We have recently reported on a Russian company Era Vodoleya that expressed its intentions to sue Google for a huge amount of $3 billion (which is 15% of Google’s revenues) because of Google allegedly infringing a patent with its contextual advertising technology - the one that turned Google into a multi-billion company. In the post I thought that the entire situation looked more like the company was trying to attract some publicity to itself instead of actually having the resources required to sue the internet giant - patent or no patent. After the post was published, the issue was widely...
Ending speculation that another Microsoft-Yahoo deal may be on the table after the exit of Jerry Yang, Steve Ballmer said at a Wednesday shareholder meeting “Let me be clear. We are done with all acquisition discussions with Yahoo.” His announcement sent Yahoo’s shares into a 20% nosedive, closing at $9.13 at days end. Ballmer did tell shareholders that Microsoft may still be open to a search deal with Yahoo but those slightly encouraging words did not soften the blow of his comments dismissing a possible acquisition. Is this really the death knell for a Microsoft-Yahoo merger? Maybe, maybe not....
About 250 people attended the Facebook Developer Garage San Francisco this afternoon/evening, hosted by Offerpal. The event was held at Mezzanine, which is a great venue. A couple quick notes from the evening: Siqi Chen, CEO of Serious Business: “Friends For Sale has 3 kinds of users: 1) guys with a lot of time, 2) guys with a lot of money, 3) hot people. Usually, groups 1 and 3 do not interact much - we allow them to do that… Interestingly, some of our highest paying users are in Saudi Arabia. One woman has spent over US $30,000 in the...
Jonathan Grayer is resigning as chairman and CEO of the Washington Post Company's Kaplan Higher Education unit after 17 years in the role. His replacement is Andrew Rosen, who has served as COO since Grayer became CEO in 1992; he's been with the company since 1986. While WaPo is mainly known for publishing the Washington Post and Newsweek, it's the Kaplan unit that's been the prime revenue driver lately. The education division produced revenues of $602 million in Q3, more than half of WaPo's total $1.1 billion. Year-to-date, the Kaplan segment revs rose 15 percent to $1.7 billion, while during...
Yahoo has launched Yahoo Glue in the United States, a Mahalo style search engine that offers a mix of rich media and text along with traditional search results. According to Mashable, Yahoo found the service so successful in their India test launch that they’re extending the product for inclusion in US search results off main Yahoo.com search queries. Ask.com went down the same route back in October, although Yahoo isn’t extending the layout to all results just yet. First impressions are positive: it’s a great way to take in search results. However there is a catch: the results are traditional...
Simon Salt is CEO of marketing communications company the IncSlingers. He writes for www.simonsalt.com and Dad-O-Matic You use Twitter, email, IM and even your phone to stay in touch with your world. Maybe your office uses services like Yammer for internal communication. But once you are done tweeting, emailing and instant messaging, you have to do actual work. Wouldn’t it be great if you could at least use those tools to help you get some of that work done? Xpenser, developed by Trastr Inc, allows for a number of different tools to be utilized to keep track of expenses. Here...
Real estate search site Trulia announced Wednesday that it has inked a deal with 1020 Placecast, an advertising company that uses location-based information to target audiences, that will see the site's advertising become location-specific. Once a user inputs a location they want to learn more about on Trulia, Placecast will access that data and apply it as a key component along with common demographic data points like psychographic information to provide more targeted ads. "Once we know the place a user is interested in, we can derive a lot of useful insights about what kind of consumer they are,...
As Aaron Peskin taketh, so Michela Alioto-Pier shall giveth back... sort of. After Peskin introduced a resolution for the Board of Supes to officially oppose Don Fisher's CAMP— mind you, withno legal teeth— colleague Alioto-Pier went on the record to say that "we may kick you to the curb, but please don't move yourself and your tattered belongings to another street." Actually, it went a bit more like this: If it so happens that CAMP gets booted out of the Presidio, you're still welcome in San Francisco— really. Please just don't go to Chicago or New York. And then sister...
