By Om Malik
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Sunday, November 22, 2009 |
10:30 PM PT |
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Matt Cutts, a software engineer and an eloquent corporate spokesman for Google, spoke at PubCon earlier this month and later gave a video interview to Web Pro News, in which he said that the speed at which web pages are available might become a factor in SEO moving into 2010. He said that because many within Google consider fastness to be vital to the web, the company is considering making web site speed a factor in calculating page rankings. Those comments have confused and scared many folks as to how speed might impact their businesses. Continue »
By Om Malik
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Sunday, November 22, 2009 |
10:27 PM PT |
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AdMob, a mobile advertising network, which has been releasing mobile metrics for a while now and touting the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch metrics as headlines, is instead focusing on RIM, Symbian, Android and even Windows Mobile devices in its October 2009 mobile metrics report. I guess when you are soon going to be part of Google, why give arch-nemesis, Apple and its iPhone any airtime. AdMob is in the process of being acquired by Google for $750 million. The report has some interesting facts about Android and gives a rough breakdown on the success (or lack there of) of various different Android devices. As always, the data from AdMob which serves display and text ads on 15,000 mobile websites and applications, is limited in scope but is broad enough to be a barometer for the larger market trends. Continue »
Featured Post
By Om Malik
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Sunday, November 22, 2009 |
7:43 PM PT |
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AOL will launch a new look and logo along with its official spinout from Time Warner on Dec. 10, as it tries to become a content-centric company. Wolff Olins, a global brand and innovation consultancy, worked on this new look and logo which seeks to replace the older, more iconic AOL branding. The minute I saw the logo (and its various interpretations), my first reaction was simple: lame. It is ambiguous at best, and as sexy as the obese, shapeless humans living on Axiom, the flagship of the BnL fleet in Pixar movie “WALL-E.” Continue »
By Om Malik
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Sunday, November 22, 2009 |
5:10 PM PT |
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By Om Malik
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Saturday, November 21, 2009 |
3:59 PM PT |
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Skype, with its spinout from eBay complete and its legal troubles with founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis settled, is looking to the future, where it wants to become a ubiquitous real-time communications platform. And that means thinking about the next-generation Skype architecture and hiring a lot of smart people, CEO Josh Silverman said in a conversation earlier today. Continue »
By Om Malik
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Wednesday, November 18, 2009 |
6:55 AM PT |
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American Express, the company well known for overpriced charge cards, is buying Ted Leonsis and Steve Case’s Revolution Money for $300 million. Leonsis shared this information on his blog. Amex wants to use Revolution Money to build a next-generation offering. Revolution Money has some kind of a next-generation payments technology that brings together offline and online worlds; it’s part of the Revolution group of companies floated by Steve Case. No one I know has either seen it or actually uses it. If there is one company that is going to do offline-online payments, that will be PayPal.
By Om Malik
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009 |
10:00 PM PT |
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Intel today said it’s invested an undisclosed amount in Joyent, the 6-year-old Sausalito, Calif.-based startup that started out as a web hosting company but eventually evolved into a cloud service provider. Neither Intel nor Joyent disclosed the amount of money invested, but Intel’s investment in the company is a strategic bet for the chipmaker, as it faces a smaller end user base for its silicon thanks to enterprises turning to computing delivered as a service to help limit the number of servers they buy. First the deal specifics. Continue »
By Om Malik
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009 |
9:00 PM PT |
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Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), one of the most respected funds in Silicon Valley, says that it’s closed NVP XI, a $1.2 billion fund that will invest in diverse sectors and geographies. NVP, which recently recorded a major hit with the $405 million sale of video conferencing equipment maker LifeSize, is one of the few venture funds to close a mega-fund. Khosla Ventures ($1 billion) and Greylock Partners ($575 million) are two other partnerships that have been able to raise mega-funds. At the same time, there have been numerous reports of many partnerships struggling to whip up interest in their second or third funds. “Track record is what that matters,” said Promod Haque, general partner with NVP, in a conversation earlier today. Continue »
By Om Malik
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009 |
7:00 PM PT |
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This morning news broke that MySpace, the second-largest social network that’s currently reinventing itself as a music destination, was buying imeem, a free online music service that has been remixed (and remade) more times that ’90s dance anthem “Keep on Moving.” TechCrunch, which reported on the news, didn’t reveal what the deal terms were. I have been dialing sources for information, and have found an interesting backstory behind this sale. Continue »
By Om Malik
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009 |
8:24 AM PT |
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Motorola and Verizon, thanks to their $100 million marketing efforts, are going to sell some 600,000 Droids during the fourth quarter of 2009, according to Mark McKechnie of Broadpoint AmTech, a boutique research firm. He had initially expected about 200,000 device sales following the launch, but he has upped his forecast: Motorola should sell another 200,000 Droids by Black Friday and 150,000-200,000 during the remainder of the holiday season. This would bring the total to some 600,000 Droids for 2009. Continue »