes as they try to put more focus on display advertising revenue from content and services, while reducing down non-core businesses.

According to ComScore, CareerBuilder owned a slight advantage of U.S. traffic in December with 16.6 million unique visitors, compared to Monster’s 16.5 million.  But adding Monster and HotJobs together will give them over 24 million non-duplicated unique visitors, substantially adding quality traffic.

HotJobs was a major factor for Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium, which sells newspaper online display inventory targeted in regional locales.  Yahoo said it will still manage the consortium, as well as search and display advertising.

Some Extra Tidbits:

• Google has began to phase out support for Internet Explorer 6, the browser identified as the weak link in recent cyber attacks, and said that starting March 1, some of its services, such as Google Docs, would not work “properly” with the browser; upgrading as soon as possible is recommended.
• Facebook is beginning to introduce its new layout to a small number of users, which emphasizes an improved search function.
• Google’s new Social Search results are lacking the relevant information of 350 million Facebook users because of privacy restrictions, which limit Google to just what is shown on the public profile pages.

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Sources:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020304057.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704041504575044920905689954.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=141912