Published June 01, 2010
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has completed an inquiry into the Google AdMob acquisition; after concerns fearing competition in the mobile advertising realm would decline given AdMob has the highest market share in the mobile advertising market.
The FTC said in a statement, “[it] was concerned about the loss of head-to-head competition,” given Google has about 65-percent of the global online search market, and is also the market leader when it comes to online advertising.
The FTC said its decision to clear the acquisition was based on Apple announcing it would enter the space with iAd, and its acquisition of Quattro Wireless.
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Published May 21, 2010

Symantec CEO Enrique Salem
The computer security giant Symantec has announced the company will acquire VeriSign’s Security Business for $1.28-billion in an all cash deal.
Symantec, the maker of the popular consumer and business security anti-virus software Norton, will acquire VeriSign’s identity and authentication technologies, including the firm’s secure sockets layer (SSL), and public key infrastructure (PKI) technologies, in addition to the VeriSign Trust Services which includes the checkmark trademark that is used by websites to indicate their website is safe.
Symantec says it will consolidate part of the acquired technologies with its own, more specifically the identity authentication technologies will be merged with security software that is used on Internet servers.
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Published May 04, 2010
Spotify is a relatively new and very comprehensive online music store that is readying it’s launch in the United States.
Apple’s iTunes music store is the largest online music library in the world and has the most users, but with Spotify’s more comprehensive feature list and more affordable pricing, it could just be the first real substitute to contest Apple.
With Spotify, you get more control with your music files compared to iTunes, as the service allows you to copy and listen to your music files on any compatible portable device, including your BlackBerry, iPhone and iPod, Google Android phone, among other portable devices. And it doesn’t stop there; you could also upload music to the cloud and listen to the tracks from any Internet connected computer.
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Published April 21, 2010
Only a couple of days after the leak of the next-generation iPhone that is expected to launch on June 22nd, Adobe, the maker of the popular web development platform Flash, has announced the company will entirely stop development for the iPhone.
The relationship between Apple and Adobe has deteriorated in recent weeks as the companies have failed to reach an agreement to bring Flash support to the iPhone.
Apple recently announced it has banned the use of Flash in its hugely popular app store; today prompting Adobe to cease future development for the iPhone entirely, meaning Adobe has no plans to bring Flash to the iPhone.
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Published April 18, 2010
Apple Inc. and Adobe Inc., the maker of the Flash web platform, have had a turbulent relationship recently as the two companies have failed to reach a licensing agreement to bring Flash support to Apple’s iPhone.
More recently, Apple decided to ban the use of Flash in its hugely successful app store. According to a person familiar with the matter that we have spoken to on condition of anonymity, Adobe was demanding an aggressive licensing structure on a per unit basis that Apple didn’t see as reasonable.
Mr. Narayen says 75-percent of all video sites on the Internet use their proprietary Flash technology to deliver content, with 70-percent of all gaming sites also using the technology to develop their makes.
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Published April 17, 2010
Google Corp. has unveiled a new search tool, dubbed Google Twitter Replay, that aims to make tweets from Twitter more useful in that people could search for past events and find all related tweets and conversations from that specific time period on the social networking website.
We firstly reported that Google initially signed an indexing deal with Twitter worth $15-million to allow the company to index tweets in real-time. At that time, Twitter also inked a deal with Microsoft Corp worth $10-million.
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Published April 16, 2010
Google Cloud Print: bring print to the cloud with any device
Google Inc. today announced a newly proposed methodology that would allow consumers to seamlessly print from any computer, and even mobile phone, to any printer.
For the most part today, consumers simply go to their local computer at home that is correctly installed with the manufacturer’s device software with the necessary drivers.
Google wants to go a step further by eliminating the problem of having to install different and non-standardized software/drivers on your computer.
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Published April 12, 2010
Google marks first UK acquisition with visual search engine firm Plink
According to a published blog post by the two-year old visual search engine company Plink, Google has acquired the company with financial details and terms of the deal being kept secret.
Plink is a visual search engine on Android that is able to analyze content visually and display search results. For example, a user could take a picture of a painting with their Android phone, and Plink would then analyze the photograph with its proprietary algorithm to give you additional information and search results. Philbin explained to The Guardian how the technology works, “It picks out repeatable elements from the image you take and comes out with a statistical representation of them.” The company says the Android app was downloaded more than 50,000 unique times.
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Published March 18, 2010
A new lawsuit has been filed against the popular online review site Yelp as business owners claim the company is extorting them for advertising dollars.
Mr. Boris Levitt, the owner of a furniture restoration business called Renaissance, has filed the latest lawsuit against Yelp.
Mr. Levitt is claiming Yelp has removed positive reviews of his business on the community, leaving mainly the negative ones, after Mr. Levitt allegedly declined a solicitation for monthly advertising dollars by Yelp. He is claiming Yelp is advertising its business as an unbiased reviews website, when in fact they are removing and manipulating reviews when businesses chose not to advertise with them.
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Published March 09, 2010

Microsoft Corporation today launched a redesign of its popular Internet portal MSN.com.
The company has updated the site with a far more simple and clean design, along with new social networking features that display information from various social networks you set up such as Facebook and Twitter. A new featured called TrendWatch was also implemented, which essentially scans Twitter for local news content.
The company has also now implemented full Facebook support.
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