TechCrunch
D: All Things Digital
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Tech Crunch
Only a few months ago, it would have been madness to suggest that online advertising would decline in 2009. But now, according to the most recent estimates from IDC, online spending in the first and second quarters is expected to be so weak, that negative growth for the year is looking increasingly likely. On Wednesday, the researcher completely slashed its growth estimate of 10% for 2009, replacing it with an estimated 5% drop in online ad revenues for the first quarter, which could get worse in the second. What a turnaround. Last year, the market grew a robust 18%, …
Bloomberg News
Yahoo isn't opposed to a search deal with Microsoft, CFO Blake Jorgensen said at an investor conference, but any agreement would have to maximize the unit's value. Jorgensen added that it would be extremely difficult to separate Yahoo's search business from the rest of the company, but not impossible. Any deal would also have to give Yahoo full access to the search engine data, which the company uses to make its display advertising more effective. "We want to do it for the right reasons and the right economics," Jorgensen said. On Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reiterated the software giant's …
John Battelle’s Searchblog
In a blog post, search guru John Battelle argues that Twitter is in virtually the same position as YouTube was before it was acquired by Google two-and-a-half years ago. While most people thought Google bought YouTube because it wanted to get into the video business, Battelle says that it's now clear that YouTube was a search play, not a video play. Because of this, he says, "Google could not afford to NOT own YouTube." Twitter, by comparison, is also in the search business. The microblogging service provides real-time, conversational search. As such, "it's an asset Google cannot afford to not …