Oh No, There Goes Google Video!
Google’s nineteen-month experiment in selling online video ends in a few days, as the company shuts down Google Video and all of the videos purchased from it by consumers.
Google Testing Privacy-Enhanced Ad Serving
New privacy practices announced by Google will get a workout in a test of third-party ad serving technology.
EFF Reminds AT&T What It Said The First Time
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent a reminder to AT&T (and the rest of us) that at one time the company resisted government pressure to spy on US citizens, and even publicized it.
Pharmacy.com Shooting For Business.com Money
A domain selling for hundreds of millions of dollars gets people’s attention. The sale of Business.com for $350 million most likely sent domainers into their files to see what they had available, if it’s going to be that kind of party. The sale has the owner(s) of pharmacy.com pretty excited, and the site is officially up for sale.
The sale of pharmacy.com is being brokered by FairWinds Partners, who inform us that this will be a private sale, rather than an auction, and that potential buyers like Walgreen’s and even Mark Cuban have been invited to bid.
FairWinds cites several recent multimillion dollar acquisitions, including wine.com, perfume.com, and diamonds.com. But as might be imagined, business.com was the icing on the cake, a web address FairWinds calls "less intuitive" for doing business.
And hence, as you might expect from one selling, that means its way more valuable. Is it a billion-dollar domain? They didn’t talk about targets, but they are touting $12 billion annual market for online pharmaceutical, health and beauty products. That, and the conversion rates among users that type addresses directly into the web-browser.
A Peek Into The Grayboxx
Well, it’s Friday afternoon, and that’s as good a time for vague rumors and reports as any. So we bring you news – somewhat figuratively speaking – of an up and-coming search company called Grayboxx.
Yahoo!Xtra Bubble Doesn’t Blow
“Yahoo!Xtra Bubble” – sounds like a kind of gum, doesn’t it? But it’s actually a new service that should soon become available to customers of Telecom New Zealand, and it’ll “offer a suite of premium services accessed through a personalised homepage – all at no extra cost.”
Perfect 10 Tries Again, This Time With MSN
Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said that lawsuits were just part of doing business today. According to Perfect 10 Magazine, lawsuits are the only things that will save them, and have added Microsoft as the most recent defendant.
Linkedin Calls Customer Delusional
It’s fun being called delusional by customer service. Today, LinkedIn is trying to make me feel like I’m in that Jodie Foster movie Flightplan where she claims her daughter was kidnapped while on an airplane and everyone else thinks she’s nuts. The movie wasn’t supposed to be very good (it scored 38% on the Tomatometer), and I’m not sure this blog post will be any better, but I can at least empathize with Foster’s character based on the previews.
Yahoo Executive Wins Innovation Award
Yahoo’s got some pretty bright people in its employ, and one of them – Dr. Usama Fayyad – has just been awarded the 2007 Innovation Award by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). And yes, that’s the same ACM that gives the Turing Award.
Firefox Needs To Go To School
Retention rates for usage of the Firefox browser have caused concern for the Mozilla Foundation. They’re brainstorming ways of improving that rate. We’ve got a suggestion for them.