Over at TechCrunch, Michael Arrington has a post announcing that his company is suing Facebook for $25 million for allowing "advertisers to post ads using my picture and name to endorse their products without my explicit permission."
ValueClick Settles With FTC For $2.9 Million
Online advertiser ValueClick, Inc. will pay a record $2.9 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its advertising claims and emails were deceptive and violated federal law.The agency also charged that ValueClick and its subsidiaries, Hi-Speed Media and E-Babylon did not secure consumer’s sensitive financial information, even though they claimed to do so.
AOL’s 850 Million Purchase
In the last couple of days one of the biggest stories has been the purchase of Social Network Giant, Bebo by AOL. With approximately 5% search market share and being one of the most visited sites on the planet, can Bebo really help make a difference to a search property which is been fairly average for the last few years? Here’s some coverage of the Bebo purchase around the Internet:
EU: Quaero Can Receive $152 Million
Over time, references to Quaero have become less and less frequent; it seemed that the French search project was more likely to fade from existence than challenge Google. The European Commission has approved $152 million in state aid, however, so Mountain View might not want to forget about it.
Street View Competitor Gaining Strength, $7 Million
When people talk about Google Street View, the conversations tend to focus on either privacy or its undeniable "neat" factor. Thanks to Google’s success in other areas, profitability just doesn’t come up. But EveryScape has built its business around similar virtual tours, and the company just raised $7 million in funding.
In-Game Ads To Reach $650 Million
The U.S. in-game advertising spending will increase from $295 million in 2007 to $650 million in 2012 according to projections from eMarketer.Video game software and hardware sales will increase to $21 billion in 2012, up from $15.8 billion in 2007. "At a time when other sectors of the digital entertainment industry are struggling with lagging sales and rampant piracy, the US video game business is booming," says Paul Verna, eMarketer Senior Analyst.
Mixx Consumes $2 Million In Funding
The economy isn’t too strong right now; a lot of people are more or less sitting on their money. But this fact makes it all the more impressive that Mixx, a social news site, has received $2 million in funding.
500 Million Downloads For Firefox
Mozilla reached a milestone recently as Firefox hit 500 million downloads. If that were people, that’d be about a twelfth of the earth, or about eight percent of everybody.
Dell Makes $155 Million Acquisition Of MessageOne
At first glance, the random acquisition of an email services company doesn’t sound all that intriguing. But Dell spent $155 million for MessageOne, so it’s pretty noteworthy from a business perspective. And to make matters even more interesting, MessageOne’s cofounder is the brother of Michael Dell.
Yahoo Eyes Maven Networks For $160 (Or So) Million
We know, we know: the big news today is Microsoft’s bid to take over Yahoo. But believe it or not, there are other things going on in the world, and one of them is Yahoo’s acquisition of Maven Networks.