The European Union is expanding a look into Google’s data retention and privacy policies to encompass all search engines. The inquiry by the panel of national data protection officers already had sparked an offer by Google to cut its retention time on user searches to 18 months from 24. AP: “The 28-member panel, which advises the European Commission and EU governments on data protection issues, said it still needed to analyze Google’s response and would also look at other search engines in the coming weeks to evaluate what data protection issues were at stake.”

NBCU-NWS : The European Commission has given its ok for the NBCU-News Corp. video distribution JV to go forward.  MKTW: “The deal was approved under the commission’s simplified procedure. This clears joint ventures automatically after one month if no customer or company lodges a complaint.”