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Monday, May 11, 2009

VC (and Twitter Investor) Fred Wilson to Speak at the Googleplex on Disruption: Help Him Write His Speech

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Well-known venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson will be at Google Wednesday to give a talk about “disruptive industries.”

The Googlers should be mighty interested, given that the object of their current annoyance and also desire, Twitter, is one of the hottest investments of late for Wilson’s Union Square Ventures.

Before Google execs try to hand over a big bag of money to Wilson to stop the microblogging madness, Wilson asked readers in a post to help him improve the talk.

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Thursday, December 4, 2008

BoomTown Decodes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s Memo on New Digital Guru, Qi Lu (So You Don’t Have To)

BoomTown strives to bring readers the very best in internal memo decoding, and this one is just too good to pass up.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent a short memo to employees this afternoon about finally hiring someone to head the software giant’s lackluster digital efforts.

That someone is former Yahoo tech star Qi Lu. He will become president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft, right after the new year.

Thus, let us try to read between the lines.

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Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Google Dumps Yahoo, Which Should Come as a Shock Only to Yahoo

When reports came out last week that Google and Yahoo were downsizing their controversial search advertising deal, I told a Yahoo exec I happened to be having dinner with that that it was the surest sign that the search giant was about to dump the long-suffering Internet portal.

The exec, who made the case that the deal was always tactical and not strategic, laughed. For all its problems, Yahoo has always been a straight-up player and such sneaky machinations are not its strong suit.

Google, not so much.

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Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Do Walk Away, Sergey (and Google) From the Yahoo Deal

Today comes news that jumping-on-prone California Attorney General Jerry Brown is thinking of climbing onto the federal government bandwagon heading right for the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., to stop the search giant’s online ad deal with Yahoo.

Brown joins big advertisers, newspapers and whatever mudslingers Microsoft can gather (and, let it be said, Microsoft can sling a lot of slimy mud).

While Google would by no means control a lot of Yahoo’s search ads, the fact that the pair together have an 80 percent share of the search market apparently frightens ordinary mortals.

Maybe it should.

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Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Liveblogging From the Google Chrome Launch: Hello, Sundar!

Okay, BoomTown is grudgingly going to liveblog this event at the Googleplex, as it might be mercifully short, given that Google is supposed to release its new Chrome browser at high noon, Pacific time.

Then again, this is Google, so you know they love to talk, because they are super-duper smart, I am told.

I will be posting video later, but thus far: A roomful of press in Building 43 at Google’s HQ in Mountain View. Tasty snacks as expected, but unusually caloric (many tiny pastries, heavy cream, very small amounts of fruit).

First up: Sundar Pichal, Chrome honcho!

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Sunday, June 22, 2008

They Grow Up So Quickly: New Central HQ for Facebook Coming Soon!

It looks like Facebook will definitely be moving from its funky multi-building setup in downtown Palo Alto, Ca. to a centralized campus in Silicon Valley, said several sources.

The high-profile social networking company–which has been undergoing a major managerial shift of late as it matures from its startup status to that of a more established Web player–has been growing quickly to almost 600 employees today from a couple hundred last year.

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About Kara

Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference.

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Ethics Statement

Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.

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