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8:10 AM ET, January 22, 2011

Techmeme

 Top Items: 
Matt Cutts / The Official Google Blog:
Google search and search engine spam  —  January brought a spate of stories about Google's search quality.  Reading through some of these recent articles, you might ask whether our search quality has gotten worse.  The short answer is that according to the evaluation metrics that we've refined …
RELATED:
Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:
Did Google Just Declare War on Demand Media?  —  Over the past few months, there has been a growing chorus of criticism — much of it anecdotal, but coming from a number of respected technology observers — about Google's increasingly useless search results.
Discussion: Mixed Media, SAI and Search Engine Land, Thanks:defrag
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
Google ready for action against content farms
Phil Nickinson / Android Central:
Minimum advertised prices set for Motorola Xoom ($799) and HTC Thunderbolt ($249)  —  We just got hit with the news of the minimum advertised price for the Motorola Xoom Android tablet and HTC ThunderBolt LTE smartphone on Verizon.  Looks like the Xoom will be going for $799 — we have to assume that's unsubsidized.
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Facebook Raises $1.5 Billion At $50 Billion Valuation  —  Facebook has officially announced that it has just raised $1.5 billion in funding at a $50 billion valuation, according to a release issued today (we've embedded the release below).  —  As stated in the release, the investment was broken into two parts.
RELATED:
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch:
The Clock Is Set For A Facebook IPO By April, 2012  —  Today, Facebook announced that it raised a total of $1.5 billion in its latest round, giving the company a valuation of $50 billion.  But it also disclosed something else: when it will likely go public.
Discussion: Mashable and SelectStart
Anthony Ha / VentureBeat:
Facebook confirms $1.5B funding, leaves $500M on the table
Nilay Patel / Engadget:
Android source code, Java, and copyright infringement: what's going on?  —  So it's been a fun day of armchair code forensics and legal analysis on the web after Florian Mueller published a piece this morning alleging Google directly copied somewhere between 37 and 44 Java source files in Android.
RELATED:
Ed Burnette / Ed Burnette's Dev Connection Blog:
Oops: No copied Java code or weapons of mass destruction found in Android
Charles Arthur / Guardian:
Google shuffle: why Schmidt had to be pushed from the top  —  After slipups with search, Street View and Android, it's clear that Google needs tighter control at the top - and Eric Schmidt is not the man for the job  —  Eric Schmidt's departure after nearly 10 years as chief executive of Google …
RELATED:
Brian Womack / Bloomberg:
Google Said to Grant $100 Million in Equity to CEO Eric Schmidt  —  Google Inc. is granting an equity award package of $100 million to Eric Schmidt, who will be succeeded as chief executive officer by co-founder Larry Page in April, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Discussion: L.A. Times Tech Blog
Ken Auletta / New Yorker:
Why Is Eric Schmidt Stepping Down at Google?
Ina Fried / Mobilized:
Take That, Cupertino!  Toshiba Flashes Insults at Apple in Teaser Site for Its Android Tablet.  —  Toshiba is taking it straight to the iPad in a new Web site that teases the coming arrival of its Android tablet.  —  On the site, Toshiba touts the features its tablet has that the iPad lacks …
RELATED:
Chris Ziegler / Engadget:
AT&T offering free MicroCells to top 7.5 percent of customers ‘likely to experience poor in-building coverage’  —  We've known that AT&T has been test-marketing free 3G MicroCells to subscribers with particularly awful reception in certain parts of the country since the product launched last year …
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
Congratulations Crunchies Winners!  Twitter Takes Best Startup Of 2010  —  This year's fourth annual Crunchies Awards have just concluded, and we're happy to say that it was an overwhelming success.  For those who weren't at the event or watching our livestream, we've included the list of nominees and winners below.
Discussion: Neowin.net
Ian Hickson / The WHATWG Blog:
HTML is the new HTML5  —  In 2009 we announced that the HTML5 specification at the WHATWG was progressing to Last Call.  The plan at the time was to finish the specification this year and publish a snapshot of “HTML5” in 2012.  However, shortly after that we realised that the demand …
Deborah Gage / Venture Capital Dispatch:
Why Andreessen Horowitz Models Itself After A Hollywood Talent Agency  —  Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz have raised nearly a billion dollars in the 18 months since they founded their Silicon Valley venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz, even though they've never been venture capitalists before.
Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:
Creator Of Million Dollar Homepage Makes Do Nothing For 2 Minutes  —  PopJam CEO Alex Tew, the guy behind the internet phenomenon Million Dollar Homepage, has now gone the opposite extreme.  Along with developer Ben Dowling, he has created Do Nothing For 2 Minutes, a site whose purpose is pretty self-explanatory.
Jon Brodkin / Network World:
Ballmer to Hu: 90% of Microsoft customers in China using pirated software  —  Microsoft CEO raises concerns to Chinese president about intellectual property protection  —  While Chinese President Hu Jintao knew he'd face some tough questions when he came to the United States this week …
Discussion: Examiner and Reuters
Robert McMillan / Computerworld:
Got $500?  You can buy a hacked U.S. military website  —  If you're a criminal looking for full control of the Web used by the U.S. Army's Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM), you can get it for just under US$500.  —  If you're a criminal looking for full control of the Web used …
Jason Kincaid / TechCrunch:
PostUp Acquires UberTwitter, Renames Itself (Again) To UberMedia  —  Bill Gross is up to something.  The CEO of PostUp, who previously founded (and sold) Overture, answers.com, and a number of other companies, has just acquired his second Twitter client in as many weeks.
 
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 More Items: 
Gautham Nagesh / Hillicon Valley:
Groups say Comcast may have violated net-neutrality rules
Thanks:gnagesh
Anil Dash:
How should a White House Quora Work?
Mary Jo Foley / All about Microsoft Blog:
Microsoft moves its Chatter-like OfficeTalk toward commercialization
Romin Irani / ProgrammableWeb:
Wolfram Alpha API Now Free and Open to All
Discussion: Market Wire, ReadWriteWeb and Wolfram
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Will Apple Put the iPhone on Other Carriers?
Discussion: Network World, Gizmodo and asymco
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab:
Open Source Hack Unlocks Apple TV's Potential
Discussion: Ars Technica, TUAW and XBMC
 Earlier Items: 
Eric Eldon / Inside Social Games:
Zynga Buys Area/Code, Developer of Ubisoft's CSI: Crime City Game on Facebook
Horace Dediu / asymco:
65% of Apple's sales came from iOS powered devices
Nob Seki / Six Apart News & Events:
Six Apart Japan to be acquired by Infocom and assume responsibility …
Jesse Stay / Stay N' Alive:
Facebook Quietly Launching Friendfeed-like Live Commenting
Discussion: Softpedia News and Download Squad, Thanks:jesse
Sarah Perez / ReadWriteWeb:
Developers Share Mac App Store Sales Figures
Discussion: Mashable, TUAW and MarketingVOX
Leena Rao / TechCrunch:
PeopleRank: Quora Is Developing An Algorithm To Determine And Rank User Quality
Discussion: Quora, MediaPost and SAI