Earlier than usual, cause.... It's a long weekend? (There will still be at least 3 new stories each day on Saturday, Sunday, and Labor Day).
by Karl Greenberg 
by Laurie Sullivan Microsoft Buys Commercial Search Site
Financial Times
Microsoft Corp. on Friday agreed to buy Greenfield Online for $486 million. Greenfield is the parent company of Ciao, an online price comparison and products reviews site, which was believed to be Microsoft's main target in the deal.
Greenfield had only just terminated takeover negotiations with the Quadrangle Group earlier in the week before Microsoft was revealed as the new buyer. The software giant's offer is worth $17.50 per share, according to the Financial Times, representing a pretty small premium over the group's closing share price on Thursday. Microsoft has already agreed to sell Greenfield's online research business, although neither the price nor the purchaser has been revealed.
The move for European-based Ciao definitely resonates with Microsoft's recent attempt to bribe U.S. search users through its Live Search Cashback program. John Mangelaars, Microsoft's vice president for consumer and online in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said Ciao would improve the commercial search experience and add around 100 developers to its European operations. Ciao has 26m users, according to Comscore. - Read the whole story...
Wikileaks To The Highest Bidder
Ars Technica
The initial idea behind Wikileaks was to publish secretive documents from "oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East," but the reality has been exposing Swiss banks, Mormons and Scientologists. However, now that the site has started selling secrets at auction, the bigger fish are swimming closer to the harbor. Apparently, a senior official inside Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's administration has some dirt for sale.
But the documents aren't really for sale, per se. Whoever wins the right to the information will only have a set period of time to make use of it before it becomes public. In this case, the leak in question is a series of emails from a senior aide to Chavez, which may or may not contain incriminating information.
This is how Wikileaks plans to make money. It hopes to attract big time news outlets with deep pockets and resources, and that the exclusivity arrangement will encourage them to outbid each other. However, Ars Technica's Nate Anderson notes that, "Buying this kind of information is generally frowned upon in reputable news circles, as it can encourage both forgery and lawbreaking in an effort to attract cash. It also turns secrets into just another form of currency, something that might seem at odds with the high-minded ideals behind Wikileaks." - Read the whole story...
250 GB Is A Lot, Actually
Silicon Alley Insider
So Comcast went and imposed a 250-gigabyte monthly cap on its users. As Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer points out, that's actually a heck of a lot -- certainly a way better deal than Time Warner Cable's 5-40 gigabyte monthly caps.
In its announcement, Comcast noted that the median monthly data usage by residential customers is only about 2-3 GB, so practically nobody is going to be affected by the enormous cap. In fact, Broadband Reports says that just 14,000 of Comcast's 14.1 million broadband subscribers go over that limit in a month. Given SAI's report, we'd love to know what those people are up to.
So, just how much is 250 GB? According to Frommer, it's 2,500-4,000 MP3 albums, or 50,000 3-minute songs, 170-250 movies downloaded on iTunes, and 50-60 high-def movie downloads. Frommer notes that the latter could be a problem some day, but generally speaking, if you download one HD movie, six standard-def movies, 5 albums, and pour lots of hours into World of Warcraft, YouTube and Hulu each week, you're still probably going to max out somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 gigabytes per month. As Frommer says, "We think you'll also struggle to listen to all that music and watch all those movies. Also, you should get out more. It's nice outside! Go for a walk." - Read the whole story...
Bloggers, Twitterers, Respond To Obama's Speech
Wired
The Web blogged and tweeted away as Barack Obama on Thursday accepted the nomination for President at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last night. "It was a deeply substantive speech, full of policy detail, full of people other than the candidate, centered overwhelmingly on domestic economic anxiety," wrote The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, a Republican and an Obama admirer. "What he didn't do was give an airy, abstract, dreamy confection of rhetoric. If the Rove Republicans thought they were playing with a patsy, they just got a reality check."
Meanwhile, on the microblogging service Twitter, traffic surged. This wasn't surprising, given that Obama is the most popular person on Twitter -- it was perhaps more surprising that the failure-prone site stayed live during his speech. According to Wired, more than 6,500 tweets poured through the service in just 20 minutes on Thursday night. "It's hard to imagine there are people in this country that can not at least feel inspired by Obama even if they do not plan to vote for him," wrote one Twitter user.
Not everyone was impressed. Megan McArdle, a colleague of Sullivan's at The Atlantic, blasted Obama's promise to end energy dependence on oil from the Middle East. "It doesn't matter what we do: drill, research alternative energy, raise CAFE standards ... in 2018, we'll still be using oil," McArdle wrote on her blog Asymmetrical Information. "Even if we discovered a magic source of clean renewable energy tomorrow, we'd still be using a lot of oil, because transitions of that magnitude take time." - Read the whole story...
Google, Mozilla Ink Deal Extension
WebproNews
Google and Mozilla have added another three years to their search partnership, meaning Google will still be the default search engine for Mozilla's Firefox browser, and Mozilla will continue to earn a significant portion of its overall revenue from the deal.
Doug Caverly digs up the most recent figures that illustrate just how important Google's search revenue is for Mozilla's bottom line. In 2006, "Mozilla received about $56.8 million--or 85 percent of its revenue--thanks to the deal," he says. Numbers like that are what enable Mozilla to keep developing products like the Firefox browser, which has gained favor with nearly 20% of all Internet users in the U.S., according to some reports.
And while the deal extension gives Mozilla bit of breathing room to either launch its own revenue-generating product (as Firefox is free) or find another well-paying partner, it will likely serve as more fodder for critics who feel that the company's ties to Google are already too binding. - Read the whole story...
Google Introduces Android Market
Silicon Alley Insider
- Read the whole story...
Is Silicon Valley Running Out Of Ideas?
The New York Times
- Read the whole story...
Social Media For Small Business Owners
The Wall Street Journal
- Read the whole story...
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