Google Is Testing Same-Day Delivery for Shoppers

Google is now in the same-day delivery business. In San Francisco, some people affiliated with Google can buy a product, using their phones or computers, and have it delivered to their homes in a matter of hours, using a new service operated by Google.

Plans for the service have been under way for more than a year. But it recently went live for some Google employees and their friends, according to two people briefed on the service who were not authorized to discuss it because Google has not yet publicly introduced it. At least one national apparel chain is involved, one of these people said. A Google spokesman, Nate Tyler, declined to comment.

Google is just one company tackling same-day delivery. So are Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, eBay and the United States Postal Service.

Though the service propels Google into commerce, the company does not intend to operate warehouses or a shipping service, but to team up with retailers and delivery companies. Several San Francisco retailers, including national chains, are participating in the program already. There is no word on whether Google will eventually send its self-driving cars to make deliveries.

For shoppers, the service means they can avoid the hassle of driving to the store and the wait of ordering online.

Same-day delivery could help physical retailers, which have been under siege from e-commerce companies that offer the convenience of shopping without leaving home. But online retailers offering same-day delivery could make life even harder for physical retailers, because letting people own something the same day has become physical retailers' biggest remaining advantage.

The reasons that Google is interested in same-day delivery, meanwhile, are less obvious.

Retail ads are a huge portion of Google's business, but they are under threat from companies like Amazon, where shoppers increasingly go to search for products, bypassing Google. Also responding to t he threat from Amazon, Google recently tried to improve its comparison shopping service by charging retailers to list their products there.

Additionally, Google has been trying to bridge the gap between the digital and physical worlds in order to better understand and profit from mobile ads. On computers, Google and advertisers know if a user clicks on an ad and visits or makes a purchase on another Web site. But they lose track of customers who look up a business or product on their phone and then put their phone away, walk into the store and buy something. Online ordering and delivery could help solve that problem.

Man Claiming Facebook Ownership Arrested on Fraud Charges

In 2010, a New York entrepreneur made an explosive legal claim: An agreement that he had with Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, entitled him to a major stake in the social-networking giant.

Mr. Zuckerberg staunchly denied the allegation, and his lawyers insisted that the entrepreneur, Paul Ceglia, was a scam artist.

On Friday, federal authorities sided with Mr. Zuckerberg, arresting Mr. Ceglia and charging him with a multibillion dollar scheme to defraud Facebook.

Prosecutors say that Mr. Ceglia, 39, of Wellsville, N.Y., filed a sham federal lawsuit claiming to have been promised a 50 percent share of Facebook, and then doctored, fabricated and destroyed evidence to support his allegations.

“Ceglia's alleged conduct not only constitutes a massive fraud attempt, but also an attempted corruption of our legal system through the manufacture of false evidence,” said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan. “Dressing up a fraud as a lawsuit does not immunize you from prosecution.”

Mr. Ceglia is expected to make an appearance in federal court in Buffalo on Friday afternoon. His lawyer, Dean Boland, did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

The improbable claims made by Mr. Ceglia received outsized attention in part because it came at around the same time as the release of “The Social Network,” the Academy Award-winning film that told the tale of Mr. Zuckerberg's legal battle with his Harvard schoolmates, the Winklevoss twins, over the origins of Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg paid the Winklevosses at least $65 million to settle their case.

Since the lawsuit was first filed, Facebook's lawyers have raised questions about Mr. Ceglia's credibility. In 1997, he pleaded guilty to possessing hallucinogenic mushrooms. And in 2010, the New York State attorney general criminally charged him with defrauding customers in a now-defunct wood pellet manufacturing business that h e had run with his wife.

Questions are now also being raised about the lawyers that represented Mr. Ceglia in his lawsuit.

In his original complaint, filed in 2010, Mr. Ceglia was represented by Paul Argentieri, a sole practitioner in upstate New York. An amended lawsuit was filed in April 2011 by Robert W. Brownlie of DLA Piper, the world's largest law firm, and Dennis C. Vacco, a former New York attorney general now in private practice at Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman in Buffalo.

In 2011, Mr. Brownlie of DLA Piper declined a request by The New York Times to produce the original documents backing his client's legal claims. “That will come out during the course of litigation,” Mr. Brownlie said. “Anyone who claims this case is fraudulent and brought by a scam artist will come to regret those claims.”

Yet court records indicate that another law firm, Kasowitz Benson Friedman & Torres, had been hired by Mr. Ceglia before DLA Piper and Lippes Ma thias becoming involved. Kasowitz Benson withdrew from the case and put DLA Piper and Lippes Mathias on notice that it had determined that the purported contract was a fraud.

Mr. Brownlie and Mr. Vacco later withdrew from the case. They did not return calls and e-mails seeking comment.

Mr. Ceglia's alleged plot dates back to 2003, when Mr. Zuckerberg was a student at Harvard University. Mr. Ceglia had placed an advertisement on Craigslist looking for a programmer for an Internet business he was trying to get off the ground. Mr. Zuckerberg responded to the ad, and Mr. Ceglia agreed to pay him $1,000 for his work.

Months later, in his college dorm room, Mr. Zuckerberg started a business called Facebook.

Mr. Zuckerberg did not hear from Mr. Ceglia again until 2010, when he was served with a complaint that claimed Mr. Ceglia was entitled to an 84 percent ownership stake in Facebook.

According to the lawsuit, Mr. Zuckerberg had promised him a substan tial interest in either “The Face Book” or “The Page Book.” Attached to the legal papers was a contract that contained language giving Mr. Ceglia an interest in Mr. Zuckerberg's start-up. The filing also included e-mail exchanges between Mr. Ceglia and Mr. Zuckerberg that purported to show their collaboration on ideas for the social network business.

Federal prosecutors say that Mr. Ceglia's claims were entirely false. Government investigators searched Mr. Ceglia's hard drive and discovered the original contract, which had no reference to Facebook. And Harvard's e-mail servers had no record of the supposed e-mails.

Facebook's lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher commended the Justice Department for filing criminal charges and, in statement, indicated that it would pursue possible claims against the lawyers that represented Mr. Ceglia.

“Ceglia used the federal court system to perpetuate his fraud and will now be held accountable for his criminal sch eme,” said Orin Snyder, a partner at Gibson Dunn. “Facebook also intends to hold accountable all of those who assisted Ceglia in this outrageous fraud.”

Citigroup Fires Tech Analysts Over Facebook I.P.O. Leaks

Citigroup paid a $2 million fine and fired a prominent employee after authorities accused the bank of improperly leaking to the media unpublished information about YouTube and confidential research on Facebook‘s initial public offering.

William F. Galvin, the Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth, accused a junior analyst of sharing nonpublic research about Facebook to TechCrunch, a blog focused on the technology world. The information included Citigroup's private revenue estimates for Facebook, as well as “Investment Risks” and “Investment Positives.”

Citigroup fired the junior analyst in September, according to Mr. Galvin's order. In a more surprising move, the bank on Friday also terminated his boss, Mark Mahaney, according to a person briefed on the matter.

“We are pleased to have this matter resolved,” a Citigroup spokeswoman said in a statement. “We take our internal policies and procedures very seriously and have taken the app ropriate actions.”

Mr. Mahaney, a star analyst who covered the recent wave of technology I.P.O.s for Citigroup's San Francisco research team, was not accused of any legal wrongdoing. While the information came from his research, the leak came solely from the junior analyst.

Mr. Mahaney was, however, blamed for not thwarting the illegal activity. Mr. Galvin did not disclose the name of the junior analyst.

Mr. Galvin's order took aim separately at Mr. Mahaney for discussing YouTube's earnings with a reporter from a French magazine, Capital, without permission from Citigroup. The discussion with the magazine did not appear to violate any securities rules, but conflicted with Citigroup's policy that research analysts receive internal approval before talking to reporters. The bank, like most Wall Street firms, further prevents analysts from expressing a viewpoint on a company unless it is published in a report.

Ultimately, the decision to fire Mr. Mahane y had less to do with a breach of arcane compliance rules than his perceived coverup, the person briefed in the matter said.

The French reporter approached Mr. Mahaney in April seeking projections about YouTube's revenue and earnings growth, information that Citigroup had not yet published in a report. Mr. Mahaney gave a terse e-mail reply that answered the essence of the reporter's questions.

But when a bank spokeswoman followed-up to remind Mr. Mahaney about seeking approval before an interview, he denied ever emailing the reporter. “I won't respond,” he said, according to Mr. Galvin's order.

When the reporter informed Citigroup that Mr. Mahaney did in fact respond, the coverup allegedly continued. Mr. Mahaney, according to Mr. Galvin's order, asked bank employees to fudge the timing of the interview.

When told that the accurate time was already submitted, he replied, “This could get me into trouble. Shoot.”

Mr. Galvin also cited past problems in which Citigroup rebuked Mr. Mahaney for grating a February interview to Bloomberg Radio about Facebook before he officially covered the company. On another occasion this year, Mr. Galvin said, Citigroup cited Mr. Mahaney for not receiving approval before going on Canadian television.

Despite the focus on Mr. Mahaney, Mr. Galvin did not pin any illegal acts on the senior analyst, who was with the bank since 2005. The only legal violations stemmed from the disclosure of Facebook information.

In May, the junior Citigroup analyst e-mailed two TechCrunch employees to say “I am ramping up coverage of FB and thought you guys might like to see how the street is thinking about it (and our estimates).” He attached a “Facebook one pager,” that featured an array of confiodential information, including Mr. Mahaney private revenue estimates meant as internal guide for the bank's analysts.

Under securities rules and a nondisclosure agreement with Faceb ook, Citigroup analysts were banned from “disseminating written research” about the social networking giant until 40 days after the I.P.O. The restriction, which applied to all banks that helped take Facebook public in May, was created to prevent research analysts from improperly promoting companies in a bid to drum up business for bankers.

The rules were reinforced in a landmark 2003 settlement with several banks, including Citigroup. The case, led by a former New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, built a Chinese wall between Wall Street research analysts and investment bankers.

A TechCrunch employee sought to post the document on the Web, but the junior analyst balked.

“My boss would eat me alive,” he said.

Today\'s Scuttlebot: Subway App and Phantom Mobile Business

The technology reporters and editors of The New York Times scour the Web for important and peculiar items. Thursday's selection includes online companies now pursuing profits offline, a look at the lives of Ellen Pao and her husband, Alphonse Fletcher Jr., and an inquiry into how solid some big companies' claims for their mobile businesses are.

Hurricane Sandy Threatens Northeast and Mid-Atlantic

http://www.nhc.noaa.govHurricane Sandy's path projected on Thursday by the National Hurricane Center.

Hurricane Sandy, now battering the Bahamas, is expected to barrel up the East Coast over the weekend and possibly collide with a winter blast, producing what weather forecasters fear could create a historic and potentially devastating storm for a large swath of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic early next week.

Under some of the most recent computer models, the hurricane could slam into the New Jersey coast on Tuesday with tropical-force winds and, depending on landfall, cause severe coastal and inland flooding and historic urban flooding in New York Ci ty, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Some weather forecasters are calling the unusual combination of a hurricane and winter weather from the Midwest “Frankenstorm,” which inspired the creation of a new Twitter account by that name.

I'm ALIVE.

- frankenstorm (@TheFrankenstorm) 25 Oct 12

Forecasters are drawing comparison to the so-called Perfect Storm of 1991, warning that the mix could cause mayhem, with downed power lines, flooding and high winds, from the Carolinas to New England and as far inland as Ohio. Some areas may be forced to cancel Halloween plans.

“If it actually hits at the kind of intensity it might across central to northern New Jersey, that would be a potential worst-case scenario for New York City,” said Paul Kocin, a meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “That would maximize coastal flooding and winds for New York. The floodin g could be of a level that would be rarely ever seen.”

But Mr. Kocin cautioned that forecasts could change and that some computer models were showing that Hurricane Sandy, expected to move into the western Atlantic before turning back toward the northern coast, could hit anywhere from the Carolinas to the DelMarva peninsula to the southern coast of New England. What is certain, however, is that the winter weather moving from the Midwest is setting the stage for a dangerous storm.

“Without these two systems coming together, it is possible that the hurricane would remain harmlessly out at sea,” Mr. Kocin said. “The storm coming from the Midwest may cause the hurricane to not only make a left turn but make it more intense than it would be otherwise.”

“The storm, wherever it comes in, is going to have a large impact over a lot of people, no matter what,” he said.

An animation by NASA.

In New York City, Bloomberg administration officials activated the city's coastal emergency plan, which that led to the closing of the subway system and the evacuation of thousands of residents in low-lying areas during Hurricane Irene in August 2011. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that some residents should prepare to evacuate. Our colleagues in City Room are noting descriptions of the storm.

“There will be a lot of rain along the whole East Coast, certainly in Southern Florida, and then coming up,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters on Thursday. “If this storm merges with another storm coming from the Ohio Valley, it has the potential to give you real weird weather, like snow, and a lot of rain and high winds. On the other hand, it might just go out to sea, and they just don't know. What we are do ing is we are taking the kind of precautions you'd expect us to do, and I don't think anybody should panic.”

Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said during a briefing that federal emergency management officials had been working with local officials to prepare for the storm. He said people living along the Eastern Seaboard should monitor weather reports in the coming days.

At least four people died in the Caribbean as a result of the hurricane, which is currently a Category 2 storm after making landfall in Cuba.