Why Brick And Mortar Websites Aren't Doing The Job
Story from BizReport

In a recent study from Internet Engine, researchers found that ecommerce-only sites, such as Amazon.com, were out-performing brick-and-mortar store websites by a 3 to 1 margin. The study found that even manufacturers were better utilizing search marketing than retailers. Why? A big part of the problem is the message of brick-and-mortar websites.

According to the most recent internet marketing studies, online shopping hubs appeared in about 30% of keyword search queries.

Selling on the Internet is different than selling in-store," said the owner of Internet Engine. "If you look at the large brick-and-mortar websites, their brand is at the forefront of their online presence. But, they aren't putting the product brands at the forefront."

Brick-Mortar-Stores

To better engage consumers, many consultants suggest putting key product brands at the center of any online campaign. Offering in-store pickup is another way for brick-and-mortar stores to pick up some of the online shopping slack. The best way to garner consumers' attention, though, is through content.

First, the content has to be product centered. Give consumers - and search engines - the information needed to return the right search query results. Second, make the site easy to read for consumers and for search engines and finally, include the right links. Being part of the right online community is a huge step for retailers trying to reach a specific community - online moms, gamers, fishing dads, etc. Branding is important online and offline, but the content has to stand up to the pressure of search engine algorithms.

"We've found that brick-and-mortar stores can do well with paid listings. They know how to advertise or sponsor a keyword, they struggle with SEO copywriting and optimizing content for top organic keyword positions."

Yahoo To Pay $1.8 Million Severance To Departing CFO
Story from Dow Jones News Wires

Yahoo Inc. said Friday that it will pay departing Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen a $1.8 million lump-sum severance payment.

In late February, the company said Mr. Jorgensen would leave the company, (Microsoft has plenty of CFOs) but remain through a transition period.

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, his resignation will be effective June 30, or such other date between July 1 Sept. 1 as mutually agreed to by the company and Mr. Jorgensen.

Until the separation date, Mr. Jorgensen will continue to provide services, including transition services to the company. From the separation date forward, Yahoo will continue to pay his medical-coverage for up to 12 months.

Yahoo To Redefine What It Means To Search
Story from Information Week

The company hopes bolstering its semantic search capabilities will help it better compete with Google for ad dollars and happier customers.

At media event in San Francisco on Tuesday, Yahoo Search executives insisted that Internet users don't want to search.

"Nobody really wants to search," declared Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo Labs and Yahoo Search Strategy. "People want to run their lives."

The stated theme for the press briefing was "The End of the 10 Blue Links," a title that reflects an evolution of Yahoo's search strategy beyond document retrieval. As described by Raghavan, Yahoo is directing its search efforts toward assessing user intent.

When a user types "Star Trek," Raghavan said, he doesn't want 10 million documents, he wants actors and show times.

Yahoo's bid to redefine search as a matter of intent rather than index size can be seen as an admission that it can't match Google's index.

In August 2005, index size mattered to Yahoo. "[O]ur index now provides access to over 20 billion items," Yahoo's Tim Meyer boasted at the time. A month later, Google's Marissa Mayer answered Yahoo's challenge, stating that Google's index was three times larger than anyone else's. And in July 2008, Google said that its index had reached 1 trillion unique URLs.

So it's perhaps understandable why Yahoo might want to reframe the debate. Given its lack of success challenging Google directly -- Google's April search share in the United States reached 64.2%, a 0.5 point gain, while Yahoo's search share fell to 20.4%, a 0.1 point decline, according to ComScore -- Yahoo wants to change the game.

And to some extent, the game has changed. Everyone is focused on mobile applications now. And in mobile search, user intent is easier to determine because location data often provides a clue about what users want. A search for "Star Trek" from a mobile device is more likely to reflect a desire to find a nearby theater and purchase tickets than it would be from a desktop PC, for example. To understand user intent better, Yahoo is developing its semantic search capabilities. Raghavan describes the process as building a Web of objects in the real world and understanding how they relate to each other. In other words, Yahoo is adding structure to its data to make inferences about user intent more accurate and to define relationships between search terms and things in the world.

Rather, its partners are doing that through initiatives like SearchMonkey. SearchMonkey allows developers to share structured data with Yahoo, enabling the display of search results enhanced with related information. Thus, a Yahoo SearchMonkey search result for a restaurant might include not only a link to the restaurant's site, but star ratings, reviews, map links, and related data, all in one search listing.

This is similar to what Google does with its OneBox search results enhancements, but Yahoo is relying on its partners to feed it with structured data.

The gambit appears to be working, too. Since October, the amount of RDFa structured data available through SearchMonkey has increased by 413%. Yahoo reportsthat 70 million SearchMonkey-enhanced search results are viewed by users every day, in 23 markets around the world. And these search results deliver more traffic to site owners, too. Some site owners say they've seen a 15% increase in click-through rates, according to Yahoo.

Yahoo's BOSS (Build your Own Search Service), the company's open search platform, has also been growing. Having recently been upgraded to allow developers to access SearchMonkey structured data, the BOSS API now handles three times as many queries as it did six months ago. With daily query volume in the 30 million to 35 million range, according to Raghavan, BOSS alone is just shy of the estimated 40 million queries handled by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Windows Live Search.

Looking ahead, Yahoo is testing new search enhancements based on its improved ability to understand user intent. One of these, for example, draws on Yahoo's data about locations to suggest related queries. Larry Cornett, VP of consumer products for Yahoo Search, demonstrated how a future search for "Paris" might produce a rich set of pictures and links of other Parisian landmarks like the Musée du Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, data not normally brought up for that keyword.

Yahoo's focus on user intent could lead to happier users, if Yahoo Search can guess user intent accurately. It could also help Yahoo make more money from advertising.

"If we can divine the user's intent, that's obviously of great interest to advertisers," said Raghavan.

Microsoft Maintains Heavy Investment In Online Systems
Story from ZDNet

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie defended Microsoft’s continued heavy investments in the online-systems arena, claiming the flowing trail of red ink from Microsoft’s Online Systems Business (OSB) doesn’t tell the whole story.

Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom Conference on May 20, Ozzie touched on his favorite topics — software plus services, Microsoft’s “three screens and a cloud” (mobile devices, PCs and TV) vision; and the need for Microsoft to field consumer services as a way to show off its cloud-computing prowess.

But a question from one audience member on why Microsoft continues to pour so much money into its still-unprofitable online services division got Ozzie to deviate a bit from his script.

(For its FY 2009 Q3, Microsoft’s OSB lost $575 million. Its latest round of layoffs allegedly included some OSB personnel, but relatively few, according to company scuttlebutt.)

The benefit of continued research and investment in Microsoft’s consumer-facing Live services — everything from Windows Live Hotmail, to the soon-to-be-rebranded Live Search — “is bigger than the numbers indicate,” Ozzie said.

Microsoft’s growing family of enterprise-focused services — Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, etc. — have taught the company a lot about cloud requirements. Its investments in consumer services have taught the company important lessons about scale, Ozzie said.

The underlying infrastructure Microsoft has built to deploy and run its consumer services is now being extended to support other services throughout the company, he said. Ozzie pointed to “Cosmos,” the high-scale file system that is part of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, as ultimately supporting and aiding every consumer, enterprise and developer property at Microsoft. He noted that the management systems for Microsoft’s current and existing cloud services are all derived from the learnings Microsoft has gleaned from managing its consumer online services.

Ozzie said he believed one of Microsoft’s main advantages vis-a-vis its cloud competitors is “the fact we build both platforms and applications.” (How the world has changed. In the 1990s, Microsoft officials, hoping to head off more antitrust suits, claimed Microsoft maintained a strict wall between its operating systems and applications business.)

The Azure operating system and services platform, which Microsoft is slated to make available in final form this fall, is another place where Microsoft has been sinking substantial funds for the past couple of years.

Ozzie said Microsoft’s focus on building a cloud operating system differentiates it from other cloud vendors. Azure is Microsoft’s “20 or 30 year vision,” he said.

Speaking of Microsoft’s online services, Microsoft is starting to turn up the hype-meter for its new search release, codenamed “Kumo.” At next week’s “All Things D” conference, Microsoft officials are going to show off Kumo to show attendees. But the actual commencement of the rollout isn’t likely to start until early June.

As search expert Danny Sullivan notes, there’s a difference between a demo and an actual debut. And all signs are pointing to Kumo/Bing/or whatever the new release eventually is called, as being made widely available to consumers starting around June 2.

Microsoft Trademarks 'Magic Wand'
Story from ZDNet

While virtually every tech company is concerned with building the better mouse trap, Microsoft is apparently trying to build a better mouse.

Seattle based technology blog TechFlash this week picked up on a newly disclosed patent filing from Microsoft for a motion-sensing "Magic Wand" interface that would allow users to turn on lights, crank up the heat, and possibly even play games with a flick of the wrist.

The wand is technically described as "an architecture that can facilitate rich interaction with and/or management of environmental components included in an environment." It could incorporate a number of handy devices including an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a camera, a laser, a biometric sensor, a transmitter, or a receiver, and would have a handy adviser in text, audio, or video form to assist users in getting their gestures just right.

According to the filing, the advisor could be configurable from appearance to accent, and could be displayed in holographic form. On top of that, the wand could track motion by creating a basic 3D model of its environment, then using a pair of cameras to determine the wand's orientation within that existing model.

Also of note are the Magic Wand's inventors. Among the listed names is J Allard, Microsoft's "chief experience officer" and chief technology officer for the Entertainment and Devices Division. Allard may be best known among gamers for managing the technical development of the original Xbox and serving as the public face of the company's console efforts until shortly after the Xbox 360 launch. Since then, he has remained largely out of sight while working on the Zune multimedia handheld, which Microsoft has promised will eventually support robust gaming functionality.

Rapidly Spreading 'Gumblar' Attack Redirects Users' Web Searches
Malware scripts morph from site to site, and even from page to page, within the same site, ScanSafe researchers say

By Tim Wilson, DarkReading, May 14, 2009

A Web-borne malware attack that redirects users' Internet searches is growing "exponentially," and has already infected more than 2,300 Websites, researchers said today.

Researchers at security company ScanSafe are warning users about an emerging series of Website compromises, collectively dubbed "Gumblar," which are spreading at a rapid rate. In the past week, Gumblar site compromises have grown at a rate of 188 percent, making it one of the fastest-growing infections on the Web, ScanSafe says.

"It should be waning by now, but it isn't," says Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at ScanSafe. "It just keeps spreading."

Gumblar, which has been spotted on popular sites such Tennis.com, Variety.com, and Coldwellbanker.com, is believed to be growing rapidly due to its unique combination of characteristics. The malware resulting from Gumblar forcibly redirects search page results to sites other than those users expect. Many of these pages are imitations of the Websites users actually intended to visit.

"For example, if a user is trying to visit Tennis.com via Google, they may be directed to a fraudulent site designed to look like Tennis.com, where a backdoor Trojan will be immediately downloaded," ScanSafe reports. "The Trojan could then allow cybercriminals control of the victim's computer, leading to a myriad of security issues, including personal data theft and stolen FTP credentials. Once cybercriminals are in possession of a victim's FTP credentials, any sites that victim manages can also be targeted for compromise -- a common malware propagation tactic."

One of Gumblar's exploits is to launch a "man-in-the-browser attack," in which the downloaded malware monitors all traffic to and from the browser, Landesman says. From this position, the malware can selectively swap out links in search results, effectively fooling the user into going to an unintended site.

Landesman speculates that Gumblar might be operating as a "botnet for hire," achieving different ends for different "clients." In many cases, the attack seems to be facilitating click fraud, in which the criminal simply redirects Web traffic to a fraud site in order to collect page views and advertising revenue. In other cases, Gumblar is routing users to malicious sites that might load additional malware onto the user's machine.

"A third potential exploit, which we haven't seen yet, is to redirect users from e-commerce or banking sites for the purpose of fraud, like a traditional phishing attack," Landesman says.

Gumblar is difficult to detect because its scripts vary from site to site, and even from page to page, Landesman says. "The cybercriminals responsible for Gumblar have learned to morph its features quickly," Landesman says. "This, coupled with Gumblar's other dynamic characteristics, is allowing the compromise to disseminate more rapidly than others we've seen."

The rapidly changing nature of the attack also makes it difficult for traditional signature detection or blacklisting tools to block, Landesman says. "If you were an individual user, I'd just tell you to disable JavaScript," she says. "But that's not possible for most businesses to do."

ScanSafe is attacking the problem via Web filtering, essentially preventing the user from going to the Gumblar sites and being infected in the first place, Landesman says. "Prevention is really the only workable defense because once you've been infected and your FTP credentials have been stolen, the criminal can modify passwords and make it difficult for you to get control back," she says.

The Gumblar Website, which dishes out the malware, is going to be difficult to find and bring down, Landesman says. While the site itself has a Chinese registry (Gumblar.cn), its source IP addresses have been traced to Latvia and Russia, and its servers are located in the U.K. "The criminals are doing a really good job of hiding their actual location," she says.

ScanSafe has posted blogs on its Website that describe the malware and its potential effects on enterprises and end users. The company will continue to post updates as the attack spreads, Landesman says.

Failure of Planet Internet Router takes Downs 1 million websites
Outage at The Planet takes out Hostgator, Site5 and others

An outage at service provider The Planet Tuesday took out hosting from a range of hosts, including the popular Hostgator service, Site 5 and others.

The outage occurred at around 2:50pm PDT Monday, and lasted approximately 25-30 minutes. The Planet customers were advised the issue was "advertising problems in a router," specifically that "there was a block of IP addresses that were not advertising correctly to the rest of the Internet." The issues were limited to The Planet’s H1, H2, and D6 datacenters.

The total number of websites affected is not known, but it believed to be in the millions. Hostgator claims alone to host 1 million domain names, and their entire operation was offline during the outage.

Notably despite the issue not being their making, HostGator has promised that it will honor its 99.9% up time guarantee.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz Drops the F-Bomb

Testimony of Marissa Mayer Vice President, Search Products and User Experience Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet Hearing on "The Future of Journalism" May 6, 2009

Chairman Kerry, Ranking Member Ensign, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to contribute to this discussion. My name is Marissa Mayer, and I work as Vice President of Search and User Experience at Google. I manage Google's efforts in search -- including Web search and Google News -- and I also guide user interaction design across Google's products. In addition, I co-chair the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. In both roles, I've reflected on the intersections of journalism and technology and I will speak to that this afternoon.

In my testimony today, I would like to cover three main points:
First, I'd like to discuss how Web search acts as a conduit for journalism by connecting individuals to the news stories they are seeking.
Second, I'll address our commitment to create economic opportunity for publishers and to provide tools to create more engaging presentations of their content.
And finally, I'll talk about how the very structure of the Web itself represents some challenges to, but also opportunities for, the future of journalism.

Search: a conduit for online publishing
Every day, millions of people search the Web for relevant answers to their questions. In response, search engines strive to connect each user with the right results, and those results can come in any number of different forms: a Web page, an image, a video, a map, or a news story – something of particular relevance to today's hearing. In each of those cases, search engines play the role of connecting users with high-quality content -- often journalistic -- ultimately sending traffic to the publisher's Website. Google is one such search engine that people use to find answers online. Another service we offer is Google News, our specialized service that's designed specifically for users who are looking for news articles. Stories on Google News are selected and ranked by computers based on the freshness, location, relevance, and diversity of their content. As a result, these stories are sorted without regard to political viewpoint or ideology, and users can choose from a wide variety of perspectives on any given story. We offer links to several articles covering a topic so that users can choose to read the story from the publishers and sources they prefer.

Both Google search and Google News connect users to answers and information as quickly as possible. We show people just enough information to invite them to read more -- the headline, a line or two of text, and a link to the news publisher's Website. A user clicks on the headline of interest and is taken directly to the site that published the story.

Together, Google News and Google search provide a valuable free service to online newspapers specifically by sending interested readers to their sites at a rate of more than 1 billion clicks per month. Newspapers use that Web traffic to increase their readership and generate additional revenue.

In terms of publications appearing in search indexes, we believe they have the right to control their content. That's why we allow site owners to choose whether or not Google can index their sites. Using what's called a “robots.txt” file, which has been an industry standard for many years, a publisher can block its Web content from any search engine's crawl. As a result, that site will not show up in Web search results. Effective use of "robots.txt" and other metatags gives publishers control over how their content is searched at a number of levels by allowing publishers to restrict: search across the entire site, individual directories, pages of a specific type, or individual pages only. So, while we think inclusion in a search engine can drive a lot of beneficial traffic, our policy first and foremost is to respect the wishes of content owners.

Creating economic opportunity for publishers
Because our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, high-quality content is incredibly important to Google. Our most basic goal is to connect users with high quality and reliable information. Credible, factual, trustworthy content -- that is, journalism -- is critical to the millions of users who search for news stories on Google. Google connects Internet users to journalists' work while at the same time helping journalists generate
income to support their work, and providing tools to make news more compelling to readers and viewers. Most importantly from an economic perspective, once readers arrive at publication sites, our Google AdSense advertising platform helps publishers generate revenue from their content. By providing relevant ads and improving the connection between advertisers and our users, Google AdSense creates billions of dollars in annual revenue for publishers. In fact, in 2008, that figure exceeded $5 billion in revenue for AdSense publishers. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers. We recently launched interest-based advertising, which we believe will be particularly helpful to publishers as it takes into account each individual user's interests in the hopes of making advertisements even more relevant.

In addition to providing revenue opportunities, Google also offers many tools for sharing information that are being used by newspapers. For example, the Los Angeles Times Website last year followed the path of Southern California wildfires using Google Maps at the site. Google Image Search brings the Life Magazine photo archive to light for a whole new generation of readers. National Geographic and The Holocaust Memorial Museum have created interactive educational content layers in Google Earth. And NASA has partnered with us to allow anyone to virtually travel the stars in Google Sky. Our Web technologies are powerful information tools, and we hope to continue to empower content creation through them.

The structure of the Web and its impact on publishers
The structure of the Web itself requires the presentation of news in a way that's fundamentally different from its offline predecessor. The Web has caused some parts of the news to be presented more easily and effectively. For example, Web pages can link to voluminous supporting materials without worrying about column inches. In addition, the always-on, always-updating nature of the Web means that real-time news updates can appear throughout the day without being tied to print production deadlines. However, other aspects are more challenging, particularly in regard to how users arrive at a news story, and how authority on a particular topic is established. I'd like to offer a few observations on what I call the "atomic unit of consumption" for online news, the prospect of creating living stories online, as well as a few simple steps online publishers can take to keep readers engaged.
The atomic unit of consumption
The atomic unit of consumption for existing media is almost always disrupted by emerging media. For example, digital music caused consumers to think about their purchases as individual songs rather than as full albums. Digital and on-demand video has caused people to view variable-length clips when it is convenient for them, rather than fixed-length programs on a fixed broadcast schedule. Similarly, the structure of the Web has caused the atomic unit of consumption for news to migrate from the full newspaper to the individual article. As with music and video, many people still consume physical newspapers in their original full-length format.

But with online news, a reader is much more likely to arrive at a single article. While these
individual articles could be accessed from a newspaper's homepage, readers often click directly to a particular article via a search engine or another Website.

Changing the basic unit of content consumption is a challenge, but also an opportunity. Treating the article as the atomic unit of consumption online has several powerful consequences. When producing an article for online news, the publisher must assume that a reader may be viewing this article on its own, independent of the rest of the publication. To make an article effective in a standalone setting requires providing sufficient context for first-time readers, while clearly calling out the latest information for those following a story over time. It also requires a different approach to monetization: each individual article should be self-sustaining.

These types of changes will require innovation and experimentation in how news is delivered online, and how advertising can support it.

The living story
The Web by definition changes and updates constantly throughout the day. Because of its ability to operate in real-time, it offers an opportunity for news publishers to publish on changing and evolving stories as they happen. Web addresses (known as URLs -- uniform resource locators such as http://www.google.com) were designed to refer to unique pieces of content, and those URLs were intended to persist over time. Today, in online news, publishers frequently publish several articles on the same topic, sometimes with identical or closely related content, each at their own URL.

The result is parallel Web pages that compete against each other in terms of authority, and in terms of placement in links and search results. Consider instead how the authoritativeness of news articles might grow if an evolving story were published under a permanent, single URL as a living, changing, updating entity. We see this practice today in Wikipedia's entries and in the topic pages at NYTimes.com. The result is a single authoritative page with a consistent reference point that gains clout and a following of users over time.

Keeping users engaged
A much smaller but important factor for online newspapers to consider in today's digital age is the fundamental design and presentation of their content. Publishers should not discount the simple and effective navigational elements the Web can offer. When a reader finishes an article online, it is the publication's responsibility to answer the reader who asks, "What should I do next?" Click on a related article or advertisement? Post a comment? Read earlier stories on the topic? Much like Amazon.com suggests related products and YouTube makes it easy to play another video, publications should provide obvious and engaging next steps for users.

Today, there are still many publications that don't fully take advantage of the numerous tools that keep their readers engaged and on their site.

Conclusion
Chairman Kerry, Ranking Member Ensign, and members of the Subcommittee, thank you for having me here today to participate in this important discussion. Preserving robust and independent journalism at the national and local levels is an important goal for the United States. Google is doing its part by driving significant traffic to online news publishers, by helping them
generate revenue through advertising, and by providing tools and platforms enabling them to reach millions of people.

There are certainly many challenges to face in adapting the long tradition of journalism to the online world. I am hopeful, though, that innovation will help preserve journalism and its vital function in our society.
Thank you.

Newspapers' Salvation: Google, Gadgets And Gumption?
Story from the Mercury News, Originally Posted on SiliconValley.com
By JOHN MURRELL

How sad is the state of U.S. newspapers? So sad that even politicians are offering sympathy, kind words and concern. Saying that "newspapers look like an endangered species," Sen. John Kerry, D.-Mass., opened a subcommittee hearing Wednesday by running down a list of print casualties and depressed share prices, saying, "We're here today to talk not only about the conditions that have led to these jolting statistics, but about the path that lies ahead for news delivery, and how during a time of great creative destruction within the market for news delivery we might preserve the core societal function that is served by an independent and diverse news media." What the lawmakers heard from witnesses was nothing new to those who have been following this discussion for a while, but the testimony did manage to hit most of the major points in the debate. A sampling:

* The "Google as parasite" banner was carried by Dallas Morning News publisher Jim Moroney, who recommended tax relief for publishers, along with temporary antitrust protection to let them work together to try to squeeze some revenue out of the aggregators. "We don't want to pull out of the digital ecosystem," he said. "We just simply want a fair compensation for the content that we publish." Saying government-sanctioned collusion would also give newspapers more leverage with potential new distribution partners, Moroney scoffed at the current terms being offered by Amazon for inclusion in the Kindle news stand. "The Kindle, which I think is a marvelous device — the best deal Amazon will give the Dallas Morning News, and we've negotiated this up to the last two weeks, they want 70 percent of the subscriptions revenue," he said. "I get 30 percent, they get 70 percent. On top of that they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device. Now is that a business model that is going to work for newspapers?"

* Google VP Marissa Mayer offered the aggregators' counterpoint, saying, "Google News and Google search provide a valuable free service to online newspapers specifically by sending interested readers to their sites at a rate of more than 1 billion clicks per month. Newspapers use that Web traffic to increase their readership and generate additional revenue." But after Google delivers readers, she said, it's up to the newspaper to hold on to them, in part by recognizing that the basic unit of consumption in journalism is no longer the full newspaper, but individual stories. "To make an article effective in a standalone setting requires providing sufficient context for first-time readers, while clearly calling out the latest information for those following a story over time," she said. "It also requires a different approach to monetization: each individual article should be self-sustaining." Allowing an ongoing story to evolve over time under a consistent URL would also build authority and repeat traffic, she said. And those visitors who arrive via search need to be kept engaged, she added. "Publishers should not discount the simple and effective navigational elements the Web can offer," said Mayer. "When a reader finishes an article online, it is the publication's responsibility to answer the reader who asks, 'What should I do next?' Click on a related article or advertisement? Post a comment? Read earlier stories on the topic?"

* Arianna Huffington, editor-in-chief of the online Huffington Post, said too much of the current debate was focused on preserving the printed product. "The future of quality journalism is not dependant on the future of newspapers," she told the panel. "We are actually in the midst of a golden age for news consumers. The discussion needs to move from 'How do we save newspapers?' to 'How do we strengthen journalism? — via whatever platform it is delivered.'" The old paradigms of the business are fading fast, she said: "The future is to be found elsewhere. It is search engines. It is online advertising. It is citizen journalism and foundation-supported investigative funds."

* Citizen journalism is no substitute for the work of trained and experienced reporters, said David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun writer and the creator of the HBO series "The Wire." "High-end journalism is a profession," he testified. "I am offended to think that anyone, anywhere believes that American institutions as insulated, self-preserving, and self-justifying as police departments, school systems, legislatures, and chief executives can be held to [account] ...by amateurs, pursuing the task without compensation, training, or for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care to whom it is they are lying or from whom they are withholding information.''



* Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., touted his Newspaper Revitalization Act, which would allow newspapers to operate as educational nonprofit entities with a tax status similar to public broadcasters, churches and hospitals. "Despite the 24/7 availability of news from print, broadcast and digital sources, there remains one clear fact: When it comes to original in-depth reporting that records and exposes actions, issues, and opportunities, nothing has replaced a newspaper," he said.

Meanwhile, some publishers are putting their hopes in the prospect of gaining paid subscriptions to digital content via a new generation of portable tablets. As rumored, Amazon on Wednesday introduced the Kindle DX, a larger-format e-reader pitched as suitable platform for newspapers, documents and textbooks. The educational applications will be tested by several colleges and textbook publishers, said Amazon, while three newspapers — the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post — will participate in a pilot program under which they will subsidize part of the $489 price of the Kindle DX for readers who commit to a long-term subscription, but only if they live outside the printed paper's circulation area. And News Corp. mogul Rupert Murdoch reportedly has a global team of executives working on a plan for a Kindle-like piece of hardware that would give his papers a vehicle for charging readers for content.

Android Data Corp. Files Suit Against Google Over Name
Story from Bloomberg

Google Inc., which unveiled its Android operating system for mobile phones last year, was sued by a man claiming his business already holds a trademark for the use of that name in connection with e-commerce.

Erich Specht of Palatine, Ill., and his Android Data Corp., sued Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, claiming he obtained U.S. trademark rights to Android in 2002 and that when Google applied for a similar right, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2008 rejected it.

"Google's actions and its business partners that will use its software will undoubtedly lead to deception, confusion and mistake among the consuming public," said Specht's complaint, which seeks a court order barring their use of the name. Specht, in his complaint filed April 28 in federal court in Chicago, also seeks at least $2 million in damages.

Google's Android software has been used in phones sold by T-Mobile USA Inc., a unit of Bonn, Germany-based Deutsche Telekom AG, and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. L.G. Electronics Inc., also of South Korea, and Schaumburg, Ill.- based Motorola Inc. have said they'll introduce Android phones this year.

Each of those companies are identified in Specht's complaint as members of Google's Open Handset Alliance, which is a defendant in the case.

"We believe these claims to be without merit, Andrew Pederson, a Google spokesman," said Friday.

Android Data's software enables remote administration of Web sites, according to Specht's complaint.

Google's Top Display-Ad Executive Is Departing

The executive in charge of Google Inc.'s global display-ad business is leaving the Internet company, the latest in a series of executives to depart in recent weeks.

The departure of David Rosenblatt, the former chief executive of display-ad technology group DoubleClick, is a setback to Google, which has said that making inroads into the display advertising market is a top strategic priority.

Mr. Rosenblatt is leaving because he would like to run a company, say people familiar with the matter, who add that he has yet to formalize specific plans. His departure was reported earlier by The New York Times.

Mr. Rosenblatt arrived at Google through its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in early 2008. Google said Mr. Rosenblatt will be succeeded by Henrique De Castro, a member of the company's European sales leadership team. Mr. De Castro's new title will be managing director of global display and YouTube advertising.

"It's important to remember that we have a strong executive leadership bench in place to support all our businesses, and have tapped into that bench," the company said in a statement.

Mr. Rosenblatt's departure follows that of Tim Armstrong, the company's top Americas sales executive, who left to lead Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, head of Google's Asian operations, also left after she was passed over to succeed Mr. Armstrong. Earlier this month, Google said sales chief Omid Kordestani was moving into a new role, as senior adviser to the office of the CEO and founders.

Time Warner Prepares to Shed AOL
Story from the Wall Street Journal

Time Warner, Inc. gave the clearest sign yet that it plans to move beyond its disastrous 2001 merger with AOL, saying it expects to press ahead with a spinoff of all or part of the ailing Internet unit.

Jeff Bewkes, who took the CEO reins 15 months ago, has been pushing through a vision of the media company as a slimmed down parcel of mostly television and film businesses. The company has already spun off its cable-TV service business.

Executives cautioned that an AOL spinoff isn't cemented, but a decision on AOL is expected "very soon."

Time Warner on Wednesday also posted a 14% drop in first-quarter profit. Deterioration at AOL and the Time Inc. magazine business offset improved movie studio and cable-TV profits.

"Advertising at AOL and Time Inc. especially is proving even tougher than expected," Mr. Bewkes said.

As the media conglomerate moves to jettison certain businesses, attention is turning to the future of Time Inc., where advertising sales swooned by 30% in the first quarter and ad declines are expected to continue for the rest of the year. Mr. Bewkes has said Time Inc. generates a steady stream of cash and contains important brands, but he also repeated Wednesday that its future within Time Warner hasn't been decided.

"Jeff Bewkes is the kind of CEO who's not sentimental; he's about putting things behind him and focusing on content" said Tom Eagan, an analyst with Collins Stewart.

Time Warner stressed that it is still exploring its options, but in a sign that it is preparing for a standalone AOL, the company last month hired Tim Armstrong, a well-regarded Google executive, as AOL's new chief. Time Warner also amended debt agreements to clear obstacles for an AOL spinoff. On Wednesday, Time Warner disclosed that it also plans to buy back Google Inc.'s 5% stake in AOL.

In 2006, Google paid $1 billion for the investment as part of a deal to handle searches on AOL's Web sites. Since then, Google has written down the value of its stake to just $274 million, or a $5.5 billion valuation for all of AOL. Some analysts have suggested AOL is worth far less.

For the quarter, Time Warner said net income fell to $661 million, or 55 cents a share, from $771 million, or 64 cents a share, a year earlier, adjusted for a reverse stock split. Revenue slid 7% to $6.95 billion, excluding Time Warner Cable.

If Time Warner sheds AOL, the cable networks -- which include CNN, TBS and HBO -- will be the company's primary profit driver. In the quarter, however, the company's ad-supported networks showed signs of strain as ad revenue fell 2%. The company said the weak economy will make it tough for the networks to increase ad revenue this year.

Time Warner's film division posted a 7% decline in revenue though operating income before depreciation and amortization rose 10% thanks to cost cuts.

IAC Is in Talks to Buy Yahoo Personals
AP Story

Internet company IAC/InterActiveCorp said it is in talks to buy Yahoo Inc.'s online-dating business, after posting a first-quarter loss due to advertising woes.

IAC Chief Executive Barry Diller said Wednesday his company was in discussions aimed at acquiring Yahoo Personals, but he cautioned that it was too early to know whether the talks would succeed.

"We would love to have Yahoo Personals, and there are discussions about that," Mr. Diller said on a conference call. IAC owns rival dating site Match.com.

Yahoo management has weighed whether to sell its match-making site for several years, according to people familiar with the matter. But Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has expressed a new desire to shutter or sell products that aren't core to its business. The company has also explored selling its job-listing service HotJobs, these people said. A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment.

InterActive Corp. CEO Barry Diller adds Yahoo
personals to Ask, Home Shopping Network
and the IAC web properties.
IAC recently made moves to spin off Expedia.com

Gene Munster, analyst at Piper Jaffray, said Yahoo Personals could be worth about $500 million, or three to four times an estimated $150 million in annual revenue for the unit.

IAC, which owns the Ask.com search engine, also Wednesday cautioned that the prices advertisers pay for search keywords dropped 5% to 20% in the first quarter and prices have not changed in April, suggesting the company's difficulties would continue into the second quarter.

Mr. Diller cautioned that the economy may not yet have hit bottom. "Unfortunately, from whatever standpoint you sit, I do not think it's over. I think we have a lot more to come," he said.

In the first quarter, IAC posted a net loss of $28.6 million, or 19 cents a share, compared with year-earlier profit of $52.5 million, or 38 cents a share. The prior-year results included the operations since spun off. Revenue fell 10% to $332 million.