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.
Guess what? Google has too many Spocks and not enough Captain Kirks.
This is one of the many interesting insights BoomTown gleaned from a video interview last night at a San Francisco book party for well-known New Yorker scribe Ken Auletta, who has just written a new book, “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.”
This “lack of emotional intelligence,” said Auletta, reminded him a lot of the subject of one of his previous books: Microsoft.
Oh, the delicious irony!
It’s not likely the announcement of Yahoo’s third-quarter earnings later today will be quite as exciting as its Open Hack Day in Taiwan this past weekend, but BoomTown will try to make those numbers and the conference call afterward with CEO Carol Bartz as entertaining as possible.
Bartz is certain to be so, especially if she lobs some good quotes, as she did in a recent interview about her management style: “I have the puppy theory. When the puppy pees on the carpet, you say something right then because you don’t say six months later, ‘Remember that day, January 12th, when you peed on the carpet?’ That doesn’t make any sense.”
How much does BoomTown pray for more zingers like that? Muchly!
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.
Folksy set was on the highest burner possible at Fortune magazine’s Most Powerful Women’s conference this morning, as legendary financial investor Warren Buffett took to the stage.
Buffett, who was interviewed by Fortune’s terrific Carol Loomis onstage in Carlsbad, Calif., held forth to the crowd–made up mostly of women–having instructed Loomis previously to “do anything with me…I like your crowd.”
Yahoo is set to unveil a major marketing campaign to reset advertiser and consumer perception of the long-troubled company during Advertising Week in New York, which starts a week from tomorrow.
According to numerous sources BoomTown has spoken to about the campaign, Yahoo is–at least with advertisers–going to focus on stressing the size and scale of the Internet giant. With consumers, the Internet giant will push the idea of being a key hub on the Web.
The details of the plan will be made public Tuesday, Sept. 22, at a press conference with senior Yahoo execs, including CEO Carol Bartz.
Although it is not a particular surprise, because Microsoft and Yahoo execs had previously said they expected as much, the Justice Department lobbed in a “second request” for information about the search and online advertising partnership the pair struck earlier this summer.
A Microsoft spokesman confirmed the request to BoomTown.
“As expected Microsoft and Yahoo received an additional request about the agreement, as we said when this agreement was announced,” said Microsoft’s Jack Evans. “We anticipated this deal would be closely reviewed and we continue to be hopeful that it will be approved by early 2010.”
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.
With upward of two-thirds of the search market, depending on what survey you use, one would not imagine that Google would worry too much about any kind of hookup of Microsoft and Yahoo.
Think again.
Sources at Google said the company is bracing for a more robust rival, which will force the company to compete and innovate more aggressively.
They add that Google will likely try to keep a low profile at first in opposing the deal announced today, positing that regulators have the same opinion about fewer competitors in the market as they did when opposing a similar Google-Yahoo search deal last year.
Early this morning, Bloomberg reported that regulators are looking into Apple’s disclosures about the health–or lack thereof–of its iconic CEO Steve Jobs.
And while BoomTown has railed against the creepy obsession the media have had with Jobs’s health and the publishing of rumors and innuendos about it as fact without a whole lot of reporting, I hope it is true.
It is also entirely appropriate that the government agency charged with keeping an eye on public companies does investigate–at the very least, to get the story right.
Finally, someone who might actually understand the Internet will be taking charge of the thus-far lackadaisical government body that plays the largest role in spurring its growth.
It looks like Julius Genachowski will be tapped by President-elect Barack Obama to take on the always controversial job of chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The news was reported in several places late yesterday, and sources with knowledge of the situation also confirmed the appointment to BoomTown.
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.
Are Google and Yahoo thinking of walking away from their controversial search advertising deal, as reported in an amusingly hedged report in The Wall Street Journal last night?
I would bet my Barry Manilow record collection, based on rumblings on Wednesday among those close to the case, that Google is a key whispery source here, sending a very public signal to the Justice Department that it would walk if pushed too far and leave regulators with egg on their faces for not letting the search giant help the struggling Yahoo.
You have to admire the sledgehammer stylings of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who loves to accuse Microsoft (justifiably, I might add) of bullying lobbying tactics in our nation’s capital, in the latest moves in the regulatory fight over the controversial search ad outsourcing partnership that Yahoo and Google have struck.
Today, just days before the Justice Department will decide whether to move ahead with a lawsuit to stop the Yahoogle deal from proceeding or let it move forward with some other remedy or tweaking, Schmidt announced that he would be campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama in the last two weeks of the election.
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.
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