Google Buzz takes on Facebook and Twitter

Google launched a set of social networking tools for Gmail users, hoping to coax them to share photos, links and status updates without the need to visit sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Called Google Buzz, the new features were rolled out to a small number of Gmail account holders and to the majority of users within the week.

It allows users to share photos, videos, web links, conversations with "friends" - defined as pre-existing Gmail contacts. Google said it may open Buzz up to outside users in the future.

The shared information goes into a special Buzz section of Gmail and also appears on Google's profile pages.

Google also launched special mobile phone apps for Buzz for Apple's iPhone and for smartphones powered by its own Android operating system.

Analysts said the move by Google was designed primarily to head off Facebook's advantage in the huge amounts of user data that it has amassed and which is highly attractive to advertisers.

Gmail has 167 million users, compared to Facebook's 400 million members.

"Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web - finding relevance in the noise - has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google's experience in organizing information can help solve," said Buzz project manager Todd Jackson.

"There's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most."

Spam plummets as gang leaves net

Two US internet service providers have pulled the plug on the firm McColo following an investigation by the Washington Post newspaper.

Anti-spam firm Ironport has seen junk mail levels drop by 70% since McColo was taken offline on 11 November.

But, it warned, it will be a temporary respite from the menace of spam.

Plug pulled

"It is an unprecedented drop but will be a temporary outage as the networks move from North America to places where there is less scrutiny," said Jason Steer, a spokesman for Ironport.

The Washington Post has been gathering data on McColo for the past four months and passed the information to its internet service providers, Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric.

Both decided to pull the plug on the firm on Tuesday.

It is believed that it hosted gangs running botnets - networks of computers that have been taken over by criminals to send malicious software and spam.

According to MessageLabs, botnets are responsible for over 90% of spam.

Increasingly the tech industry is fighting back.

"All the US internet peering companies are under much more scrutiny. The authorities and the internet community have woken up to the problem," said Mr Steer.

But while it might make criminals think more carefully about what they do, it will not stop them, he thinks.

"Spam levels will come back to normal as we build up to Thanksgiving and Christmas," he said.

A recent study by computer scientists from the University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD) found that spammers manage to turn a profit despite only getting one response to every 12.5m emails they send.

(Source)