Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave what he just had to know would be a much quoted comment to the Nikkei today, explicitly saying that the company had “begun seriously looking into acquisitions again.”

Music to the beleaguered mergers and acquisitions market, to be sure, especially after a recent uptick from other big companies pulling out their wallets again as the impact of the econalypse subsides.

According to sources, Google is working on at least a half-dozen acquisition deals, most of which are small start-ups in the online advertising and cloud-computing arenas.

That would be welcome news for many.

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A few weeks ago, when I was having breakfast with legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreessen about his new venture fund, he talked about what he thought was critical to being successful as an Internet company.

Ticking off names, from Apple CEO Steve Jobs to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Andreessen said he always favored technical entrepreneurs for one key reason: “You need someone who lives and breathes product.”

It’s a refrain I have heard a lot recently from a wide range of people in the sector, most especially when talking about two of the more challenging renovations of key Internet brands going on of late.

That would be: Yahoo and MySpace.

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Recently, while I was at a conference in Los Angeles, I caught up with Veoh Founder Dmitry Shapiro.

BoomTown will be focusing a lot on online video this year and Veoh is one of the several online video sharing sites–a group of smaller players that includes sites like Joost, Hulu, Dailymotion, Vimeo and others that I like to call not-YouTube.

Still, it is making progress.

Today, the Los Angeles-based Veoh announced that the ABC television network would put full episodes of its hot primetime shows–such as “Ugly Betty” (love it) and “Desperate Housewives” (not so much)–up on the site.

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Project Granola?

Apparently, that’s the jokey nickname that’s been given by some in the company to Microsoft’s new online strategy, in the wake of its failed efforts to acquire Yahoo that ended in a big heap of mess this past weekend.

Now, sources tell BoomTown, it is all about “organic”–hence the image of a healthy handful of granola (except for the fact that, in my experience, nobody really likes granola after eating it as much as they think will before).

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Here’s a little video I made while in Las Vegas at the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) yesterday.
The one-time mighty conference has obviously lagged, as the way the entertainment industry buys and sells programming has drastically changed over the years.
Also a concern: the impact of interactive technologies–digital issues seemed to be the biggest [...]

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I am back in Sin City to appear on a panel at the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) conference here today, along with former Walt Disney head Michael Eisner, former Viacom head Jonathan Dolgen and Dmitry Shapiro, founder and CIO of Veoh.
Titled “Possibilities and Perils of Internet TV,” it should be an interesting [...]

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Here’s a video I did on the panel I moderated focused on online video at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, called “Webolution!–Hollywood Adapts to the Web.”
Tech is getting a lot of attention in Hollywood, so talking about online video is a key area for the independent filmmakers who are here this year.
Topics on [...]

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I just got to Park City, Utah, for my annual visit (well, this will be my third year here) to the famous film festival that takes place in this lovely mountain resort.
While I like a good movie as much as the next person, I am no film aficionado, nor do I have a screenplay stuffed [...]

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I like Mike. Volpi, that is, Joost’s new CEO. The 40-year-old longtime tech exec is a nice choice to run the moderately hyped online video television site. But I will admit it–I have not been gung-ho on the prospect of Joost–which I have called a potentially “messy control freak of a service.”

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I will be traveling south to Los Angeles Sunday afternoon to do a few days reporting there.
That will include visits to the offices of JibJab, Userplane, Disney’s Internet Group, as well as some catching up with newly minted investor Ross Levinsohn and Joost CEO Mike Volpi.
We’ll be headed that way again a week later to [...]

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Here’s an interesting graph from a Wall Street Journal article yesterday about the continuing efforts to figure out the best way to monetize online video, which is considered the gold mine of Web 2.0.
That is, if anyone can create innovative advertising beyond the weak ideas thus far, like the 15-second preroll–a wretched experience that only [...]

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