Facebook, today, responded to user comments and concerns about privacy by announcing it will introduce simpler and more powerful controls for sharing personal information. New settings will give the more than 400 million people who use Facebook the power to control exactly who can see the information and content they share, all with just a few simple clicks.  In addition, new settings will be added to make it easier to turn off third-party applications or websites. Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially announced the changes in a blog post.

The company’s new privacy controls reflect wide-ranging and collaborative consultation with the office of Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) and a number of online privacy and consumer advocacy groups. Zuckerberg first announced Facebook’s intention to make these changes that detailed principles by which Facebook operates:

• People have control over how their information is shared.
• Facebook does not share personal information with people or services users don’t want.
• Facebook does not give advertisers access to people’s personal information.
• Facebook does not sell any of people’s information to anyone.
• Facebook will always be a free service for everyone.

Today’s announcement focuses on the first two of these principles.

Making Control Simple
One control for content: A new simple control makes it easy to share on Facebook with friends, friends of friends or everyone—all with just one click.  The corresponding settings are immediately applied and displayed in an easy-to-understand grid.  At the same time, Facebook has maintained its more granular settings for those who want to customize their level of sharing.  These settings now all appear on a single page for easier access.

Retroactive control: People who choose the more restrictive “Friends Only” or “Friends of Friends” options with the simple control will have the corresponding setting for all the content they posted previously for sharing.  Thus, a person can make all the content they’ve ever shared on Facebook more private with just a couple of clicks.

Future products:  Facebook commits to carry over people’s privacy choices for new products that facilitate sharing.  Thus, if someone chooses “Friends Only” for “Sharing on Facebook,” new products that have privacy settings will be automatically set to “Friends Only.” This means Facebook users don’t have to worry about new settings in the future.

Prioritizing simplicity: Granularity of control has always been a primary objective in Facebook’s privacy design.  Starting with the changes announced today, the company will also prioritize ease-of-use in its privacy design.

Fewer privacy changes: Facebook’s goal is to make privacy-related changes with less frequency and to work within the framework announced today as it continues to innovate new features and products.

Less Publicly Available Information

Significantly less public information: Facebook has drastically reduced the amount of information that is available to everyone.  This information is now limited to Name, Profile Picture (should a user choose to have one), Gender (though this can be hidden on the profile), and Networks (should the user join any).

Privacy controls for Pages: Connections to Pages, which were previously available to everyone, will have privacy settings that work for both ends of the connection.  People can prevent others from seeing Pages on their profile and from seeing them in the “People who like this” boxes on the Pages themselves.  Applications will also need to ask for explicit permission in order to access any of your Pages that are not visible to everyone.

Easier Opt Outs

Full control over how applications and websites on Facebook Platform access information: In response to requests, Facebook has added a simple way for people to completely turn off Platform applications and websites, so that your information is not shared with applications, even information available to everyone.

Easier opt-out of Instant Personalization Pilot Program:  Facebook has also made it easier for people to turn off the instant personalization program, which prevents those, and any future, applications in the program from accessing their information.

Granular data permissions for applications and websites:  Facebook also highlighted the new controls users have over information shared with applications and websites on Facebook Platform.  With the new data permissions model, applications must obtain specific approval before gaining access to any personal information that a user has not made available to “Everyone.”

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Electronic Arts, maker of the Madden NFL and FIFA soccer video games, is looking to build sports games for Facebook after buying social-games maker Playfish for $275 million, and may buy other similar companies.

The head of EA Sports, Peter Moore, said the company was learning from Playfish about building communities that could actively help it improve its games as it seeks to expand its online offerings amid a decline in packaged games for consoles. Venture capital-backed Playfish makes games for people to play for free on computers with friends, mainly on Facebook. Its hits include “Pet Society”, in which players create pets that interact with each other, and buy virtual goods for them. EA, which slashed its fiscal 2010 forecast this month, partly due to a steep fall in sales of packaged games in Europe, has been criticised by some investors for paying too much for Playfish. The acquisition was completed a few weeks ago. “We are learning an awful lot about a very different type of game experience than we are used to doing,” Moore told Reuters in an interview. “We use social networks primarily right now for building marketing tools,” he said. “We then look at how do we build games, and we will be doing that in conjunction with Playfish.”

EA Sports accounts for about 30 percent of the company’s overall revenue, which was $4.2 billion in the year to March 31. Moore said EA, which failed in a hostile bid for rival Take-Two in 2008, would likely look to buy more companies like Playfish. “You’re seeing a focus in our M&A activity being on companies that will enhance our digital strategy,” he said. Moore said online games were not only a way of compensating for lost revenue from packaged games but also potentially a source of new ideas and better games. “It allows you to go out and go get more friends, get more people involved. You’re building a labour force quite frankly that helps you build your game and be more powerful or more relevant in that game environment,” he said.

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Google has long been the king of search, dominating rivals including Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. But it increasingly sees social networks such as Facebook as challengers to its search engine, a Google official said.

As people search out advice online for everyday, personal decisions, the standard list of links served up by Google is not seen as intimate or trustworthy, Google Group Product Manager Ken Tokusei said Monday. For decisions such as choosing a restaurant or a day care provider, social networking sites or known review sites have an advantage, he said.

Such sites offer information from friends or acquaintances, and Tokusei said users tend to trust that information more. This puts Google’s results at a disadvantage.

“We haven’t gotten to the point where results are seen as if they come from someone you know,” he said.

The search giant has begun to offer tools for users to rate results and delete unrelated links, but it still has work to do, he said.

As Internet users gain savvy and experience, they also expect better-honed answers to queries. Sites such as WolframAlpha, launched earlier this month, comb the Internet for data, and analyze it to provide specific answers to queries, rather than a list of sites.

Google Inc. does something similar for some searches, providing price quotes for “Sony stock” or an answer for “Tunisia capital.” But it also provides the familiar list of sites to dig further, a strategy it is unlikely to change.

“It’s a matter of determining what kind of information the user is looking for. But we will always serve some links to pages with our results,” said Tokusei.

He spoke to reporters at Google’s Japanese headquarters in Tokyo, where he gave an overview of the company’s basic search tools.

Google has developed a host of expanding tools and services, from a mobile operating system to an online word processor, but it devotes 70 percent of its employees and resources to search.

The company still faces fresh competition from its traditional rivals, which are regrouping in an attempt to take back market share.

Microsoft has failed to make much headway in repeated Internet ventures. But the deep-pocketed company, which has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into improving its search engine, continues to develop a new search technology, part of which is called “Kumo” internally.

Yahoo, which has seen its share of total online searches conducted plummet to Google, is tweaking its search results, cutting out some links and emphasizing images and video.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has said he is still interested in buying part of Yahoo after a proposed deal was turned down last year.

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