Google acquired Aardvark, this week, a social graphing site that draws on a user’s social network to answer user generated questions, for 50 million dollars. Founded by former Google employees, the social search engine has accrued 90,000 users since its launch in October. So, why did Google pay 50 million dollars for a 90,000 person network? Well, according to Hadley Reynolds, a search industry analyst for IDC, “The success of the social sites is a threat to Google, and the Buzz announcement and the Wave before it show how seriously it is taking the challenge. This acquisition is another sign.” If anyone has any thoughts on how Aardvark could affect Google’s social strategy, please comment below.

Google Buzz Receives Mixed Reviews

Google went live with its new social media product this week Buzz. Built into Google’s Gmail, Buzz allows users to update their statuses, like on Facebook, and chat with other Gmail users. A cross between Twitter and Facebook, Google Buzz is a clear attempt to solve Google’s social media problem, i.e. their lack of any successful social media product to date.  Not surprising, the blogosphere exploded after Tuesday’s announcement with criticisms and praise of Google’s newest product. Whether or not the social networking sphere needs any more buzzing, remains an open question.

For a more complete analysis of Google’s recent social media activities, check out Richard Waters’ article.

ComCast Releases 2009 Numbers

ComCast released their “The 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review” report this week, which summarizes the prevailing trends from 2009. According to the report, “despite these economic headwinds, consumers’ use of digital media climbed to new heights in 2009 as the Internet continued to evolve as an integral component of Americans’ personal and professional lives.” The search market not only grew 16% in 2009, but the number of social networking users dramatically increased and display ad impressions grew by 21%. Check out ComCast for a copy of the complete review.

eBay Ordered to Pay Damages to Louis Vuitton

eBay was ordered to pay damages of $275,800 this week to Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) the world’s largest maker of luxury goods. According to the suit, eBay mislead consumers online, by directing users to their site whenever there was an instance of misspelled words in search queries, for example “Viton” instead of “Vuitton.” According to Yohan Ruso, the director general of eBay in France, “This case is about the use of Adwords to direct buyers’ listings for authentic goods from eBay sellers. This issue is being used by certain rights owners as an excuse to retain total control of what people can buy, where they can buy it from, and how much they have to pay. This is why 750,000 Europeans signed a petition to the European Parliament last year, protesting barriers to Internet trade.”

Amazon to Offer Classics for Free

Amazon is going to release 65,000 classics of English literature, for free, to their Kindle. The works of Dickens and Austen were digitized by the British Library in partnership with Microsoft Live Search Book search project.

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta Resigns

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta unexpectedly quit on Wednesday after less than a year on the job. Van Natta was hired last April my Rupert Murdoch, who owns MySpace as part of a larger News Corp conglomerate, to turn things around at the struggling dot com. According the LA Times, Van Natta’s resignation is in part a result of conflicts between News Corp. digital media chief Jon Miller and Van Natta.  Van Natta will be succeeded by Chief Operating Officer Mike Jones and product chief Jason Hirschorn, who will assume the  titles of co-presidents.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and eBay announced this week their plans to offer free Wi-Fi from various outlets across the country for the upcoming holiday season. Google has partnered with Boingo Wireless network to bring free Wi-Fi to 47 national airports, Microsoft has taken care of hotels and airports across the country, provided that users use Bing for search, and Yahoo has computers and mobile phones covered in Times Square. Corporate rationale has, most likely, less to do with bringing holiday joy to the nation and more to do with potential ad revenue. To read more about how offering free Wi-Fi will benefit Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and eBay, check out Om Malik and Stacey Higginbotham’s article.

Debates Continue over Social Media Marketing and the Pharmaceutical Industry

The debate over social media marketing and pharma ads continued this week with a two day public hearing, hosted by the FDA. The goal of the hearing was to determine whether or not the FDA needs to take political action to regulate the presentation and promotion of approved drugs on the internet. Google and Yahoo, as well as other ad-supported sites, attended the hearing, seeking federal simplification of drug advertisement guidelines.

Google Launches Flu Shot Finder

Google launched a flu shot finder this week, which enables users to search for clinics offering both traditional and H1N1 flu shots. The project is a collaborative effort between Google, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Health and Human Services. So, if you are feeling a bit feverish, check it out at Google Flu Shot Finder.

Google to Test “Skippable” Ads on YouTube

Google started testing “skippable” ads this week, which will allow users to skip ads and go directly to their video content. The experiment will keep track of which ads are skipped, before what content and who the users are.  With this data Google gains rich insight who, what, when and wheres of ad-skipping and may look to shift the traditional advertising model from  cost per impression or per click to cost per engagement, as Laurie Sullivan addresses in her article on MediaPost News.

Bits

• Twitter Users Drop 7.9%- According to a study published by ComScore this week, Twitter’s user numbers dropped 7.9% from September to October.
• New Apple Store in NYC- Apple opened their new store on the Upper West Side this week. The impressive, glass store comes as part of Apple’s plans to open between 40 and 50 stores internationally in the coming fiscal year.
• From Twitter Channel to T.V. Sitcom- ‘S— My Dad Says’- Justin Helpburn’s Twitter channel ‘S— My Dad Says,’ which covers the joys and challenges of being 29 and living with your 79 year old father, is being turned into a CBS sitcom.
• Google Buys AdMob- Google announced this week their plans to acquire AdMob, a mobile advertising firm, for $750 million, making it one of Google’s largest purchases to date. 
• Electronic Arts Buys Playfish- The video game company, Electronic Arts, announced this week their plans to buy Playfish, the highly successful free-to-play gaming company for $400 million. They also announced this week their plans to cut 1,500 jobs, 16% of their work force, by March 2010.
• Google Cuts Storage Rates- Google announced on Thursday their plans to cut their annual fee for data storage from $20 for 10 GB to $5 per year for 20 GB.

Google announced the launch of their new commerce oriented search engine on Thursday. According to some analysts, the launch is a bit surprising, coming from Google, as their traditional search engine already occupies a large, healthy retail based business. It could be that Google is trying to use their commerce search engine as a preemptive strike against Bing, which has concentrated on online shopping. While this may not be a ‘game changer’ for experienced, large retail business, it could help mid-size retail companies have a more robust online marketing presence this coming holiday season.

Social Media Doesn’t Isolate

A new study came out this week from Pew Internet Personal Networks Community that debunks the argument that social networking sites encourage social isolation in society. The study directly challenges a now famous study, from 2006, which was written by Miller McPherson and Lynn Smith-Lovin that addresses an increase in American social isolation since 1985.  According to McPherson and Smith-Lovin, weakening ties to neighbors and the community demonstrate this trend. According to Pew Internet’s survey, Americans are not as isolated as McPherson and Smith-Lovin wrote and in fact, social networking sites foster more diverse social networks.

Can’t you just hear precocious teenagers throwing this argument at their parents, as they tell them to get off of Facebook or MySpace and come to dinner?

Google Address Privacy Issues and Offers Transparency

Google announced their new service, Google Dashboard, at a conference in Spain on Thursday. The service pulls together user information from Gmail, Picasa, YouTube and other Google services, allowing users more transparency and the right to edit their privacy settings. While most of the information was already available through different sources on Google, the new services brings this data together. The service has already generated both criticism and praise, I suggest checking out both on the New York Times’ Technology Blog.

MSN’s Makeover

Good ol’ MSN got a makeover this week. The newly designed homepage allows users to directly access their Twitter and Facebook account within MSN, allowing users to update tweets or news feeds without being redirected. Check out the new homepage for yourself!

Facebook to Implement New Anti-Scamming Rules

Facebook announced yesterday, via a blog post, their intentions to implement new anti-scamming rules around app advertising. The announcement comes on the heels of user complaints and industry criticism.

Bits and Bolts

• Twitter started their ‘retweet’ integration project this week, making the popular communication method part of the site’s features.
• It turns out that the creators of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 tapped into their devoted fan base, using Twitter, to ask questions and seek advice on their new game.
• eBay launched a fashion focused website this week. Using their wealth of consumer data, eBay plans to follow fashion trends, generating articles and op-ed within a blog-like community.
• Google celebrated the 40^th anniversary of the beloved children’s show Sesame Street this week with a collection of doodles devoted to the show’s favorite characters.
• Early sales of Microsoft’s new operating system Window 7 suggest that Windows users are making a quick and welcomed switch to the software. Preliminary analytics show that sales of Windows 7 is 234% higher than Vista’s launch in 2007.
• Microsoft announced this week their plans to lay off 800 employees. The cutback comes as part of Microsoft’s plan to downsize by cutting 5,000 jobs, which was announced earlier this year. It is still unclear which departments will be impacted most directly, or when the cutbacks will be made.

While book sellers, search engines and a lot of annoyed authors across the world are worried about the infinite money to be lost if Google Books passes through court, a new group of critics recently emerged — the academics. At a conference held recently at the University of California Berkeley, Geoffrey Nunberg, adjunct professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, spiced up the dialogue by stating that Google Books will be “the last library.” According to Nunberg, a project of this scale, both in terms of cost and influence, will only happen once, leaving Google as the world’s last library.

So what? Google is already the world’s leading dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, why not add library to its list of attributes, right? Well, hardcore cultural preservationist would argue the prospect of a corporation holding ‘metaphorical rights,’ i.e. the authority to catalogue books from Chuck Klosterman to Goethe, to the entire world’s literature. Taking on the world’s books also implies a responsibility to draw the boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate, tolerable and intolerable, ‘Cultural’ and culturally offensive and on and on across a number of differing cultural lines and across the internet.

Aside from the theoretical issues threatened by Google becoming an even stronger cultural curator, Google Books is simply not a good library, or at least not yet.  Nunberg candidly criticized the viability of Google’s ‘library,’ stating that thousands, if not millions, of metadata mistakes in GoogleBooks, (my favorite of which being that Susan Bordo’s 2003 edition of Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body dated 1899 is categorized under Health & Body), make it a laughable source for academic research. Google Books doesn’t even use the Dewey Decimal System. Instead, the world’s (possibly) soon to be largest library uses the commercial format BISAC, which is comically bad for surfing through the largest library ever. As Nunberg stated, “In short, Google has taken a group of the world’s great research collections and returned them in the form of a suburban-mall bookstore.”

Most of us are not academics, but almost all of us are Google users. While I’m excited about the prospect of emerging transparency in pursuing for literature offered by Google Books, I’m also wondering if I will be able to adapt my ‘keyword inquiries’ into library format.

Google plans to introduce its revamped DoubleClick Ad Exchange today, which should act as a market place for exchanging advertising space. Venturing into display advertising has been part of Google’s expansion plan for some time now. Last year Google bought DoubleClick, a digital advertising agency, with the clear intention to up its game against such contenders as Yahoo. It comes as no surprise after the slowing down of text ad sales that Eric E. Schmidt and others are focusing their efforts on display. To read more about the DoubleClick Ad Exchange platform, check out the New York Times’ article Google Aims to Wrest Display Ads From Yahoo.

U.S. Government to File Against Google Books

The U.S. Government plans to join the hundreds of others who have filed complaints against Google Books on Friday. The Justice Department is expected to address its concerns regarding the possible impact Google Books could have on its competitors and the book publishing market. To read more about Google Books and the government’s filing, check out The Wall Street Journal’s article U.S. to File Concerns Over Google Book Pact.

Google to Publish

Just as we thought the drama surrounding Google Books couldn’t get any more vibrant, Google announced on Thursday their plans to team up with OnDemandBooks, which is the maker of the Espresso Book Machine. The petit printing press can print out books within a matter of minutes, clearly an enticing proposition for anyone browsing the numerous books in Google’s archive.  In its beginning stages, Google and OnDemandBooks intend on having 13 espresso locations in the U.S. and 13 abroad. To read more about the deal, check out this week’s LATimes Blog: Shakespeare in Seconds.

Skype Founders Sue eBay

It has been only two weeks since eBay sold 65% of their stake in Skype to private investors, which is why this week’s announcement from Skype that they will sue eBay for copyright infringement comes as a slight surprise. The crux of the argument between eBay and Skype is a piece of peer-to-peer technology called “global index,” which is the framework of Skype’s software and what allows them to connect telephone calls over the internet rather than through phone lines. Making matters more complicated, “global index” was a licensed piece for software from a U.K. company called Joltid, which terminated their license with eBay in March. Joltid has also moved their original case against eBay from the U.K. to the states and added Skype into the suit. Such a tangled legal web could definitely jeopardize the sale of  Skype. To read more about the case, check out the SF Gate’s article Skype Founders Sue eBay: What’s Going On?

Facebook Hits 300 Million

Facebook made two significant announcements this week: their cash flow is in the positive and their population just hit 300 million active users. To put it in context, the United States has a population of 307 million people and with Facebook’s aggressive expansion effort it won’t be long before they surpass that number. To read more about Facebook and TechCrunch50, check out CNet’s article Facebook at TechCrunch50.

Google to Newspapers, “Why can’t we be friends?”

Google recently announced the launch of their new app Fast Flip, which recreates the experience of reading a newspaper or magazine on the internet. The hope is that readers will be more likely to use the format to read articles online rather than in print, offering traditional print publishers an opportunity to cross over into the internet age. Google has teamed up with 36 publishers, but more are soon to come. Not surpisingly, Google plans to serve up contextual ads around the articles, sharing the “bulk” of the revenue with the publishers. To read more check out Google Unveils Fast Flip for Newspapers and Magazines, a blog post from the LATimes.

Acquisitions Abound

The investment bankers were kept busy this week, as a number of big names were either buying, selling, or considering additional investment.  The acquisition spree was headlined by Adobe, which bought web analytics giant Omniture for $1.8 billion in after-hours trading on Tuesday.    The matchmaking continued on Wednesday with Google’s acquisition of ReCaptcha, a company that provides word verification technology to help web operators reduce spam and fraud.  That was followed by  rumors of Google’s acquisition of online video platform Brightcove for $500 million to $700 million.  Word quickly spread on Twitter, where Mark Glaser, Executive Editor of PBS MediaShift first reported it.  Both companies gave a firm “no comment” and one analyst now suggests there’s no deal in the works and the reports are believed to be false.  Speaking of Twitter and news to tweet, the company will reportedly raise $50 million in another round of funding, which would put the company’s valuation at $1 billion (that’s billion with a ‘b’).  And as long as we’re making eye-popping valuations, Wall Street Journal blogger Michael Corkey makes a case for valuing Twitter at $2.7 billion.

Google’s Top Executive in China Leaves Company

Google announced today that the president of Google in China, Lee Kai-Fu, will step down in September. Kai-Fu is responsible for expanding and improving upon Google’s services in China. He leaves to start his own business. For more information on Kai-Fu’s resignation, check out the BBC.

eBay sells Skype

Having purchased Skype in 2005 for an estimated $2.6 billion, eBay is selling the majority of its stake in the internet telephony company for just over $2.75 billion to a collection of private-equity firms. The sale comes as no big surprise after eBay’s torrid struggle to make Skype profitable for their main auctioning business. To read more on the details of the deal and how they reflect our struggling economic times, check out Bloomberg’s article “Buyout Firms Return to Basics as Silver Lake Acquires Skype.”

Greystripe and Peacock Equity Partner to Expand the Possibilities of iPhone Advertising

Greystripe is a mobile advertisement company based out of San Francisco, which specializes in iPhone compatible Flash advertisements. Rather than traditional banner ads, Greystripe creates ads that mimic free subscription games for the iPhone. Peacock Equity recently invested an additional $2 million in Greystripe to expand their sales team and client base. To read more about Greystripe, their adverts and investment history check out this New York Times article: “Greystripe’s Flash Attracts More Cash.”

Google Finally Offers Some Transparency Regarding their PEnding Book Deal

Up until now Google has been very tight lipped about their pending book deal, but in a blog post yesterday evening Google finally divulged some of the policies they plan to execute, if the deal passes through court in October.  The blog post doesn’t seem to be cooling any tempers, however, as Amazon and others continue to raise questions regarding Google’s growing book monopoly.

Twitter Snags Another Ex-Googler

Twitter announced this week that Dick Costolo, former Feedburner CEO and Google colleague of Twitter’s founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone, will be joining their team as the new chief of operations officer starting next week. To read more about Costolo’s position and Twitter check out this VentureBeat article.

Falling through a Cloud: Gmail Disappears for 100 Minutes on Tuesday

Gmail experienced an outage on Tuesday for a record 100 minutes. According to Google’s official statement, the outage was an accident caused by a maintenance oversight. Although nothing is fail-proof in life, Gmail’s disappearance does bring into question the stability of ‘the cloud.’ For more information about Google’s mishap and the plethora of user reactions, check out PCWorld’s article “Google’s Gmail Outage: A Familiar Feeling.”

And the Winner Will Be? – Microsoft vs. VMware

By now the epic battle between Microsoft and Google is famous, but it seems that Google isn’t the only force Microsoft has to reckon with these days. VMware is a software development company, headed by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz, that specializes in virtual machine software geared towards reducing hardware and energy costs.  As the industry’s leading virtual machine software developer, VMware’s technology, which integrates itself into operating systems like a browser does, poses a grave threat to Microsoft’s operating system.  Steve Lohr’s two articles, that appeared in the New York Times this week, “VMware vs. Microsoft: It’s About More Than the Plumbing” and “Challenging Microsoft With a New Technology,” offer further insight into VMware industry strengths and describe why Microsoft is worried.

CoolerBooks and Google

Google announced this week their plans to make more than a million public domain books, i.e. with expired copyrights, available through Coolerbook.com and the Cool-er e-book reader. Not surprisingly, Amazon quickly reacted against this announcement, claiming legal opposition against Google’s book settlement as a violation of both antimonopoly and antitrust laws. To read more about Google’s announcement and Amazon’s growing voice in the battle against Google Books, check out Miguel Helft’s article “Google and Amazon Increasingly at Odds Over E-Books.”