• Ross Fadner, Feb 27, 2009, 11:30 AM
  • Microsoft CFO: Yahoo Deal Is No Panacea Bloomberg News/Silicon Alley Insider The back-and-forth between Microsoft and Yahoo executives over a possible search deal continues, with Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell admitting at an industry conference on Thursday that Yahoo's search business wouldn't be the "silver bullet" that fixes its Web business. "Yahoo doesn't have the magic solution," Liddell said. "No one should think it will transform the industry."

    Liddell also noted that Microsoft's Web division had been disappointing, and that a number of fixes would be considered. "No one inside Microsoft says we've done as well (at online) as we should have," he said (via Silicon Alley Insider) . "We have to have a plan that excludes Yahoo. We need to try different things like cashback. We need more distribution deals. We need to think about a new brand. We need to do all these things. With respect to Yahoo, it's a good increase (in market share), but it won't solve all these issues."

    Liddell's comments come just a day after Yahoo CFO Blake Jorgensen said the Web giant would consider a search deal. Later on Thursday, Yahoo announced Jorgensen's departure. For now, Liddell said, Microsoft assumes that no deal is happening. He added that the software giant could issue $1 to $3 billion worth of debt at some point in the next six months. Read the whole story...
  • Pubs Could Sue For Google News Revenue ClickZ When Google launched Google News in 2002, many in the media world said the search giant had created a product it didn't dare monetize, notes ClickZ's Zachary Rodgers. The thinking was that Google News relied entirely on major media companies for its content, and that these firms would instantly sue if Google tried to make money off their content.

    Well, that was 2002, towards the beginning of the newspaper industry's death spiral. Now, with newspaper and other print companies reeling, Google has begun serving ads on Google News results in the U.S. In a blog post announcing the move, Google business product manager Josh Cohen said the new ads were part of a broader initiative to introduce paid listings in more places, like Google Finance, Google Image Search, and YouTube video search.

    The move could have significant repercussions for Google, Rodgers says. For starters, traffic to Google News is estimated at 16.5 million per month, according to January data from comScore. That's a lot of new eyeballs, which could translate into a nice chunk of revenue for the search giant. But Rodgers notes that publishers could still sue. As Sandra Baron, executive director at the Media Law Resource Center, says, "A significant issue for content providers is whether or not what Google provides becomes a substitute for going to the actual content providers' site. When that tension becomes too great, people seek legal solutions to it." Rodgers also points out that this is a different proposition in the U.S. than it is in Europe. Read the whole story...
  • MySpace Adds New Features, Reduces Ads Read Write Web MySpace no longer receives as much press as Facebook and Twitter, but the News Corp. site is still one of the most popular sites on the Web. And, says Read Write Web, it continues to try to innovate with new products for users and advertisers. However, for some, new features like "status and moods" might be seen as "too little too late." After all, status updates have become the province of Twitter and Facebook.

    Other new features are more useful. For example, MySpace is now offering music users a "Music Playlisting" feature that allows users to share playlists publicly the same way they could share songs in the past. The site has also added more than 90 new themes under "Profile 2.0", a feature designed to improve the layout and management of MySpace pages. There are also a slew of ho-hum new features. For example, MySpace is trying to become easier to use, by requiring fewer steps to getting things done. You can now also print practically everything on the site, or add more than one person in the To: line of a message.

    These aren't groundbreaking new features, but they are new for MySpace, "and the MySpace community seems to be liking it," says RWW's Rick Turoczy. However, the most interesting part of the new feature announcement was a reduction in the number of ads users see, which Turoczy notes is "an interesting position for a company that finds its revenue by showing those advertisements." Read the whole story...
  • Report: U.S. Would Raise $52 Billion By Lifting Web Gambling Ban Reuters/Online Media Daily According to a new study, the U.S. could raise nearly $52 billion in revenue over the next 10 years by taxing Internet gambling activity. Of course, this would require lifting the three-year-old Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which makes it illegal for credit card and other companies to knowingly process payments made through offshore gambling operations. European online gambling companies lost billions in market value after Congress passed the 2006 law.

    Gambling supporters hope the new analysis, prepared by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, will help repeal the legislation. "There is a dramatic need to have a regulated system that protects American consumers. Right now, it's the Wild West," Jeffrey Sandman, a spokesman for the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative, told Reuters on Wednesday. Indeed, Internet gambling has grown despite the legislation. According to Reuters, PwC's latest estimate of how much the U.S. could raise by regulating and taxing Internet gambling is 22% higher than it was in 2007 because of increased spending by U.S. consumers.

    Meanwhile, as reported in Online Media Dailyl, U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank is planning to reintroduce a bill to overturn the 2006 ban, which was approved when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and Republican George W. Bush was in the White House. Read the whole story...
  • If Your Startup Is On The Brink Of Failure... Jason’s List (via Silicon Alley Insider) In a very long email that can be read in its entirety here, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis, who will be keynoting the 2009 OMMA Global Hollywood Conference & Expo in Los Angeles next month, advises startups to hold on for as long as they can during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

    In the memo, Calacanis, who co-founded and then sold the blog network Weblogs to AOL in 2005, expresses the gloomiest of outlooks for the global economy. "The severity of what has happened can't be underestimated," he said. "Bottom line: there is zero chance of a short or medium term-rebound. Zero." This means that most startups will soon find themselves on their own, if they haven't already. "You can't count on your VCs saving you or some magical offer from Yahoo or Google showing up to bail you out," he said. "Chances are Yahoo and Google are going to be shutting down and/or selling off companies they've already bought -- like eBay and AOL have started doing. Parents don't adopt while they're putting their kids up for adoption."

    He added that the decisions senior managers make in the next 30 days "will probably make or break your company...the death spiral has started. Once that happens, you can't stop it -- you can only ride it out." Read the whole story...
  • Sales Reorg At AOL D: All Things Digital Read the whole story...
  • Web 2.0 Europe Is Cancelled TechCrunch Read the whole story...