by Jessica Hodgson, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Thursday that he believes it’s a “shame” that Yahoo had decreased its focus on Internet search, through its recently announced partnership with Microsoft.
by Julia Angwin, Editor, Digits, The Wall Street Journal
Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said Thursday evening that, for six years, he resisted the idea of building what became the Chrome browser and (soon) operating system, before succumbing to the enthusiasm of Google Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Larry Page should have been in a good mood. It was the fall of 2007, and Google’s cofounder was in the middle of a five-day tour of his company’s European operations in Zurich, London, Oxford, and Dublin. The trip had been fun, a chance to get a ground-floor look at Google’s ever-expanding empire.
The news that Google is placing ads on Google News has sent a renewed wave of hand-wringing through the newspaper industry. How dare those Googlers make online news a profitable business! Of course, Google is planning to keep most of that profit. Good on them!
Like Napoleon marching into an abandoned Moscow, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have led Google’s advance into traditional advertising only to find nothing to loot. Now begins Google’s long imperial retreat, starting with 40 layoffs. But the real cut here is to Google’s ambitions.
by Lise Buyer, Founder and Principal of the Class V Group
The numbers are startling; one technology IPO last quarter, only six in 2008. Is innovation dead? Did Google/Microsoft/Cisco consume all the promising start-ups? Did Sarbanes-Oxley render IPOs too hard and costly? Yes, if you believe columnist, conference and collective wisdom. They’re wrong.
Beta, as it pertains to Web sites, has seen better days. Not long ago, saying the word as part of your Web development cycle could help land venture capital even faster than claiming “community,” “paradigm shift” or “disruptive technology.” Now, the term is dissipated and confusing.
Is YouTube making Google a political player? The video-sharing site, with its stratospheric bandwidth bills and questionable new ad formats, may never pay Larry and Sergey back in cash for the $1.65 billion they shelled out to buy it in 2006. But it doesn’t have to. YouTube, having conquered online video, is taking over political broadcasting.
The Consumer Electronics Show is increasingly about media and content, so it’s no surprise that online advertising companies were setting up parties in the parking lot outside the Las Vegas Convention Center. AOL and Microsoft have white tents and Yahoo has a purple one. But the biggest search giant is missing. While Google is not attending CES as an official exhibitor this year, don’t be fooled. It may not have invested in its own booth (it did two years ago when co-founder Larry Page gave a keynote speech), but the company has brought an army of Googlers to Vegas and booked a number of hotel suites on the Strip to conduct its meetings.
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