United Kingdom

Google's Android App Market will begin selling applications early this year. Google had promised a way for developers to earn cash for their applications.

Apple's App Store lets developers keep 70 percent of the revenue generated from application sales. RIM's Blackberry Application Store promises to give developers 80 percent of the revenue when its store launches in March.

A proposed British database intended to store details of every phone call, e-mail and Web site visit made in the U.K. could be managed by a private sector contractor under government plans, the Guardian newspaper reported Wednesday.

Such outsourcing would be accompanied by tougher legal safeguards to guarantee against leaks and accidental data losses, the newspaper said, citing a consultation paper.

British retailer Tesco entered the U.S. market only last year but already it has managed to put Wal-Mart, the world's No. 1 retailer, on the defensive. Tesco fired the first salvo, in a battle that retailing analysts expect will intensify, by launching Fresh & Easy, a chain of 10,000-square-foot convenience stores, in cities across California, Nevada, and Arizona in November 2007. Eleven months later, Wal-Mart returned fire, taking on Tesco in Arizona with the debut of the similar-size Marketside, its first new store format in a decade.

For seven years, AirData, a small wireless operator in Stuttgart, did something the largest German mobile operators, including T-Mobile, were unwilling to do: It delivered broadband Internet to consumers in remote corners of the country.

But at the end of 2007, AirData's license to use the 2.6 gigahertz band expired after the country's regulator, Bundesnetzagentur, deemed AirData's service inappropriate for the frequency, which it wanted to reserve for mobile phone, not broadband, services.

If Britain's culture minister has his way, the Internet could soon see a rating system akin to the movie industry.

Andy Burnham told Britain's The Daily Telegraph that new standards of decency need to be applied to the Web, and announced plans to negotiate with President-Elect Barack Obama to devise international rules for English-language Web sites.

While Burnham's plans could amount to censorship in the eyes of some free-speech advocates, he nonetheless plans to encourage Internet service providers to find ways to offer "child-safe" Web services.

Regulators in France have put a stop to France Telecom's Orange being the only carrier selling Apple's iPhone in France. The Counseil de la Concurrence, the French Council on Competitiveness, acted after another carrier, Bouyges Telecom, filed a complaint.

The council asked Apple to cease its exclusivity deal with Orange and allow other carriers to offer service for the iPhone while regulators further investigate. Orange offers the iPhone in several countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and had been exclusively selling the iPhone in France since July.