NEWS: Google invests $1 billion in AOL

Posted: 21/12/05 By: Jemima Kiss
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Google is to invest $1 billion in a five per cent stake of AOL, the US web portal and internet service provider.

The alliance will create a powerful advertising partnership and will promote more AOL content to Google users.

Search advertising using Google technology will be introduced on the AOL network and display advertising will be extended on Google sites. The two sites will also collaborate on video search, instant messaging and improving the searchability of AOL content.

NEWS: Time Warner to Sell 5% AOL Stake to Google for $1 Billion

Time Warner to Sell 5% AOL Stake to Google for $1 Billion

...identified as advertising, but Google will give AOL credits to pay for them as...unit preferred to work with Google. Yesterday, several AOL executives said that was true...placement with those sold by Google. AOL's sales force will also have...
December 17, 2005 - By SAUL HANSELL and RICHARD SIKLOS; Andrew Ross Sorkin contributed reporting for this article.

TECHNOLOGY; Under Terms of Partnership, AOL and Google Agree to Shared Selling of Ads

...joint venture to sell ads. The Google-AOL deal involves a range of other...name to communicate with other AOL users. Google will help drive users to AOL...impediment to a potential spinoff of AOL. Mr. Parsons said Google's investment in AOL did not...
December 21, 2005 - By SAUL HANSELL - Business - 866 words

NEWS: Is Public Relations Ready for Discontinuous Change?

November 21, 2005

Is Public Relations Ready for Discontinuous Change?

As the Thanksgiving holiday nears, I try to gather my thoughts on the year past and to anticipate the year ahead. The most striking development for our industry must be the fundamental shifts occurring in media. Here are a few statistics:

* Every dollar coming out of print advertising revenue for newspapers is replaced by only 33 cents online, according to Citigroup analyst William Bird. Print advertising accounts for approximately 66% of total revenue for newspapers. This money is ebbing away to web competitors like Monster.com or Yahoo.

* The largest 50 Web companies are attracting 96% of the ad spending on line, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, with the majority going to AOL, Google, MSN and Yahoo. The hottest genre of Web advertising is 15 second commercials that run before on line videos on sites such as WebMD.

NEWS: Fox buys MySpace

News Corporation Buys An Internet Company

...immediately after the formation of Fox Interactive Media, a unit within...foxsports.com, foxnews.com, and fox.com. The addition of Intermix...the American market. In buying MySpace, the company is following Mr...Murdoch said. He added that the Fox Interactive unit was working...
July 19, 2005 - By RICHARD SIKLOS (NYT)

TODAY IN BUSINESS

...iPods to sophisticated home music systems. [C9.] FOX UNIT BUYS PHOTOBUCKET -- Fox Interactive Media has agreed to acquire the photo...public spat in which the popular networking site MySpace partly blocked content from Photobucket. [C11...
May 31, 2007 - (NYT)

Growing Online, BBC Is to Join With MySpace

The commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation is expected to announce a partnership with MySpace on Thursday to make some of its content available on MySpace, the popular social networking Web site. MySpace, part of the News Corporation, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, said Wednesday tha ...

NEWS: Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr

Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr CNET News.com
Yahoo buys photo-sharing site Flickr Move comes less than a week after the Internet giant launched a beta test of a new blogging tool.

Yahoo has purchased online photo-sharing service Flickr, less than a week after the Internet giant launched a beta test of a new blogging tool.

Vancouver, British Columbia-based Flickr lets users upload digital photos from computers and camera phones, put together photo albums, and post photos to blogs, among other things.

Google generates dramatic profit growth, but eats into partners' income

Google's stock rose by almost 10% to $210 in late trading after the companyreported Q4 results that beat analysts' estimates. Here are the key numbers from Google's results and some brief comments about the sources of Google's income...

Google cut the proportion of revenue it pays to its AdSense partners to 77% from 85% a year earlier. On its conference call, the company ascribed this to (a) strong performance from partners that Google makes fixed minimum payments to, and (b) strong performance from smaller partners that receive a lower share of revenue. That's fine, but at the end of the day it still means that Google increased the percentage of profits it takes from its partners. Will this generate the same hostility from partners as eBay's recent price rise? Or to put it another way: is that a sustainable source of growth?

Google's AdSense program performed spectacularly, generating almost as much revenue as its search business ($490 million versus $530 million) and growing at almost an identical rate sequentially (28% versus 29%). Google's AdSense program is actually two distinct businesses: partnerships where Google provides PPC ads for other companies' search, such as AOL Europe, Ask Jeeves, and Shopping.com; and Google's contextual advertising business for content  owners.  Comments on the conference call suggest that both of these businesses performed strongly.