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Buzz Out Loud 682: The murder of CableCard

EPISODE 682

Web creator rejects net tracking http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7299875.stm

BT confesses lies over secret Phorm experiments http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/17/bt_phorm_lies/

Yahoo Buzz is a game-changer for social media http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ yahoo_buzz_is_a_game_changer.php

Google says Microsoft’s Yahoo buy might hurt Internet http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/ idUSPEK15292020080317

Flickr Video beta due in April http://www.news.com/8301-13953_3-9895044-80.html

Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/ 20080317-firefox-3-goes-on-a-diet-eats-less-memory-than-ie-and-opera.html

LimeWire digital music … Read more

Google: We didn't help the NSA (or did we?)

Google is now the first of the major search engines and e-mail providers to make a firm statement on the issue of the National Security Agency's wholesale surveillance of Internet content.

Google has stated it didn't help the NSA search your e-mails. More specifically the company denies participating in the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program. But the company's carefully worded denial might not be enough to reassure savvy readers.

The Wall Street Journal recently revealed the true extent of the NSA's surveillance system:

"According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors … Read more

Schmidt: Microhoo would hurt the Net

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Google doesn't want Microsoft to acquire Yahoo.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Beijing, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that his company "would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft," according to a Reuters story published Monday.

Without citing specifics, Schmidt said his observation is based the "things that (Microsoft) has done that have been so difficult for everyone."

He added: "We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the Internet, but I … Read more

Use Google Docs to share, manage your NCAA basketball pool

For the next three weeks, office workers across the country will have visions of buzzer-beaters dancing in their heads.

It's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament time, and that means brackets will be zipping through e-mail systems in organizations large and small. There are dozens of sites that let you make your tournament choices online, whether to test your basketball-prediction acumen against the masses, or to recruit friends and coworkers in a private pool.

You can even use Google's Basketball Bracket Battle gadget to place your choices on your iGoogle page. After you select the "Create a bracket … Read more

Open source is in our DNA, argues Yahoo! exec

I once took Jeremy Zawodny, technical director at Yahoo!, to task for not contributing enough back to open source. Today, Zawodny made it clear that openness and open source are in Yahoo!'s DNA. It is a trend that started long ago, Zawodny writes, and will only accelerate over time:

We've been on the openness road for a long, long time at Yahoo. And we take it rather seriously. Some times it hasn't been as visible as others, but believe me, the trend is quite clear when you look at all the data. The Open Source adoption and work. The APIs. The way we communicate with users and partners. The Blogs. The RSS feeds....… Read more

Revisiting Apple's iPhone strategy

In the post I wrote about Rich Miner of Google saying that the Android mobile software stack will gain more users than the iPhone, several people commented. The general consensus is that Apple is the BMW of the personal computer industry and is the standard for innovation that its competitors, with far more market share, follow. Android is a non-factor.

The challenge for Apple is to keep coming up with proprietary products that fuel its business model, which is based on innovation and R&D around both hardware and software. Since Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company has … Read more

Google to competitors: I drink your milkshake

Henry Blodget, a Wall Street analyst during the dot-com heyday who now runs Silicon Alley Insider, published a report Friday that examines Google's advertising growth in 2007 against those of 17 online and traditional media rivals, including Yahoo, Microsoft, Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, CBS, and Clear Channel.

Specifically, Blodget's analysis, which was drawn from company press releases, showed that Google is drinking everyone else's milkshake.

From the story:

"The year-over-year growth of revenue (in 2007) on Google.com (U.S.)--approximately $2 billion--was more than twice as much the growth of ad revenue in all of … Read more

Open Season Episode 13: Advice on open source that you can actually use

For this week's Open Season we had the always enjoyable and fully bearded Michael Cote from Red Monk joining the illustrious team of myself, Matt Asay and Ashlee Vance.

This time we actually focused and talked about things that are important, including why you still can't trust Microsoft, why Google is inevitably evil and why the Sarah Lacy SXSW meltdown didn't seem that bad when watched online.

Rock on.

Open Season: Episode 13

Rejecting a looming online advertising monopoly

Sometimes disruption can be taken too far. Unfortunately, it often is as a company grows and looks to adjacent markets to grow further. Such is the case with Google and its recent entry into the ad-management market. TechCrunch rightly opines:

It's yet another example of Google knowing no bounds in its quest to know everything about every person and site.

This is good and provides customer value...to a point. But it's starting to sound an awful lot like Microsoft's voracious appetite on the desktop.

Why should publishers care? Because it makes Google their biggest competitor and stifles competition, as open-source ad-serving company OpenX notes:… Read more