Google Inc. on Thursday introduced a new option that will enable visitors to display more information on the online search engine leader’s bare-bones home page, a departure that pushes the company a step closer to operating an Internet portal in the mold of rivals Yahoo and MSN.com.

The feature, available here, allows the millions of Google users worldwide to select components tools located underneath the search engine’s hood and display them on the main page.

For instance, a user could choose to have the weather, an e-mailbox, movie listings, top news stories, stock market quotes, and driving directions displayed whenever they visit Google’s home page and sign in using a personalized account. The company unveiled the feature during a media day hosted at its Mountain View headquarters.

Source: AP

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged that his company’s search engine can ruffle privacy feathers, but said the company’s technology doesn’t violate the company’s founding motto, “Don’t be evil.”

Schmidt discovered his own home phone number through Google, but said he was able to remove it by filling out Google’s standard form. But Google shouldn’t be blamed when that sort of private information crops up, he said.

“Google does not discover things that are not public,” said Schmidt, answering questions on the stage of the Gartner Symposium here Wednesday. “Many people are disturbed to find their home phone number. But we found it because it was a public piece of information.”

In response to a question about how Google treats consumer privacy, he tried to illustrate how the company’s don’t-be-evil philosophy trumps technology by recounting a meeting he attended with company co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin. In it, a business executive suggested a particular change at Google.

Source: News.com

Desperate to get HD DVD’s capacity up to something closer to its rival’s, Toshiba last week unveiled a three-layer disc that can hold 45GB.

Now TDK has announced a four-layer BD.

The disc holds up to 100GB of data. More to the point, it’s recordable, and according to TDK, can support a write-speed double that of today’s 50GB BD-Rs - or 6x (216Mbps), in other words.

The disc uses TDK’s Durabis coating, announced last January, which finally allows BDs to be used without a protective cartridge, though they remain rather less resilient to scratches then DVDs.

Source: The Register

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is turning over its online DVD rental business to Netflix Inc., signaling that the world’s largest retailer couldn’t beat the Internet upstart at its own game.

Shares of Netflix surged after the agreement was announced Thursday, rising $4.38, or 28 percent, to $19.88 in pre-market trading.

Wal-Mart is offering its existing online DVD rental customers the chance to continue their subscriptions with Los Gatos-based Netflix at their current price for the next year. Those who don’t sign up with Netflix by June 17 will lose their service. Wal-Mart plans to continue promoting the Netflix service on its Web site.

In return, Netflix will remind its subscribers that they can buy DVDs from Walmart.com.

The companies didn’t disclose how many customers Netflix will inherit nor the financial terms of their partnership. About 70 percent of Wal-Mart’s DVD rental customers pay $12.97 per month for the right to check out up to two titles at a time. Most Netflix customers pay $17.99 per month for three titles at a time.

Source: AP (via Yahoo)

After months of remaining nearly mum about the next version of Office, Microsoft is slowly breaking the silence.

The company is still not discussing the specifics on most of the features it will add with Office 12, but it is promising to have the productivity software suite ready by the second half of next year. The company is also talking about some broad areas that it sees as ripe for improvement, including enhanced collaboration. Among the other key areas are individual productivity, finding business information and managing corporate business documents.

Source: News.com