Google's Motorola eyes BlackBerry employees

With Blackberry shedding staff in its hometown of Waterloo, Ontario, other tech companies, including Google's Motorola Mobility unit, are moving to take advantage of a growing pool of local talent. 

Motorola Mobility said it plans to set up a new hub in Waterloo, located about an hour's drive west of Toronto. 

"We have a small space right now and we're looking to grow considerably," said Derek Phillips, engineering director for Motorola Canada. 

He declined to specify the number of new hires expected, but said the company was seeking computer science and engineering talent. 

Google acquired Motorola Mobility last year in a $12.5 billion deal that gave it ownership of a large portfolio of communications patents. It has since moved to revamp the company's money-losing mobile phone business. 

Google separately has its existing Canadian development headquarters in Waterloo, which boasts an in-office slide. 

The company is one of hundreds of tech players with a presence the city, attracted in part by graduates of the University of Waterloo's highly ranked computer science, engineering and technology programs. 

The vast majority of local technology companies are small startups looking to make a splash such as the one BlackBerry, then called Research in Motion, made after it pioneered pocket email in the 1990s. 

But times have changed for BlackBerry, which said on Friday that it would cut about 4,500 workers, more than a third of its global workforce, and post a quarterly loss of nearly $1 billion. 

The job cuts are expected to strike a blow to the city and regional economy, given the knock-on-effect on retailers, the property market and local service providers. 

The latest layoffs follow other cuts over the past three years as Blackberry bled market share to competitors such as Apple Inc and phones that use Google's Android operating system. 

On Monday, BlackBerry said it agreed to sell itself for $4.7 billion to a consortium led by its biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. 

It is unclear if the sale, if it goes through, will result in further job cuts. 

Start-ups hiring

Phillips did not link Motorola's expansion to BlackBerry's troubles, but said the local talent pool was key to the area's appeal. 

"The goal is to try to get just as many people who are interested to come out and hire as many people as we can. I think as long as we can find really good people, we will find a way to hire them," he said. 

The hiring is not expected to come close to replacing the hole left by the BlackBerry cuts. But members of the local technology community noted that Motorola is not the only one looking to expand in the region. 

Mobile payments company Square Inc plans to establish a permanent office in the area in 2014, spokeswoman Lindsay Wiese told Reuters. 

Avvey Peters, head of external relations at Communitech, a non-profit that bills itself as a regional hub for the tech sector, said she knew of about 1,000 job vacancies in the industry. She estimates the sector employs about 30,000 people. 

"Certainly everybody's watching. Everybody's feeling for individuals who either have been laid off or are going to be," she added. "The local ecosystem created BlackBerry, not the other way around."

source:Times of India

Cyberspying: Government may ban Gmail for official communication

The government will soon ask all its employees to stop using Google's Gmail for official communication, a move intended to increase security of confidential government information after revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US.

A senior official in the ministry of communications and information technology said the government plans to send a formal notification to nearly 5 lakh employees barring them from email service providers such as Gmail that have their servers in the US, and instead asking them to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside. Currently, we are looking to address this in the government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data," said J Satyanarayana, secretary in the department of electronics and information technology. 

Snowden fallout

The move comes in the wake of revelations by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the US government had direct access to large amounts of personal data on the internet such as emails and chat messages from companies like Google, Facebook and Apple through a programme called PRISM. 

Documents leaked by Snowden showed that NSA may have accessed network infrastructure in many countries, causing concerns of potential security threats and data breaches. Even as the new policy is being formulated, there has been no mention yet of how compliance will be ensured.

Several senior government officials in India, including ministers of state for communications & IT Milind Deora and Kruparani Killi, have their Gmail IDs listed in government portals as their official email. 

A Google India spokeswoman said the company has not been informed about the ban, and hence it cannot comment on speculation. "Nothing is documented so far, so for us, it is still speculation," Google said in an email response. 

A senior official in the IT department admitted on condition of anonymity that employees turn to service providers such as Gmail because of the ease of use compared with official email services, as well as the bureaucratic processes that govern creation of new accounts. 

"You can just go and create an account in Gmail easily, whereas for a government account, you have to go through a process because we have to ensure that he is a genuine government user." 

Last week, IT Minister Kapil Sibal said the new policy would require all government officials living abroad to use NIC servers that are directly linked to a server in India while accessing government email services. Sibal said there has been no evidence of the US accessing Internet data from India.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research firm Centre for Internet and Society, said he agrees with the government's decision to ban Gmail for official communication and that any official violating this needs to be punished. 

"After Snowden's revelations, we can never be sure to what extent foreign governments are intercepting government emails," he said. Abraham, however, called the government's decision a "late reaction", as the use of Gmail and other free email services by bureaucrats has increased in the past. 

"Use of official government email would also make it easier to achieve greater transparency and anti-corruption initiatives. Ministers, intelligence and law enforcement officials should not be allowed to use alternate email providers under any circumstance."

source:Times of India

Google, Facebook can't flout Indian laws: Court

  The Delhi High Court has announced the verdict and It is necessary for Facebook and Google to follow the rules and they have made it clear.

     The Delhi High Court on Friday said that social networking site Facebook Inc and search engine Google Inc are bound by the rules of this country and cannot flout the law just because they are foreign companies.

A division bench of Acting Chief Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru also directed the two companies to display on their websites the name and contact details of their grievance officers.

"We direct Google Inc and Facebook Inc to display the name of grievance officer on their respective sites. We also direct other intermediaries that the compliance (of the rules) be done in two weeks," the court said.

It said the Information Technology (Intermediaries) Rules mandate that all social networking sites have to publish the name of grievance officer and their contact details.

"Just because you are a foreign company, you cannot flout the law. Like us, you are bound by the rule of law of this country," said the court, also asking the central government to take steps to ensure that the social networking sites comply with the rules.

The bench also asked the central government to file its response on the allegations of petitioner that Delhi Police, Indian Railways and others have created accounts on social networking sites despite government departments being barred from doing so under the law.

The petitioner submitted that government departments like Delhi Police and the Indian Railways are not entitled to create accounts on social networking sites.

The court was hearing the PIL filed by former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader K.N. Govindacharya through his advocate Virag Gupta alleging that the websites have no mechanism for protection of children from online abuse.

The PIL has said that children below 18 years are entering an agreement with the social networking sites to open accounts which is against the Indian Majority Act, the Indian Contract Act and also the Information and Technology Act.

The plea has also sought recovery of taxes from the websites on their income from operations in India.


Times of India




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