Nicholas Carlson

German officials have become the latest to raise privacy concerns over the pending merger between online advertising companies Google and DoubleClick. In an open letter to European Union regulators today, Thilo Weichert, commissioner of the national center for data security in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein (Landeszentrum für Datenschutz Schleswig-Holstein), questioned whether the proposed Google-DoubleClick […]

Who’s fitter, happier, more productive now? Next week, British rock group Radiohead will release its new album, In Rainbows. And so far, the group has said on the album’s Web site that it will be available only through download from Radiohead.com. And if that’s not enough to cause a stir in the music industry, users […]

Yahoo isn’t giving up on search. It is, however, giving up on trying to catch Google by offering users just another set of “ten blue links,” Vish Makhijani, general manager of Yahoo! Search told InternetNews.com. To that end, Yahoo today re-launched its search, replete with special features designed to improve the experience and better enable […]

Text messages sponsored by Google ads? That scenario, and others like it, look increasingly likely after Google today announced it acquired Zingku’s mobile messaging and social networking service. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Zingku’s service enables mobile users to establish groups of contacts and share text and picture messages with them, as […]

Maybe you only think you’re an influencer, blogger Bob. At Yahoo’s Passionista summit, held at the Time Life building in New York last Wednesday, Ed Keller took the stage to tell the crowd that the secret to good marketing is getting to a group he and many others call the “influentials.” In fact, Keller is […]

These days, short-form videos of the kind found on Google’s YouTube are considered crucial in promoting network TV shows. The problem for television networks is that once content hits YouTube and other third-party sites, it’s no longer under network control. Today, CBS offered a solution to the problem, calling it EyeLab. It’s a Web-based editing […]

Lawyers from Google and Microsoft sparred in Congress today as the Senate Judiciary committee looked into antitrust concerns raised by Google’s proposed $3.1 billion DoubleClick acquisition. Seeking to derail the purchase of the online ad firm, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith said in prepared oral testimony that if the government allowed the “GoogleClick” merger, “It […]

If Internet-based video is the wave of the future, many of us are already drenched with options including such as YouTube, Joost and Apple’s iTunes. But today, Microsoft is making a play to have its own video download service added to the mix. During his keynote speech at the DigitalLife show here in New York, […]

There’s a new way to fill up your iPod — but the latest music store to open on the Web isn’t from Apple. It’s from Amazon. Open to public beta today, the online retailer’s new Amazon MP3 music store features what the company characteristically calls “Earth’s biggest selection” — over 2 million songs from more […]

Microsoft’s reported interest in taking a minority stake in Facebook remains just so: reported. Maybe Microsoft wants to make sure it’s not investing in damaged goods before going official. Yesterday, New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced his office is investigating Facebook after discovering “significant” defects in the site’s safety controls and the company’s response […]

Thanks to advertisers, mobile users hitting sites such as IGN, FOXSports, AskMen, RottenTomatoes.com and that social network MySpace will be able to do so for free. As part of a deal with Millennial Media, Fox Interactive Media (FIM) will both sell and serve mobile-based ads, according to a statement. Formats will include custom sponsorship packages […]

Now Google and AOL have the numbers they need to get marketers to move their ad spend from television to new Web video advertising formats. According to a study commissioned by the two companies and conducted by market insight and information group TNS, 75 percent of respondents in a recent online survey said they watched […]