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Good by to privacy. Google recently launched Buzz, a social network platform trying to compete with Facebook. Interestingly, it made the choice to include millions of Gmail users and to automatically create links between people who had corresponded via e-mail (and without asking for consent). The immediate lesson is (i) privacy probably is a value of the past, since complaints were relatively weak, and (ii) in the current paradigm the real power is no longer in software or operating systems, but in owning data on people and relationships. Google as the next Microsoft?

Talking about changing paradigms on the Internet, it is becoming clear that in the world of social networking the idea of privacy is changing (if not disappearing at all). One of the most extreme cases is Blippy, a seemingly successful Twitter-like service that captures all of your expenses and shows them to all on the web.

Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic on Monday moved towards investigating Google following the internet group's disclosure that it had recorded communications sent over unsecured wireless networks in people's homes. Peter Schaar, the German commissioner for data protection, called for a "detailed probe" by independent authorities into the practice by Google. He said the group's explanation of the collection of data as an accident was "highly unusual". "One of the largest companies in the world, the market leader on the internet, simply disobeyed normal rules in the development and usage of software," he said. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission was expected to launch an inquiry as well, according to people who spoke to agency officials. Privacy advocates said an inquiry could look at whether the collection of data breached rules on unauthorised access to computers and private communications. "This may be one of the most massive surveillance incidents by a private corporation that has ever occurred", said Marc Rotenberg, leader of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Centre in Washington. "It is unprecedented vacuuming of WiFi data by a private company. Can you imagine what would happen if a German corporation was sending cars through Washington sucking up all this information?" Google reiterated its statements from late Friday in Europe, when it reversed earlier denials that it had collected personal activity. It said it had been using a fleet of camera-equipped Street View vehicles, which take pictures for the group's imaging services, and had been at the same time using the cars to assemble a database of electronic WiFi addresses intended to improve the functioning of its maps and other location services. Google said the project leaders ignored that the vehicles were also taking in snippets of activity on the WiFi networks. "We didn't want to collect this data in the first place and we would like to dest