• Ross Fadner, Jul 30, 2008, 12:00 PM
  • Interview: John Battelle IMedia Connection Since publishing his landmark book "The Search," Web guru John Battelle says that the biggest change we've seen in the field is "the complete failure of any other company to gain significant share against Google." In fact, Battelle doesn't see anyone beating Google at its own game in the near future. Rather, it will take "a redefinition of search to a new, more useful result" to change the status quo, a shift as dramatic as the move from DOS to Windows.

    Speaking about the display market, Battelle claims that brand managers and ad agencies aren't taking advantage of all the consumer data generated by online media campaigns. "It's coming," he says, "but it will be slow, and it will not be evenly distributed for a while. I think for now the key is to get into conversations with key potential customers and with your core supporters. Listen, learn, prepare for the data you will soon have access to."

    Regarding Google/DoubleClick, Battelle says that the biggest privacy threat posed by the deal is the government or another entity gaining access to their data, rather than GoogleClick's handling of the data they produce. Read the whole story...
  • Cloud Computing's Growing Pains Ars Technica Google, Microsoft and Amazon are investing heavily in cloud computing -- the idea that software and computing services should be maintained on the Web, distributed across data centers around the globe. Amazon was the first to the punch, offering the first computing services for businesses a couple of years ago. More recently, Google and Microsoft have entered the fray, the latter through the recently launched Exchange Online.

    At Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting last week, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie talked up the company's cloud computing plans. The goal, he said, is to produce a set of tools that allows developers to create programs that work just as well on a single server as they do on a whole data center of servers. This is what Microsoft talks about when it mentions "software-as-a-service." As CEO Steve Ballmer himself said, "Some people think software plus services is all about search. But it's really about changing the way software is written and deployed. The future is about having a platform in the cloud and delivering applications across PCs, phones, TVs, and other devices, at work and in the home."

    For all of its promise, Amazon's recent troubles show that cloud development still has a long way to go. Last weekend, the online retailer's S3 storage service suffered a service outage lasting several hours. Later, the company claimed that some of the communication between S3's servers became corrupted, causing the servers to repeatedly fail. The fact that the initial corruption spread to take down both S3 sites is worrying, especially since the S3 servers were supposed to be self-organizing, to a large extent. Read the whole story...
  • Why BT Buying Ribbit Is Significant Read Write Web British Telecom has purchased the Web telephony platform Ribbit for $105 million. According to Read Write Web's Marshall Kirkpatrick, this one is a great fit, because Ribbit can bring click-to-call functionality to any Web application. Significantly, Kirkpatrick says that Ribbit could help move the stuttering telecom giant forward.

    Ribbit is essentially a platform that lets developers add click-to-call functionality to Web applications. The key is its well-built developer platform. "Even with giant research and development budgets, established companies are increasingly hard pressed to compete with the innovation brought to market by a whole world of developers once those developers are handed Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)," says Kirkpatrick, adding that "someone had to buy Ribbit and it's a sign of the ineptitude of U.S. telecom companies that none of them did."

    As Michael Boustridge, president, BT Americas said in the press release about the deal: "The Ribbit platform makes it simpler, cheaper and faster to build communications functionality into applications, enabling developers to introduce new revenue-generating voice services in hours, rather than weeks. By combining the Ribbit platform with BT's existing web services, we have the potential to deliver some of the world's finest applications for communications innovation benefiting consumers and businesses alike." Read the whole story...
  • Tech Giants Join Forces For Cloud Computing Reuters Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Yahoo are joining forces to create an experimental network that lets researchers test "cloud-computing" services projects that would reach billions of users at once. According to Reuters, "the goal is to promote open collaboration among industry, academic and government researchers by removing financial and logistical barriers to working on hugely computer-intensive, Internet-wide projects."

    In other words, HP, Intel and Yahoo are funding a massive cloud-computing research project, where the goal is to create a level-playing field for conducting that research -- i.e. a platform that doesn't belong to Google, Microsoft or Amazon. As Prabhakar Raghavan, the head of Yahoo Research, says, "No one institution or company is going to figure this out."

    Cloud computing refers to the process of turning Internet hardware and software into Web-based services stored on the Web in disparate data centers across the globe. "Potentially the entire planet will come to rely on this, like electricity," Raghavan said. "We are all trying to move from the horse driving the wagon to a million ants driving the wagon. The challenge can be a billion ants one day and a million ants the next." Read the whole story...
  • Pickens Rips Into Yahoo Over Microhoo Handling San Francisco Chronicle Oil baron and billionaire investor, T. Boone Pickens, dug into Yahoo's management for failing to sell all or part of the company to Microsoft Corp. Pickens bought 10 million Yahoo shares in May in the hope that an acquisition was forthcoming -- thanks in part to the proxy charge led by Carl Icahn. However, on Monday he said he got tired of waiting for a deal and sold his entire holding at a $50 million loss.

    "I think that Yahoo management was pathetic," Pickens told the San Francisco Chronicle. Pickens' comments echo those of some other investors who were upset at Yahoo's handling of the situation. Yahoo shares are currently trading at $20.12, well below Microsoft's offer of $33 per share three months ago.

    The Chronicle points out that this was an uncharacteristic foray into technology for Pickens, who during a CNBC interview acknowledged that he was merely following Icahn's lead in buying the Yahoo shares. However, earlier this month, Icahn settled his proxy battle with the Yahoo board, agreeing to take three seats in exchange for ending the boardroom battle. Read the whole story...
  • MySpace Begins Lay-offs TechCrunch Read the whole story...
  • Mark Lefar Takes Over At Vonage BusinessWeek Read the whole story...
  • Moore Steps Down At 24/7 Real Media Silicon Alley Insider Read the whole story...