Business

Last week, AOL announced that it would acquire Bebo, the third most popular social-networking site in the United States. The deal is worth $850 million, a bargain when considering that many companies, such as News Corp., Facebook, and Google are ... looking to the medium as the next big thing for advertising dollars. (Source: nytimes.com ) While the nobility of Silicon Valley have high hopes, no one has really found the 'magic formula' to turn social networking into a cash cow. If any company has the ability to monetize connecting with friends it may be AOL and Bebo. AIM is the dominant Instant ... (view more)

Google recently announced that it has completed negotiations before European anti-trust commissioners, and is finally able to close its $3.1 billion deal to acquire DoubleClick. The new addition to the Google brand will bring a greater concentration ... of advertising power within one corporation. However, anti-trust hearings in the US and Europe felt that the companies could merge because they occupied different parts of the advertising search market (Google is the dominant online supplier of text-relevant ads, while DoubleClick is a large advertiser for banner ads). (Source: nytimes.com ) ... (view more)

Over the last several years, Google has been slowly sucking up advertising dollars that might normally be spent on television. Now, the six largest cable companies want to stop that. To do so, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cablevision, Cox ... Communications, Charter Communications and Bright House Networks are planning a joint venture to allow advertisers to purchase interactive and custom ads across their cable systems. Collectively, the companies will invest about $150 million in the project. (Source: nytimes.com ) The announcement of the cable company's "Project Canoe" comes only a week after ... (view more)

Hoping to answer a number of concerns about its popular Office software, Microsoft has released a slew of fixes meant to patch up some fairly significant holes. A total of twelve flaws, four "critical", have been addressed by the new update. These ... are meant to fix gaps that could potentially give an attacker the ability to execute code without authorization. Given the software's immense popularity, that certainly makes for a lot of systems. (Source: macworld.com ) One of the most "critical" fixes is meant to save future headaches for Outlook email users. Again, remote execution ... (view more)

Steve Jobs is not a fan and is actively encouraging the computer industry to abandon Flash in favor of open source standards that can do the same job. Jobs' reluctance to use Flash became apparent last week in a conference call with shareholders, ... when he said that Flash Lite, the version for mobile phones, was "not capable of being used with the web" and therefore would not be showing up on the iPhone. (Source: betanews.com ) There are a multitude of invisible applications and codes buzzing around your computer when you visit the web. Some of the most popular include Java, JavaScript (no ... (view more)

It seems that Yahoo is simply staving off an inevitable takeover by Microsoft, while it desperately searches for a partner in a last ditch attempt to fortify its defenses against the hostile bid. As Redmond-based Microsoft prepares to apply more ... pressure to its rival, Yahoo has responded by postponing the nomination of new members to its board. (Source: mercurynews.com ) In a statement released on March 5, Yahoo announced that it has amended its bylaws to extend the nominating process to elect directors to its board. Problem is, the company has given no fixed date to the end of this ... (view more)

Search site Ask.com -- formerly Ask Jeeves -- is to ditch 8% of its workforce and re-evaluate its strategy. It seems the site will be revamped from a general search site to one aimed specifically at married women, with an emphasis on lifestyle ... issues. New CEO Jim Safka says research found 65% of the site's users are female, compared with 48% across all search engines. The site is particularly popular with women in their late 30s living in the Midwest and Southeast. (Source: reuters.com ) Ask is currently the fifth biggest search engine, but has a mere 4.5% market share, far behind Google's 58 ... (view more)

After directing his company to sink $240 million into a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook last year, the company's iconic leader has personally abandoned the social networking site in favor of the more business oriented LinkedIn. As a company, Microsoft ... is still working with Facebook of course; however, Gates himself has decided to set aside his profile because of the massive amounts of friend requests he was receiving; no doubt his 'FB friends' were also driving him crazy with constant invitations for mindless applications, but that's another story. The LinkedIn community seems to be very ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced surprise price cuts to its Windows Vista operating system, in some cases slashing the cost almost by half. In the United States, the price will drop from $399 to $319 for the hi-spec Ultimate edition. The standard Home ... edition price is falling from $259 to $219. The price cuts vary in other countries, and the new prices will take effect once Service Pack 1, the first major update to Vista, is released. For emerging markets such as Russia and India, Microsoft is dropping its upgrade option, by which existing Windows users can get Vista for a reduced price. They've found ... (view more)

Apple has become the second largest seller of music in America, behind only Wal-Mart. The statistic comes from market research group NPD; its chart is based on the number of sales rather than the actual revenue. To make for a fair comparison, it ... counts 12 individual song downloads on Apple's iTunes service as equivalent to one sale of a physical CD album. Apple was ranked fourth in the same study last year, but has now leapfrogged both Target and Best Buy. A spokesman for NPD said the change was "fairly understandable given the pressure that's been on CDs and the almost 50-percent growth in ... (view more)