Following allegations that Google was “bypassing the privacy settings” of the iPhone’s Safari browser, three members of the U.S. House of Representatives want the FTC to look into whether Google’s actions violate a settlement agreement with the FTC stemming from “deceptive tactics” used during the launch of Google Buzz. Lawmakers, including Joe Barton and Edward J.

Call it “Cookiegate” — or “Safarigate” perhaps. Late last night we got the Wall Street Journal’s piece: “Google’s iPhone Tracking: Web Giant, Others Bypassed Apple Browser Settings for Guarding Privacy.” Danny covered the article and its claims... ...

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The news alert from the Wall St. Journal hit my phone about an hour ago, pulling me away from tasting “Texas Bourbon” in San Antonio to sit down and grok this headline: Google’s iPhone Tracking. Now, the headline certainly is attention-grabbing, but the news alert email had a more sinister headline: “Google Circumvented Web-Privacy Safeguards.” Wow! What’s going on here?

Anyone involved in online marketing has an innate sense that mobile is a big deal. We’re never more than an arm’s length from our phones, and we have a curious tendency to do everything on them. I once sat in front of a dark, Netflix-enabled flat-screen, watching Netflix on my iPhone.... ...

I just heard from our friends at WillowTree Apps about their most recent iPhone app, “Likes”. Utilizing the growing number of Facebook Likes out there, it will look at your friends’ and friends of freinds’ activity and make local recommendations accordingly. It’s an interesting idea, and well within the growing trend of social sharing that we discussed in our 2012 predictions.

Constant Contact, an email marketing company, announced its acquisition of mobile app developer CardStar this week. CardStar developed a mobile app where consumers are able to store all of their existing loyalty cards, rather than having to carry multiple, physical cards.

Google has announced that its mobile crawler now has a user-agent that’s specific to smartphones. The company has already had a user-agent that targets feature phones. The new Smartphone Googlebot-Mobile user agent is: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us)... ...

Yahoo’s 10th annual top searches Year in Review is out, identifying the top trends and stories of the year based on the billions of searches performed by their users. This year, the iPhone was the top search of the year, a spot held by the B... ...

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Google has just pushed out an update to the Google+ iOS app compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, bringing it up to version 1.0.7.2940 and introducing a few new features including full resolution photo uploads, search, and photo +1. Also included are the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements.

Plus: Yahoo! Sports is the sports leader; “Cyber Monday” beats expectations; many market on Facebook, but few pay, and more 1: The rank of the search term, “iPhone” on Yahoo! in ’11. The runners up included “Casey Anthony,” “Kim Kardashian” and “Katy Perry.” Who are these people? 1: The rank of Yahoo! Sports on the Web. After a brief dalliance at #2, just behind ESPN.com, Yahoo!