Good Morning Tech

by Gautham Nagesh - 09/20/10 10:59 AM ET

Privacy concerns prevent cloud adoption in Europe. The New York Times reports strict privacy laws have slowed the evolution of cloud computing in Europe compared to the U.S. The laws make it difficult to move users’ personal information to servers outside the 27-nation European Union, a challenge for U.S. vendors such as Microsoft, Google and Oracle. Advanced encryption technologies and personal privacy controls are among the options firms are considering to work around the restrictions. http://nyti.ms/dmlcEq

Facebook denies phone rumors. Facebook pushed back over the weekend against reports it is secretly developing its own smartphone to compete against Apple’s iPhone and phones powered by BlackBerry and Google’s Android platform. A company spokesperson denied a report from the blog TechCrunch, claiming Facebook has been working on features to integrate into its mobile services, but not a stand-alone device. http://nyti.ms/9NFqwG

Verizon names new chief operating officer. Verizon will reportedly name Lowell McAdam to be chief operating officer on Monday, setting him up to eventually succeed chief executive Ivan Seidenberg. The announcement comes after chief financial officer John Killian announced last week that he would retire to spend more time with his family. Both had been seen as potential replacements for Seidenberg. http://bit.ly/akFGau

Today: Google is hosting a discussion at its Washington, DC officers on “10 Things you don’t know about online advertising” at 2pm.

Said. “This is winning. If we were losing, we would not have these
problems.” – Google chief executive Eric Schmidt when asked about the increasing number of news reports centered around conflicts between his company and the government or tech industry rivals.