Internet & Media

Time Warner is not interested in a bidding war for NBC Universal, according to Jeff Bewkes, CEO of the media conglomerate.

Bewkes, who was being interviewed Friday for The Atlantic's First Draft of History conference at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., said big media mergers hardly ever work.

"Some deals work in media, but most have not," he added. "Over the past 10 to 15 years, there is a very low percentage of deals that have delivered what they would deliver, in terms of return on investment."

After the interview, which was streamed live … Read more

Update 3 p.m. PT: To include an updated comment from Google.

Google said on Friday that an error caused the search engine to remove The Pirate Bay from its search pages.

"Google received a (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down request that erroneously listed Thepiratebay.org, and as a result, this URL was accidentally removed from the Google search index," Google said in a statement. "We are now correcting the removal, and you can expect to see Thepiratebay.org back in Google search results this afternoon."

Later, Google updated it's statement: "The removal appears … Read more

Cable giant Comcast is reportedly in talks to gain a controlling stake in General Electric's NBC Universal, in a deal that would help shape Comcast's online-content strategy and help NBC Universal keep pace amid the shifting market.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Comcast is hoping to form a privately held joint venture that would include NBC's media content. Comcast would control the venture with a 51 percent stake, and GE would own 49 percent of the new company.

Combined, the new jointly owned media company would own more than two dozen TV networks, including NBC, … Read more

Apple's iPhone and Android-based smartphones have both seen solid growth throughout the world this year, says a report released Wednesday by AdMob.

The iPhone's worldwide market share jumped from 33 percent to 40 percent over February to August, according to AdMob's "August Mobile Metrics Report," which tracked smartphone usage for that six-month period. AdMob, which serves ads for mobile Web sites and apps, bases its numbers on data from ad requests, impressions, and clicks.

Phones running Google's Android OS picked up a 7 percent market share by August versus only 2 percent in February, … Read more

LONDON--Could Twitter Labs prevent drunken tweets like Google Labs hinders drunken e-mails? Here's hoping.

Britt Selvitelle, Twitter's user experience and front end engineering lead, said here Friday that the company will soon launch Twitter Labs. The service will let developers create add-ons and other functions for the microblogging site. Of course, developers can already do this with Twitter's API, but this will make Twitter a formal participant in the process.

Selvitelle announced the project at the Future of Web Apps conference in London. He did not offer many details, but it sounds similar in function to Google … Read more

This weekend, starting Friday at 10:30 a.m. PDT, Hulu will be live-streaming the Austin City Limits music festival. Hulu will be using its Watch Now application on Facebook, which has a live events box integrated so that users can discuss the concert as they watch.

You can see the schedule of acts on the Facebook application page for the live-stream. Unfortunately, the stream features only a fraction of the acts that are playing the festival. In fact, some of the biggest acts, including Kings of Leon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dave Matthews Band, and Pearl Jam are missing from … Read more

Fujitsu and Toshiba announced on Thursday that they have completed the transfer of Fujitsu's hard-drive business to Toshiba.

First announced in February, the agreement moves Fujitsu's former hard-drive business into a new Toshiba subsidiary company called Toshiba Storage Device Corp., or TSDC.

To ease the transfer, Toshiba will initially own 80 percent of TSDC, with the remaining 20 percent owned by Fujitsu. By December of 2010, Fujitsu will give up its entire share, making TSDC a wholly owned Toshiba subsidiary.

The conclusion of the deal had been postponed because of delays in obtaining regulatory approval from the European … Read more

We get it, Tim Armstrong. We know the still relatively new AOL CEO is all about reinventing the once-mighty online access company into a digital publishing powerhouse. But that didn't stop him from really hammering the point home at The Atlantic's First Draft of History conference on Thursday morning.

"What is the future of the company?" Armstrong, who previously served as a high-profile sales executive at Google, said in his talk, which was streamed live online. "If I had to describe it in one word, I think it's content, and I think it's … Read more

Sometimes, it's hard to resist the relentless pressure of bloggers.

They make jokes about you. They spawn commenters who make even more jokes about you. Until you finally decide that your are the serf and the bloggerati and commenterati are your whip-wielding masters.

So it has proved for the dedicated and passionately committed staff of the Wisconsin Tourism Federation. Since this Web thing has spread around the world like swine flu, more and more witty folks have made japes about the WTF being, well, you know, I mean, WTF!!!!

So, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the organization sat … Read more