Google on Tuesday lost its second senior executive in two months, as Doug Merrill, the company's vice president of engineering, announced that he would leave to become the president of digital at EMI Music. Merrill's departure was preceded by that of Sheryl Sandberg, the company's former video president for global sales and operations, who left in February to become COO of Facebook. The search giant is also still without a CFO. At EMI, Merrill's job will be to drive the record company's digital distribution strategy. At Google, Merrill headed the company's internal engineering efforts and was involved in …

The Web is (currently) a lousy medium for brand marketing. An advertiser is going to get a lot more mileage out of a targeted two-page spread in a magazine than a standard IAB unit. In other words, branding on the Web doesn't scale, in part because current online methods lend themselves to direct response, leaving consumers, brands and publishers out of the conversation. Search, ad networks and other cost-per-click vehicles are clearly not the answer to brand building. Marketers need to go to where the consumers have gone to keep building their brands. That would be social networks. …

Something big is afoot between Google and eBay's Skype, like a partnership or outright acquisition. There've been rumblings of a deal now for several weeks. Google's Product Management team has been conspicuous by its absence from the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, but that doesn't mean it's working on a Skype deal. Even so, a Skype acquisition would make perfect sense for Google. The search giant is definitely looking at voiceover IP with its new GTalk VoIP offering, its free 411 service and recent acquisition of GrandCentral, an Internet calling management company. Skype could be integrated into …

Laptop makers hope that iPhone users don't point to the wave of the future, after a new survey revealed that one-quarter of owners believe the iPhone is replacing the notebook. According to the Rubicon Consulting report, 28 percent said they often carry their iPhone instead of a laptop, prompting the speculation that third-party software innovation on the Apple device could result in it displacing the notebook altogether. About 43 percent "strongly supported" Apple making at least one major change. Popular answers included adding a keyboard and improving the browsing experience--about 40 percent of the survey's respondents reported that …

Rumblings in the blogosphere yesterday suggested that Microsoft was preparing to up its $31 per share offer for Yahoo, but Microsoft sources on Tuesday said there are no plans to raise its bid, originally worth $44.6 billion. However, such pronouncements are standard in deal negotiations. This suggests Microsoft will bide its time until Yahoo delivers first-quarter earnings in a few weeks. Company strategists argue that Yahoo has failed to find a viable alternative or sufficiently convince investors that remaining independent is the best option for the future. They also feel the worsening economic situation could lower the value …

Increasingly, publishers are scooping up technology firms to help them craft marketing services for advertisers--and we're not talking about Yahoo, MSN and AOL getting into the ad network business (although they started the trend). Magazine publishers like Condé Nast and Meredith are using technologies they've acquired recently to design promotions that would help marketers sell ad space.< For example, Condé Nast is preparing a promotion for the retailer Dillard's that lets visitors to the Dillard's site vote on merchandise that will be used later in ads. The promotion leverages the technology of the magazine publisher's recently acquired …

The San Francisco Chronicle has a guide to social gaming, which has helped the online casual games sector expand its mostly female, older-skewing audience to the younger MySpace and Facebook generations. As one tech industry exec says, it takes about three minutes to play a game of Scramble on Facebook. As social game creator Marc Pincus, founder of the Zynga Game Network, says, "My games are for people who don't have time for games. I don't make games for gamers." Indeed, many of the most popular social games borrowing (sometimes a little too heavily) from classic board …