For those who missed it, Time Warner stuck the final knife into the back of the old AOL last week, when AOL’s interim CEO, Jonathan Miller, allegedly hand-picked by the outgoing Steve Case, was axed and replaced with a career TV/old media executive. Miller wasn’t an Internet expert, but he’d worked with Diller, who is …
Okay, not kill Google, and, really, barely even scratch it, but at least a way to make publishers happy and claw back some market share. As Douglas McIntyre points out on 247wallst.com, one flaw (for publishers) in Google’s advertising programs is that publishers receive no compensation for displaying ads that aren’t clicked on–even when those ads are towering skyscrapers …
Hate to join the crowd kicking this sick horse, but for those who have followed the Overstock story over the last couple of years, the company’s pathetic Q3 results–and the sheer predictability of same–can only leave one shaking one’s head. For the last two years, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne has howled and ranted on television, …
Eight hours after the mayhem surrounding CFO George Reyes’s remarks, Google did the wise thing: It issued a press release. This timing of the release all but proves that Reyes’s comments were inadvertent (otherwise the release would have gone out this morning). So far, so good. Unfortunately, far from clarifying Reyes’s remarks, the press release …
Reader Bob Estrada links to Andy Abramson’s excellent analysis of Yahoo! voice offering, which concludes that it may be Skype that is soon checkmated, not everyone else. Key to the argument is pricing power (Yahoo!, AOL, et al can undercut Skype), pre-existing messenger user bases, and full immersion of voice capability in Yahoo!’s community-oriented content. Andy’s the expert here …
After not getting its way in negotiations with YouTube (details, anyone?), Viacom has demanded that YouTube remove 100,000 unauthorized Viacom clips. Although this is probably little more than another negotiating tactic (like the preposterous idea floated a few months ago about the creation of a Big Media YouTube Clone), it will be interesting to see how it …
Jason Jones was kind enough to update our Skype model with last night’s Q2 results. Feel free to view here: Key points: Skype’s revenue and registered users continue to grow nicely year-over-year, up 105% and 95% respectively. With $90 million of revenue in Q2, the company is now closing in on a $400 million run-rate. The …
Emily Steel of the WSJ reported startling numbers from TNS Media Intelligence showing just how fast major advertisers are pulling money out of traditional media and throwing it into paid search, digital media, and other “unmeasured” advertising. This trend has been underway for years, and the figures are backward-looking, but it’s no wonder that traditional media conglomerates …
The smart debate in the comment section about whether yesterday’s Yahoo news reflected a Yahoo issue or a market issue, as well as whether a general slowdown in online ad spending would affect Google. My take is that it is almost certainly a market issue and that, eventually, it would/will almost certainly affect Google. As several readers …
After fumbling its opportunity to get in bed with AOL, Microsoft has one more way to gain the scale necessary to be a serious competitor to Google: Get in bed with Yahoo. (I am extremely skeptical that the MSN-is-a-Microsoft-division strategy will ever work–a skepticism developed over 11 years of watching Microsoft make vow after vow …