Google on Friday released Web traffic data indicating that Facebook is king when it comes to online visitors, despite criticism about privacy at the social-networking service.
Facebook.com is visited monthly by 540 million people, or slightly more than 35 percent of the Internet population, according to Google Ad Planner worldwide data gathered using recently acquired Double Click.
Approximately 570 billion pages are viewed monthly at Facebook.com, more than eight times as many pages as are viewed each month at second-place Yahoo.com which gets 490 million visitors, according to Google.
The figures support word from Facebook that it has not been abandoned by members despite carping by politicians, consumer groups and privacy advocates that want tighter safeguards on personal information at the Web site.
Only 23,515 people had signed up as of Friday at a “We’re Quitting Facebook” Web site as “committed” to dump the social-networking service as part of a campaign to stage a mass protest on May 31.
That number represents less than .006 percent of Facebook’s more than 400 million members.
Facebook is overhauling privacy controls in the face of a barrage of criticism that it is betraying the trust which has made it the world’s biggest social network.
Facebook redesigned its privacy settings page to provide a single control for content and “significantly reduce” the amount of information that is always visible to everyone.
Facebook also said it is giving users more control over how outside applications or Web sites access information at the service. The revamped privacy controls began rolling out on Wednesday.
Facebook last month sparked criticism from privacy and consumer groups, US lawmakers and the EU by adding the ability for partner Web sites to incorporate data regarding members of the social-networking service.
Critics continue to call for Facebook to make all user information private by default and then let people designate what they want to share case-by-case in an “opt-in” model.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts