Google Ecosystem

First appeared on CNN Money

Technology innovations are often blended into buzzword trends like "curation" and "social graph." This is shaping up to be the year of "ecosystem."

What does that mean? Depends on who you ask. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) chairman Eric Schmidt offered up his view during a panel discussion at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Schmidt started with a canned answer about how he defines ecosystem -- "scalable network platforms that deliver the best customer value" -- but he warmed up when the talk turned to Google's Android operating system.

"We even have Android in refrigerators now," Schmidt said. "By open-source we mean, 'take it and have fun.' And people have."

The panel moderator, CNET's Molly Wood, pointed out the pitfall of that strategy: hundreds of devices are running dozens of various versions of Android. But as soon as she said the word "fragmentation," Schmidt cut her off.

"You have to be careful with that word, fragmentation," he said.

"So what would you say?" Wood asked.

"I would say differentiation," Schmidt replied. "Differentiation is positive, fragmentation is negative."

Whatever you call it, the approach is working: Google activated 3.7 million Android phones on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Schmidt revealed.

But Wood pressed the fragmentation issue, asking Schmidt whether the new Android operating system -- 4.0, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich -- is a chance to "give [Google] a little more control."

Schmidt replied: "Well, control ... I mean, we want to get everybody under Ice Cream Sandwich, but we absolutely allow our developers to add or change anything, as long as they're not breaking anything."

He added: "The great thing is if you don't like one phone, you can choose another. You're not bound to certain hardware."

That potshot was aimed at Apple, whose iOS appears only on its own devices.

Schmidt's digs at competitors continued when Wood brought up Internet-connected TV and the success of Microsoft's (MSFT, Fortune 500) gesture-controlled Kinect system.

"How big a barrier is it that Microsoft seems to have all the pieces in place, with the Kinect and the Xbox and all, but hasn't really gotten it together yet?" Wood asked.

"Microsoft is trapped in an architectural problem it might not get through," Schmidt replied.

The blunt comment drew a few laughs from the audience. Schmidt shrugged them off saying, "My sense is that they're going to get there. It's a problem of user interface design. It's a matter of getting people with great taste into the company, designing."

Next on Schmidt's slam list: Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), whose Kindle Fire tablet runs on a highly altered version of Android. Schmidt said Google welcomed the customization, but that the tablet "has some limitations, [which] have been well documented."

Wood tried to close the discussion with a question based on the panel's theme: "Which is most important for the ecosystem: Hardware, content, services or software?"

Schmidt went the politician's route. He tossed that query out and swapped in his own.

"They work together," he said. "I'll answer a different question: What was the most surprising thing in 2011?" Schmidt asked himself, as attendees laughed.

"It's always surprising to people when they realize how significant these ecosystems are," he continued. "I saw this with respect to Apple, Amazon and even Facebook."

The open ecosystem allows multiple types of players to work together, Schmidt said. That means "everyone can be a winner" in a financial sense.

"All of these people can operate without your knowledge or control," he said. "It's about making it open enough so that the creative people, the app developers, the consumers -- you build something tremendously valuable for everyone."

Apple’s Siri Changes Voice Technology

First appeared in Fox Business

Apple Inc. will again dominate conversations at CES, the world's biggest technology showcase. Only this time, the talk is extending beyond iPad and iPhone chatter to include "Siri," the voice app that is capturing consumers' imagination.

Apple's dulcet-voiced, speech-controlled personal assistant, a key factor in making the iPhone 4S a blockbuster, has breathed new life into the once-obscure and oft-maligned world of speech-recognition technology.

Siri, which can do everything from taking dictation for text messages and entering calendar appointments to answering general-knowledge questions, has intrigued users. Experts say it demonstrated emphatically that voice recognition has moved beyond the days of misheard commands, narrowly defined keywords and anguishingly slow speeds.

The smartphone industry is now scrambling to match and better Apple's offering. Google Inc and Microsoft Corp will likely want to cash in on an explosion of interest in an area they have invested in for years, without getting anything like the attention Siri is attracting.

"All the mobile phone manufacturers are investing in speech, expanding investments in speech, creating more elegant designs and integrating it more deeply into phones," said Michael Thompson, senior vice president for mobile at voice-recognition specialist Nuance.

Thompson was coy about his company's future plans but said he expects voice to be a central topic at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as device makers jostle for attention from investors, media and consumers.

While voice is expected to be used in many areas of consumer electronics, the technology is particularly pertinent to cellphones because it simplifies functions from Web surfing to typing.

Internet merchants like eBay are also jumping on the bandwagon. And reports have emerged about a voice-control for TVS from South Korea's LG Electronics just before CES, which will open its doors in Las Vegas this week.

Many companies at CES are not yet ready to showcase products that can match or outdo Siri, Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin said. But he said he expects the current flurry of activity to result in big voice product advancements in coming years as the technology is perfected.

Apple's rivals are planning to ship phones with improved speech technology in the fall, in time for the 2012 year-end holiday season, said Thompson at Nuance, which supplies and licenses technology to Apple but has its own voice app.

Even traditional PC makers will jump on the bandwagon: Intel announced at CES on Monday it will adopt Nuance's "Dragon NaturallySpeaking" voice-command technology on ultra-thin laptops -- dubbed UltraBooks -- coming out this year from the likes of Dell and Hewlett Packard.

"Voice as an input mechanism is going to be more and more useful and more and more prevalent," Golvin said. "Consumers have a lot of bad historical experience with it. They are going to encounter good voice interfaces more and more."

BANDWAGON ROLLS ON

Experts say the technology will evolve as more consumers get acclimated to it.

The interest in voice is already sparking acquisitions, with Nuance setting its sights on phones based on Google's Android operating system. Last month, it bought Vlingo, a developer of voice-control apps for a phones based on Android.

Android phone manufacturers -- all major rivals of Apple -- include Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, HTC Corp and Motorola Mobility, which Google is buying.

In the meantime, some developers are helping phone makers bridge the gap. A new app called "Ask Ziggy," launched a few weeks ago on Microsoft Windows-based smartphones, is generating buzz among users as it allows them to update Facebook, Twitter, answer texts and questions -- all through speech.

The free app helps a Windows phone mimic Siri's features and is already one of the top downloaded apps in its category.

"There's been a lot of interest globally," said Ask Ziggy developer Shai Leib, who told Reuters his inbox has been flooded with feedback from users, some even from Microsoft employees.

Leib plans to incorporate speech technology further in the app, to make phones completely hands-free. Microsoft's gesture-based Xbox Kinect gaming system has also raised the possibility of using hand gestures to manipulate screens and execute commands -- the so-called "Minority Report" interface named after the Tom Cruise sci-fi vehicle.

"With the success of the Microsoft Kinect and Apple's Siri, new ways to interface with CE devices have suddenly become top of mind," Ben Arnold, NPD's director of industry analysis, wrote in a blogpost last week. "I expect several companies to exhibit products using some of these new interface methods in an effort to differentiate themselves."

Leib argues there's nothing to stop smartphones also adopting gesture-recognition.

"The next level is to improve the speech, grammar and make the answers a little bit more conversational," he said. "The possibilities are amazing, especially with Kinect."

"I am looking forward to see what's going to happen with Windows 8 and if there are going to be future updates on the Windows phone that can recognize gestures."

HISTORY OF SPEECH

Apple was not the first to incorporate speech on phones. Google has had speech-recognition applications for Android smartphones for more than two years, and is now possibly trying to beef up its capabilities through the recent acquisition of a company called Alfred.

Alfred uses artificial-intelligence technology to sift through the Web's vast trove of data and recommend restaurants, bars and other real-world places users might like. Some experts say the technology could provide an important building-block that Google could pair with existing voice-recognition technology to create its own answer to Siri.

E-commerce companies are also playing catch-up, not wanting to be caught flat-footed should consumers become more comfortable using voice to search the Web and shop online.

EBay is planning a voice and image-based search function for its online market and "Red Laser" price-checking mobile software.

EBay Chief Executive John Donahoe has said he believes Siri is just the beginning, and sees a future where users can speak their preferences into phones to narrow down shopping choices.

Dan Miller of San Francisco-based Opus Research agrees. He was particularly intrigued by reports last November of an acquistion by Amazon.com of Yap, whose software coverts voice to text.

"The clock is ticking. In the next year or year and half expect a talking Kindle that supports commerce," Miller said.

Miller, who has studied voice technology for about 25 years, said he is gratified by the sudden spotlight on voice as he recalls years of consumer frustration over automated customer serivce systems.

"We're really happy to see this much positive attention," he said, "As opposed to "Oh the machine doesn't understand me."

Spam Attacks Social Media

First appeared on Wall Street Journal

"Spammers have decided to move where the people are and where the defenses are weak: Facebook and Twitter," says Chester Wisniewski, an analyst at security firm Sophos Ltd.

Hackers commonly sow social spam by creating false Facebook profiles and then "friending" people they don't know. Once the new friend clicks on a bad link, the spam begins propagating as his other friends do the same. And it can get started through nefarious third-party apps, or when people download malware outside Facebook or Twitter that gives hackers control of their computers.

A common social-spam attack on Facebook, known as "like-jacking," involves duping users into clicking on an image that looks as if a friend has clicked the "Like" button, recommending it.

More nefarious are come-ons for seemingly irresistible posts—like getting a free iPad—that lead people to run malware that can take over a Web browser, or even entire computer. Some social malware impersonates users, starting eerie one-on-one Facebook chat sessions with friends. Security experts also warn that a growing volume of sophisticated hacker attacks take information gleaned from social-networking profiles to trick people with convincing targeted messages.

San Francisco resident Clint Wilson discovered firsthand that his Facebook account was spamming his friends when his co-worker, who shares Mr. Wilson's account for work purposes, clicked on an offer for free dinner vouchers at the Cheesecake Factory. The offer was fake, and included a link that installed Web-hijacking malware.

Mr. Wilson, chief executive of software maker Cazoomi Technology Corp., quickly posted a note onto his Facebook account warning his friends to ignore the spam. "It's worse than email spam, because it's hard to stop," he says. He eventually figured out how to uninstall the malware from his Web browser, but estimates it cost him $500 in lost productivity.

Fighting social spam requires manpower because spammers move quickly. At Facebook, the company's site-integrity team spends its days and nights scanning for spikes in what users report as spam, and other unusual activity, such as friend request rejections. Every day, Facebook says it blocks 200 million malicious actions, such as messages linking to malware.

About once a quarter, Facebook gets hit with a big attack—and it's all hands on deck until the spam is destroyed, say employees. Weeks like that turn into "a very intense battle," says Mr. Stein. A poster on his team's wall features a unicorn slaying a spam monster.

Spammers' weak spots are typically things that cost them money, such as Internet addresses to house malware or the human effort required to set up and manage accounts. Facebook can't prevent spam, but it is stepping up measures to make it harder to create and use fake profiles.

When Facebook is suspicious about an account, it asks the owner to prove his identity, even if he has the correct password. Sometimes it does this by asking users to identify their friends. The point is to ensure that a real person—not a computer—will have to complete the test, thereby increasing the costs of spamming.

Some of the combat efforts may be working. Twitter says its "spammy" tweet rate of 1.5% in 2010 was down from 11% in 2009. Those being affected by spam and the number of spammer accounts escaping detection are "not tracking in an upward direction," says Del Harvey, Twitter's head of trust and safety.

Facebook's Mr. Keyani says he is taking the long view: "This is a game where there is never going to be a winner or a loser. We're just going to be battling it out."

Yahoo Struggles With Content

First appeared in the Wall Street Journal

Ousted Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Carol Bartz faced a plight all too familiar to many of her peers: Making money off digital content isn't easy and it's getting harder.

As Web traffic explodes, Internet companies are struggling to profit off ads shown next to the articles, videos and other content offered to viewers.

It's a simple rule of any market. The more information that is created, the more the value is reduced. And despite attempts to woo spending with bigger, bolder and more targeted ads, services that help consumers navigate that content, namely search, remain the big money makers online.

"People tell me that content is king, but that is not true at all," says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital-media unit of Publicis Groupe SA. "Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content."

Internet pioneers Yahoo and AOL Inc. are losing out to Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., both of which are adept at helping point the way to pertinent or interesting material. As a result, Yahoo and AOL are getting left behind in the fast-growing U.S. market for online advertising, which ballooned 20% to $31.3 billion from 2010 to 2011, according to eMarketer.

Yahoo and AOL's shares of the overall U.S. online advertising market will drop to 11% and 2.7% in 2011, respectively, according to the research from, down from 16.1% and 4.4% in 2009.

Their businesses have been plagued by a range of missteps that extend far beyond their current regimes. Both were slow to recognize the appeal of social-networking and to update their once dominant email services to compete with new rivals.

Excessive turnover and extensive bureaucracies have strained their relations with Madison Avenue, say advertising executives. Ms. Bartz recently attributed Yahoo's weaker-than-expected ad sales to heavy turnover among advertising executives.

Yahoo said in a statement that the company has been meeting with advertisers and agencies who say they excited by the advertising opportunities at the company. A spokesman for AOL declined to comment.

A few years ago, scale virtually guaranteed profits if Internet companies had relationships with marketers, as there were few sites that could deliver large audiences to advertisers. But advertisers now can turn to a wide range of competitors to reach a similar number of people, and that has pushed down the amount of money they spend on those sites and the price for ad rates on the portals.

"What do Yahoo and AOL bring? In fact, they don't bring all that much," said Rob Norman, chief executive of WPP PLC's GroupM North America, who says marketers view them as large quantities of mostly commoditized inventory. "Just because you have a lot doesn't mean that you have something that is of distinct value."

Pricing trends across both properties vary depending on where the ads appear, advertisers say, but overall rates aren't rising fast enough to compensate for meager to flat traffic growth. In the second quarter, AOL's revenue fell 8.4% from the year earlier to $542.2 million.

Yahoo's revenue fell 23% to $1.3 billion.

The average cost to reach one thousand views across both Yahoo and AOL sites has fallen steadily in the past year, ad executives say. At Yahoo, that rate dropped to an average $6.50 in July 2011 from $7.65 in July 2010, while at AOL, that rate dropped to an average of $7 in July 2011 from $9.45 in July 2010, according to SQAD WebCosts. Back in July of 1998, Yahoo was fetching about $25 per thousand. A Yahoo spokeswoman said their internal data isn't consistent with WebCosts' data.

Some companies have responded by cutting back the number of ads to boost their value. AOL stripped ads off several of its marquee sites in recent years, including AOL.com, its fashion site Stylelist and movie site Moviefone to make room for more premium advertising.

Both AOL and Yahoo are under pressure from "advertising exchanges," the lingo for services that allows advertisers to bid for ad space across a multitude of properties that reach a particular type of user. Increasingly, marketers will turn to the advertising exchanges directly to buy high volumes of cheap online ads instead of negotiating with big publishers like Yahoo and AOL for more expensive ads.

In addition, marketers can target those ads bought via exchanges directly to people who are likely to be interested in their product or service, regardless of the context of the site where they appear. That gives the big portals less bargaining power, advertisers say. Yahoo runs a major exchange but the business isn't growing fast enough to restore overall revenue growth.

While it's a juggernaut, Facebook isn't immune from the problem of expanding inventory. Advertisers say most ad rates on the social network remain low, as its growing traffic leads to a proliferating number of pages it can show ads on.

"Sometimes there is an irrational desire to be involved with things that are just on upswings," says Mr. Norman. "The value of (marketing on Facebook) may be open to some questions."

Smaller publishers are also feeling the changing economics acutely. News sites such as Salon and Slate aren't consistently profitable. Upstarts like the Daily Beast have yet to reach profitability though executives say the three-year-old site is ahead of its pace. Slate last month laid off a handful of editorial staffers, citing unexpected "head winds" in advertising.

Cookies Aren’t Safe

First appeared in SiliconValley.com

Your computer's appetite for cookies would put the Cookie Monster to shame.

Without letting you know, your Internet browser gulps down hundreds of the digital tracking beacons fed to it by the websites you visit, sometimes storing them for months or years, enabling an array of companies you've never heard of to monitor what you do online.

Cookies are not inherently dangerous -- they are a kind of virtual ID card that helps browsers perform a number of online tasks that most users have come to expect: allowing you to stay logged in to your Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO) email service, or to go from page to page on Amazon.com while filling up your shopping basket with books.

But the useful cookies are far outnumbered by those that serve no other purpose than to keep track of what you do online. They often come from sites you have never visited. This can happen when you open pages that carry embedded advertisements, which are capable of adding cookies to your browser without your permission or knowledge -- and often do.

These tracking cookies allow ad firms to follow you from site to site. Over time, the trail of sites you visit may allow them to build a demographic profile about you that includes your hobbies, place of residence, income level and even health status.

To remove all of your cookies in Internet Explorer 9, open the "Tools" menu at the top of the window and select "Delete Browsing History." Make sure the "Cookies" check-box is selected, and press "Delete." Internet privacy buffs may want to delete the other categories of data as well -- stored passwords, Web histories and temporary Internet files.

You can go a step further and prevent your browser from taking cookies from obscure advertising sites in the future. To do this in Internet Explorer 9, click again on the "Tools" menu and select "Internet Options." Click on the "Privacy" tab at the top of the dialogue box, then press the "Advanced" button (between "Import" and "Default"). Check the "Override automatic cookie handling" box, then check "Block" under "Third Party cookies." Leaving first-party cookies enabled will allow for easier use of Web email and commerce sites.

YouTube Display Ads Skyrocket

First appeared on eWeek

YouTube unveiled its most-watched videos and most-viewed ads of 2011. Meanwhile, Piper Jaffray analysts expect YouTube to be the linchpin of Google's display ad efforts.

YouTube counted more than 1 trillion playbacks on the video-sharing site this year, or roughly 140 views for every person on Earth, Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) video sharing Website said.

The Website, which said 48 hours of video are uploaded to the Website every minute, revealed its most-watched videos of 2011. The site gauged global view counts of popular videos uploaded throughout the year.

Rebecca Black's "Friday," video led the top 10 videos watched worldwide. YouTube rewarded her by letting her host this year's "YouTube Rewind" look back at the most-watched videos of the year.

YouTube isn't serving all that video content without some serious advertising. The video site also shared the most-watched ads on YouTube in 2011. This Volkswagen ad led the top 10 most-watched ads, while this Chevy ad came in third. Both were Super Bowl ads.

However, most of the ads never aired on broadcast TV, which illustrates the opportunity YouTube has going forward for pairing ads with original content.

These included T-Mobile's Royal Wedding at No. 2, and DC Shoe's Gymkhana Four, at No. 4. Both were exclusive to YouTube.

YouTube is evolving. While its first five years were a blur of user-generated content, YouTube hopes to boost user engagement by offering users streaming movie rentals and broadcast channels with original content. More users spending more time on YouTube significantly increases the ad-serving opportunities for Google.

Calling YouTube the "Super Bowl of the Web," Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said that while YouTube may only account for 3.5 percent of Google's total gross revenue this year, YouTube portends great things for Google's display ad business.

The Website enjoys 800 million unique visitors per month, or the same volume as Facebook. YouTube also sees 25 billion searches a month, twice that of Yahoo and 10 times that of Facebook, he added in a Dec. 15 research note.

"We believe YouTube is the company's flagship offering in its display products and is encouraging advertisers to branch out to Google's other display products," Munster wrote. "We remain confident that YouTube will exceed $1.3 billion in gross revenue for 2011."

Moreover, he expects YouTube will grow revenue 60 percent year-over-year in 2012, surpassing $2 billion in gross revenue.

Mozilla Grows with Google

First appeared in eWeek
Google will pay Mozilla $300 million a year for the next three years in a search deal it renewed earlier this week. The deal will give Mozilla much-needed cash to grow its business.

The Christmas holiday isn't the only thing Mozilla employees have to be cheerful about these days.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is paying the software maker $300 million a year over the next three year to feature its search engine in its Firefox Web browser, AllThingsDigital learned Dec. 22.

If true, Mozilla will take in nearly three times as much in 2012 as it took in 2010, when nearly $100 million of its $123 million in revenues came from its previous search deal with Google.

AllThingsDigital said Mozilla was able to command such a handsome sum by including Google search rivals Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) in the bidding process for the coveted slot in Firefox, which has anywhere from 22 to 25 percent market share, or hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Google and Mozilla declined to comment on the financial terms of the new agreement, which Mozilla announced Dec. 20 and confirmed was good for at least the next three years.

In the arrangement, Mozilla drives searches to Google.com from the search box in Firefox and Google pays Mozilla a portion of ad revenues generated from those searches.

The arrangement is certainly interesting because it's not without some tension. Google launched its Chrome Web browser in September 2008, when Firefox was on its way to garnering 25 percent share by nibbling away at Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Internet Explorer share.

Chrome commands anywhere from 18 percent to 25 percent market share, depending on whether you believe the more conservative number from Net Applications, or the loftier number from StatCounter.

By tripling its revenue with Google's search deal alone, Mozilla is the big winner in this deal. The company gets the cash to fund other projects beyond Firefox, which, while popular and steadily improving, is no longer growing.

Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher identified some of those projects as Boot2Gecko, a Firefox OS for smartphones; the identity-based BrowserID alternative to Facebook Connect and Google Account credentials; and Apps initiative, which is intended to help developers write programs that work on all devices.

Google wins on multiple fronts. One, it benefits from millions of searches driven by millions of Firefox users. Two, it keeps those searches away from Bing , which at only 15 percent market share is more desperate to have them.

Three, Google comes off as a benevolent benefactor, providing the majority of funds for a leading, fellow open-source Web browser with which it shares a lot of common interests.

Finally, Firefox and Chrome both win because together they account for anywhere from 40 to 50 percent market share, providing a nice pair of open-source alternatives to market leader Microsoft Internet Explorer, which has dominated the market for the last 15 years since stamping out Netscape.

Google Sued for Andriod

First appeared in The Guardian

British Telecom is claiming billions of dollars of damages from Google in a lawsuit filed in the US which says that the Android mobile operating system infringes a number of the telecoms company's key patents.

The lawsuit, filed in the state of Delaware in the US, relates to six patents which BT says are infringed by the Google Maps, Google Music, location-based advertising and Android Market products on Android.

If successful, the suit could mean that Google or mobile handset makers will have to pay BT royalties on each Android handset in use and which they produce.

That could be expensive: Android is presently the most successful smartphone platform in the world, with its handsets making more than 40% of sales, equating to more than 40m produced every quarter. Google recently said that more than 500,000 Android devices are activated every day.

BT's move – which could also be repeated in Europe – means that Google is now fending off lawsuits against Android from six large publicly-traded companies, according to Florian Müller, an independent expert who follows the twists and turns of international patent litigation. BT joins Apple. Oracle, Microsoft, eBay and Gemalto, a digital security company.

A BT spokesman told the Guardian: "BT can confirm that it has commenced legal proceedings against Google by filing a claim with the US District Court of Delaware for patent infringement.

"The patents in question relate to technologies which underpin location-based services, navigation and guidance information and personalised access to services and content. BT's constant investment in innovation has seen it develop a large portfolio of patents which are valuable corporate assets."

A Google spokesman said: "We believe these claims are without merit, and we will defend vigorously against them."

In the filing, BT cites a number of US patents which were applied for and, apart from one, awarded in the 1990s which it says Android is infringing. BT has a long history in the mobile business, having been one of the original providers of mobile phone services with the Cellnet joint venture in the UK in the 1980s.

Müller says: "Android already had more than enough intellectual problems anyway. Now Google faces one more large organisation that believes its rights are infringed. BT probably wants to continue to be able to do business with all mobile device makers and therefore decided to sue Google itself."

Google is fending off multiple lawsuits relating to Android, while a number of handset makers including HTC and Samsung have yielded to patent claims by Microsoft against Android and are paying a per-handset fee for every one they make.

Many of the alleged infringements made by Android would also seem to apply to Apple's iPhone and iPad mobile devices – such as the "Busuioc Patent", which detects whether a mobile device is connected to a cellular or Wi-Fi network and allows streaming dependent on that.

Apple's iTunes Match service, launched in the US earlier this year and last Friday in the UK, also detects what sort of connection the device has before allowing file uploads or downloads. It is not known whether Apple has licensed use of the systems from BT, or whether BT has decided they do not infringe its patents, or whether litigation is pending.

BT points in the lawsuit to its large patent portfolio, from research at its Adastral Park centre near Ipswich, and that it has a portfolio of more than 10,000 patents.

The new lawsuit marks a return to attempts by BT to monetise its patent portfolio over web use.

In 2000 it asserted a patent claim in the US against Prodigy, one of the biggest internet service providers, claiming a patent on the hyperlink – the method by which people follow links between pages on the web. But embarrassingly for BT the claim was rejected when a judge said that no jury could find that the patent was infringed.

Asian Yahoo Sales

First appeared on Yahoo! News

Yahoo appears to be getting closer to giving its frustrated shareholders something they've long wanted: a sale of the Internet company's holdings in China and Japan.

The prospect of Yahoo Inc. finally consummating a deal with China's Alibaba Group and Softbank Corp., the controlling owner of Yahoo Japan, emerged in online reports published Wednesday by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, both newspapers reported Yahoo is exploring a proposal valued at about $17 billion, or $14 per share. The price reflects Wall Street's belief that Yahoo's investments in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan have become the company's most valuable pieces. Yahoo's U.S. business has lost its luster as the company's website loses traffic and advertising revenue to Internet search leader Google Inc. and Facebook's social network.

Yahoo ended Wednesday with a market value of about $20 billion, based on its stock closing price of $15.99. The shares gained 88 cents, with most of the surge occurring after the reports of Yahoo's talks with its Asian partners.

If the deal comes together, Alibaba and Softbank would contribute cash and certain assets to newly formed entities. Yahoo would then surrender its 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan and most of its holdings in Alibaba to gain control of new entities, according to the Times.

Yahoo would retain a 15 percent stake in privately held Alibaba, down from 42 percent as of Sept. 30, according to the company's most recent quarterly report.

The transaction would be designed to avoid a big tax bill — a stumbling block in Yahoo's previous discussions to sell its Asian holdings.

Yahoo declined to comment Wednesday. Alibaba didn't respond to requests for comments.

The renewed talks among Yahoo, Alibaba and Softbank are the latest bit of boardroom intrigue that that has been unfolding since Yahoo abruptly fired Carol Bartz as CEO in early September after losing patience with her attempts to turn around the company during her 2½ years on the job.

Since then, Yahoo's board has been mulling a variety of options that have included selling the Asian holdings, selling a 20 percent stake to buyout firms or even auctioning off the whole company.

The nine-director board has been leaning in different directions as it ruminates. Just a few weeks ago, it appeared the board was leaning toward selling a large stake to a group led by Silver Lake Partners for $16.60 per share or TPG Capital for $17.60 per share.

That idea didn't go over well with some of Yahoo's major shareholders, including hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, who has been threatening to overthrow the company's board.

Yahoo's board is scheduled to discuss the proposed divestiture of the company's Asian holdings in a Thursday meeting, according to the Times. The newspaper said the directors intend to decide whether to intensify negotiations that could last for a few more weeks.

More Than One Mark Zuckerburg?

First appeared on Mashable

Facebook has threatened to sue Mark Zuckerberg, an Israeli entrepreneur who recently took the social network founder’s name. The new Zuckerberg, born Rotem Guez, legally changed his name Dec. 7.

Zuckerberg II’s website, MarkZuckerbergOfficial.com, states that he first filed a lawsuit against Facebook in January, after the social network refused to give him access to his profile, which it had shut down.

Zuckerberg (all further mentions refer to the Israeli entrepreneur) co-founded Like Store, a social marketing company, which sells companies Likes for their brand pages. The site states (translated), “Are you sad no one’s visiting your Facebook Page? We have a solution! Need 1,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you. Need 5,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you. Need 10,000 Likes? We’ll get them for you.”

In September, Facebook’s law firm Perkins Coie threatened to sue against Zuckerberg, claiming the Like Store violated the social network’s Terms of Service, by selling brands fans. The threat instructed Zuckerberg to shut his company and never return to the social network for any reason.

Zuckerberg officially changed his name Dec. 7. In the below video of his trip to the Interior Ministry to make the switch official, he says he plans to change his family’s names as well. One week later, Facebook again threatened a lawsuit against Zuckerberg’s still existing Like Store. Little did they know, they were threatening someone with the name of their own founder.

Though legally Facebook can, of course, sue someone named Mark Zuckerberg, it makes for quite the funny tale.

Perhaps anticipating the media attention he would receive, Zuckerberg has set up an Internet campaign for his new persona, including a Facebook Page and Twitter account, @iMarkZuckerberg, suggesting that he’s ready to make a splash with his new identity. His Facebook Page includes photos of his new identification card and passport.

Google Social Media Upsets Little Girl

First appeared in Washington Post

Father Rich Warren sounded off on social media sites Reddit and Google+ about his upsetting morning: He had woken up to find that Google had suddenly, without warning, shut down his daughter’s e-mail account and blog. His daughter had used her Gmail to send e-mail to her grandparents, friends and classmates, and had started the Blogger blog as a class project.

Warren said he believed both accounts were disabled because his daughter was underage. Under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Web sites collecting information from children under age 13 must take a number of steps to protect the child’s privacy. Warren says he’s not upset with Google for complying with COPPA, but how they went about it.

Back in May, Google seemed to encourage children’s memories be shared on Gmail, YouTube, blogs and other services. In a viral video commercial dubbed “Dear Sophie,” a father is shown creating a Gmail account for his baby daughter, and then using it to send her photos, videos, and messages that chronicle her growing up, so that she can read and see them when she’s older:

The difference between “Dear Sophie” and Warren’s situation is that Sophie’s father did all the actual uploading of information, not his daughter. But how does Google know that? And how did Google realize, after several years of ignoring it, that Warren’s daughter was underage? Why, as Warren asked in his Google+ letter, did the company not inform him or ask his consent before disabling the accounts? And how can parents work to make sure this doesn’t happen to their children?

A Google Support page provides some answers, writing that accounts can get disabled if a child enters a birthday indicating they are not old enough to use Gmail. Warren’s daughter may have filled in that information if she joined Google+.

In one part of his letter to Google, Warren laments, “Remember, we're talking about letters from grandparents and friends. I can't even log in and back them up. They're just gone.”

That’s not necessarily true. Google writes on its support page that accounts can be re-enabled if a parent sends a government ID or credit card information over email or fax to prove their age. Accounts can be re-enabled after several days, or even go back up instantly.

Warren’s post sparked hundreds of comments, in which many Google users argued about whether the online giant should be at fault or not. Several parents, saying they’d had enough with Google’s attitude toward child usage, suggested using different, more kid-friendly e-mail providers altogether.

Update, that afternoon:

A Google spokesman responded to request for comment on Warren’s letter, saying:

Asking for age information helps us provide features like age-appropriate settings to our users, who are interacting more every day with the people they know. Under our policies, Google doesn’t allow users who are under the age of 13 to have Google Accounts, unless they are using Google Apps for Education accounts through their school. This is similar to a lot of online services, as it's very complicated for many providers to offer better solutions for children that meet the relevant regulations. It's not as simple as just asking a parent for consent to let their child have an account — there are associated implications for data and privacy involved. 

We know that this data is important to people, and we want to help by finding the right solutions. We're also working on designing special safety settings for teens.

Regarding the [“Dear Sophie”] video, the email address in the spot belongs to the Dad... The implied understanding is that the girl in the story does not have access to the account, but that she will have access to it “someday.”

Yahoo Makes Executive Changes

Story first appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Yahoo Inc. hired top eBay Inc. executive as its new chief executive in an effort to continue as an independent entity, but the move did little to stem questions about the struggling Internet company's future.  Scott Thompson was hired by Yahoo Inc.

Mr. Thompson, the 54-year-old president of eBay's PayPal electronic payments unit, is tasked with turning around Yahoo's core online-advertising business, the company said. His hiring follows more than four months of strategic limbo when the Sunnyvale, Calif., company operated without a permanent leader following the September firing of the previous CEO.

But even with a new CEO, Yahoo faces a long list of strategic questions with many options still on the table, said people familiar with the matter.

In particular, Yahoo's discussions about whether to shed some of its valuable stakes in several Asian Internet companies and whether to sell a minority stake in itself to private-equity investors remain unresolved, these people said.

While the sale of a minority stake to private-equity firms now appears less likely, Yahoo's ongoing discussions about a tax-free exchange of its stakes in its Asian assets, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yahoo Japan, which are valued at around $17 billion, are likelier to move ahead, said other people familiar with the matter. Yahoo directors also haven't ruled out an outright sale of the company, said one of the people familiar with the matter, though some board members believe it's unlikely a bidder will emerge.

Mr. Thompson will play a big role in the ongoing strategic review that Yahoo's board is conducting, said one of the people familiar with the matter.

The new CEO will have a big role in Yahoo's final decision on its Asian Internet-company stakes and its discussions with private-equity investors, this person said.

In a conference call announcing Mr. Thompson's appointment, a Yahoo Chairman acknowledged that the strategic review of Yahoo isn't over.

But the Yahoo executives emphasized that their first priority would be to turn around Yahoo's core online-ad business, which rivals such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. have chipped away at over the years. In the conference call, it was discussed that Yahoo would almost certainly remain publicly traded.

Mr. Thompson, who will assume the CEO post, said in an interview that he wanted Yahoo's business to return to being "one of those great iconic brands" on the Web. "We'll be back to innovation and disruptive concepts," he said.

As CEO, Mr. Thompson said he expects to hire executives and to use Yahoo's "arsenal" of resources, including its balance sheet, to make acquisitions "if it is appropriate." He said Yahoo would build new Web services, and "if we don't have it, we will find it in the market...and we'll do it fast."

Mr. Thompson's appointment is the latest in a long-running game of musical chairs atop Yahoo. Mr. Thompson will be the company's fourth permanent CEO in five years.

Many of his predecessors were bedeviled by Yahoo's strategic challenges, as the one-time Internet leader fell behind Google Inc. and Facebook.

While Yahoo still has some of the Web's most popular destinations, including its Yahoo.com home page and sports, news and entertainment-content sites, it has struggled to keep pace with Facebook and such other content sites as ESPN.com.

Yahoo's share of the $12.3 billion spent in 2011 on graphical and video ads in the U.S. was 13.1%. That was down 14.4% from the previous year, according to research firm eMarketer. Yahoo's overall revenue has been about $6 billion annually for the past few years.

In making the leap to Yahoo from PayPal, Mr. Thompson is moving from a stable and fast-growing business to a bigger company grappling with its dimmed status. PayPal's annual revenue of about $3.4 billion in 2010 was about half that of Yahoo's, and while PayPal is growing at about 25% a year, Yahoo's revenue has been flat. PayPal has 11,000 employees, and Yahoo has 14,000.

Mr. Thompson, who joined PayPal in 2005 as chief technology officer and senior vice president and rose to president in 2008, has little online advertising experience.

Known for his cordial personality and thick Boston accent, he is expected to be a sharp contrast to his predecessor.

Investors appeared to be skeptical about Mr. Thompson's appointment. In 4 p.m. trading, Yahoo's stock closed at $15.78, down 3.10%.

Directors initially sought a CEO with experience in online advertising and content. But Mr. Thompson's candidacy was helped by his record running fast-growing PayPal, an acquaintance recalled. In addition, Mr. Thompson "was always interested" in the company's top job and expressed the interest during the early days of the search, the acquaintance said.

Mr. Thompson said in an interview that the talks with Yahoo began in November and then started to move at an "accelerated" pace. Yahoo directors approved his selection at a board meeting that some members attended by phone, according to one person familiar with the situation.

The appointment of Mr. Thompson is unlikely to interfere with Yahoo's discussions about the tax-free exchange of its stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan for cash and other assets, some of the people familiar with the matter said. A deal could be struck within six to eight weeks, one person said.

Alibaba prefers a friendly deal with Yahoo, but it could still revisit an alternative plan to bid for the whole company in conjunction with buyout firms if the cash-rich split-off proposal falls through, people familiar with the matter said.

Alibaba's spokesman, said that "Scott Thompson is known to us as a strong leader, and we look forward to working with him to deliver value to Yahoo's shareholders."

Separately, private-equity firm Silver Lake hasn't taken its offer off the table and would be open to interacting with Mr. Thompson to understand his vision for Yahoo and assess ways to work together, a person familiar with the matter said.

New York Times Email Disaster to Millions

Story first appeared in the Associated Press.
The New York Times accidentally sends an email to millions offering a 50 percent discount.

In today's digital age, it's easy to send out an email by mistake — even for a company that's in the business of communication.

The New York Times thought it was sending an email to a few hundred people who had recently canceled subscriptions, offering them a 50 percent discount for 16 weeks to lure them back.

Instead, Wednesday's offer went to 8.6 million email addresses of people who had given them to the Times.

That was the first mistake. The second came when the Times tweeted this: "If you received an email today about canceling your NYT subscription, ignore it. It's not from us."

But the Times did send the original email.

This email should have been sent to a very small number of subscribers, but instead was sent to a vast distribution list made up of people who had previously provided their email address to The New York Times. The NYT said they regret the error.

The damage had already been done, however.

Many people called or wrote in. The newspaper initially honored the discount, even to people who were already paying full price and had no plans to cancel. Murphy said the newspaper stopped giving out discounts to people who received the email in error by early afternoon. She did not say how much the gaffe cost the company or specify how many people contacted the newspaper.

A parody Twitter account called (at)NYTSpam amassed 152 followers by Wednesday afternoon by making fun of the slip-up. The account's description of itself says: "Parody account. Not affiliated with (at)NYTimes or actual spammers -- just sick of bad digital strategy."

The newspaper has made big strides in raising revenue from digital subscriptions. It says it has gained 324,000 digital subscribers since restricting full online access to paying subscribers in March.

Google Receives AdMeld Aquisition Approval

Story first appeared in USA TODAY.
The Justice Department approved Google's acquisition of online advertising service Admeld after concluding the deal wouldn't diminish competition in one of the Internet's most lucrative marketing niches.

The decision announced Friday clears the way for Google (GOOG) to take control of Admeld six months after the companies agreed to the deal. Google said it plans to take control of Admeld within the next few days, although the two companies' products will remain separate for a while longer.

It's the fourth time since 2007 that that the U.S. government has taken a close look at a Google acquisition to determine if it would stifle competition or drive up prices. Google has gained regulatory approval in each instance. In 2008, though, Google backed out of a proposed partnership with Yahoo (YHOO) to avoid a legal battle with the Justice Department.

The Justice Department is still reviewing Google's proposed takeover of cell phone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings (MMI). That $12.5 billion deal is the biggest in Google's 13-year history.

The Federal Trade Commission is in the midst of a broader inquiry into whether Google has been abusing its dominance of Internet search to make it harder for people to find rival services and apply pressure on advertisers to pay higher prices. Google has consistently predicted that investigation will be resolved in its favor.

Google hasn't disclosed how much it is paying for Admeld, a New York company that works with websites to help them figure out how to make the most money from the amount of space they have available for display ads. It's a steadily growing field of advertising that emphasizes photos, video and illustrations instead of Google's specialty of distributing text-based commercial links alongside search results.

The Justice Department said that privately held Admeld, formed in 2007, raised about $30 million in 2010 to help fund its operations.

Google generated revenue of about $29 billion last year and analysts expect it to surpass $38 billion in revenue this year. Most of Google's revenue still comes from search advertising.

In an attempt to diversify beyond search advertising, Google bought DoubleClick for $3.2 billion in 2008. That deal is turning display advertising into a major moneymaker for Google, but the company's market share in the segment still lags behind Facebook and Yahoo, according to the research firm eMarketer Inc.

That apparently helped sway the Justice Department to approve the Admeld deal.