The privacy issues that have been hounding Facebook may be coming to a head. A report in the Wall Street Journal indicates that the Facebook, along with MySpace, Digg, and a handful of other social-networking sites, have been sharing users' personal data with advertisers without users' knowledge or consent.

The data shared includes names, user IDs, and other information sufficient to enable ad companies such as the Google-owned DoubleClick to identify distinct user profiles. Some of the sites in question, including MySpace and Facebook, stopped sharing the data after the Journal asked them about it. The surreptitious data sharing was first noticed (PDF) by researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and AT&T Labs in August 2009, who brought it up with the sites in question. It wasn't until WSJ contacted them that changes were made.

Not surprisingly, Facebook appears to have gone farther than the other sites when it comes to sharing data. When Facebook's users clicked on ads appearing on a profile page, the site would at times provide data such as the username behind the click, as well as the user whose profile page from which the click came. "If you are looking at your profile page and you click on an ad, you are telling that advertiser who you are," Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman told the Journal. Advertisers contacted by the paper said that they were unaware of the additional data and did not make use of it.

Facebook has tweaked its privacy policy throughout its history, with the most recent moves to open up more user information to the public drawing heavy criticism and FTC complaints. Users have also had a tough time navigating the site's often-Byzantine privacy controls, which has led to a trickle of user defections. With these latest revelations about Facebook ignoring industry standards, not to mention its own privacy policies, that trickle may turn into a torrent.

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Web typography just got a shot in the arm from Google, as the company has announced a free, open-source library of 18 typefaces that Web designers will now have at their disposal. Google hosts all the fonts on its servers, and offers a simple Web-based API that handles all the browser differences behind the scenes. Furthermore, Web font service provider TypeKit has partnered with Google to offer an additional open-source JavaScript library called WebFont Loader for even more control over how fonts are loaded by the browser.

The state of the art in Web typography just a few years ago consisted of relying on a short list of "Web fonts" common to nearly every platform. Anything fancier required replacing text with images, which looked great but hampered usability, especially for those with disabilities. More advanced techniques came along, but they involved replacing the text with Flash or SVG graphics instead of static images.

Google has launched a new cloud storage service competing directly with Amazon's S3. Google Storage for Developers offers scalable, high-bandwidth storage, with an easy-to-use RESTful API.

Google Storage will cost 17¢ per gigabyte per month, with uploads costing 10¢ per gigabyte and 15-30¢ per gigabyte for downloads. Initially, Google Storage will only be available to a limited number of US-based developers, with 100GB of storage and 300GB of bandwidth per month for no charge.

This announcement comes just a day after Amazon offered a cut-price version of S3, offering weaker reliability guarantees for a lower price. Amazon's Reduced Reliability storage offers 99.99 percent reliability for 10¢ per gigabyte, compared to S3's normal price of 15¢ per gigabyte. Amazon's pricing structure also offers discounts for heavy users.

Though Google has its AppEngine cloud computing platform, it has previously lacked a storage solution to go with it. As such, it was missing a key component for many Web applications, and represented a big drawback relative to Amazon's more comprehensive offerings. Google Storage is a step towards remedying this deficit, but it's going to be a while before the search giant's offerings will rival the maturity of the much more established—and cheaper—S3.

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Google today announced that it acquired mobile streaming service SimplifyMedia two months ago, and will be leveraging its technology to let Android users to stream music directly from their home PCs.

Simplify Media had previously made a very popular iPhone app with the same streaming capabilities, but announced in March that it was discontinuing its iPhone app and moving the company in a "new direction." It turns out that direction was being bought by Google. During a keynote presentation today, Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra revealed the company's plans to build Simplify Media's technology into Android.

SimplifyMedia's server application runs on both Windows and Mac computers, and can stream music from apps like iTunes, WinAmp, and Windows Media Player. It can also stream photos from apps like iPhoto. Music and photos can then be streamed from a home computer to a remote one, or to an iPhone or iPod touch using the Simplify Media iPhone app.

According to Gundotra's comments, Google will focus on enabling music streaming from home PCs to Android-based mobile devices. This is in contrast to services like Pandora, Spotify, or the soon-to-be defunct Lala, which streams music to mobile devices from the cloud.

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The heat is being turned up on Google over its recent WiFi data collection incident. Two members of Congress have now sent a letter to the FTC asking a series of questions about how Google's actions might be covered by federal law and what actions the FTC might take. The letter is short and sweet, but it shows that there is growing concern in Congress over Google's "mistake."

The letter, signed by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), first asks if the FTC has begun investigating the issue and what the Commission's understanding is of the type of data collected. Who had access to the data? Did Google collect people's passwords? Did the company violate the public's expectation of privacy? Were Google's actions illegal?

These are all questions that the two congressmen want the FTC to answer by June 2. Of course, they're not the only ones asking the FTC to take a look into Google's gaffe—earlier this week, public interest group Consumer Watchdog also called on the agency to investigate Google's "flagrant intrusion into consumers' privacy." German authorities have also demanded that Google hand over the hard drives it used to store the data.

Google's voluntary admission definitely touched a sensitive nerve with lawmakers and the public alike, and the company is now paying the price—at least in terms of increased scrutiny. The search giant has arguably been walking on thin ice when it comes to perceptions of how it protects its users' privacy, but in this case, it may have softened the blow (slightly) by coming out about the "mistake" before anyone else noticed.

Update: Google's data collection mistake is now also the subject of a class action lawsuit out of Oregon. The plaintiffs alleged that "hundreds if not thousands of Google employees throughout the United States and the world have access to data maintained on Google's servers." EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding has also accused the company of flouting EU privacy regulations.

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Google unveiled new APIs for its Buzz social networking service on Wednesday during a presentation at the company's I/O developer conference. The new APIs will make it possible for third-party developers to write software—such as desktop and mobile client applications—that can read and post content on Buzz. The Buzz APIs are built on top of open standards to enable broad compatibility with other services.

Google's Chris Chabot started the session by describing Google's vision for social networking. The Web is becoming increasingly social, he explained, but social networking is heavily fragmented due to the multitude of disparate services that are popular among users. Google hopes to unify social networking and make it a pervasive part of the Internet experience, but not at the cost of diversity and rich competition in the marketplace. The solution, said Chabot, is to facilitate interoperability through open standards. He said that Google wants Buzz to be part of a bigger ecosystem, one that includes a healthy quantity of good third-party software.

Facebook has found itself facing some tough choices when it comes to the direction of the company, specifically revolving around user privacy. As most Netizens know, Facebook has faced harsh criticism in recent months—which may be coming to a head after having built up slowly over the years—regarding how it handles user information. Now, the company is left deciding whether it wants to revert to its old principles and go against founder Mark Zuckerberg's policy of forging ahead, privacy be damned.

Facebook public policy head Tim Sparapani said in a radio interview Tuesday that the company was working on simplifying its privacy controls because of user complaints about their complexity. "I think we are going to work on that. We are going to be providing options for users who want simplistic bands of privacy that they can choose from and I think we will see that in the next couple of weeks," he said.

During the opening keynote at the Google I/O conference this morning in San Francisco, the search giant unveiled new Web technologies and reaffirmed its commitment to open standards.

Vic Gundotra, Google's VP of engineering, started the keynote by highlighting the waning relevance of desktop applications and discussing the significance of software's ascent into the cloud. The most important applications today are Web apps, he said. Although the Web has transformed the way that software is developed, deployed, and consumed, it has introduced new challenges that have to be overcome before it can fulfill its potential. The Web is growing up, Gundotra remarked, but the diverse ecosystem of Internet stakeholders must work together to ensure that it continues to advance.