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Content Tagged with asides + Google
Changing Internet and Privacy Erosion
God, how I miss Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems co-founder & former CEO, and his off-the-cuff but often prescient quotes. Back in 1999, much to the chagrin of privacy advocates, he quipped, “You have zero privacy anyway… Get over it.” Recent developments only give credence to his flippant observation from almost a decade ago.
- There is legislation in front of the Senate that will pretty much require payment systems to report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government. This is going to impact eBay, Amazon and Google, along with credit card companies. The requirement is buried in Senator Christopher Dodd’s 630-page Senate housing legislation
- The U.S. Congress has worked out a deal that gives phone companies immunity from participating in warrantless eavesdropping.
- Sweden recently passed a new law that allowed the Swedish government to eavesdrop on Internet traffic as it sees fit.
- France is banning illegal Internet downloaders, according to Times UK Online, following some other bans.
Most Online Videos Are 3-Day Wonders
The 10 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube could be a problem for Google’s infrastructure. Video files are fat and people don’t want to wait long once they press play, which means keeping them requires a trade-off between fast access and cheap storage. A range of companies are trying to address these sorts of storage problems through compression, caching and even Flash memory in the data center.
But since you can’t cache everything, the recent study from Tubemogul, which shows that online videos get the most views in the first three days (with the peak demand occurring on Day Three), can help set caching policies. Dropping a video from the cache after 11 days would mean only half of the video’s viewers would be tormented with a slightly slower upload time.
Will Vertical Ad Networks Steal Market Share From All Purpose Ad Networks
Earlier today, Kayak, a travel industry search engine, announced that it’s going to launch its own advertising network. I have been skeptical of this company, more so after their merger with SideStep. (How are those revenues growing, fellas? They were $85 million last year on a transaction volume of $3.5 billion…weren’t they? Or did the slowing economy and struggling travel industry force this move of launching an ad network?)
Kayak is not the first company to announce such plans for ad networks that are as wide-ranging as health, glamour and technology. A substantial amount of attention and money has been attracted by startups chasing the ad verticals, and sometimes I feel like everyone has Glam envy.
The big question remains: Are these networks capable of making big money and tasting success? How will they stay relevant when large players such as Google continue to dominate, and at the same time march towards an ad exchange ecosystem that will obviate the need for ad verticals? Share your thoughts with the rest of us.
Feb. 21 Headlines: Google Launches Video AdSense
Microsoft-Yahoo Merger: Our Entire Coverage
- Dear Yahoo, I Pwn You. XO Microsoft. [GigaOM]
- Google Drives Microsoft’s Hostile Bid for Yahoo [GigaOM]
- Microsoft Offers to Buy Ailing Yahoo for $44.6 Billion [WebWorkerDaily]
- What Would Micro-Hoo Mean for Video? [NewTeeVee]
- WWD Debate: Microsoft Wants Yahoo, What do Web Workers Get? [WebWorkerDaily]
How High Can Apple Go? $600 a Share?
Bolstered by the news of upcoming movie rentals via iTunes, hot selling Macbooks and iPod Touches, Apple just blasted past the $200 a share. So where does it go next?
“There’s so much growth to look forward to for the iPhone,” said Stephen Coleman, chief investment officer at St. Louis-based Daedalus Capital LLC, which owns about $7 million of Apple shares. He projects the stock will hit $600 in 18 months. (via Bloomberg)
Seems like a case of too much egg nog! Or Not! This has been a good year for Apple believers - the stock is up a whopping 138%. In comparison, Google, the other stock market darling is up a mere 54%. But you already knew that!
What’s on GigaNET: Weekend Edition
Web Worker Shoot Out: Google Calendar vs 30Boxes: in a bit of a David vs. Goliath match, let’s set an appointment to pit these two calendar applications against each other and see who’s left standing. Continue reading.
Under the Hood of The Pirate Bay’s New Video Site: YouTube could get some unusual competition soon: The operators of infamous Swedish Torrent site The Pirate Bay have announced that they are going to start their own streaming video platform soon. No details, but we do a little digging and come up with some surprising findings. Continue reading.
Go Ahead Push The Red Button or don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good: Marketing guys like me are the worst for the development stage because we deal primarily in words and ideas. What I didn’t understand was the importance of allowing the initial push of development to happen. Continue Reading.
What’s on GigaNET
- Found+READ: Is it possible to recruit a co-founder?
- WebWorkerDaily: iGoogle vs Netvibes - a Web 2 showdown
- WebWorkerDaily: How to really benefit from social apps?
- NewTeeVee: American Idol is tops online as well.
- GigaOM Jobs: YouTube needs a Content Acquisition Associate
- GigaOm Jobs: Networked Insights needs a java developer
What’s on GigaNET
- NewTeeVee: Google goes slumming, doing TV ads now
- NewTeeVee: BitTorrent tests ad-supported content
- WebWorkerDaily: Prepare yourself for Bust 2.0, whenever it happens
- WebWorkerDaily: Sorry state of spam, and what you can do about it
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Google, finally shows its funny side
The world will get a chuckle out of Google’s April Fools prank, “TiSP.” But unless you’ve been following their plans with Earthlink to develop a citywide wifi program pretty closely, you might have missed the element of mockery.
You see, a competing plan proposed by San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano proposed building out a municipally owned network by laying fiber-optic cable alongside the city’s underground sewers.
Local columnist Matt Smith called Ammiano’s plan a “boondoggle” in this weeks San Francisco Weekly, though also complained that Gavin Newsom’s lack of political skill is what’s keeping Google from giving away “what amounts to free beer.”
Touche, Google. Touche.
Is Web 2.0 a time sink?
As web workers, most of us are steeped in Web 2.0 throughout our working day (never mind that we can’t agree on what “Web 2.0″ means). Many of us have embraced online applications from Google, Yahoo, and elsewhere to do the bulk of our work, and we rely on a mishmash of social media sites to stay in touch with our peers and build our extended networks. But this connectivity comes at a cost: the internet is filled with bright, shiny distractions. Though we think of the web as a massive productivity enhancer, for some people it’s also a great time sink. Continue Reading
Could filtering become a fiasco for YouTube?
YouTube’s defense against claims of copyright infringement has long been the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which clears service providers from liability related to material transmitted through their systems. But if Google were to implement copyright filters, proactively screening content before it’s posted to the site, would YouTube leave the safe harbor of DMCA? Continue Reading…
What’s on GigaNET
- WebWorkerDaily: 18 tips to trick out your Google Calendar
- NewTeeVee: Neokast: P2P: Streaming for Everyone?
- NewTeeVee: Viacom, Universal want viral love, or not
- NewTeeVee: Killing YouTube, one joint venture at a time. Right! It is actually good.
- GigaGamez: PS3, not exactly a Mercedes, Sony backtracks
- NewTeeVee: Apple TV, a game changer?
- GigaGamez: This video game thing, bigger than we thought.