Google Gets a Little More Personal
Google added a link to its "personalized home" in the upper right of its Google.com home page. If you click on the link and are not signed in to Google, you'll see weather, quote of the day, word of the…
Yahoo! FUSE-ing Local Content
Yahoo!'s "FUSE" (Find, Use, Share, Expand) strategy is more apparent in what might be called Yahoo! Local 2.0. The newly launched site, which I was fortunate to preview during a hectic SES conference, combines an impressive and rich array of…
ILM:05 Agenda Is Done
My apologies to all those who've been repeatedly asking me about the ILM conference and speaking opportunities. I've been buried in work. The agenda is completed. We started with 30+ panels and whittled down, condensed and compacted them into 22…
Local Is Primed for Growth Agree Borrell and Jupiter
On the very same day, both Borrell Associates and Jupiter released reports that are quite bullish on the local space. Jupiter, which had taken something of a contrarian position about the outlook for local search (previously the company projected $879…
RHD Reported in Pursuit of Dex
The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that RH Donnelley is in talks to acquire Dex Media, an acquisition that would propel RHD into the third position in the US directories market, behind SBC and Verizon, ahead of BellSouth and…
Google Wi-Fi Imminent?
Paid Content reports Google is: reviewing bids received from multiple technology vendors for the development of a national DWDM fiber network, an optical switching fabric that would cover the entire continental U.S., and ultimately the globe. Here are more details…
Local Is Primed for Growth Agree Borrell and Jupiter
On the very same day, both Borrell Associates and Jupiter released reports that are quite bullish on the local space. Jupiter, which had taken something of a contrarian position about the outlook for local search (previously the company projected $879…
The Emergence of the Social Web
Perhaps I'm obsessing over this whole user-generated content phenomenon—and I don't want to overhype it. But in my view, this is one of the most interesting things happening online. I tried to capture the phenomenon in the context of Yahoo!'s…
AOL Offers VoIP for the Masses
AOL announced an impressive VoIP offering, TotalTalk, which will be available October 4 (the TotalTalk site says "coming soon," but you can get a general taste here). The offering, available via the new AIM Triton client, has a suite of…
Yahoo! Speeding Up Search
Yahoo! "Instant Search" has been introduced based on Yahoo! Shortcuts. AOL (with SmartBox), SNAP and a couple of others are doing similar things in providing answers before the query is completed. More from the Yahoo! Search Blog on Instant Search.
Yahoo! UK PPCall Play
How did I miss this one? According to Netimperative: The service is already available in Yahoo! Cars and will be introduced into Yahoo!€™s other e-commerce properties, Shopping and Travel following an initial introductory period beginning in early August on its…
AOL Offers VoIP for the Masses
AOL announced an impressive VoIP offering, TotalTalk, which will be available October 4 (the TotalTalk site says "coming soon," but you can get a general taste here). The offering, available via the new AIM Triton client, has a suite of…
ILM:05 Agenda Is Done
My apologies to all those who've been repeatedly asking me about the ILM conference and speaking opportunities. I've been buried in work. The agenda is completed. We started with 30+ panels and whittled down, condensed and compacted them into 22…
Yahoo! Earnings Rise 6x, Shares Drop
Yahoo! announced quarterly revenues of US$1.25 billion and net income of US$755 million. That represented a 51 percent increase from revenues of US$832.3 million last year during the same period. Yet the stock lost value in after-hours trading. I believe…
Yellow Pages Arbitrage?
Yellow Book USA announced another acquisition this week, purchasing two directories from User-Friendly Phone Book LLC, which is itself a company that has been actively pursuing acquisitions in the U.S. independent sector.The two properties involved are the Steel Valley and…
Broadband on a Tear
According to the FCC (reported by CNET), broadband (BB) grew in all 50 U.S. states and was up overall by 34 percent in 2004. Here's why BB will continue to gain: Government initiatives (e.g., municipal free access) Price competition WiMax…
PE Group Buys Yellow Brick Road
Also this week, a group of private equity buyers acquired Yellow Brick Road, the European directory holding company, from its existing PE owners, paying them 1.8 billion euros, more than four times the cash investment of current owners Veronis Suhler…
Google UK's Second Local Deal
First Google and Yell announced that the latter, the owner of the Yellow Pages brand in the U.K., would provide the content for Google Local U.K. Now Yell's rival in the directory publishing business, Thomson Directories, has announced that it…
New Google Approach to Search Relevance
As Google became progressively more powerful, more and more people began trying to manipulate Google's "organic" search results. That aim has spawned a whole industry -- search engine optimization -- and in fact resulted in more manipulated links (some would…
'I Agree with What He Said'
What do you get when you ask a YPA staff vice president to ask six board members questions in front of the membership? In short, not a lot of controversy. That's nobody's fault. It's just the environment. Stephanie Hobbs, who…