Some large libraries are rejecting Google and Microsoft's programs to scan their book repositories for Web searching. The stated reason libraries are wary is largely because both companies restrict access to the data to individual search results — a notion that most librarians say they're opposed to on principle, preferring universal access to their stored knowledge. Come on. Their true motives are an open book.
I've been saying it for ages: There is no Googlephone. Last week, at the Web 2.0 Summit conference, I finally got confirmation that Google's not getting into the cell-phone business. How? I overheard a rep from Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, chatting up a vice president at Google. Now, I know this particular executive is utterly guileless; she wouldn't lie. And when the Foxconn rep tried to pitch her on getting a contract to make the Googlephone, she replied, flat-out, "We're not making a Googlephone."
Harrison Bergeron ain't got nothing on Bill Gates. Microsoft and the European Commission announced an agreement to handicap the software giant enough to make it equal to everyone else, in compliance with a 2004 ruling. Now Microsoft competitors will pay only a one-time fee of 10,000 euros to access the code needed to write software compatible with Microsoft's, and pay much lower licensing fees. Now that Microsoft's been laden down with tons of legal scrap metal, should we be surprised its lawyers are trying to do the same to Google in the DoubleClick case? (Photo by Revi Kornmann)
Facebook opened its Application Directory and application "about" pages to the unwashed, unregistered masses on Sunday. You no longer have to be a Facebook member to learn about killer apps such as Top Friends, Zombies, and Food Fight. The directory and about pages will also now get indexed by search engines "like Google, Windows Live, Yahoo, etc.," Facebook said. Wonder how they came up with that short list?
Google modified details of its proposed DoubleClick acquisition in order to placate customers and competitors in Europe, say reports. As a result, the European Commission today extended its inquiry into the purchase to until November 13. The ordeal stems from complaints by competitors, in particular long-time antitrust watchdog Microsoft, which in Europe and in the US complain that control of DoubleClick ad-serving would give Google control over 80 percent of the online-advertising market and too much access to users' private information. Google, in turn, believes that allowing it to dominate online advertising is good for everybody and that you should stop asking questions, or people will find out about your top ten search terms, pervert.
Facebook, in the midst of a high-stakes negotiation over its future, has just dramatically upped the ante. How? The social network is quietly starting to promote its long-rumored ad-targeting system — under a clever costume. Facebook has disguised the system as a simple upgrade to Flyers, its much-derided system for selling cheap ads on a self-service basis. This new system shares little with Flyers except its name, however — and poses an obvious threat to Google.
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo — as well as a host of freelance moneybags — continue to press their offers to shower Facebook, the hot social network, with dollars and ads. And last Wednesday at San Francisco's Web 2.0 Summit, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his company was close to clinching a deal. When Friday came and went without a deal, though, conference attendees where whispering about what might have gone wrong. The latest rumor, though, is that Facebook will have an announcement to make on Tuesday. How do we know that? The company has scheduled an all-hands meeting for that day.
Ever catch a Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speech in person? He's the kind of speaker to make you wish you sat at home watching the webcast. It's not just the spittle. It's the feeling he might just reach out and consume you. Turns out, he might. Yesterday, he told the Web 2.0 crowd Microsoft plans to acquire 20 companies a year for the next 5 years. He said Microsoft is willing to spend $50 million to $1 billion on each company to do it. Take note, startup entrepreneurs, unless you're ready to move to Redmond and get assimilated, avoid the front row. You'll stay drier that way, too. (Photo by Aaron Wagner)
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Is Brian McAndrews the odd man out in the online-ad industry? In a four-person panel, Microsoft's new advertising chief was sitting off by himself, while executives from Yahoo, AOL, and Openads shared a couch. "You won't have a dominant player," says McAndrews of consolidation in the industry — consolidation that he helped along by selling his company, aQuantive, to Microsoft for $6 billion. aQuantive, like Microsoft, was based in the Seattle area, far from the office parks of Silicon Valley and the skyscrapers of Madison Avenue.
Software giant Microsoft is getting the attention of the geek blogosphere for moving its drag-and-drop Web mashup development tool, Popfly, into public testing. Why? Because it has a cute name? Because it's being pitched to everyday Internet users who aren't developers — women, even? (As if women don't program now.) Because it's being pitched as an easy way to build widgets for popular social networks MySpace and Facebook? For all those reasons, sure. But that's not why you should care about Popfly.
An informant reports that high-energy Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's early morning razzle-dazzle outpaced one reporter:
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Special correspondent Paul Boutin is reporting by text message, which is fitting, since apparently this morning's keynotes from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and eBay's Meg Whitman can easily be condensed into a Twitter. Or less. Conference organizer Tim O'Reilly, in fact, has all the good lines. O'Reilly to Whitman: "You become what you disrupt." He means, Boutin texts, that eBay is now the old guard waiting to be Napstered. That's also evident in a following exchange, where O'Reilly points out that you can't Skype people by clicking from a Facebook page or using an email address. Whitman's only response is that it's easy to look up people in Skype's directory. Meg, it's time you had a chat with Mark.
"If I wanted a $14 billion advertising business, I could get halfway there by buying Yahoo right now. But that's just me. " Federated Media head John Battelle to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the Web 2.0 Summit.
Microsoft and several large media companies — Disney, CBS, NBC Universal, Fox and MySpace, Viacom and Dailymotion — will announce plans this morning to use technology "to eliminate copyright-infringing content uploaded by users to Web sites, and block any infringing material before it is publicly accessible," according to a Wall Street Journal report. The Journal says Google, which separately announced its own automated piracy detector yesterday, isn't part of the group.
Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed — okay, okay, "terminated" — a proposed California state law, AB 779, which would imposed stronger consumer data protection on California businesses. Why? Because the law was overly broad and confusing. Too bad. A host of businesses would actually benefit from strict privacy laws. Why? Because actually extracting a business advantage from consumer data is extremely tough. Laws that hamstring their savvier competition would actually benefit the vast number of companies who have no clue how to violate their customers' privacy for fun and profit.
Microsoft and Best Buy are liable for subscribing the retailer's customers to Microsoft's Internet service, MSN, without consent, the Supreme Court ruled today by overturning a lower court's ruling on an appeal. One question the Supremes should have asked: "Who in their right mind subscribes to dialup anymore?" [AP]
