I certainly understand both sides of the argument here, but the irony of the undisputed leader in search (Google) asking the one-time media darling amongst Internet companies (Amazon.com) to fork over details of book search intellectual property is pretty funny.
As expected, online retailer Amazon.com Inc. has objected to providing details about its book search feature to rival Google Inc., which says it needs them to fight copyright infringement allegations from a group of authors and book publishers.
In a Monday filing, Amazon.com described Google’s request, which was made via a subpoena served on Oct. 6, as “overly broad and unduly burdensome” and said it would expose Amazon’s trade secrets.
Amazon lawyers also note how Google wants “essentially all documents concerning Amazon’s sale of books on its Web sites, and all searching and indexing functions.”
“Google can not show any substantial need to obtain Amazon’s proprietary information,” despite Google’s promises to only use the information to defend itself against the lawsuits, Amazon’s lawyers wrote.
Read more.
Digg this Blog
Share on Facebook
WatchMojo on Twitter
WatchMojo on YouTube
Add to Favorites
WatchMojo NewsletterAll great investors will tell you buying a stock is only half the equation, you have to know when to sell. Stocks go up and down (and up again, sometimes…) but knowing when to hit the cash register is as important if not more than buying the stock in the first place.
Here’s the Fool’s take.
Or something like that…
The online search giant Google Inc. unveiled a new service Monday that allows users to create their own personalized search engine for their own Web sites or blogs.
The free service, dubbed Google Custom Search Engine, allows organizations or individuals to create a customized, content-focused search engine, that can be limited to specific Web sites, ultimately allowing users to create a search engine around a specific topic such as a sports team, according to the company.
Users of the customized search engine can even adjust its look and functionality or use Google’ AdSense program and ultimately generate revenue, Google said.
“We want to make it easy for anyone to create a search engine about all of their favorite topics, without needing a Ph.D.,” Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, said in a prepared statement.
Read more on Google’s forays or check out our own MetaMojo.com, the vertical search engine featuring best of breed results.
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ — Modoshi Inc., a new online shopping community, today launched its beta site ( www.modoshi.com ) and invites zealous online shoppers to participate by finding and posting deals. Deal-posters will make a commission based on how many sales a particular deal generates, earning cash commissions from Modoshi.
Modoshi, a word derived from Japanese meaning ‘give back,’ helps deal searchers and online shoppers by operating a site where the entire e-commerce community benefits as shoppers find great deals and Modoshi gives back cash to the deal posters for successfully contributing to the Modoshi community. Deal posters research the best price online for any item and use a simple online form to create an accurate posting. Proprietary software verifies the accuracy and validity of all the item information posted. The deal poster then earns a commission based on how well his deal performs.
“Modoshi represents the latest trend in Web 2.0,” explains Modoshi co-founder Vaishali Angal. “We offer shoppers an attractive, organized and accurate site where they can feel confident they have found the best deals.”
“All of our checks and balances are intended to keep the site as accurate and fair as possible,” continues Angal. “Our goal for this community is to create a place where deal posters get rewarded with commissions if they have found great deals and help drive traffic to their posting and shoppers win because they find deals without having to spend time researching the web.”
Modoshi also pays commission for referring new users. Moreover, Modoshi deal posters may easily organize deals into their own Modoshi pages called “theme stores” where posts are gathered by topics, for example, photography. Modoshi assigns a unique web-address to such pages that can be easily shared with others, making it easy for online shoppers to find what interests them.
“In the spirit of Modoshi and information sharing, we want to give back to our participants by paying them for the content they contribute. The Modoshi website itself does not sell anything and is absolutely free to use,” says Angal.
For more information or to post a deal, visit Modoshi.com . For interviews and media queries, contact Erica Zeidenberg, Hot Tomato Marketing, at 925-631-0553.
Alexa is anything but reliable and representative of the broad Web universe, but it’s interesting to see how similar the traffic patterns and ranking of BusinessWeek.com and Forbes.com are:
Forbes is ahead at #323 while Business Week sits at #580, but Business Week has only more recently really unleashed its resources online.
What makes this a race to watch is that Forbes gets a lot of credit for having a quasi independent online presence, regularly updating and publishing stand-alone content pieces over the years. Forbes.com also gets much credit for coming up with some rather progressive ad elements.
BusinessWeek however is one site that should get credit too, a lot of new features, online-only editions and what not. They might be playing catchup to Forbes on the Web (according to Alexa) but I expect the spread to converge quite a bit.
Should be a nice race to watch as the two fight for online supremacy amongst business readers.
I think these sites got the message: there are a lot of sites online that were serving the void if these offline companies sought to keep their “good stuff” offline. If they do not fill the void, someone else will, so hats off to their management for understanding that it’s important to recognzie trends and follow readers online instead of going against the grain in a futile attempt to boost offline circulation and readership.
Long before anyone had heard of YouTube, BitTorrent was the bad-boy online video site. If you wanted that vintage Saturday Night Live episode or a missed episode of a beloved sitcom, you went to BitTorrent or one of the pirate sites powered by its technology. Since BitTorrent’s beginning in 2001, more than 80 million people have downloaded the technology and 5 million people are using it at any given time—making it one of the top ten downloads on the Web.
But as BitTorrent’s popularity grew, so did the risk of legal backlash from studios and other content producers who say the technology violates copyrights. And recent years have seen a boom in rival sites and methods for getting video over the Internet—many of them fast, free, and even legal. To cope, BitTorrent is going legit, as evidenced by a flurry of deals with studios and other companies.
Read more on Business Week.
From Business Week.
The setting of the Monaco Media Forum, a luxury seaside hotel in the ultra-wealthy monarchy of Monaco, hardly conveyed a sense of gloom, but the discussions were another matter. “We are facing the end of journalists as an elite,” Michael Maier, CEO of German online newspaper Netzeitung, said in a statement that exemplified the fin de siècle mood. “This is very painful.”
Anyone’s got a kleenex? Sorry, I don’t have a square to spare, I can’t spare a square. You see, it’s not that I am all that pro-Web and anti-print; it’s the opposite. I love print media and think it is very valuable and relevant. After all, it’s not normal or healthy to be stuck to a laptop, so naturally, things that are not electronic or digital tend to have a greater value in many ways. What makes me laugh when I hear such things is that they are juxtaposed with an almost apologetic claim that print is relevant:
At times the discussion could sound downright apocalyptic. “If media disappear, democracy disappears,” said French author and venture capitalist Jacques Attali. Warned Bob Guccione Jr., founder of Discover Media, which publishes science magazine Discover, “By the time this conference reconvenes, a lot of [print outlets] will be gone.” But Guccione went on to defend the relevance of ink and paper. “Print media content is actually very, very valuable. What we do matters,” he said.
From 2000 to 2005, I took on all of these print companies in the lucrative men’s publishing sector. The fact remains that these companies boast revenue figures that would allow them to crush would-be online competitors, but for many psychological, social and sociological reason, they choose not to. It’s not an economic decision or many decisions that has led to the current state of malaise in print. It’s like Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist.org say: “newspapers make billions a year,” so do not be too sorry for them, but their cost structures, culture, aversion for risk and “busines” outlook make anything remotely akin to risk taking an alien endeavor.
Established print outlets are still the only organizations able to send journalists to trouble spots or commit time to serious research and writing, conference participants agreed. Guccione echoed an Oct. 20 speech by Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel at a dinner for conference participants hosted by Prince Albert. Author and Holocaust survivor Wiesel argued that the biggest threat to the world right now is indifference. “We are passion vs. indifference,” Guccione said.
The bunker mentality was not as prevalent among traditional media people as it might sound, though. Luckily, young representatives of Internet startups also came to Monaco and injected some optimism into the proceedings, even a whiff of euphoria. Participants heard presentations from new companies such as vpod.tv, which allows companies or individuals to quickly set up their own Net broadcasting channels, or Netvibes, which helps people set up their own home pages with links to their favorite sites.
It’s ironic then that print executives are willing to send off a journalist into hostile territory to get the news scoop, but they have not dared venture out and risk anything to establish strongholds in digital media.
Nothing venture, nothing gained.
Today, Google announced that it allows Google Ad Sense / Ad Words advertisers to choose which sites they want their ads to run on… Hmm, right there, Google just changed from a blind network of sorts to an ad agency, allowing advertisers to pick and choose which sites (who already have Ad Sense on them, mind you) they wish to advertise on.
This is a pretty major development. The advertising agency is not going anywhere. But, many advertisers just got one more reason to take their ad planning and buying in-house. The advertising agencies who charge 5% for planning, 5% for creating and 5% for buying just saw a lot of people remove 10% off the table.
The really interesting by-product of this is that this gives an incentive to smaller, newer sites to accept Google’s contextual ads on their site. They might be too new or young to pop up on Nielsen NetRatings or Media Metrix (and thus will not get the attention of media buyers), but by offering advertisers to advertise through Google, they get on their radar.
Initally the ad spends are tiny (as they are limited to CPCs, CTRs, and ad impressions) but as the publisher grows, they can remove Google’s ads and force advertisers to go directly to the site.
Read more.
A picture is worth a thousand words. And anyone who knows me knows that I have no problem sharing 1,000 words.
What’s really impressive about this chart is the fine print:
Internet stats does not include search. Imagine the growth rate if it did!
Bertelsmann is jumping into digital investment.
Company has formed a $63 million venture-capital fund to invest in digital biz and tapped Richard Sarnoff, who has functioned as Random House tech czar and runs a similar fund there, to head it.
Venture fund Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments will be used to invest in emerging technologies and companies, Sarnoff said.
In certain cases, BDMI could buy a startup outright, but most of the time, the investment will likely take the form of a minority stake. Company’s larger buys would be handled separately at the corporate level.
The media giant has set up a company in Luxembourg to execute and house BDMI’s investments. Sarnoff will remain based in Gotham, reporting to Bertelsmann chief financial officer Thomas Rabe.
Bertelsmann, the privately controlled multinational that is the fourth-largest media company in the world by revenue, also may invest in startup initiatives within the company.
Bertelsmann has major footholds in a number of media and entertainment businesses, notably book publishing in the U.S. and Europe (Random House), music around the world (Sony BMG), television in Europe (RTL) and magazines in Europe (Gruner & Jahr).
Sarnoff wasn’t specific about the projects in which the fund may invest but said investments are more likely to be in sectors where digital penetration has lagged, like print media and television, as opposed to music.
“It makes sense to invest at the beginning of the transformation rather than the end, because in many cases it’s too expensive at the end,” he told Daily Variety.
Read more (but beware, you just might get hit with THE most annoying ad ever - I know you want to click on it more than ever).
