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My 2 featured articles for the week ending June 3, 2005:

Archived blogs for the week of May 30, 2005

884 - June 3, 2005 - 11.56 AM EST

Feedster raises venture capital funding

Feedster has closed its first round of venture capital financing. No numbers were attached to the announcement, but the deal was led by Selby Venture Partners, a Menlo Park firm and one of the biggest name in Silicon Valley VC funding.

We visited with managing director Bob Marshall several months ago, and it seems the firm hasn't invested much in the Internet media space. Though it's not entirely green either, having invested in music recommendation company, Savage Beast.

Posted on Businessblog™

883 - June 2, 2005 - 5.41 PM EST

Search engine market expected to explode in Europe

The search engine industry in Europe is expected to increase significantly according to the latest numbers from Nielsen NetRatings.

All over Europe, search activity increased by eleven percent in 2004 compared to an average growth of only 4 percent in Web users.

According to Nielsen, across Europe in April 2004 there were 110 million Internet users, which has risen to 115 million in a year. In contrast, the number of people using search engines grew from 79 million to 88 million.

France topped the list of biggest searchers with 81 per cent of users being regular searchers closely followed by the UK with 80 per cent. Both countries are now ahead of the US which has a search to user ratio of 79 per cent.

Google is by far the most popular search engine across Europe.

Posted on Businessblog™

882 - June 2, 2005 - 1.42 PM EST

eBay acquires Shopping.com

eBay is acquiring Shopping.com, an online-comparison shopping site for $620 million in cash.

The online marketplace will pay $21 a share of Shopping.com's shares, or a 20% premium, both companies announced.

Shares of eBay fell 2.5% to $38.11 in after-hours action. The stock rose nearly 3% to $39.11 in regular trading.

Shopping.com surged 19% to $20 in late trading to $20.80, after closing 2% higher at $17.44 during the day. The company is expected to earn $131 million in 2005 and earn 70 cents per share. Based on those forecasts, eBay is paying 4.7 times this year's sales and 30 times earnings.

Executives at both companies declined to discuss the deal value, but did say both companies are complementary, with business models focused on bringing buyers and sellers together and receiving a brokering fee from the transaction. They said there would be no layoffs.

'We really like the essence of Shopping.com,' said Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, who told MarketWatch that eBay approached Shopping.com a few weeks ago. 'Shopping.com focuses on bringing buyers and sellers together.'

Additionally, Shopping.com brings a large audience to eBay sellers, who have showed their ire in the last few months after eBay raised prices.

'We thought this would be something that would be excellent for our community of sellers,' said Cobb. 'This will give them access to a new set of buyers.'

Posted on Businessblog™

881 - June 1st, 2005 - 2.43 PM EST

Yahoo to link with two stock trading brokerages

Yahoo users will be able to access stock-trading accounts directly through the Yahoo Finance section.

Stock trading access could also be another strong tool for building user loyalty.

Aiming to take the popular financial news and information pages of its portal to new levels and target an affluent class of users in the process, Yahoo's (Nasdaq: YHOO) Japan subsidiary has announced plans to link with two stock trading brokerages.

Yahoo Japan said it struck a deal with E*Trade Securities, Japan's top online stock broker, and Nikko Cordial Securities, the number three broker in the country. The details are still being worked out and were expected to be finished within the week, according to reports.

Yahoo did not provide details on how the agreements will work, but it's believed users of the portal will be able to access stock-trading accounts directly through the Yahoo Finance section of the Japanese site. The financial terms were not disclosed, but speculation was that Yahoo Japan would receive a referral fee for all transactions originated through the portal.

Posted on Businessblog™

880 - June 1st, 2005 - 12.29 PM EST

Google's stock expected to reach $350

Credit Suisse First Boston is the latest brokerage to increase its expected price target for Google's shares above $300.

Shares of the Internet search engine quickly jumped $7.51, or 2.7%, to $284.78 after analyst Heath Terry boosted his price target on the stock to $350 from $275.

Terry carries an outperform rating on Google's stock, which closed at an all-time high of $277.27 on Tuesday.

"While there will certainly be plenty of volatility in the stock price, particularly over what is supposed to be the slower summer period, we believe shares have further to go given the momentum in the company's core advertising business, the growing impact of new business like Gmail, Froogle and Local and a valuation that, relative to the company's growth rate, is far from stretched," Terry wrote in a research note.

Posted on Businessblog™

879 - May 31, 2005 - 8.56 AM EST

Is Google being accused again?

Could Google breach more copyright rules with its Harvard and Oxford university initiative?

In 2004, Google announced agreements with five of the world's biggest universities, including Oxford and Harvard, to scan the better part of the contents of their whole libraries to the Internet.

Google's plan is to make millions of important but previously inaccessible documents available to researchers everywhere with just a few clicks.

The head of Oxford University's library service said the project could turn out to be almost as important as the invention of the printing press.

Google meanwhile claimed its motives were purely altruistic, the realisation of a longstanding dream for the group's billionaire founders Sergey Page and Larry Brin who'd worked on a digital library project during their student days.

Posted on Businessblog™

878 - May 30, 2005 - 7.15 PM EST

Google PR Observations

Judging by the many elements we closely analyzed since the Google PR indicator vanished sometime late Thursday night / early Friday morning, it appears at first glance that this most likely would have been caused by a temporary glitch or a flaw, either caused by Google itself, or (most probably) in one or more of their data centers.

The technical glitch was noticed globally and affected all sites, even the PR 9's and 10's such as CNN, Microsoft and Yahoo. As of about 5.00 PM EST Monday May 30, the problems most people have experienced so far seem to have subsided. About 98% of the sites we carefully monitor have returned to their original PR that was recorded on or before May 26.

The next few days could be interesting, since there could be some isolated 'surprises' for a few lucky webmasters. Although most of the sites we follow have either returned to their original PR before May 26, we did notice three sites (1%) that saw their PR increase by one point, indicating this could have been a "mini PR update" done by Google.

Posted on Businessblog™

877 - May 30, 2005 - 12.51 PM EST

Ask Jeeves launches Zoom and Web Answers

Ask Jeeves introduces two new search products which increase relevance and guide users to find the information they need faster.

"Zoom," a next-generation related-search tool that gives users suggestions to narrow or expand their searches; and "Web Answers," which provides direct answers harvested in real time from the billions of Web pages in the Ask Jeeves index.

"Today's launches significantly advance the cause of some of our most popular search features," said Jim Lanzone, senior vice president of search properties.

"Zoom and Web Answers are not bells and whistles; they are important innovations on some of our core search technologies, which will help our users find what they need faster than with other search engines."

Zoom and Web Answers are now available on Ask Jeeves. Zoom is a new concept navigation tool that offers suggestions to narrow and refine your search ("zooming in"), or expand your search ("zooming out") to explore new ideas.

It can even identify specific names related to your original search. Zoom is visually represented on the Ask Jeeves results page with suggestions that are categorized on the right side of the page into Narrow Your Search, Expand Your Search and Related Names.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2005. All rights reserved.

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