While in Washington, D.C., BoomTown can’t just visit the policy wonks from Internet companies, so I paid a visit to Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that works to promote privacy and protection online.
In other words, a professional–and much needed–thorn in the side of Facebook, Google and these days, MicroHoo.
Yahoo and Microsoft are poised to finally sign the definitive agreement that will govern the complex and far-reaching search and online advertising partnership they struck in late July, said sources close to the situation.
If all goes well, the various Microsoft and Yahoo execs–who have been ferreted away over the last weeks, busy dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s in the massive document–could even turn in the delayed deal homework to their bosses for signature by the end of the week.
Yesterday, BoomTown paid a visit to the Washington, D.C., office of Facebook to meet its reps in the nation’s capital.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the social networking site has a very small staff–for now, just a trio of on-the-young-side dudes–battening down the hatches from a funky office in a funky section of D.C., Dupont Circle, far from the tonier and lobbyist-rich K Street corridor.
Yesterday, BoomTown wrote about the status of the regulatory investigation for the Microsoft-Yahoo search and online advertising pact, which most expect to get approved.
One of the few vocal critics of the deal, though, is Jeffrey Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a public interest group, who lobbed MicroHoo some important questions.
Here are the answers.
Unlike the gripping back and forth of the fight over Yahoogle last year, the approval process for the search and online advertising partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo is chugging along slowly but surely as the Justice Department has deepened its investigation by reaching out to a broad range of publishers, advertisers, public interest groups and rivals for comment recently.
But, so far, there is still no significant external challenge to the MicroHoo deal, even from Google, the likeliest company to try to scuttle or, at the very least, slow down the deal.
In other words: Zzzzzzzzzzz…
MSN, Microsoft’s online portal, released a beta version of a service to let users manage their health information on the Web.
Called My Health Info, the Microsoft offering, which includes a range of widgets and other Web tools, wades into an area that many are attempting to crack, including Google.
A new survey that should surprise only the people behind the Beacon debacle shows that a majority of Americans of all ages don’t like being tracked online by advertisers.
In related stating-the-obvious news, Americans also find Jon and Kate Gosselin super-annoying.
This morning, BoomTown was on the very terrific National Public Radio talk show, “On Point,” along with Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain.
The program, moderated by Tom Ashbrook on Boston’s WBUR station, was titled “From Desktop to the Digital Cloud” and dealt with the increasing move of data of all kinds online and into the so-called “cloud.”
In other words, eventually, a completely virtual life for music, photos, records and more, and the end of packaged software.
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.
Goodness gracious, make it stop!
You must know by now how much BoomTown loves internal Yahoo memos. But this is getting ridiculous.
It’s been like a flash flood after a long drought at Sunnyvale HQ today, as Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz turns on the firehose of a whole lot of communicating.
“I know you guys have reorg fatigue,” wrote Bartz in the latest email to employees about the management reorganization finally announced this morning.
Also memo fatigue at All Things Digital HQ, if you can believe it.
Under cover of darkness last night, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on the social-networking site’s blog that it would “return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”
Oh, this is just too good to resist. Therefore, BoomTown shall not tarry in our ongoing job of busting the chops of the young Facebook leader, whose minions have actually–and I am not joking here–given him the nickname: The Wizard.
Well, the Wizard obviously had to pull back the curtain last night and show some serious mea culpa to the people, before they got out the pitchforks.
Here’s a translation of Zuckerberg’s message.
Late tonight, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a blog entry, saying the popular social-networking site would “return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”
Facebook has been embroiled in a controversy this week about its Terms of Service–essentially, a Web site’s rules that users must abide by while using its online service–after changes gave it more sweeping rights over customers’ content and privacy.
Now, in full backtrack mode, Zuckerberg said a new “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities” was on the way and asked for user input.
Viva La Revolución! I vote for no more SuperPoking!
In a BoomTown post last night noting that users should just get used to not having much control of their privacy and posted content online, in the wake of the controversy over Facebook’s Terms of Service changes, how could one leave out this gem of a digital diatribe on the issue by gossipmonger supreme, Perez Hilton?
In an item yesterday, Hilton–who has gotten into a lot of copyright infringement legal trouble himself–asked his fans to boycott the fast-growing social-networking site anyway in one of my favorite pot-calling-kettle-black cyber-tussles yet.
When Sun Microsystems Gadfly-in-Chief Scott McNealy made his infamous statement about online privacy online in 1999, there was a horrified hubbub at the time that he had the audacity to say such a thing.
You know, that he actually uttered such a terrible thing as the truth.
What a shock then that everyone is now in yet another tizzy about Facebook changes to its Terms of Service, which pretty much state the obvious again by noting that Facebook archives info you posted, even if you quit the service.
As in: You cannot take it back, if you have shared with 476 of your closest “friends,” your bikini shots from Cabo.
Is it just me or does the fact that President-Elect Barack Obama is broadcasting his weekly address on YouTube not seem like it should be the very biggest deal in the world?
While it is a first for the Commander-in-Chief, I am more depressed that it is a first–after all, skateboarding cats made it to YouTube eons ago–than utterly thrilled that he is doing it.
But, when it come to the glacial movement related to politicians and tech issues, disappointment seems to be a better stance than hope.
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. Read more »
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.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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