"The telcos have lost control of the device. When you start building genuinely agnostic services, when you don't know the target device, it requires a different form creativity," he said. It's a move from closed networks to more open software platforms, and part of BT's transformation from a telco to a platform-based, software-driven services company. "Everything we do at BT is embeddable as workflow for customers. Voice is a feature embedded in … Read more
If you weren't aware, a war--more like a tug-of-war--is happening in the mobile space. The iPhone is quickly rising as the development platform to beat, despite its paltry share of market versus Nokia (Symbian), Java BREW, Blackberry and Microsoft Mobile. In addition, Google's fledgling open-source Android platform is also a challenger to the incumbents.
At a Mobile Web Wars Roundtable held by TechCrunch more than 20 mobile wonks discussed that state of mobile platforms (see the list of participants below). The purpose of the roundtable was to determine which mobile platform is best for developers. The iPhone has … Read more
On this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet Editor in Chief Larry Dignan and I discuss the news of the week. It was a big week for Microsoft, with several announcements and teases from its meeting in Seattle with financial analysts. Steve Ballmer is still bullish on the online space, but not on Yahoo. We also talk about Kevin Johnson's departure from Microsoft. (See coverage on the Microsoft financial analyst meeting from Ina Fried and Mary Jo Foley.)
We spend a few minutes debating the impact of Carl Icahn joining the Yahoo board and what it means for Jerry … Read more
This week, Facebook took a number of strategic steps toward its goal of giving people the "power to share and make the world more open and connected." That's how founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the mission statement for Facebook.
With that mission statement, similar to Google's mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," Facebook is highlighting its noble aspirations, but underneath the "make the world a better place" is the fact that both Facebook and Google, as well as Yahoo, Microsoft, MySpace, and others … Read more
Carl Icahn has apparently decided that his 4.98 percent stake in Yahoo common stock is safe in the hands of Yahoo's current eight-member board, which has fought him for control of the company over the last several months. Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang lives to fight another day.
Icahn and two other board nominees of his choice will round out the board, keeping current Chairman Roy Bostock and Yang in place. Icahn had proposed a complete board replacement, with Lucian A. Bebchuk, Frank J. Biondi Jr., John H. Chapple, Mark Cuban, Adam Dell, Keith A. Meister, Edward … Read more
We are continuing our summer preview of the new CNET with revamped News and Downloads pages in addition to the redesigned Reviews and CNET.com home page introduced last month.
As with our first beta test, a small percent of random visitors to CNET sites will be presented with the new pages. We've had a lot of feedback (please keep it coming!), and we'll continue to make changes are we gather more info and head toward the official launch later this summer.
See also: CNET's new, improved look
On June 27, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said he didn't think that his company and Yahoo would make a deal, adding that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will find "plenty of other opportunities.
Not so fast. As Yahoo's quarterly earnings come up on July 22 (see Kara Swisher's take on the upcoming financial results) and the shareholder meeting on August 1, Carl Icahn and Steve Ballmer are teaming up to remake Yahoo's board of directors and shelve Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang. In a letter to Yahoo shareholders, Icahn said:
Steve (Ballmer) made it clear to me … Read moreOn this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss this week's big stories. It was a busy week on the search front. Adobe is providing Google and Yahoo with Flash Player technology that allows their search engine crawlers to find and index SWF content, including Flash "gadgets" such as buttons or menus and self-contained Flash Web sites. It's good to make more information accessible via search engines. However, Microsoft has been silent on whether Live Search would index Flash content.
In addition, Microsoft bought Powerset for about $100 million to enhance … Read more
As expected (see previous reports), Microsoft scooped up Powerset to buttress its search efforts.
It's not a replacement for increasing market share by acquiring Yahoo Search, but it gives Microsoft some differentiated search technology and top engineers for less than $100 million. Ramez Naam, group program manager of Live Search, said the Powersoft negotiations happened in parallel with the Yahoo talks over the last few months. Google and Yahoo may also have been interested in Powerset, but no one is talking.
Whether Microsoft can leapfrog Google over the long term with this semantic engine remains to be seen.
Powerset … Read more
A few weeks ago I talked with Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook, about the challenge of innovating quickly and building stable infrastructure while 250,000 new members are added to the social network every day. Check out the video on ZDNet.
Q: You've been at Facebook, I think, for about a year and it's been quite a ride I guess, scaling up from zero in 2004 to over 80 million today. How do you keep up with that hyper growth? Heiliger: You're absolutely right--we've had a lot of growth. We add over … Read more
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