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Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Yahoo-Microsoft Regulatory Filings Start This Week: Let the Legal Game-Playing Begin!

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After all the investor hubbub over the oh-no-they-didn’t deal between Yahoo and Microsoft starts to die down a bit, the pair are now embarking on the path that is the only way toward proving the efficacy of them joining together.

That would be getting a variety of state, federal and international regulators to say yes to the wide-ranging online advertising and search arrangement they announced last week so they can start making it work.

According to sources at both companies, a variety of filings will be made this week, including one to the Securities and Exchange Commission that should provide more details of the partnership.

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Thursday, July 2, 2009

NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker: The Full D7 Interview

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Jeff Zucker runs one of the world’s leading media and entertainment content companies, which is also being caught in the throes of a major shift, due to the impact of the Internet over the last decade.

In this onstage interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Zucker talks about the state of the television business; the changing advertising market; the impact of Hulu, an online premium video joint venture NBC launched with News Corp.; and precisely what he meant when he said that the Web was turning “analog dollars into digital pennies.”

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

In Case You Missed It, Here’s the Print Version of D7, Um, Online!

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Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal did a special Technology Report section, made up of excerpts of selected interviews from the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, including Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ringing in Bing and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz looking for the primo opportunity to curse at BoomTown.

Here are the online links to the transcripts, as well as video highlights.

We’ll be posting the full video of all the sessions on this site soon.

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Monday, May 4, 2009

Welcome to Lucky D7: Still Gambling on the Digital Future

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Incredibly, this is the seventh year of the D: All Things Digital conference.

We feel very lucky to get here, especially in the midst of what our own site’s Digital Daily scribe, John Paczkowski, has so perfectly dubbed the “econalypse.”

Ironically, Walt Mossberg and I planned to launch the very first conference in the middle of the last major downturn for tech, in 2001. But, in the carnage of the Web 1.0 meltdown, we actually held off for two years, with our first D gathering taking place in 2003.

Well, we’re still going–making the same long-term bet that the digital revolution will keep rolling as we did at D1. Here’s our lineup for D7.

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Saturday, December 13, 2008

Ex-Yahoos Weigh In on Their Choices for New Yahoo CEO

With so many more ex-Yahoos out there now, BoomTown put out feelers to a range of them to ask whom they would like to run the company they no longer work for. After all, who better than to pick a new CEO than an ex? The response was swift and varied wildly, depending on which way the ex-Yahoo felt the company should go, from a basic turnaround expert to–drum roll, please–his digital Holiness, Steve Jobs of Apple. No kidding.

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Zucker: Apple of His Eye?

When last we checked in with NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, he was merrily trashing Steve Jobs and Apple.
What a difference a three-month-long writers’ strike in Hollywood makes.
Yesterday, in an interview in the Financial Times, Zucker said: “We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with [...]

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Hollywood Doesn’t Get It, Part 3,553

Doug Morris is still a very, very grumpy man about the digital arena.

We did not think it could get worse than NBC honcho Jeff Zucker (pictured here), who demanded a vig for every iPod sold because “Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of [...]

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Thursday, November 8, 2007

Hollywood Hoo-Ha, Part 2,478

What, oh what, can we say about the latest inane quote from yet another Hollywood mogul about Apple’s Steve Jobs and his hugely popular iTunes and iPod products.
The latest piece of hoo-ha comes from former Disney CEO Michael Eisner (pictured below), pointing a finger at Apple as the real villain in the ongoing strike between [...]

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Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Striking Out on Creating an Internet Hit

So when, if ever, will there be a truly bona fide Internet hit?
And please, pretty please, it just can’t be “lonelygirl15″ (pictured below) and some clever music videos.

The lack of lasting and profitable professional content online is once again in sharp relief with the writers’ strike now taking place in Hollywood.
In a Wall Street Journal [...]

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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

NBCU’s Jeff Zucker Turns Lemonade Into Lemons

Just as NBC Universal’s Hulu online video-sharing site debuted yesterday to decent reviews, including by BoomTown here, its CEO Jeff Zucker managed to fall all over himself to diss the digital media business.

Hooray for Hollywood!
In an interview with writer (and BoomTown friend!) Ken Auletta at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, the voluble Zucker (pictured here) [...]

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Friday, June 29, 2007

NBC-News Corp. NewCo. Has No Name, but CEO Now Has One

So yesterday in a very short post, I said the $1 billion valuation that NBC Universal and News Corp. were reportedly putting on its online video joint venture was, shall we say, premature.
Here’s why: No users, no track record and no revelations about what it is actually going to look like. Also no firm launch [...]

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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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