Google Co-Founder Larry Page replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO

In addition to announcing their quarterly earnings on Thursday, Google dropped somewhat of a blockbuster. CEO Eric Schmidt is no longer CEO, instead being replaced by co-found Larry Page, while Schmidt becomes executive chairman.

Page will take charge of day-to-day operations on April 4, while Schmidt will focus on deals, partnerships, government outreach, and become a technology thought leader. Co-founder Sergey Brin will take the title of ... Co-Founder. His job is to lead the company’s “strategic projects.” Brin will be in charge of Google’s new and experimental technologies.

BusinessInsider has a pretty harsh look at the move. They believe that

Eric Schmidt was tossed from the company, because Sergey and Larry were frustrated with dealing with him. Note the quote from Schmidt that Google wanted to "speed up decision making." If things are working smoothly, you don't have those problems.

That was mentioned in Schmidt's blog post on the change, saying that partly, the move was made to simplify the management structure and speed up decision making.

In terms of the actual financials, Google said that in Q4 2010, revenue was $8.44 billion, an increase of 26 percent over the same period in 2009. Operating income was $2.98 billion compared to $2.48 billion from Q4 2009. Google reported a profit of $2.54 billion, or $7.81 a share, up from $1.97 billion, or $6.13 a share, a year earlier.

Markets reacted in after-hours trading by spiking on the earnings news, dropping as the news about Schmidt spread, and gaining again. At the current time, Google is up 8.74‎ (or 1.39 percent‎) in after hours trading.

Eric Schmidt first joined Google's board as chairman in 2001, then later that same year became the company's CEO. Ironically, he announces he is leaving the CEO post just days after his biggest rival, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, announced a medical leave of absence.

Wikileaks handed two discs of secret Swiss banking data

Many are awaiting a Wikileaks release regarding a major U.S. bank, widely believed to be Bank of America. In the meantime, however, former Swiss banking employee Rudolf Elmer has handed over two discs worth of data to Wikileaks, containing information about bank accounts of more than 2,000 "prominent individuals."

Elmer has his own whistleblower website, which is where the information came from, and he handed the discs over to Wikileaks chief Julian Assange, publicly, at a press conference on Monday morning. It is up to Wikileaks to vet, and if they deem the information reliable, release it.  Assange said,

"Once we have looked at the data ... there will be full revelation."

The discs could potentially hold information related to possible tax evasion. The people involved could be using the Swiss banking system’s offshore Cayman Islands accounts to avoid paying taxes in their native countries. Yesterday, Elmer told The Observer:

"Once you become part of senior management and gain international experience, as I did, then you are part of the inner circle, and things become much clearer. You are part of the plot. You know what the real products and service are, and why they are so expensive. It should be no surprise that the main product is secrecy ... Crimes are committed and lies spread in order to protect this secrecy."

However, both Wikileaks and Elmer are interested in the flaws in the system, not the individuals involved. Thus, we probably won't be seeing actual names exposed.

While Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden over sexual misconduct chargers, Elmer is facing trial in Switzerland for an earlier data leak. In this case, however, Elmer claimed he did not break any Swiss banking secrecy rules. He indicated that all of the banking information was related to the Cayman Islands, and lay outside Swiss jurisdiction.

You can watch the actual handover below.

FCC's net neutrality rules under attack by the GOP

The GOP is wasting no time in beginning work to detail the net neutrality rules just outlined by the FCC. While most who have analyzed the rules feel they really are essentially toothless, some are portraying it as a government takeover of the Internet.

Net neutrality, which is the concept that all traffic on the Internet be treated the same, is a founding principle of the Internet, as noted by Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited as the father of the Internet, and who strongly supports net neutrality. To many, Comcast's recent moves to charge more for Netflix traffic are just the first of many corporate anti-net neutrality moves, which could lead to such things as consumers paying more for access to Skype or even Facebook. In fact, a recent presentation showed that such proposals are already ongoing.

That's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the possibilities. Many have also expressed concern that existing corporations could work to block start-ups' access to the Internet.

Despite this, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) this week re-introduced the oddly-named "Internet Freedom Act" (.PDF), which is designed to prevent the FCC from enacting net neutrality rules. Toothless or not, the FCC could always toughen the rules in the future.

The definition of a corporation is what drives concern over letting corporations self-regulate. After all, a corporation must, by law, attempt to maximize profits for its shareholders. With a little common sense, one can see that maximization for profits for, say, Comcast, could include throttling or even blocking Netflix, so Comcast could promote its own Xfinity service.

A statement on Blackburn's website claim the rules are a "hysterical reaction to the hypothetical problem of anti-competitive online behavior." Comcast's moves show the problem is not hypothetical.

Hackers 'celebrate' North Korean heir's birthday

Hackers "celebrated" the birthday of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's heir apparent Kim Jong-un with attacks on the country's Twitter and YouTube accounts. Users of DC Inside, a South Korean Web site, later claimed responsibility for the Twitter hacking, but it is yet unclear who hacked the YouTube Channel.

The first Tweet was sent at 7:20 a.m. Saturday from Uriminzokkiri, the username used by North Korea on Twitter and YouTube. It was followed by three other Tweets, all containing messages against the North Korean regime. The Tweet said:

“Let’s create a new world by driving out rebels Kim Jong-il and his son Kim Jong-un!”

The Twitter hack came a day after the country's YouTube channel was hacked with a two-minute animated video, showing Kim Jong-un driving a sports car, running over people, and saying, “People are useless.”

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Free North Korea Radio reported that the site of Uriminzokkiri, which is also North Korea's official website, were under cross-scrutiny for failing to prevent prior hacking of the site. The new hacks certainly can't help their prospects for keeping their jobs, and perhaps more.

You can watch the hackers' YouTube video, cross-posted by a different account, below (it's obviously since been deleted from the official North Korean account).

'Facebook shutdown' rumors circulate, cause social networking panic

It's hard to understand why anyone would believe this sort of story, but it's happened (again). The Internet has gone wild as people tried to search for information on Facebook's "impending closure" after The World Weekly News, a satirical website, posted a fake story that claim Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was closing the site due to "stress."

The article, titled "FACEBOOK WILL END ON MARCH 15th!" possibly should have been titled "The Social Networking World Will End on March 15th!" as folks suddenly started flooding Google Search with "Is Facebook really shutting down?," "Facebook ending March 15?," and "Facebook shutdown." The tremors echoing across the Web still hadn't settled by Sunday morning.

Twitter was hit with Tweets about the issue, with one person not all that unhappy if in terms of the rumor that Facebook was ending on March 15. Instead, he was more concerned that Facebook users would jump to Twitter:

So the rumor is Facebook is shutting down....please don't jump to twitter & ruin my social networking experience.

It's hard to understand why anyone would believe a company recently valued at $50 billion would shut down. If Zuckerberg was that stressed, he would probably take a leave-of-absence or simply step down.

According to the article, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a press conference and said:

“Facebook has gotten out of control, and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”

Even more humorous is the WWN's reported reaction of a high school student and a parent. These are precisely the sorts of reaction we might truly see if Facebook truly was ending on March 15:

“What am I going to do without Facebook?” said Denise Bradshaw, a high school student from Indiana. “My life revolves around it. I’m on Facebook at least 10 hours a day. Now what am I going to do with all that free time?”

“I’m glad the Facebook nightmare is over,” said Jon Guttari, a single parent from Detroit. “Now my teenager’s face won’t be glued to a computer screen all day. Maybe I can even have a conversation with her.”

Considering how the Internet reacts if Facebook, Twitter, or some other social networking site is down for a short down due to an outage, the reaction to the virally spread faux news is not surprising. But users can calm down: the answer to the question "Is Facebook really shutting down?" is "No, get real."

No sense of humor: Apple complains to Twitter about Steve Jobs parody account

Just a few days after a California law banning certain Internet impersonations (or e-personations) went into effect, Apple has complained to Twitter about the @ceoSteveJobs Twitter account. While that account has over 370,000 followers, its most famous Tweet came last year when the U.K.'s Daily Mail quoted a post that said Apple might have have to recall the iPhone 4.

The Tweet said,

We may have to recall the new iPhone. This, I did not expect.

There's no doubt that to most, the account is hilarious (probably not to Apple). Examples of recent Tweets:

About the iPhone's recent New Year's alarm issues:

• All mobile phones have alarm problems. Press conference Tuesday.
• You're setting it wrong.
• Please don't call this #alarmgate. That makes it seem like we did something wrong.

Regarding the iOS' auto-correction problems:

• The next iPhone update includes several autocorrection fixes. For instance, typing "Android" will autocorrect to "hemorrhoid."

Now, the new law does not cover parody. In fact, it says that an illegal e-personation is one that intends to "harm, intimidate, threaten or defraud." However, that said, there are Twitter rules in place that the account violates, and Apple may simply have waited for the law to go into effect to give its complaint more power.

The owner of the account has been notified that Twitter has received a "valid report” that the account is in violation of the Twitter parody policy.

The Twitter parody policy, which the company says was not modified after the California law went into effect, gives the following guidelines about a username:

The username should not be the exact name of the subject of the parody, commentary, or fandom; to make it clearer, you should distinguish the account with a qualifier such as "not," "fake," or "fan."

Given the warning, the bio of the account has been changed to explicitly include the word "parody," as in "More than meets the i. As you should expect from a parody account."

Christof, as he's being called, still needs to change his username. He's concerned that a name change will take half the fun (or more) away, and that all the "good" Steve Jobs usernames with "fake" are taken. He said:

“Most parody doesn’t blatantly label itself. That takes away the fun and the magic of it. If @bpglobalpr had been @fakebp, it wouldn’t have caught on nearly as fast and might never have been as funny. Once you got the joke, the fact that it felt like it was really coming from BP made it all the funnier.”

True, but rules are rules, and these aren't even California's rules, but rather Twitter's rules. Additionally, it's pretty well known that Apple doesn't have much of a sense of humor. Hey, they even killed off that uber-cool Steve Jobs action figure! And, as noted by @ceoSteveJobs:

Bought my daughters two of those rare Steve Jobs action figures for Christmas. Well, they're rare now.

URL SNAFU tarnishes Google Chrome billboard ad

It's funny when Google, masters (or at least, wanna-be masters) of all things Internet make an obvious mistake like this. A billboard, or hoarding, as they call them in India, isn't going to get many adopters of Chrome, since the URL provided is wrong.

The problem, of course, is case-sensitivity. The billboard gives the URL http://www.google.co.in/Chrome, when it needs to give the URL http://www.google.co.in/chrome. It's such a small mistake, right? In terms of results, it's like a GPS pointing you to Sacramento instead of Los Angeles.

Of course, as one commenter points out snarkily, if the first attempt lands you on a 404 error page, you might have to search for the actual URL, using Google search, which is, after all, it's primary business.

Chinese crackdown nabs 60,000 porn sites

A year ago, the Chinese government launched a campaign to shut down porn sites. Whether it's been a success or not is hard to say, but it's certainly taken down a huge number of porn sites. The government has shut down some 60,000 porn websites, the official state-run news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday.

At a news conference, the director of the Information Office of the State Council, Wang Chen, said that in addition to the 60,000 sites being disabled, approximately 350 million pieces of pornographic or other indecent content was deleted in the crackdown. 2,197 criminal cases were tried, involving 4,965 people. 58 of those people received prison sentences longer than five years.

Xinhua also divulged the follow statistics:

• Around 44.37 million copies of illegal publications, including 981,000 copies of lewd content, 37.35 million pirated copies, some 3.93 million illegal copies of newspapers and magazines, among others, have been confiscated across China.

• More than 16,000 cases, including over 10,000 ones of pirated publications, 1,669 cases involving pornography, and 371 cases involving fake journalists, news reports or media outlets, have been uncovered this year.

• China has shut down more than 60,000 porn websites since launching a crackdown in December 2009.

• Law enforcers across China during a campaign launched in April had destroyed a total of 36.39 million copies of pirated or illegal publications, audio and video discs.

• The office has received over 170,000 tip-offs, mostly about the online or cellphone-based spreading of porn content this year and 534 people have been rewarded 544,000 yuan (81,964 dollars) for the information provided.

• Authorities in Zhongshan City of southern Guangdong Province shut down a huge disc-producing outfit with five production lines and confiscated 3.87 million illegal discs.

Remembering that Xinhua is the official state-run news agency, the following statement from Xinhua needs to be taken with a grain of salt:

The government values the role of the Internet and is willing to read public opinion through the Internet, he said, noting that the country will also try to regulate Internet order and promote the development of Internet culture, in a bid to create a healthy Internet environment for the public.

California's law banning Internet impersonations goes into effect

California's new law banning online banning online impersonations (or e-personations) has gone into effect, as of Jan. 1, 2011. The law makes assuming another person's identity on the Internet, when it seeks to harm someone, illegal.

It's not about parody, such as done by Dan Lyons, who portrayed the Fake Steve Jobs for years, but instead the practice of taking on another's persona on the Web, and fabricating e-mails, Facebook posts, or other communications with the to intent "harm, intimidate, threaten or defraud." Senate Bill 1411 makes such an act a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

A primary driver of the new law was an experience of a colleague of State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, who authored the bill.

Carl Guardino, CEO of Silicon Valley Leadership Group, approached Simitian after an e-mail went out falsely in his name, purporting an apology for something "ugly" that he didn't do.

"People who knew me knew it wasn't me. But thousands of people who don't know me received this, too," Guardino explained. "Somebody was out to harm me. I went to the police and they said, Terrible? yes. Scandalous? yes. But there's nothing we can do about it.' "

Of course, the most famous of these sorts of impersonations involves Megan Meier, 13.  Lori Drew, mother of another student and a neighbor, set up a MySpace profile for a fictitious teenage boy to establish a "relationship" with Meier, then break up with her while taunting her.  Meier committed suicide in 2006 afterwards.  Missouri had not laws covering the issue, and although federal prosecutors tried to convict Drew of somewhat questionable charges, she eventually was acquitted.

Simitian said,

"As a Silicon Valley legislator, I'm nothing but enthusiastic about technology. But the question is, is the technology used wisely and appropriately?" Simitian asked this week. "This e-personation' is one area where some constraint appeared necessary."