It is being reported that the man who held the toughest job at Google, Shashi Seth, head of monetization for YouTube has left the company for greener pastures - after only a year on the job.
“I think part of being a Googler is that you like smaller environments, and I think Google got a little big for me,” says Seth.
This is yet another indication that monetizing video is a lot harder than many thought it would be despite YouTube’s huge viral popularity and lead in the online video sharing market. Irrespective More»

Labels: google, viacom, Youtube

Facebook announced today that it will be opening up its code. Dubbed Facebook Open Platform or fbOpen, this move is viewed as being in direct competition to Google’s OpenSocial which is also an open source development platform for creating social apps.
“The goal of this release is to help you as developers better understand Facebook Platform as a whole and more easily build applications, whether it’s by running your own test servers, building tools, or optimizing your applications on this technology. We’ve built in extensibility points, so you can add functionality to More»

Labels: Facebook, google, open social, Open Source, social media

Billionaire takeover strategist Carl Icahn is looking at a possible play to force Yahoo back to the table with Microsoft to sell the company at a big profit. The news today sent Yahoo up about 1.30 and YHOO is still rising in after market trading.
Given that the prevailing stock price of Yahoo is well below Microsoft’s top offer of $33 per share, this play has only one key challenge - making sure you can get Microsoft back to the table. Frankly I think that is not much of a hurdle to overcome as I More»

Labels: google, icahn, Microsoft, msft, Yahoo, YHOO

Maria Bartiromo at CNBC has a detailed interview with Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. The full transcript is here and below. I’ve noted some items below in quotes.
As we’ve noted here before, monetizing video and social media is very difficult. Schmidt confirms that is an ongoing challenge at Google:

… the whole social networking space has been harder for us tomonetize–thatis, develop advertising businesses again–than some of theother–than some ofthe other spaces that we’re in. It has to do what peopleare doing. When youthink about More»

Labels: Eric Schmidt, google

The “deadline” imposed by Microsoft on Yahoo expired yesterday, which makes it likely that Microsoft is either preparing to drop their bid or - and this appears a more likely scenario - preparing for a hostile takeover where they’ll try to get a new slate of directors approved for Yahoo who would view the takeover favorably, leading to a probable merge this summer.
Yahoo’s board meets today and although it would be interesting to be there I’m certainly not envious of the Yahoo board right now. If Microsoft drops their current offer Yahoo stock is likely to More»

Labels: google, Microsoft, msft, Yahoo, YHOO

Larry Dignan and Dan Farber at CNET have the early scoop on Yahoo’s freshly unveiled Yahoo! Open Strategy somewhat cryptically labelled …. “Y!OS”
Ari Balogh, Yahoo CTO said at the San Francisco Web 2.0 Conference today:
“We are taking open to a whole other place,”… “We are rewiringYahoo from the inside out with a developer platform that will open up the assetsof Yahoo in a way never done before, making the consumer experience socialthroughout and provide hooks to developers.”

It is too early to know if this type of openness will be embraced by developers to the More»

Labels: google, open social, web 2.0, Yahoo, YHOO

Google has been named the world’s number one and most powerful brand for the second year in a row clocking in at an estimated value at $85,057 million which represents a 30% increase in its brand valuation. This, according to BrandZ’s top 100 brand ranking for 2008. Other tech heavyweights in the top ten included GE, Microsoft, China Mobile, IBM, and Apple which was the biggest mover in the top 10 and a new entrant, moving up from sixteenth to seventh place with an incredible 123% increase in brand value to $55,206 million. HP More»

Labels: google

Despite a small 1% drop this morning, stock in internet giant Google (GOOG) appears to be stable at the new price level of approximately $533 per share, about a 20% increase from the lows of last week. Until Thursday’s favorable earnings report Google stock had come under severe downward pressure after reports that revenue could suffer from a major slow down in the increase in paid clicking at Google - by far the internet’s most important advertising venue with control of approximately half of all online advertising.
Thursday’s earnings, however, indicated that the reports of More»

Labels: comscore, google, stocks

Microsoft has purchased the innovative travel service “Farecast” for a reported $115,000,000. SeattlePI has more about this breaking story. Farecast uses a predictive algorithm to help users determine if airline ticket pricing is poised to go up or down from the current levels and thus helps to find bargain pricing online.
Rather than develop extensive “Web 2.0″ features internally, it is becoming very clear that Microsoft is trying to fuel their massive new web initiative with cash, buying companies like Farecast (and Yahoo) that can make Microsoft an immediate player in the rapidly evolving More»

Labels: farecast, google, Microsoft, Yahoo, YHOO

Google stock soared in after hours trading to over $500 per share after a very favorable earnings report that suggests Google is doing a much better job of pulling revenue out of paid advertising clicks. After hours GOOG showed a gain of over 11% from today’s closing price.
Reuters Reports
More»

Labels: google, Search, stocks