Sarah Weinman

Another 65 jobs will be cut from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Boston and Orlando offices in the wake f a deal signed earlier this month to purchase information technology services from Teaneck, NJ-based global outsourcing firm Cognizant Technology Solutions. An HMH spokesman told the Boston Globe that Cognizant will take over responsibility for application development and maintenance, while Houghton Mifflin’s information technology department will continue to manage strategy, direction, business knowledge, innovation, and the customer interface.Globe

In response to recent complaints about privacy issues by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Google Books Engineering Director Dan Clancy explains why their policy hasn’t gone into details about how privacy will be enforced: “We have a strong privacy policy in place now for Google Books and for all Google products. But our settlement agreement hasn’t yet been approved by the court, and the services authorized by the agreement haven’t been built or even designed yet.” As a result, while Clancy promises that “whatever we ultimately build will protect readers’ privacy rights,” and points to a FAQ page for further questions, […]

In more Amazon news, CEO Jeff Bezos issued a statement yesterday afternoon on the company’s customer forum, apologizing for deleting Kindle editions of unauthorized editions of George Orwell’s 1984 and other illegally sold copies without prior warning. “Our ‘solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles,” wrote Bezos. “It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.”Bezos statement

Springer Science & Business Media has succeeded in getting three private equity companies to bid again for a share of their business after the previous round of offers was too low. With a 3.1 billion euro debt load, Springer hopes to sell a stake up to 49% to raise 500 million euros in order to alleviate the burden. A decision on the bids from TPG, Sweden’s EQT and a consortium comprising Carlyle Group and Providence Equity Partners (with Apax said to be in discussions, but not formally bidding) is not expected for weeks. UBS and Goldman Sachs have been hired […]