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Mergers: Commission clears proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google — Mergers: Commission clears proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google … Google operates an Internet search engine that offers search capabilities for end users free of charge and provides online advertising space on its own websites.
Discussion:
Salon, CNET News.com, VentureBeat, Google Watch, eWeek, Threat Level, Digital Trends, paidContent.org, WebProNews, Business Wire, Tech Trader Daily, Digital Destiny and Searchviews
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We've officially acquired DoubleClick — I'm pleased to share the news that we completed our acquisition of DoubleClick today. Although it's been nearly a year since we announced our intention to acquire DoubleClick last April, we are no less excited today about the benefits that the combination …
Discussion:
WebGuild, Technological Winter, Reuters, SEO and Tech Daily and Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

EU approves Google's DoubleClick acquisition; Here comes the display ad ripples — Updated below: European regulators on Tuesday approved Google's purchase of DoubleClick setting up the search giant's big splash in the display advertising market. — According to the EU's competition committee …
Discussion:
New York Times, Reuters, Ars Technica, Los Angeles Times, IDG News Service, Tech Beat, The Register, Electronista, paidContent.org and Mashable!


Searchme: A New Visual Search Engine — [Updated with correct funding of $31 million and note that Google has a similar effort in its labs.] — Today, Sequoia Capital, which has been a key investor of search giant Google (GOOG), as well as Yahoo, will unveil its latest investment in search, a visual search engine called: Searchme.
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SearchMe Launches New Search Engine With Heavy Backing From Sequoia — Mountain View based SearchMe has been around since 2005 and has raised $31 million from Sequoia, DAG Ventures and Lehman Brothers. But until last weekend when I met founders Randy Adams and John Holland I knew next to nothing about them.
Discussion:
Gizmodo

Testing Over, Hulu.com to Open Its TV and Film Offerings This Week — SAN FRANCISCO — Hulu.com, the long-gestating Internet joint venture between NBC Universal and Fox, emerges from limited testing on Wednesday to make its catalog of TV shows and video clips available to anyone on the Web.
Discussion:
Medialoper, Seeking Alpha, Contentinople, Mashable!, Clickety Clack, paidContent.org and Lost Remote
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A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide — As you might know, WordPress 2.5 is about to be released, and we wanted to encourage WordPress users to upgrade. To Movable Type. — The truth is, there are lots of good blogging tools out there, and they're all good at different things.
Discussion:
STARTUP CHATTER, Valleywag, Bb's RealTech, David Dalka, Favorite {fvrit} Blog, Like It Matters, The Blog Herald and Changing Way
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Google's drop in paid clicks: Part of the grand plan — After ComScore reported a recent decline in Google's paid clicks, the Net ratings service followed up, noting evidence that the drop was due to “Google's own quality initiatives that result in a reduction in the number of paid listings and …
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IDG News Service
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Hostility Has Its Rewards — MENLO PARK, Calif. — “It's crazy to say you will only grow through innovation,” Larry Ellison, the hard-charging chief executive of Oracle, was telling me last week. “It's bizarre that there's a stigma to buying something rather than building it yourself.”
Discussion:
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs


CBSSports.com Opens March Madness On Demand Video For Easy Access From Any Site — Seeking more online viewers for games and ads, CBSSports.com and the NCAA are announcing a “developer platform” for March Madness on Demand. It's not the kind of developer concept where people are encouraged to build apps …


MacPro, Mac Book Air get software updates — While we slept last night, Apple released two updates for two of their less common hardware offerings: the MacBook Air and select Mac Pros. They aren't terribly exciting and, as always, the descriptions are fairly vague.
Discussion:
PC World, AppleInsider, MacUser, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Macsimum News and MacDailyNews

20% Of Valley Startups Can't Get To Their Cash — The credit crisis is in full swing through most of the U.S. economy, but it has barely touched venture-fueled Silicon Valley. Until recently, that is. Up to 20% of venture backed startups may have been convinced by their financial advisors …
Discussion:
FOXBusiness.com


The “Nuclear Disaster” At SXSW Was Nothing More Than A Witch Burning — Based on the Twitter messages and blog posts I saw yesterday emerge real time from the SXSW conference, it sounded like Sarah Lacy's interview of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was, truly, a career ending, never seen before train wreck of epic proportions.


Drop It Like It's DropBox — Personal file storage, sharing and syncing is one of those categories of technology problems that, despite all efforts, no one ever seems to get right. Most of the current offerings, even the better ones, leave something to be desired.

Where Every Ad Knows Your Name — Just how personal can advertising from the Web giants get? That's a question you may be wondering after reading my article in Monday's Times and the related blog post. With big Internet companies, which already have a lot of data about users …


AOL “Disintegrating”; Also, Why Curt Viebranz Was Fired* — *UPDATE: AOL spokesperson Tricia Primrose strongly denies several assertions in this post. Specifically, she argues that AOL's business is strong and that Curt Viebranz's dismissal had nothing to do with his reluctance to embrace certain revenue targets.