|
||||
A merry Christmas and happy new year to one and all. The third issue of Technofringe is packed with information about the internet and web site design/ hosting. There's a few technology articles included from forward thinking writers throughout the world. Hopefully you'll enjoy this conglomerate of avid information.
Cheap Domain Names: TOP
Buying a domain name isn't as hard as most think. It's simply a case of approaching a web hosting company and signing up with them. Most hosting companies now allow prospective clients to check the availability of domain names before registering them. 123-reg, a UK based hosting provider for example provides a comprehensive list of domains that you could register, all based on your preferred choice. Costs vary depending upon whether you are opting for a .co.uk, .eu or .com address. Typically they start at £2.99 (about $6.00) per year. Most registrants have to sign up for a 2 year contract. You should choose an easily accessible registration site even if you know how to register a domain name. Some sites can be confusing, making a simple process frustrating when it really doesn't have to be. You also need to compare prices and other services that the site has to offer. If you intend to market yourself online, it's important to choose a domain name that will reflect what you are selling (a product or service). For example: web_hosting.com will work better in search engine results than company_name.com when someone searches for web hosting. ..Com, .Biz or Just plain Country address? Should you register a generic top level domain (gTLD) or a country code top level domain (ccTLD) for your online business? In my opinion, that depends on the market for your product or service. If you are selling strictly to UK, Canadian or US, or if being known as British, Canadian or American is an important feature of your product or service, then you are better off with a .co.uk, .ca or .us domain. However, if you are marketing a product or service internationally, you may wish to register your online business as a dot-com (or a dot-biz or whatever other generic Top Level Domain is appropriate).
It usually takes about 24 hours for registration to complete (with the registrar) and before the domain can be picked up by search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo. |
Add this to:
|
||
Hosting Your web site: TOP
By Richard Johnson
 |
Okay, this is probably the most important aspect of getting a web site online. You've designed it in dreamweaver, word or even hard coded your website using HTML. It's ready to hit the world and bring in visitors, but you still aren't too sure about how, where or what hosting package to choose. There's a plethora of different web hosting providers out there and the market is moving in an ever downward spiral, with more hosting providers joining the fray each day. Be warned though, some of the hosting providers out there are just middle men. Major hosting companies are now selling on pre-made reseller packages (rather like affiliate marketing) to draw in growth without the need for a sales team. The down side to these packages is that you'll share the same server and IP address as thousands of other users. (see Alexa.com for details). The more sites that share your IP address, the more difficult it is to rise up search engine rankings. Fine if you don't intend to market online, but may be a draw back if you do. Your ISP should have a fast refresh rate at it's server end. The more sites that share your server, the slower it will load when someone accesses it. This does affect search engine ranks as robots (also known as spiders) will crawl your site once they start to find it. The speed at which your server can respond to their requests will affect future rankings in the search engines. Hosting packages need to be chosen carefully for other reasons too. There's a limit to just how much the service provider will allow you to host on the server, let alone how much can be downloaded by visitors each month. Unless you're going to have a dedicated server, your bandwidth will be capped at anything from 500GB to 5000GB each month. Doesn't sound like a problem? Well, 500 gigs on an average site with 700 unique visitors a day and 1500 unique page views each day generates about 300-500 gigs per month, depending upon the images embedded in the web pages. Costs vary from hosting company to company, but expect to pay about £40 or $80 per annum upwards. You will also need to look carefully at what is offered in the package. Does your hosting company offer PHP, Perl or MySQL server side? If these aren't hosted on your server and you want to use if as a shop, you'll be severely limited to the payment options you can provide. |
Add this to:
|
||
Marketing your web site: TOP
Also known as SEO or Search Engine Optimization. This is a fine line between human interaction with prospective readers and the Search Engines (see previous article and Spiders). It's a highly important aspect of website design. Your website may have been live for days, weeks, months or years, with a few or maybe no visitors at all. It's all down to backlinks and optimization of the text inside the website. Backlinks (which come from other web sites to yours (basically your website address on someone else's site)) point to your site and give it a vote of confidence. They let others know your site exists and gives you a connection back to the world wide web. Getting backlinks is not that difficult, but finding valid ones that actually pass on a good vote is quite time consuming. A link from a environmental site to one about computers won't count for much in search engine terms. It will let the spider cross into your site, but won't really get you seen in the search engines. You need to also check out each site that is going to link to you and never link back to that site unless they are indexed by google (simply type the URL of the site in google's search bar like: site:www.urlhere.com) So what's a VOTE? When you start clocking up more and more in-bound links to your site, the relevance of the sites linking to you start to add up. If links aren't relevant they won't do much, but those that are will bump you up the search engine rankings. So a link from one computer site to another will push that site up google's search engine rankings. Optimizing the website is just as hard. Like your backlinks, which always contain anchor text (<a href="http://www.website URL.me.uk" >Anchor text</a> ) where the anchor text is also known as keywords, literally gives your site a vote relating to those particular words. Your site should also contain those words and the words must be those that you want potential customers to look for you with. So, if you type Anchor text into Google, your site: www.website URL.me.uk will come up in the search engine results. |
Optimisation Tips: TOP
Heck, even the shrewdest internet marketer has to optimize a website for a good return in Google, Yahoo or MSN. It takes a lot of practice, but one of the best tools out there is keyword cloud (http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php). It'll return exactly what Google will see on your website.
In the past month, there's been a major Google update to their search engine algorithm (what the spider sees. It's down to something called Page rank, Google's way of saying exactly what they think of a website (ranked 1 to 10 with 10 being a great site). It's been abused by many website owners, who have been selling links on the basis that they have a good page rank. On the back of this, Google are now penalizing web sites that sell links and actively seeking out those that sell or buy links between sites. Our advice is: Don't do it. Buying a link or even hiring a Search Engine Optimisation Company to do this for you could spell disaster before you've even started.
Saying that, getting your site off the ground can be done with little effort or cash injection. You can hire someone to manually submit your site to website directories. Many Companies in India will do this for you and place your link on 300 or more directories, which is a start. Be careful not to flood the internet with links to your site as this is seen as spamming and is an instant blacklist on the major search engines. 30-50 new links per month is a good start.
Next, write and submit a few articles with links/ anchors back to your website. There are a large number of article directories on the internet and also people willing to do the submission for you. Don't submit the same article to more than 100 individual article directories though. This is seen as spamming and all the major search engines can spot similarities from webpage to webpage.
A good/ well optimized website, with good Unique content can achieve a page rank with Google in about 6-9 months. At this point, you'll start to see traffic (visitors). Adding in more links will drive you further up the search engines. At first, you'll wonder exactly how these visitors are finding your site as you can't see it on the search engines for your search terms. In effect, you have been indexed with some very obscure search terms, that are infrequently used. After about a year of being online, your site starts to see results for search terms that you have optimized it for.
It's worthwhile pointing out that Google does not index/ show a site in search results if it is under 6 months old. The same goes for new content. It won't consider a link as being valid for a minimum of 3 months (so those links you've spotted for sale on ebay with 30days in the title are worthless).
MSN has changed it's spider algorithm in the past month as well. Previously, it's indexing procedure held keywords with a high weighting. The more a keyword combination was used in the body of the website, the higher the ranking. This has now changed and is more in line with Google's 5%. Be very careful with keyword spamming. It doesn't help a site.
A competition of course used what they thought was a very good trick to get up the search engine rankings. Not only did they add in a very large amount of keywords, but they also cloaked them (made the text the same color as the background). They've been dropped down to the 15th page of Google for relevant search terms and are slowly sinking. Avoid the following when designing/ optimizing/ linking:
- Cloaking words (white text on white background)
- Use of keywords too many times
- Poor flow of text
- Copying content from others
- Similar text from page to page
- Page size (make sure it fits in the browser window- user's shouldn't have to scroll)
- Never leave pages orphaned. They should link back to the main website somehow!
- Create Doorway pages (other landing pages inside the website that are linked to from outside the website, but not inside the website)
Always:
- Add a site map. Spiders will crawl this.
- Check for 404 (not found) errors
- Remove redundant html
- Check the webpage's on more than one browser (use safari, Opera, Explorer and Firefox)
- Mix up keyword phrases in links and main body text.
- Think about your readers.
Add this to:
|
||
Pace Micro Buys out Philips Set Top Box Arm TOP
The Guardian Newspaper
British-based Pace Micro Technology is to become one of the world's biggest TV set-top box makers after a tie-up with Dutch electricals group Philips.
Philips is selling Pace its set-top boxes unit and connectivity solutions business, which specialises in broadband technology, in exchange for 70m shares in the British company.
The deal will give Philips a 23% stake in Pace and means that between them they will have high profile clients including broadband-based TV provider BT and pay-TV group BSkyB in Britain.
Announcing the deal yesterday, Neil Gaydon, Pace's chief executive, said it takes Pace into the world's top three set-top box makers. He predicts the deal will create a company with revenues of more than £500m producing approximately 8.5m set-top boxes a year. "It gives us scale in a whole bunch of fronts, it gives customers confidence, it gives new technology opportunities," he said. "This addition gives us without question the best customer portfolio in the world, it gives us the best and widest portfolio of products." As part of the tie-up, Pace will be allowed to use the Philips brand on a range of products it sells for the next three years. The deal comes at a time when TV viewers are moving to new TV formats such as high definition and receiving their programmes in a variety of new ways from different set-top boxes. Pace believes using the Philips brand will mean it can introduce its own name to a retail audience through co-branding at a time of high demand. |
"At the moment, 200 million people have VCRs who don't have PVRs (personal video recorders) in Europe. Only 3% of mainland Europeans have PVRs, Sky+ type technology," said Gaydon, stressing the potential for growth.
Pace shares came under pressure earlier this year after Sky bought Alan Sugar's rival box-maker Amstrad.
Investors had feared that would mean less business for Pace, but the latter quickly announced a new contract from the TV company.
Add this to:
|
||
Apple to Hit Japan with iPhone TOP
Courtesy of MacNewsWorld
Following launches in the U.S. and Europe, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has reportedly turned its attention to bringing its touch-enabled iPhone to one of the world's most competitive markets -- Japan. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been shopping around to find a Japanese carrier for the iPhone, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Citing sources familiar with the situation, the paper asserted that Jobs recently met with executives at NTT DoCoMo (NYSE: DCM) , Japan's leading mobile carrier, and made several trips to chat with officials from Softbank, the No. 3 carrier.
Apple could not confirm the veracity of the Journal's report or comment on any further plans for the iPhone, according to spokesperson Simon Pope.
Opening Japan
Apple is keen to make the iPhone available to Japan's almost 100 million mobile phone users. Success in Japan could play a key role in achieving the company's goal to acquire 1 percent of the global mobile phone market by the end of 2008. "Japan is very important to Apple because it is a large market with very advanced users, and the Apple brand is already quite strong there via the Mac and the iPod -- thus it could represent a significant sales opportunity for the iPhone," Charles Golvin, a Forrester Research analyst, told MacNewsWorld. Not everyone agrees on Japan's significance for the iPhone. Gaining a toehold there isn't a vital step in the iPhone's path to success, according David Chamberlain, an analyst at In-Stat. |
"It makes no difference at all. The iPhone was already a success before a single one was ever sold," he told MacNewsWorld.
That's not to say Japanese consumers would give Apple's smartphone the cold shoulder. When the iPhone does make it onto store shelves in Japan, the device will receive a welcome as warm as -- if not warmer than -- the one it saw in the U.S., according to Chamberlain.
"When I was there in September people were absolutely hyperventilating to get the iPhone," he stated.
In such a highly competitive market, though, Apple may have to offer jaded Japanese consumers a version of the iPhone that goes above and beyond what has been offered stateside and in Europe. The device will have to be able to operate on one of Japan's 3G networks and serve as a robust delivery method for digital content such as TV shows -- features Japanese users have to come expect from their mobile handsets. "The most sophisticated phones on the market are in Japan. Japan leads the world in different features and phone capabilities. The iPhone faces some stiff competition if it gets to Japan, because you have a large number of devices that have WiFi, that have large screens, that have full browsers and GPS (global positioning system) as well," said Chris Hazelton, an IDC analyst. |
"It won't have the impact it did in the U.S.," he told MacNewsWorld.
Releasing an updated model in Japan is a must, Golvin stated. However, rolling out a pumped up version could in effect allow Apple to kill two birds with one stone.
"For the iPhone to be viable in Japan, it will have to be the next version -- one that includes a third-generation cellular modem," Golvin said. "This is true simply because of the network technologies used in Japan, but it further means that Apple would have an updated model to sell into the U.S. and Europe that addresses the current model's greatest weakness, which is slow data speed for Internet access."
Let's Make a Deal Apple has successfully negotiated exclusive deals with mobile phone network operators in the U.S., the UK, France and Germany. Those agreements have been hard won for Apple, with carriers reluctant to submit the heretofore unheard of stipulation that has them sharing their profits with the handset maker. In Germany, Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) launched a suit challenging the exclusive contract Apple signed with rival T-Mobile , claiming it was against German law. A court in Hamburg found in favor of T-Mobile on Dec. 4 and reversed an injunction prohibiting the sale of the iPhone. The report of the negotiations in Japan comes about two weeks after talks with China Mobile and China Unicom, two of that country's leading mobile network operators, were slowed over Apple's demand for a share of the revenues generated from the iPhone, according to a November Reuters report. As has been the case with their colleagues in China, the strength of Japanese network operators could put a kink in Apple's normal game plan of playing carriers against one another in order to strike a lucrative revenue-sharing deal with one. "This is not the first time Apple is looking at two different carriers. China Unicom and China Mobile are both in negotiations with Apple. These are markets where a device vendor has never gotten to share revenue with a carrier. And so Apple's demands on the carrier far exceed any other device vendor's demands. It's tough in the U.S. market, so it was a surprise [that AT&T agreed to the deal], because carriers in the U.S. are very powerful," Hazelton explained. "In Japan they are even more powerful. If Apple is able to [find a taker] for its demands, that will be impressive," he continued. "That would be a very, very big change in Japan," Chamberlain explained. "The carriers, particularly DoCoMo, dominate the handset vendors. The vendors can't even put their own names on their phones, just a single letter. "DoCoMo puts out a handset specification -- calls it, for instance, 'the 504' -- and then the S-504 is made by Sanyo, the P-504 is from Panasonic, NK-504 would be Nokia, etc.," he continued. "Impossible? I don't know, but it would be a very, very big change." |
Eyes on Softbank
While negotiations with both DoCoMo and Softbank continue, Chamberlain expects the No. 3 carrier to wind up with the deal.
"I predicted [in September] it would be Softbank that would get it. The most interesting -- and important -- part of that announcement would be that none of the Japanese carriers offer GSM (global system for mobile communications) or EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution), the voice and data networks, respectively, that are on the current iPhone. Softbank has UMTS (universal mobile telecommunications system), which is 3G and uses the same 3G technology used in Europe and in the U.S. by AT&T. DoCoMo's version of 3G is not completely compatible with European and U.S. networks," Chamberlain pointed out.
If Chamberlain's prediction is correct, SoftBank, he believes, will be "very willing to deal" with Apple.
"Even though SoftBank has had the highest net subscriber addition in the past two months, they still have only 17 percent of the Japan market, compared with 53 percent for DoCoMo and 30 percent for KDDI [the No. 2 vendor]," Chamberlain noted.
"Softbank has added 191,600 subscribers in the past month, more than DoCoMo's 48,000 and KDDI's 65,000 combined. The iPhone would be a very important deal for Softbank," he added.
If Apple cannot reach satisfactory terms with DoCoMo, Golvin said, then it will strike a deal with "SoftBank, who is a very aggressive No. 3 in the market and hence much more motivated to meet Apple's demands."
Give Me 3G
Regardless of which company becomes Apple's exclusive Japanese carrier, the hardware maker still will have to bring all of its marketing skills to the table in order to penetrate the Japanese market.
"There really is very, very limited growth for new subscribers in Japan. And, in fact, Japan is almost 100 percent penetrated. So, what they are really looking at is stealing subscribers from other carriers. Softbank has done a pretty good job, and within the last year and a half has opened up the Japanese market with member portability, allowing it to pull a lot of NTT DoCoMo carriers to SoftBank," Hazelton said.
Despite challenges in Japan and other markets, Apple is almost guaranteed success with the iPhone and should have little trouble meeting its goal of owning 1 percent of the global mobile handset market.
"Give them time. Our forecast for 2008 is about 1.22 billion handsets, so that 1 percent looks like 12 million. One-point-five percent of our forecast handset sales in the Japan market alone would take the iPhone halfway to its goal of 12 million," Chamberlain concluded.
"Apple will meet their 10 million device target, though I believe that having a 3G version is necessary to achieve that goal," Golvin said.
Add this to:
|
||
FCC Auctioning off 700mHz spectrum TOP
The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday published the list of companies that have applied to participate in its auction of the 700 MHz (megahertz) band of wireless spectrum next month, and included among the long list of expected players were a few surprises.
Oil giant Chevron, for one, apparently plans to bid, as does billionaire entrepreneur and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) cofounder Paul Allen, who applied via Vulcan Spectrum. Also included were expected participants such as AT&T (NYSE: T) , Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) , Alltel (NYSE: AT) , MetroPCS, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) , applying under the name Google Airwaves.
A total of 266 companies have applied, but only 96 applications have been officially accepted -- the remaining 170 are still incomplete, the FCC says. Participants now have until Jan. 4 to complete their applications and submit their payments, thanks to an extension the FCC also made on Tuesday; previously, the deadline had been Dec. 28.
In accordance with the auction rules, no information is available as to which block of spectrum the companies plan to bid on or how much they will pay to the FCC.
Varying Prices
The 700 MHz band of wireless spectrum, previously used by TV stations, is widely desired because of its ability to travel long distances and go through walls. Now that TV broadcasters are moving to digital distribution, the FCC plans to auction off those bands starting Jan. 24.
Bidding will be conducted in stages via an electronic, anonymous process, and winners won't be announced until the auction is concluded. In addition to rescheduling the upfront payment deadline, the FCC has also moved its mock auction to Jan. 22.
Google and others lobbied earlier this year to ensure that whoever wins the much-sought-after "C Block" portion of the spectrum up for auction will be required to allow users to download any software application they want onto their mobile devices, and to use any mobile devices they would like on that wireless network. The C Block's reserve price at auction is US$4.6 billion.
Other financial deposits required from participants depend on which licenses they plan to bid on, so that the more spectrum blocks they are eligible to bid on, the more they must deposit.
In all, the FCC auction is expected to raise at least $15 billion, with some estimates as high as $30 billion.
'A Free-for-All'
"Having such a large number of both expected and unexpected bidders just confirms how valuable and rare the spectrum is," Paul Gallant, a telecom policy analyst with Stanford Group, told the E-Commerce Times. "This certainly supports the view that the auction will be a free-for-all, where the minimum bids are quite likely to be met."
Just what many of the participants -- smaller ones, in particular -- have in mind should they win spectrum remains to be seen.
"Many of these are very local, smaller players, and it's hard to imagine they're going for anything nationwide," Ira Brodsky, president of Datacomm Research , told the E-Commerce Times. "Ultimately, it may come down to AT&T, Verizon, Alltel and Google for the big chunks of spectrum."
Also notable about the list are the companies that are conspicuously absent, including Sprint (NYSE: S) and a variety of WiMax players, Brodsky added. "Sprint, for example, has PCS spectrum, so if it could get into lower-frequency stuff, it would be much more competitive," he noted.
Strange Bedfellows
Paul Allen's involvement via Vulcan "is very interesting," Bill Hughes, a principal analyst for In-Stat, told the E-Commerce Times.
"On the one hand, Vulcan invests in a lot of interesting technologies, and the fact that they are participating in this is good news for the government and good news for potential customers because they are a viable competitor with a lot of money backing them up," Hughes explained. "Of course, they've flown in under the radar, so I have no idea what they plan to do."
Chevron's involvement, meanwhile, "strikes me as strange," Hughes added.
"They have a lot of private wireless networks, but there's a big difference between having your own wireless network for refining and distribution and franchising gas stations, and being a wireless service provider," he said. "They have the money required, but nothing leaps to mind as to why this would be a good fit for them."
Arbitrage Plans
The lists seem to include a number of organizations that are likely looking to arbitrage a winning bid, Hughes noted.
"By that, I mean that if they win an auction, they plan to sell the rights to another organization that, for some reason, finds that it needs that property to complete a contiguous region," Hughes explained. Such a strategy was common with cellular licenses, he noted.
One big difference, however, is that cellular licenses were allocated by the FCC using a lottery system. "I am not sure how you would expect to win with an auction," he said. "Actually, I am pretty sure that the FCC actively worked to avoid this kind of business plan by requiring there be skills to build out a network, not just money to buy and sell."
Small Companies, Uncertain Success
Regarding the many regional phone companies that plan to bid, "I can see their motivation for bidding, but I am doubtful that the boundaries line up with service areas," Hughes said.
For example, Whidbey Telephone is a company that serves Whidbey Island in the Puget Sound. It is about 30 miles north of Seattle and serves 60,000 people, including 20,000 in the town of Oak Harbor, which is "known mostly in the Seattle area as a place for second homes and sightseeing," Hughes explained.
WhidbeyTel does not have spectrum for cellular and does not resell any of the existing carriers, "probably because it is not profitable enough," Hughes explained. Yet it does plan to bid in the auction.
"They apparently want to add wireless service to their portfolio, which is a reasonable aspiration given their situation," he explained. "Their problem is that I am sure that there is not a license just for Whidbey Island. Being so close as the crow flies, they will be bidding against other organizations that have greater aspirations than just serving Whidbey Island.
"I'm sure they are aware of this situation and wish them well, but they will only succeed if some bidding strategies around them work out in their favor," he concluded.
Add this to:
|
||
Google's being Hijacked TOP Courtesy: ZDNet |
 |
Google's AdSense earnings are threatened by a Trojan that replaces the search giant's paid-for adverts with its own, in order to hijack advertising revenue.
Launched in 2005, Google AdSense allows third-party web sites or publishers to generate revenue from Google's text advertisers.
AdSense acts as a middleman between an advertiser and a publisher. By crawling the content of publishers' web pages, AdSense determines the relevance of a text ad to page content and then places the ad within the page if there is a match.
Trojan.Qhost.WU, discovered by security firm BitDefender, has been designed to replace ads served by Google on third-party web sites that use Google's AdSense network. The ads are replaced with alternative ads called from hosts outside the AdSense network.
"The Trojan sits on the user's 'hosts' file — located in the "%WINDIR%\System32\drivers\etc" directory — to redirect the initial query… to a malicious host," explained BitDefender.
Although it has not been established whether the ads served — or the pages that the ads link to — contain malicious software, BitDefender virus analyst Attila-Mihaly Balazs said it is "a very likely situation, given that they are promoted using malware in the first place".
Fears for consumers centre on the dramatic rise in the use of web pages to inject malicious HTML code through browsers. Security firm Sophos earlier this year highlighted that as many as 30,000 new web pages each day were being used to spread malicious software.
However, the biggest victim in this case may be Google itself, as it makes the majority of its money from advertising. According to Nishad Herath, senior researcher at McAfee's AvertLabs, Google is powerless to stop the Trojan stealing Google's space on third-party sites.
"There's nothing a search vendor can do to protect against the problem since it works by locally modifying content that's being displayed on the browser. There's absolutely nothing that Google or any ad vendor can do about that," said Herath.
Publishers on Google's AdSense network may also lose revenue if the Trojan becomes widespread.
"[The Trojan] takes away viewers and thus a possible money source from their web sites," said BitDefender's Balazs.
Meanwhile, Google has an entirely different battle on its hands as it attempts to maintain the integrity of its AdSense network. By making it easy for businesses to buy ad space on its network, Google has faced the problem of malicious advertisers exploiting the network to deliver malware to users.
"Google's business model is to make it easy for advertisers to place ads on Google's network of publisher sites that produce relevant content. What's happened is that some advertisers include malicious content as part of the advertisement or they host malware on the links that people go to when they click on a link," said McAfee's Herath.
"Ad vendors have been cracking down on these sites as they find out about them. It's a big problem because you have to go through all the links to find out whether they contain malicious content or not," he added.
Google yesterday said its policy is to remove sites that redirect users to malicious pages, but this approach will not prevent the Trojan from damaging its revenue since it sits on the user's PC and causes the browser to bypass the AdSense network completely.
"While you would expect the ad vendors to sort of deal with the quality of people who they allow to advertise using their networkings, things like this Trojan are a client-side issue," said Herath.
Add this to:
|
||
U.S. antitrust regulators approved Google Inc.'s $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick Inc. TOP
The transaction still faces substantial antitrust scrutiny from European regulators and cannot be completed without their approval. The European Commission has set a deadline of April 2 to finish its review.
The Federal Trade Commission appeared to accept many of Google's arguments that its online ad sales business doesn't compete with DoubleClick's ad-serving tools, saying its analysis "showed that the companies are not direct competitors in any relevant antitrust market."
"The FTC's strong support sends a clear message: this acquisition poses no risk to competition and will benefit consumers," Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said. "We hope that the European Commission will soon reach the same conclusion."
The deal, announced in April, will combine Google's leading position in online text ads with DoubleClick's ad-serving tools that help publishers place and track display ads.
Microsoft Corp., AT&T Inc. and other critics have argued the transaction would give Google a dominant share of the rapidly growing online advertising market. Google contends its business doesn't overlap with DoubleClick's and as a result a combination won't reduce competition.
Privacy advocates also strongly opposed the deal, saying the combined company will have access to a huge amount of data on individual Web-surfing habits. The FTC said it lacked the legal authority to block the deal on any grounds except on antitrust matters.
However, in an apparent nod to these concerns, the FTC on Thursday proposed a set of privacy guidelines for the online advertising industry, describing them as something that "clearly transcend" the Google-DoubleClick deal. It remains to be seen how such guidelines would be enforced.
Privacy advocates were not assuaged.
The FTC "sidestepped its responsibility today when it approved the merger of two companies whose new, extended data-collection reach will give it unprecedented access to track our every move throughout the digital landscape," Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said. The CDD and the Electronic Privacy Information Center fought the deal on privacy grounds.
The five-member commission voted 4-1 in favor of the deal. Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour dissented "because I make alternate predictions about where this market is heading, and the transformative role the combined Google/DoubleClick will play if the proposed acquisition is consummated."
Online ad spending is projected to reach $21.4 billion this year, according to research group eMarketer, surpassing the $20.5 billion radio advertising market for the first time. EMarketer expects online ad spending to nearly double to $42 billion in 2011.
The size of the market and Google's bid for DoubleClick has spurred other purchases. Microsoft agreed to pay $6 billion for Seattle-based online advertising firm aQuantive Inc. earlier this year, and Yahoo Inc. bought Internet advertising exchange Right Media Inc. for $680 million in April. London-based advertising giant WPP Group PLC purchased online advertiser 24/7 Real Media for $649 million in May, while Time Warner's AOL bought Tacoda for an undisclosed amount in July.
Add this to:
|
||
US Spending Increases- Online TOP
More than $22bn has been spent online in the US since the beginning of November, 18 per cent up on last year, according to the latest market data.
Research firm comScore reported that online spending reached $881m on 10 December alone, up 33 per cent on last year.
This marked the heaviest online spending day of the season and the heaviest online spending day on record.
"The strong surge at the beginning of last week saw Monday and Tuesday easily surpassing $800m in sales and showing very strong growth rates, but the remainder of the week saw more modest spending," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni.
"However, we anticipate that spending at the beginning of this week will again be strong with most free shipping deals available until 18 December."
This year's 18 per cent online retail spending growth rate stands well below the 26 per cent rate at the same time last year.
An analysis of online spending by household income reveals that slower growth among lower income households is weighing on the overall season-to-date growth.
While households earning at least $100,000 have increased online spending 28 percent versus year ago, households making less than $50,000 have increased their spending by just 10 per cent.
"The current economic realities appear to be having a negative impact on the growth in consumer spending," explained Fulgoni.
"From the sub-prime housing meltdown to a decline in home values, to higher gas prices and an uncertain stock market, many consumers are either feeling the pinch or are lacking the confidence to spend at the rate they had in the past.
"Consumers in lower income segments appear to be the most affected, as evidenced by the sluggish growth in their rate of online spending."
Add this to:
|
||
Horse Racing Backs Online Gambling Ban TOP
One of online gambling's most passionate detractors apparently enjoys almost $40 000 in encouragement and support from an industry that benefits increasingly from his attacks on Internet gambling.
According to an article on Gambling Web this week the wannabe nemesis of online gambling, Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, has accepted almost $40 000 in campaign funds from the horse racing industry.
Goodlatte has consistently been an ardent supporter of anti-online gambling legislation that gives inequitable carve-outs for Internet betting through state lotteries, fantasy sports and, yes - horse racing in the United States. And the latter has in particular embraced the opportunity with expanded online betting activities (see recent InfoPowa reports)
Goodlatte has been frequently quoted as supporting the view that online gambling is immoral, somewhat out of balance with his support for the carve outs, which have contributed to the invidious (and potentially expensive) situation that the United Stated currently finds itself in vis-a-vis the World Trade Organisation; facing billions in claims from other nations..
Goodlatte has been vociferous in his efforts to get online gambling banned or hamstrung. Last month, he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on online gambling assembled by Congressman John Conyers, where he again insisted that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act - which seeks to prohibit financial transactions with online gambling companies - be enforced with criminal prosecutions.
Add this to:
|
||
Part of the Computer Displays UK Limited Group of Companies Copyright 2007