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At Glasshouse event, Bebo's Michael Birch avoids AOL talk

SAN FRANCISCO--It's kind of cheating to showcase the dotcom scene by hosting an event featuring Bebo co-founder Michael Birch and Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster. An outsider, observing Buckmaster's interview of Birch on Monday night as part of the Glasshouse salon series on entrepreneurialism, would get the idea that Web 2.0's scions must all be tall, stylish, and exceptionally good-looking.

That outsider would also get the idea that Silicon Valley had the comic timing of Juno, as it was, for the most part, a witty and borderline tongue-and-cheek interview. Bebo's success, Birch said, was "was … Read more

Big week in Microsoft-Yahoo battle

This week is shaping up to be a big one in Microsoft's nearly 3-month-old effort to acquire Yahoo.

The software maker has set a Saturday deadline for Yahoo to come to the bargaining table or else face a proxy fight.

Coloring the state of things will be earnings reports from both Microsoft and Yahoo due this week. Yahoo reports Tuesday, while Microsoft is set to release quarterly numbers on Thursday.

Those reports are all the more significant in that Microsoft's bid (at least so far) is half stock. A good earnings report from Yahoo might put pressure on … Read more

Report: AOL lays off 100 from ad unit

Time Warner's AOL division began a 100-person layoff Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The cuts came from the Platform-A group formed last September to offer ad inventory on its own and third-party Web sites. It will cut its employee count to about 1,500, the newspaper said. It quoted an AOL representative who said some people held redundant jobs from the consolidation of several groups into the division.

Last month, AOL replaced Curt Viebranz as the president of AOL with Lynda Clarizio, who had led the Tacoda component Platform-A.

Google, AOL execs: Opting out of targeted ads OK by us

WASHINGTON--As advocacy groups bristle at online advertisers' increasingly sophisticated targeting techniques, top privacy lawyers at Google and AOL on Thursday backed "opt-out" technology as a way to give Internet surfers more say in the process--although they admitted it's far from perfect.

At the moment, a group called the Network Advertising Initiative allows Internet surfers to say no to targeted ads from more than a dozen major Web ad networks, including Google's DoubleClick, Yahoo and its Blue Lithium subsidiary, Microsoft's Atlas advertising unit, and AOL-owned Advertising.com and Tacoda. The system works by placing a cookie--a … Read more

Google will derail the Microsoft-Yahoo deal

Over the past few months, we've been inundated with constant stories about the future of Yahoo. Will it be gobbled up Microsoft? Will Yahoo get away? For quite a while, no one was quite sure. But after seeing what's going on with Google and the deal it may soon strike with Yahoo, the writing could be on the wall.

Last week, Yahoo announced that it had formed a temporary deal with Google that involved the company outsourcing its search ads to Google. At that time, the online firm said that it would give it a two-week trial period to see how it worked and make a decision after that time.

But after foregoing that two-week stipulation and deciding instead to try to form a deal now, Yahoo seems anxious and more willing than ever to sell itself to any other company but Microsoft.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo and Google are closer than ever to forming a deal that would see Yahoo increase its revenue by as much as $1 billion per year and throw a wrench into Microsoft's plans post-acquisition.

And while the Journal is reporting that the Yahoo-Google deal may have a stipulation in it that says it can be dissolved if Microsoft acquires the company, I'm not so quick to believe that any deal between the company won't put the hooks in Microsoft.

And if you ask me, when the deal is reached, Microsoft will be forced to back off.… Read more

Is there something wrong with Google's search ads?

Google's first-quarter earnings report, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, just got a lot more interesting.

Late Tuesday night, those Internet traffic trackers at ComScore put out some lousy news: growth in paid-search clicks in the United States is slowing down.

In fairness to Google, it did better than its competitors, according to a JPMorgan report issued Wednesday morning. (ComScore's paid-click numbers are not typically issued directly to public. We hear about them when Wall Street analysts issue their own reports on the data.)

Paid-search clicks at Google were up 2.7 percent in March, compared to the same month … Read more

Study: Google extends search lead over rivals

Google gained market share in the United States over search rivals in March, rising 0.53 percentage points to an all-time high of 59.8 percent, according to new ComScore results released Tuesday.

"We were somewhat surprised at the March uptick, especially since the company had previously alluded that the unusual Easter timing could impact search activity," said Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney in a report Tuesday that quoted the ComScore numbers.

Yahoo, meanwhile, slipped 0.3 percentage points to 21.3 percent, and Microsoft dropped 0.2 percentage points to 9.4 percent--both figures are record lows for … Read more

AOL acquires Sphere for content, ad networks

Time Warner's AOL has acquired Sphere, a start-up whose technology beefs up Web pages with links to articles, blog posts, and other related content, the company said Monday night.

Sphere will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, the company said in a statement, part of the programming division led by Executive Vice President Bill Wilson. AOL--along with Newsweek, Time, Reuters, GigaOM, The Wall Street Journal, and other sites--already was a Sphere partner.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

The acquisition will help AOL provide readers with relevant content and distribute AOL content across Sphere's publisher … Read more

Looks like some Yahooers prefer Microsoft to AOL

D: All Things Digital's Kara Swisher has a nice insidery account of a meeting various Yahoo executives apparently had Thursday with Chief Executive Jerry Yang. The upshot: they (and various other Yahoo employees she said she spoke to) have mixed feelings about being subsumed by Microsoft but recoil at the prospect of acquiring AOL.

The employees she surveyed think Time Warner's AOL is "slow-moving, weak in technology, and saddled with a largely dispirited staff," Swisher said. (Unsurprisingly, that assessment is the polar opposite of that from AOL CEO Randy Falco, who pondered AOL's appeal to others … Read more

AOL CEO addresses troops, but not Yahoo

CNET News.com's Jim Kerstetter contributed to this blog.

In a memo apparently intended to ease the nerves of AOL employees, Chief Executive Randy Falco broadly outlined the Time Warner business unit's position in the marketplace without directly addressing the elephant in the room: Yahoo.

In recent days, reports have resurfaced that Yahoo is either in partnership or merger talks with the struggling Time Warner unit. But in his memo sent out to employees, Falco never actually addresses Yahoo, Microsoft, or the machinations reported in recent days.

Instead, he talks about AOL's current standing in advertising, publishing, … Read more

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