PaidContent.org captured some interesting sound bytes from Microsoft's second quarter earnings call. Results, by the way, were poor, especially in online advertising, where organic year-over-year growth fell from 26% in Q1 to 8% in Q2. Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget said this "is also known as hitting a wall," and added that Microsoft's soft display results bode particularly poorly for Yahoo, which delivers second quarter earnings on July 22. Meanwhile, Microsoft stood by their numbers as being consistent with what the firm told shareholders in April. The company also claimed that factors like market weakness and the uncertainty …

In a study conducted by Millward Brown, industry experts said they still see the digital space as an opportunity for marketers despite the economy. The marketing management study, which polled 252 U.S. CMOs, VPs of marketing and marketing directors and managers, showed that 75% expect spending for new media to increase in the next year. The survey also showed that 75% expected their digital budgets to increase, while only 4% expected them to decrease. br> "These results show us that not only is digital marketing a global capability that marketers must truly embrace for its effectiveness and ROI, it is …

Google "blithely insisted that all was well" during its second quarter earnings call on Thursday, but investors begged to differ, sending shares plummeting in after-hours trading after the company missed The Street's earnings-per-share estimates by nearly ten cents per share. Unlike other companies, Google has decided not to offer any guidance in advance of what its sales and profits will be, which it makes it more difficult for Wall Street analysts to forecast the company's quarterly results. The strategy has proven to be a double-edged sword for Google in the past. Hal Varian, Google's chief economist, admitted softness in certain …

Google confirmed a pair of new deals for its YouTube video-sharing site on Wednesday. The company first reached a deal to feature clips from Lions Gate Entertainment Inc on YouTube. The deal gives viewers access to scenes from Lions Gate movies, accompanied by ads and a link to an electronic sell-through. Some heralded the move as the first big step taken by Google in recent years to sign on a major traditional media company as a YouTube partner. "There are things in our library like 'Dirty Dancing' that have been watched tens of millions of times and it will …

It would appear that the so-called "urgent" AOL acquisition talks with Microsoft and Yahoo reported yesterday by Reuters were precipitated by people close to the Time Warner company, as The New York Times is today reporting that neither Microsoft nor Yahoo appears much interested in the once-mighty Web portal. Indeed, the Times claims that while both companies are listening to Time Warner, they seem to be more focused at the moment on their talks with each other, which have gone back and forth now for more than five months. Richard Greenfield, an analyst who covers Time Warner for Pali Capital, …

The battle over Yahoo's search business as witnessed over the last few days seems both ridiculous and petty. And it takes the attention away from what is Yahoo's true value: a media aggregation platform. Yahoo is the place a lot of people -- some 400 million -- visit to get their news, sports scores and email. GigaOm's Om Malik describes the battle over Yahoo's search business as both "ridiculous and petty," saying that all the focus is taking attention away from Yahoo's biggest and best asset: its media aggregation platform. Some 400 million people visit Yahoo sites to get category-specific …