I can't believe I missed this lower-down in the release: The acquisition also enables eBay and Skype to pursue entirely new lines of business. For example, in addition to eBay's current transaction-based fees, ecommerce communications could be monetized on a…
Simplified search/local search enabler (my awkward term) SME Global Solutions has bagged some cash -- in other words, closed a Series A round with Redpoint Ventures -- and changed its name. The company is now being called "WebVisible." What WebVisible…
According to the WSJ, eBay is reportedly in talks to buy VoIP provider Skype. News Corp. had approached Skype but apparently balked at the price. Om Malik reports: Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennstr¶m shed some light on the company€™s…
Hitwise, via Reuters, reports that Wikipedia's traffic has grown 154 percent during the past year. It now threatens to surpass traffic to the New York Times site -- one of the few successful news brands online -- and other major…
Again, no time to devote to this yet but Om Malik writes some very provocative stuff about Google VoIP, VoIP in general and how they might intersect with local search and PPCall. Make no mistake, all the major networks/paid search…
By and large newspapers' blog-related efforts have so far not been terribly successful. Now, according to a blurb in PaidContent.org, a Knight Ridder-owned newspaper in Columbia, S.C. has launched a separate "citizen journalism" site, TheColumbiaRecord.com. According to the site: TheColumbiaRecord.com…
Internet service providers (ISPs) have long been frustrated by the seeming indifference of their subscribers to their content offerings. Comcast, in particular, has more recently been very aggressive in trying to beef up its content offerings so that it doesn't…
Rupert Murdoch has gone from lambasting newspaper publishers about their online inaction to building with several swift strokes of his checkbook pen an Internet powerhouse that, via its collection of properties, now claims to be "the fifth most trafficked presence…
Commenting on personnel matters is outside the typical scope of this blog, but Om Malik argues that Google's announced hire of Vint Cerf from MCI indicates that GoogleNet (the national broadband wi-fi network) is real. Read more.
Click fraud is getting more attention and media coverage lately. And now there's a cottage industry emerging around the perceived problem. My question is: Will this motivate or accelerate a move to an alternative model (e.g., cost per lead/action) that…
In the battle of the interactive maps, MSN is seeking to challenge Google's satellite mapping supremacy with a suite of mapping tools that will seek to combine the best elements of satellite mapping with A9's Yellow Pages local business photography…
Last Fall general purpose (as opposed to niche) search engine Accoona launched to considerable media fanfare. Yes the name does come from the Swahili phrase "acoona matata," popularized in the U.S. by the Disney film The Lion King. Though I'm…
Search-engine marketing firm TrafficLeader, whose technology supports BellSouth€™s "Real Search Engines Solutions," announced a deal with the Houston Chronicle to sell search marketing to local businesses on a similar €œflat-fee, guaranteed clicks€ basis. We had predicted €œsimplified search€ would make…
Danny Sullivan asks the question of whether search engines becoming portals -- in part because they're so furiously competing with each other -- implies a potential decline in quality. Google reportedly announced its "fusion" strategy because users were requesting greater…
Ask Jeeves has acquired Excite Europe from Tiscali for 6.1 million euros (an apparent pittance). In March of last year, Ask Jeeves bought Excite.com in the U.S. Also today, Ask Jeeves and InfoSpace announced they had settled litigation associated with…
Two brief items caught my interest from opposite ends of the online spectrum, but both reflect consumer sentiment. First, there were some reports about a "grassroots" resistance among Flickrphiles to registering as Yahoo! users. Wired News has a fairly extensive…
So here's a bit of compulsive behavior from me -- coming out of the baby zone to post. I read this piece tonight on Om Malik's blog and thought it was a very interesting and bold set of predictions about…
After an almost unprecendented frenzy of speculation Google Talk is live. What is it? It's an IM client that has VoIP (good transmission quality). You have to have a gmail account to participate. (This may help drive gmail adoption.) It's…
I'm trying to get a bunch of things done and only have time for bullets right now: Print growth was sluggish but there was significant Q2 online newspaper revenue growth (28.6% to $500.7 million) vs. one year ago, according to…
I got an opportunity to preview Google's version 2 of its desktop client (GD2) late last week. It's very interesting and, in the few days I've been testing it out, pretty useful. It offers much improved desktop search, indexing an…
