Week in Review: Google comes out victorious

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In the end, the hysteria over Google Street View was based on very little.

Out of the 100,000 calls and 25,000 complaints that the ICO receives annually, it received only 74 about Street View.

This week the ICO confirmed last week’s IT PRO report that Google Street View was not a threat to personal privacy.

In the end, it was all about ‘common sense’, as senior data protection practice manager David Evans put it. Faces are captured all the time on the TV – many of them without consent, but perfectly legally.

It doesn’t mean that everybody is happy with it, and there are still other privacy and copyright challenges that Google may have to face after this battle.

Also this week, Sun Microsystems rejected IBM’s overtures and decided to get cosy with Oracle.

It will be an interesting relationship, with IT professionals and analysts holding mixed views about how the relationship will pan out.

The budget was also released this week. The IT world had high hopes, and we reported that billions were earmarked for the tech and comms areas.

But some are not convinced that the government has made a big enough commitment to plans to create a British high-speed broadband network.

Malware affecting government computers was also back in the news, a month after the Chinese government was accused of hacking.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed to IT PRO that the Police e-Crime Unit was investigating reports that UK government as well as corporate computers had been hit by a Ukrainian botnet.

Talking of security, the RSA Conference was also happening across the pond in San Francisco. Some of the biggest names in security were talking about the change that is needed in the future, while Cisco's chief executive made some startling predictions about the next few years.

And finally we had coverage of the end of the Pirate Bay trial, as the founders were found guilty, sent to jail and set to pay a huge fine.

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