Consolidation in the mobile advertising market continues at breakneck pace. After Google’s proposed $750m acquisition of AdMob and Apple’s $275m bid for Quattro, Amobee is now buying RingRing Media of the UK for an unspecified - but probably much smaller -  amount.

California-based Amobee said the deal would result in a combined company bigger than Quattro in terms of revenues and number of ads served each month. Analysts at IDC estimate Quattro has around $21m in mobile ad revenues, giving it around 7 per cent of the market. Both would still be dwarfed by the combined Google/Admob, which would have nearly a quarter of the market with revenues of $68m. Continue reading "Amobee to buy UK’s RingRing Media"

It is another change of tactics in a war that has been going on for 50 years. This week, consumer electronics companies led by Apple, HP, Sony, Panasonic and Research In Motion, broke off the latest round of talks to reform the Europe’s convoluted system of private copy levies.

The copy levies are surcharges placed on devices such as MP3 players and printers by 22 European countries, to compensate writers, artists, and musicians for small amounts of personal copying of their material. It is not to be confused with illegal filesharing; the copy levies are intended to cover handfuls of copies in the private sphere, which many countries allow. Continue reading "No end in sight for 50-year copyright levies war"

Facebook has become embroiled in a bizarre battle against sites which offer internet users help in deleting their online presence - so-called “social network suicide”.

The social networking site has blocked the site Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, from accessing its users’ profiles and is taking legal steps against another similar site. Continue reading "Facebook blocks online identity deletion sites"

“Don’t panic” - the words on the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - should also be emblazoned on the front page of the EU telecoms package, which was voted through on Tuesday.

This update on European telecoms and internet legislation has been highly controversial. Profound division on issues,  such as whether persistent illegal downloaders can have their internet access cut off, had already delayed its passage by several months.

Then, in the few weeks run-up to its approval, a new panic emerged: Would the new laws force companies to completely change the way they use internet cookies?  Continue reading "Brussels is not going to eat all the cookies after all"

Google has had several years of tussles now with privacy regulators. Three years ago European data protection commissioners began question what the company was doing with all the personal data it was gleaning from users of its search engine. In the past year, the company has faced outrage - at least in some pockets like Italy, Japan and Switzerland - over Street View, which provides panoramic, eye-level views of every street of major cities around the world.

Earlier this year, a leading privacy group called on the US Federal Trade Commission to consider shutting down Google’s web services until the company could better safeguard personal data. There have been a number of instances where Google Docs, Google Desktop and Gmail have had glitches which made users personal documents visible to others. Continue reading "Google’s ‘dashboard’ privacy controls are a good start"

Dailymotion, Europe’s biggest online video challenger to YouTube, on Thursday said it had raised $25m in a new funding round led by the French Sovereign Fund (FSI). The French strategic investments fund, which is 49 per cent owned by the government, contributed $11m to the round, with all the existing investors, Advent Venture Partners, AGF PE, Partech International and Atlas Ventures,  taking part.

Dailymotion chief executive Cedric Tournay also said the company had now hit break-even and expected to make a profit next year. The site now attracts around 60m unique users each month, up from 35m a year ago.  Although it is dwarfed by YouTube, it is doing well to survive and grow in a market where competitors like Joost and Veoh have had to retreat. Continue reading "Daily motion raises $25m to accelerate growth"

Shazam, the mobile phone music discovery service, could be on track for an IPO, with Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers taking a stake in the company. Shazam, which was the original service that allowed users to hold up their phone in a noisy bar to identify what music track was playing, has seen phenomenal growth over the last few months, reaching the 50m user milestone this week.

The company has seen rapid growth after launching the service free on the iPhone App Store in the summer of 2008. The iPhone app has been downloaded more than 10m times. Continue reading "Kleiner Perkins takes stake in Shazam"

Cisco’s $3bn bid for Tandberg has made everyone sit up and take notice of video conferencing. It is only little over a week since HP launched its new SkyRoom video conferencing product for desktop computers. HP’s Halo already competes with Cisco at the high end of the telepresence market, with elaborate camera and meeting room systems which come close to simulating real-life meetings. Now, with the Tandberg acquisition and SkyRoom, both companies are looking to serve all segments of the market from high end to mass market. Microsoft has also developed teleconferencing services similar to Cisco and HP. Continue reading "Sharper focus on video conferencing"