By PETER SVENSSON
The lack of high-speed Internet access in some areas of the U.S. has been hotly debated, even as that digital divide has narrowed. But a new, wider gap is being created by technology that will make today's broadband feel as slow as a dial-up connection.
Much like broadband enabled downloads of music, video and work files that weren't practical over dial-up, the next generation of Internet connections will allow for vivid, lifelike video conferencing and new kinds of interactive games.
But while access to cable and phone-line broadband has spread to cover perhaps 90 percent of the U.S. in the space of a decade, next-generation Internet access looks set to create a much smaller group of "haves" and a larger group of "have nots."
The most promising route to superfast home broadband is to extend the fiber-optic lines that already form the Internet's backbone all the way to homes. Existing fiber-to-the-home, or FTTH, connections are already 10 times faster than vanilla broadband provided over phone or cable lines. With relatively easy upgrades, the speeds could be a hundred times faster.
In the U.S., the buildout of FTTH is under way, but it's highly concentrated in the 17-state service area of Verizon Communications Inc., which is the only major U.S. phone company that is replacing its copper lines with fiber. Its FiOS service accounts for more than 1.8 million of the 2.9 million U.S. homes that are connected to fiber according to RVA LLC, a research firm that specializes in the field.
FTTH is also offered by some small phone companies, cooperatives and municipalities, like Chattanooga, Tenn. The other major phone companies, like AT&T Inc. and Qwest Communications International Inc., are laying FTTH in "greenfield" developments, but aren't pulling fiber to existing homes. Some cable companies are doing the same.
Graham Finnie, chief analyst for the telecom research firm Heavy Reading, believes 13 percent of U.S. households will be connected to fiber by 2012. Since Verizon is the major builder, the vast majority of those will be in Verizon territory on the East Coast, Texas and California.
"That does beg the question: What happens to everyone else? There's going to be a huge community of people who are not getting FTTH in the next five years," Finnie said.
"A quarter of the U.S. is going to get one of the best networks in the world," said Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime newsletter.
The rest of the country, he said, is going to be stuck with slow DSL or cable, though the latter is due for upgrades in the next few years that will boost top speeds fivefold.
Still, it's not entirely clear that people on fiber connections are going to have a big advantage over slowpokes on regular broadband. Today, there is not much that can be done on a fast connection that can't be done on a standard one. Fiber is already available to a third of South Korean homes, but that hasn't revolutionized society there, at least not yet.
Increased used of video, particularly high-definition video, is seen as the future of the Internet, but most cable modems and high-end DSL are already capable of streaming HD video downloads. However, fiber connections support higher upload speeds, potentially making for better video conferencing from the home, which in turn creates opportunities for distance learning. Games also could get a jump in realism and online interactivity, Burstein said.
Not only are U.S. regions going to differ tremendously in how fast they get fiber, the differences between countries will also be huge. Apart from South Korea, Finnie cited Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Sweden as other front-runners. He estimates that almost half of all Swedish households would have fiber by 2012, for instance.
"This is not a market where there's a smooth progression across countries and regions — it's going to be extremely variable," said Finnie.
Considered as a whole, the U.S. will be "middling" in the international comparison, trailing the pioneers but well ahead of other developed nations like Finnie's home country, Britain, which he estimates will have 3 to 4 percent fiber-connected homes in 2012.
The fiber buildout is going to take more time and be more patchy than the introduction of broadband because it's so much more expensive, Finnie said. Cable modem and DSL connections are retrofits to links originally laid down to provide video and phone service, respectively. Fiber-optic lines will be the first links that are built for data to reach U.S. homes.
The costs will remain high, because getting permits for the buildout and drawing the physical lines is "a hugely physical, human-type activity," said Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council North America. While the cost of the equipment keeps dropping rapidly, two-thirds of the cost of connecting a home are labor, he said.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Microsoft Joins Low-Cost Laptop Project
By STEVE LOHR
After years of conflict, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child, have reached an agreement that will put Windows on the organization’s computers.
Laptops running Microsoft's operating system will be tested next month in limited trials.
Microsoft long resisted joining the ambitious project because its laptops used the Linux operating system, a freely distributed alternative to Windows.
The group’s small, sturdy laptops have been hailed for their innovative design. But they are sold mainly to governments and education ministries in developing nations, and initial sales have been slow partly because countries were reluctant to purchase machines that did not run Windows, the dominant operating system.
Education ministries want low-cost computers to help further education, but they often see familiarity with Windows-based computing as a marketable skill that can improve job prospects.
“The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the nonprofit group. “And those people are much more comfortable with Windows.”
The alliance between Microsoft and O.L.P.C. comes after long stretches of antagonism, punctuated by occasional talks, between the two sides. Mr. Negroponte, a former computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a new media pioneer, said he first talked to Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, three years ago.
But at the time, Microsoft was fiercely opposed to anything that might promote the use of open-source software, like Linux. Since then, Microsoft has become more comfortable in competing against Linux and at times running its products on the same machines in data centers, desktops and laptops, Mr. Negroponte noted.
Back then, he added, the nonprofit laptop project did not have a working machine.
Last year, Mr. Negroponte said he contacted Mr. Gates again, and this time the Microsoft chairman was receptive. He instructed Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, to work out a deal with Mr. Negroponte. Those talks began in January in private meetings, when both men were attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The first of the project’s child-friendly XO laptops running Windows XP will be tested next month in limited trials in four or five countries, said James Utzschneider, manager of Microsoft’s developing markets unit. He declined to name the countries, but said XO laptops running Windows would be generally available by September.
The pact with Microsoft is not an exclusive agreement. The Linux version will still be available, and the organization will encourage outside software developers to create a version of the project’s educational software, called Sugar, that will run on Windows.
Windows will add a bit to the price of the machines, about $3, the licensing fee Microsoft charges to some developing nations under a program called Unlimited Potential. For those nations that want dual-boot models, running both Windows and Linux, the extra hardware required will add another $7 or so to the cost of the machines, Mr. Negroponte said.
The laptops now cost about $200 apiece, and the project’s goal is to eventually bring the price down to about $100.
The project’s agreement with Microsoft involves no payment by the software giant, and Microsoft will not join One Laptop Per Child’s board.
“We’ve stayed very pure,” Mr. Negroponte said.
But the alliance with Microsoft has brought some turmoil within the project. Walter Bender, the president who oversaw software development, resigned last month. His departure, Mr. Negroponte said, was “a huge loss to O.L.P.C.”
Inside the project, there have been people who, Mr. Negroponte said, came to regard the use of open-source software as one of the project’s ends, instead of its means.
“I think some people, including Walter, became much too fundamental about open source,” Mr. Negroponte said.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Bender wrote that he left the project because he decided his efforts to develop and support the Sugar open-source learning software “would have more impact from outside of O.L.P.C. than from within.” Outside the constraints of working on a single hardware platform, like the XO laptop, his work, he wrote, should “lead to a broader base, more options, and a better set of tools for children.”
After years of conflict, Microsoft and the computing and education project One Laptop Per Child, have reached an agreement that will put Windows on the organization’s computers.
Laptops running Microsoft's operating system will be tested next month in limited trials.
Microsoft long resisted joining the ambitious project because its laptops used the Linux operating system, a freely distributed alternative to Windows.
The group’s small, sturdy laptops have been hailed for their innovative design. But they are sold mainly to governments and education ministries in developing nations, and initial sales have been slow partly because countries were reluctant to purchase machines that did not run Windows, the dominant operating system.
Education ministries want low-cost computers to help further education, but they often see familiarity with Windows-based computing as a marketable skill that can improve job prospects.
“The people who buy the machines are not the children who use them, but government officials in most cases,” said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the nonprofit group. “And those people are much more comfortable with Windows.”
The alliance between Microsoft and O.L.P.C. comes after long stretches of antagonism, punctuated by occasional talks, between the two sides. Mr. Negroponte, a former computer researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a new media pioneer, said he first talked to Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, three years ago.
But at the time, Microsoft was fiercely opposed to anything that might promote the use of open-source software, like Linux. Since then, Microsoft has become more comfortable in competing against Linux and at times running its products on the same machines in data centers, desktops and laptops, Mr. Negroponte noted.
Back then, he added, the nonprofit laptop project did not have a working machine.
Last year, Mr. Negroponte said he contacted Mr. Gates again, and this time the Microsoft chairman was receptive. He instructed Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, to work out a deal with Mr. Negroponte. Those talks began in January in private meetings, when both men were attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The first of the project’s child-friendly XO laptops running Windows XP will be tested next month in limited trials in four or five countries, said James Utzschneider, manager of Microsoft’s developing markets unit. He declined to name the countries, but said XO laptops running Windows would be generally available by September.
The pact with Microsoft is not an exclusive agreement. The Linux version will still be available, and the organization will encourage outside software developers to create a version of the project’s educational software, called Sugar, that will run on Windows.
Windows will add a bit to the price of the machines, about $3, the licensing fee Microsoft charges to some developing nations under a program called Unlimited Potential. For those nations that want dual-boot models, running both Windows and Linux, the extra hardware required will add another $7 or so to the cost of the machines, Mr. Negroponte said.
The laptops now cost about $200 apiece, and the project’s goal is to eventually bring the price down to about $100.
The project’s agreement with Microsoft involves no payment by the software giant, and Microsoft will not join One Laptop Per Child’s board.
“We’ve stayed very pure,” Mr. Negroponte said.
But the alliance with Microsoft has brought some turmoil within the project. Walter Bender, the president who oversaw software development, resigned last month. His departure, Mr. Negroponte said, was “a huge loss to O.L.P.C.”
Inside the project, there have been people who, Mr. Negroponte said, came to regard the use of open-source software as one of the project’s ends, instead of its means.
“I think some people, including Walter, became much too fundamental about open source,” Mr. Negroponte said.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Bender wrote that he left the project because he decided his efforts to develop and support the Sugar open-source learning software “would have more impact from outside of O.L.P.C. than from within.” Outside the constraints of working on a single hardware platform, like the XO laptop, his work, he wrote, should “lead to a broader base, more options, and a better set of tools for children.”
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Icahn may run Yahoo proxy campaign
By Dane Hamilton
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is considering mounting a proxy campaign to replace Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) board members after the company failed to reach a deal to merge with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research), a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.
The veteran investor has built up a stake in Yahoo in the last week and would run a slate in an effort to force the company back to the negotiating table with Microsoft, the source said, asking for anonymity because the decision to go ahead with the move has not yet been made.
It is unlikely that Icahn, a veteran of numerous proxy battles, will join with other hedge funds in the campaign, the source said. A decision to run a proxy slate this year must be made by Thursday to qualify for the July 3 annual meeting.
Still, other activist hedge fund managers may try to get involved, including Scott Galloway and his investment firm Firebrand Partners LLC, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday evening, citing people close to the matter.
Galloway won a seat on the New York Times Co (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) board last month after hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners spent half a billion dollars to bankroll his campaign to try to force change at the newspaper publisher.
Galloway, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, declined to comment on the report. A Harbinger representative was not immediately available for comment on whether it would back Galloway if he were to wage a campaign against Yahoo.
Microsoft walked away from its Yahoo bid this month after the Internet company turned down its offer to raise it to $47.5 billion, or $33 per share. Yahoo demanded $37 per share.
A Yahoo spokesman declined to comment on Icahn's potential moves. Microsoft executives have said they were done with their pursuit of Yahoo, and one person close to Microsoft on Tuesday said that remained the case.
The size of the stake Icahn has built could not immediately be determined. He had no Yahoo shares as of early last week, the source said. The Wall Street Journal said Icahn has amassed a stake of roughly 50 million shares, or less than 4 percent of the company's roughly 1.44 billion shares outstanding.
One lawyer who has worked with Icahn in previous campaigns said such a campaign could have good odds of success, providing Microsoft is willing to come back to the bargaining table, which he said is probable.
"The odds are pretty decent," said Marc Weingarten, an attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel, who said he is not involved in any plans for a Yahoo proxy campaign.
"Yahoo has a lot of unhappy shareholders. And if someone could press the company in getting something done, I would think there is a decent chance at a transaction."
One hedge fund manager who heads a large activist fund said it is "a likely possibility" that Icahn would run a Yahoo campaign. The manager, who has worked with Icahn on previous campaigns, asked to remain unidentified.
Should he decide to get involved, Icahn could be in a position to force the companies to restart the talks. Not only does he have the resources to spend the millions of dollars needed for a successful proxy campaign, he also has experience in pressuring companies back to the bargaining table.
Last year, for instance, Icahn was successful in getting Oracle Corp (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) to return to the bargaining table to buy BEA Systems (BEAS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) after those talks collapsed.
Yahoo shares surged 5.1 percent after news of a possible Icahn move on Yahoo was reported by CNBC on Tuesday afternoon. The stock closed up $1.30 at $26.56 on Nasdaq.
The possibility of a proxy battle has loomed since Yahoo rejected Microsoft's offer, sending Yahoo shares tumbling.
One Yahoo shareholder, Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital, said last week he was working to line up support to run a dissident director slate. Jackson said on Tuesday he could not line up financing for a proxy campaign that he said could cost at least $1 million. He told Fox Business Channel he would likely support an Icahn slate, depending on who Icahn proposes.
"It basically came down to dollars and cents," Jackson said in an interview. "The SEC hasn't enacted some sort of open proxy access and that makes it difficult for a shareholder like me to belly up to the bar and put up $1 million. That's the bind I'm in."
Jackson said he still plans to run a "no vote" campaign against current directors, which basically entails reaching out to shareholders and asking them not to endorse the company-sponsored slate.
Jackson was instrumental last year in a campaign to have former Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel replaced.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is considering mounting a proxy campaign to replace Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O: Quote, Profile, Research) board members after the company failed to reach a deal to merge with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research), a source close to the matter said on Tuesday.
The veteran investor has built up a stake in Yahoo in the last week and would run a slate in an effort to force the company back to the negotiating table with Microsoft, the source said, asking for anonymity because the decision to go ahead with the move has not yet been made.
It is unlikely that Icahn, a veteran of numerous proxy battles, will join with other hedge funds in the campaign, the source said. A decision to run a proxy slate this year must be made by Thursday to qualify for the July 3 annual meeting.
Still, other activist hedge fund managers may try to get involved, including Scott Galloway and his investment firm Firebrand Partners LLC, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday evening, citing people close to the matter.
Galloway won a seat on the New York Times Co (NYT.N: Quote, Profile, Research) board last month after hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners spent half a billion dollars to bankroll his campaign to try to force change at the newspaper publisher.
Galloway, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, declined to comment on the report. A Harbinger representative was not immediately available for comment on whether it would back Galloway if he were to wage a campaign against Yahoo.
Microsoft walked away from its Yahoo bid this month after the Internet company turned down its offer to raise it to $47.5 billion, or $33 per share. Yahoo demanded $37 per share.
A Yahoo spokesman declined to comment on Icahn's potential moves. Microsoft executives have said they were done with their pursuit of Yahoo, and one person close to Microsoft on Tuesday said that remained the case.
The size of the stake Icahn has built could not immediately be determined. He had no Yahoo shares as of early last week, the source said. The Wall Street Journal said Icahn has amassed a stake of roughly 50 million shares, or less than 4 percent of the company's roughly 1.44 billion shares outstanding.
One lawyer who has worked with Icahn in previous campaigns said such a campaign could have good odds of success, providing Microsoft is willing to come back to the bargaining table, which he said is probable.
"The odds are pretty decent," said Marc Weingarten, an attorney with Schulte Roth & Zabel, who said he is not involved in any plans for a Yahoo proxy campaign.
"Yahoo has a lot of unhappy shareholders. And if someone could press the company in getting something done, I would think there is a decent chance at a transaction."
One hedge fund manager who heads a large activist fund said it is "a likely possibility" that Icahn would run a Yahoo campaign. The manager, who has worked with Icahn on previous campaigns, asked to remain unidentified.
Should he decide to get involved, Icahn could be in a position to force the companies to restart the talks. Not only does he have the resources to spend the millions of dollars needed for a successful proxy campaign, he also has experience in pressuring companies back to the bargaining table.
Last year, for instance, Icahn was successful in getting Oracle Corp (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) to return to the bargaining table to buy BEA Systems (BEAS.O: Quote, Profile, Research) after those talks collapsed.
Yahoo shares surged 5.1 percent after news of a possible Icahn move on Yahoo was reported by CNBC on Tuesday afternoon. The stock closed up $1.30 at $26.56 on Nasdaq.
The possibility of a proxy battle has loomed since Yahoo rejected Microsoft's offer, sending Yahoo shares tumbling.
One Yahoo shareholder, Eric Jackson of Ironfire Capital, said last week he was working to line up support to run a dissident director slate. Jackson said on Tuesday he could not line up financing for a proxy campaign that he said could cost at least $1 million. He told Fox Business Channel he would likely support an Icahn slate, depending on who Icahn proposes.
"It basically came down to dollars and cents," Jackson said in an interview. "The SEC hasn't enacted some sort of open proxy access and that makes it difficult for a shareholder like me to belly up to the bar and put up $1 million. That's the bind I'm in."
Jackson said he still plans to run a "no vote" campaign against current directors, which basically entails reaching out to shareholders and asking them not to endorse the company-sponsored slate.
Jackson was instrumental last year in a campaign to have former Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel replaced.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Google Steps Into Data Portability Dance
by Juan Carlos Perez
Google is releasing a preview version of Friend Connect, a service designed to let Web publishers add social networking features to their sites.
Friend Connect, which was due to be available on the Web sometime Monday, lets publishers add social networking applications by inserting "a snippet of code" in their sites, Google said.
"We're seeing social capabilities get baked into the infrastructure of the Web," said David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, at a press conference to launch the service. "[They're] increasingly not tied to any one site, to any one source of friends, or any one type of application. We see the Web moving towards an end state where people can use any apps on any Web sites with any of their friends."
Thus, sites will be able to add features like user registration, friends invitation and message posting, and allow visitors to interact with their existing friends at social networking sites like Facebook, Google's Orkut, Plaxo and Hi5, according to Google.
"Google Friend Connect is like giving Webmasters a saltshaker full of 'social' that they can sprinkle on their sites to add social capabilities," Glazer said.
Google's move is yet another in a recent string of data-portability efforts aimed at tearing down the walls in social networking sites and letting users export the data and content they have stored in those sites. MySpace and Facebook took steps in that direction with announcements last week.
As the popularity of social networks keeps rising and people set up multiple profiles, they are demanding the ability to carry their data, content and connections from one site to another, so that they don't have to reenter all that information again.
At the same time, Web publishers are eager to latch onto the craze by adding social networking features to their sites, now that a critical mass of Internet users have embraced the interaction and sharing that social applications provide.
Friend Connect uses open standards for authentication and authorization like OpenID and OAuth, and makes any Web site a potential "container" of social applications built with Google's OpenSocial APIs, Glazer said.
"The entire Web has become a container for OpenSocial apps," he said.
Monday night, Web publishers will be able to sign up to a waiting list to get access to the Friend Connect service, but Google expects to make the service available to anyone within the coming months, officials said.
The back-to-back unveiling of initiatives from Google, MySpace and Facebook, with their differences and limitations, signal both progress and confusion for data portability, Gartner analyst Ray Valdes said.
"The underlying complexity is being revealed, and that's progress," Valdes said.
At this point, vendors aren't aiming for full data portability, primarily because key technical and operational issues need to be worked out, as evidenced by the painstaking but valuable work being done by the Data Portability Workgroup, Valdes said.
However, vendors are comfortable offering data availability, letting their users expose content and data to other sites but keeping the data stored in their servers, he noted. "For the moment, until other issues are solved, data availability is the most pragmatic approach," Valdes said.
As outlined by proponents, the ideal data portability scenario would be for users to have full control over their social profile data, independent of any sites.
Google is releasing a preview version of Friend Connect, a service designed to let Web publishers add social networking features to their sites.
Friend Connect, which was due to be available on the Web sometime Monday, lets publishers add social networking applications by inserting "a snippet of code" in their sites, Google said.
"We're seeing social capabilities get baked into the infrastructure of the Web," said David Glazer, director of engineering at Google, at a press conference to launch the service. "[They're] increasingly not tied to any one site, to any one source of friends, or any one type of application. We see the Web moving towards an end state where people can use any apps on any Web sites with any of their friends."
Thus, sites will be able to add features like user registration, friends invitation and message posting, and allow visitors to interact with their existing friends at social networking sites like Facebook, Google's Orkut, Plaxo and Hi5, according to Google.
"Google Friend Connect is like giving Webmasters a saltshaker full of 'social' that they can sprinkle on their sites to add social capabilities," Glazer said.
Google's move is yet another in a recent string of data-portability efforts aimed at tearing down the walls in social networking sites and letting users export the data and content they have stored in those sites. MySpace and Facebook took steps in that direction with announcements last week.
As the popularity of social networks keeps rising and people set up multiple profiles, they are demanding the ability to carry their data, content and connections from one site to another, so that they don't have to reenter all that information again.
At the same time, Web publishers are eager to latch onto the craze by adding social networking features to their sites, now that a critical mass of Internet users have embraced the interaction and sharing that social applications provide.
Friend Connect uses open standards for authentication and authorization like OpenID and OAuth, and makes any Web site a potential "container" of social applications built with Google's OpenSocial APIs, Glazer said.
"The entire Web has become a container for OpenSocial apps," he said.
Monday night, Web publishers will be able to sign up to a waiting list to get access to the Friend Connect service, but Google expects to make the service available to anyone within the coming months, officials said.
The back-to-back unveiling of initiatives from Google, MySpace and Facebook, with their differences and limitations, signal both progress and confusion for data portability, Gartner analyst Ray Valdes said.
"The underlying complexity is being revealed, and that's progress," Valdes said.
At this point, vendors aren't aiming for full data portability, primarily because key technical and operational issues need to be worked out, as evidenced by the painstaking but valuable work being done by the Data Portability Workgroup, Valdes said.
However, vendors are comfortable offering data availability, letting their users expose content and data to other sites but keeping the data stored in their servers, he noted. "For the moment, until other issues are solved, data availability is the most pragmatic approach," Valdes said.
As outlined by proponents, the ideal data portability scenario would be for users to have full control over their social profile data, independent of any sites.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Alarm at Google Yahoo partnering
by Maggie Shiels
No firm deal with Google has actually been announced
Regulators in the US are being urged to investigate any potential online advertising and search partnership between Google and Yahoo.
The call by a coalition of 16 American civil rights and rural advocacy bodies comes despite the fact no firm deal has actually been announced.
"We all suffer in such mega mergers," Gary Flowers of the Black Leadership Forum told BBC News.
The justice department is examining a trial the companies did in April.
It has been widely reported that it is looking into the anti-trust implications of last month's two-week test.
However, the department says it has no comment on the coalition's demands because there is no definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google at the moment.
But reports say that the two companies are presently hammering out the intricacies of a future potential advertising and search agreement, and are sharing their plans with antitrust regulators.
At Google's shareholder meeting on Thursday, Chairman Eric Schmidt said: "If there were a deal [with Yahoo], we would anticipate structuring the deal to address the anti-trust concerns that have been widely discussed."
'Never positive'
This assurance is not good enough for the coalition which is made up of the League of Rural Voters, the National Black Chamber of Commerce and the American Agriculture Movement.
It also includes the Black Leadership Forum, an umbrella group of 36 civil rights organisations including the NAACP and the National Urban League.
In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thoma Barnett, head of the Justice Department's anti-trust division, the coalition argues that such a deal would give Google almost 90% of the search advertising market and strengthen its influence over internet users' access to information.
"We face a possible future in which no content could be seamlessly accessed without Google's permission," the letter states.
The effect Mr Flowers says of such large partnerships is never positive and would for the black community, as for other communities, "condense competition, increase prices and limit new business opportunity on the internet".
'Do no evil'
League of Rural Voters' executive director Niel Ritchie claims that the do-no-evil mantra may no longer apply in today's marketplace in which Google's reach is apparently without bound, touching more and more aspects of our everyday lives.
"We believe the government should give this agreement very careful scrutiny," he says.
Mr Flowers says:
"Google has already exhibited a pattern of violating privacy, engaging in anti-competitive conduct and using its monopoly power in the search market to drive internet users to its affiliated services and its viewpoints on policy matters.
"Any joint combination with Yahoo could dramatically worsen these problems."
The Centre for Digital Democracy, a consumer advocacy group, is also willing to push regulators to block any deal and wants European consumer groups to raise concerns with European Union officials.
"You can't allow Google to operate a portion of its leading competitor out of its back pocket," Jeffrey Chester executive director of the CDD told the Associated Press.
There has been no comment from Yahoo or Google.
No firm deal with Google has actually been announced
Regulators in the US are being urged to investigate any potential online advertising and search partnership between Google and Yahoo.
The call by a coalition of 16 American civil rights and rural advocacy bodies comes despite the fact no firm deal has actually been announced.
"We all suffer in such mega mergers," Gary Flowers of the Black Leadership Forum told BBC News.
The justice department is examining a trial the companies did in April.
It has been widely reported that it is looking into the anti-trust implications of last month's two-week test.
However, the department says it has no comment on the coalition's demands because there is no definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google at the moment.
But reports say that the two companies are presently hammering out the intricacies of a future potential advertising and search agreement, and are sharing their plans with antitrust regulators.
At Google's shareholder meeting on Thursday, Chairman Eric Schmidt said: "If there were a deal [with Yahoo], we would anticipate structuring the deal to address the anti-trust concerns that have been widely discussed."
'Never positive'
This assurance is not good enough for the coalition which is made up of the League of Rural Voters, the National Black Chamber of Commerce and the American Agriculture Movement.
It also includes the Black Leadership Forum, an umbrella group of 36 civil rights organisations including the NAACP and the National Urban League.
In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thoma Barnett, head of the Justice Department's anti-trust division, the coalition argues that such a deal would give Google almost 90% of the search advertising market and strengthen its influence over internet users' access to information.
"We face a possible future in which no content could be seamlessly accessed without Google's permission," the letter states.
The effect Mr Flowers says of such large partnerships is never positive and would for the black community, as for other communities, "condense competition, increase prices and limit new business opportunity on the internet".
'Do no evil'
League of Rural Voters' executive director Niel Ritchie claims that the do-no-evil mantra may no longer apply in today's marketplace in which Google's reach is apparently without bound, touching more and more aspects of our everyday lives.
"We believe the government should give this agreement very careful scrutiny," he says.
Mr Flowers says:
"Google has already exhibited a pattern of violating privacy, engaging in anti-competitive conduct and using its monopoly power in the search market to drive internet users to its affiliated services and its viewpoints on policy matters.
"Any joint combination with Yahoo could dramatically worsen these problems."
The Centre for Digital Democracy, a consumer advocacy group, is also willing to push regulators to block any deal and wants European consumer groups to raise concerns with European Union officials.
"You can't allow Google to operate a portion of its leading competitor out of its back pocket," Jeffrey Chester executive director of the CDD told the Associated Press.
There has been no comment from Yahoo or Google.
Google Friend Connect
by Dan Farber
Google is expected to join the social network data portability crowd with "Friend Connect" on Monday. TechCrunch speculates that Friend Connect will be a set of "APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites."
Google will join Facebook and MySpace, which launched ways to port user data to partner sites this week. Facebook Connect will provide the hooks to let users port their friends, profile photos, events, and other data across the Web to partner sites. MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability, with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter as initial partners for its effort to let members port their data.
Yahoo is partnering with the leading social networks so its users can take advantage of the freeing of user data, and it will also be crafting its own social network and APIs as part of its forthcoming Yahoo Open Strategy.
TechCrunch's Mike Arrington reasons:
The reason these companies are are rushing to get products out the door is because whoever is a player in this space is likely to control user data over the long run. If users don't have to put profile and friend information into multiple sites, they will gravitate towards one site that they identify with, and then allow other sites to access that data. The desire to own user identities over the long run is also causing the big Internet companies, in my opinion, to rush to become OpenID issuers (but not relying parties).
With 70 million users, more than 20,000 Facebook applications, and about 350,000 developers, Facebook has a major scale advantage over Google's Orkut. MySpace has the advantage of an even larger user base, but lags Facebook on the developer and application fronts.
However, Google has been taking a more open and distributed approach with its OpenSocial API, which allows compliant applications to work across any social network. By extension, Friend Connect would provide glue to allow any site to add a social dimension and build connections to other social networks.
I spoke with David Glazer, Google director of engineering, in March about injecting the social graph and data portability into the core fabric of the Web. He said the big challenge isn't the technology but applying existing and emerging standards, such as OATH (secure API authentication), OpenID (identity management) and OpenSocial APIs (application integration).
The key for all the data portability efforts (check out the DataPortability Project) is that users have granular controls to manage their data and to maintain privacy and security. Facebook and MySpace have not fully disclosed how their privacy controls will work yet. Stay tuned for more details on Google's Friend Connect and the next chapter of "The Making of the Social Web."
Google is expected to join the social network data portability crowd with "Friend Connect" on Monday. TechCrunch speculates that Friend Connect will be a set of "APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites."
Google will join Facebook and MySpace, which launched ways to port user data to partner sites this week. Facebook Connect will provide the hooks to let users port their friends, profile photos, events, and other data across the Web to partner sites. MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability, with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter as initial partners for its effort to let members port their data.
Yahoo is partnering with the leading social networks so its users can take advantage of the freeing of user data, and it will also be crafting its own social network and APIs as part of its forthcoming Yahoo Open Strategy.
TechCrunch's Mike Arrington reasons:
The reason these companies are are rushing to get products out the door is because whoever is a player in this space is likely to control user data over the long run. If users don't have to put profile and friend information into multiple sites, they will gravitate towards one site that they identify with, and then allow other sites to access that data. The desire to own user identities over the long run is also causing the big Internet companies, in my opinion, to rush to become OpenID issuers (but not relying parties).
With 70 million users, more than 20,000 Facebook applications, and about 350,000 developers, Facebook has a major scale advantage over Google's Orkut. MySpace has the advantage of an even larger user base, but lags Facebook on the developer and application fronts.
However, Google has been taking a more open and distributed approach with its OpenSocial API, which allows compliant applications to work across any social network. By extension, Friend Connect would provide glue to allow any site to add a social dimension and build connections to other social networks.
I spoke with David Glazer, Google director of engineering, in March about injecting the social graph and data portability into the core fabric of the Web. He said the big challenge isn't the technology but applying existing and emerging standards, such as OATH (secure API authentication), OpenID (identity management) and OpenSocial APIs (application integration).
The key for all the data portability efforts (check out the DataPortability Project) is that users have granular controls to manage their data and to maintain privacy and security. Facebook and MySpace have not fully disclosed how their privacy controls will work yet. Stay tuned for more details on Google's Friend Connect and the next chapter of "The Making of the Social Web."
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
FBI rescinds secret order for Internet Archive records
by Anne Broache
The FBI has backed down on a secret request for information about a user of the Internet Archive digital library, thanks to a legal challenge from two prominent advocacy groups.
The case, which was brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the archive, dates to last year but only became public on Wednesday. That's because the type of request involved, known as a national security letter (NSL), is accompanied by a gag order that forbids the recipient from disclosing its existence or discussing it with anyone except his attorneys, who are also gagged. As a result of a settlement, the FBI agreed to withdraw the national security letter and to lift the gag order.
The 2001 Patriot Act and its subsequent reauthorization dramatically expanded the FBI's ability to use NSLs, which do not require a court order and are supposed to be used only in investigations related to terrorism. Investigators are able to use the tactic to obtain customer records and logs from Internet service providers, telephone companies, financial institutions, but Congress in 2006 imposed limits on the FBI's ability to use NSLs on libraries. The EFF said this is the first known case to challenge an NSL served upon a library since those legal changes took effect.
The situation with the Internet Archive began last November, when the FBI served founder Brewster Kahle with an NSL (PDF) seeking an unspecified individual's name, address, and "any electronic communication transactional records" (i.e., not the content of communications, but logs of activity) pertaining to the user. Kahle, who is an EFF board member, believed the request was overbroad and decided to challenge the query in court, handing over only publicly available documents in the mean time.
"The free flow of information is at the heart of every library's work," Kahle said in a statement Wednesday. "That's why Congress passed a law limiting the FBI's power to issue NSLs to America's libraries. While it's never easy standing up to the government--particularly when I was barred from discussing it with anyone--I knew I had to challenge something that was clearly wrong."
The Internet Archive, founded in 1996, is a repository for archived Web sites, public domain books, concert recordings, and films, among other things. It has about half a million registered patrons and, according to the EFF, does not collect IP addresses of those who submit items to the collections or of those who read, view, or listen to its collections.
The Bush administration is hardly a stranger to lawsuits targeting its use of NSLs, and its challengers have met with some success in recent years. Last fall, for instance, a federal judge ruled the surreptitious requests for information were unconstitutional. A federal appeals court is expected to hear the government's appeal next month, the EFF said.
In addition, the FBI has taken heat two years in a row from the Department of Justice's inspector general--and, by extension, members of Congress--for misusing its NSL powers, including making attempts to seek and get information that would otherwise require a court order. The FBI says it has since instituted more internal checks on the process.
The police agency on Wednesday was quick to defend its actions in the Internet Archive case and the NSL approach more broadly. Here's a snippet from a statement released by spokesman John Miller:
"The information requested in the National Security Letter was relevant to an ongoing, authorized national security investigation. National Security Letters remain indispensable tools for national security investigations and permit the FBI to gather the basic building blocks for our counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations. Internet Archive voluntarily provided publicly available information to the FBI, and identified for the FBI that information it possessed which was not publicly available. Internet Archive's refusal to disclose this information formed the basis of its civil suit, which the parties have now resolved through settlement."
Attorneys for Kahle said they considered the settlement a great victory. But they again voiced concern that untold numbers of improper NSLs have gone unchallenged because of their secretive nature.
"It appears that every time a national security letter recipient has challenged an NSL in court and forced the government to justify it, the government has ultimately withdrawn its demand for records," Melissa Goodman, an ACLU staff attorney who worked on the case, said in a statement. "In the absence of much needed judicial oversight--and with recipients silenced and the public in the dark--there is nothing to stop the FBI from abusing its NSL power."
The FBI has backed down on a secret request for information about a user of the Internet Archive digital library, thanks to a legal challenge from two prominent advocacy groups.
The case, which was brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the archive, dates to last year but only became public on Wednesday. That's because the type of request involved, known as a national security letter (NSL), is accompanied by a gag order that forbids the recipient from disclosing its existence or discussing it with anyone except his attorneys, who are also gagged. As a result of a settlement, the FBI agreed to withdraw the national security letter and to lift the gag order.
The 2001 Patriot Act and its subsequent reauthorization dramatically expanded the FBI's ability to use NSLs, which do not require a court order and are supposed to be used only in investigations related to terrorism. Investigators are able to use the tactic to obtain customer records and logs from Internet service providers, telephone companies, financial institutions, but Congress in 2006 imposed limits on the FBI's ability to use NSLs on libraries. The EFF said this is the first known case to challenge an NSL served upon a library since those legal changes took effect.
The situation with the Internet Archive began last November, when the FBI served founder Brewster Kahle with an NSL (PDF) seeking an unspecified individual's name, address, and "any electronic communication transactional records" (i.e., not the content of communications, but logs of activity) pertaining to the user. Kahle, who is an EFF board member, believed the request was overbroad and decided to challenge the query in court, handing over only publicly available documents in the mean time.
"The free flow of information is at the heart of every library's work," Kahle said in a statement Wednesday. "That's why Congress passed a law limiting the FBI's power to issue NSLs to America's libraries. While it's never easy standing up to the government--particularly when I was barred from discussing it with anyone--I knew I had to challenge something that was clearly wrong."
The Internet Archive, founded in 1996, is a repository for archived Web sites, public domain books, concert recordings, and films, among other things. It has about half a million registered patrons and, according to the EFF, does not collect IP addresses of those who submit items to the collections or of those who read, view, or listen to its collections.
The Bush administration is hardly a stranger to lawsuits targeting its use of NSLs, and its challengers have met with some success in recent years. Last fall, for instance, a federal judge ruled the surreptitious requests for information were unconstitutional. A federal appeals court is expected to hear the government's appeal next month, the EFF said.
In addition, the FBI has taken heat two years in a row from the Department of Justice's inspector general--and, by extension, members of Congress--for misusing its NSL powers, including making attempts to seek and get information that would otherwise require a court order. The FBI says it has since instituted more internal checks on the process.
The police agency on Wednesday was quick to defend its actions in the Internet Archive case and the NSL approach more broadly. Here's a snippet from a statement released by spokesman John Miller:
"The information requested in the National Security Letter was relevant to an ongoing, authorized national security investigation. National Security Letters remain indispensable tools for national security investigations and permit the FBI to gather the basic building blocks for our counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations. Internet Archive voluntarily provided publicly available information to the FBI, and identified for the FBI that information it possessed which was not publicly available. Internet Archive's refusal to disclose this information formed the basis of its civil suit, which the parties have now resolved through settlement."
Attorneys for Kahle said they considered the settlement a great victory. But they again voiced concern that untold numbers of improper NSLs have gone unchallenged because of their secretive nature.
"It appears that every time a national security letter recipient has challenged an NSL in court and forced the government to justify it, the government has ultimately withdrawn its demand for records," Melissa Goodman, an ACLU staff attorney who worked on the case, said in a statement. "In the absence of much needed judicial oversight--and with recipients silenced and the public in the dark--there is nothing to stop the FBI from abusing its NSL power."
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Yahoo Isn’t Abandoning Strategy with Google Deal
by Sarah Lacy
In his Saturday missive, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer cited Yahoo's proposed partnership with Google as a key reason for not going hostile. Ballmer said such an arrangement "would fundamentally undermine Yahoo's own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system."
Yahoo President Sue Decker disputed that assertion in the second part of my interview with her Monday. Decker says the Yahoo-Google search test was "helpful" but that Yahoo will remain a "principal" in both search and display. (For part one of the interview, click here.) She didn't rule out a possible deal with AOL or a stand-alone strategy.
Decker acknowledged the anger and disappointment among some Yahoo employees who wanted the Microsoft deal. But, she added, there's a "greater sense of urgency" now at Yahoo, and "I think you'll find as many excited to show the world what they can do."
In his Saturday missive, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer cited Yahoo's proposed partnership with Google as a key reason for not going hostile. Ballmer said such an arrangement "would fundamentally undermine Yahoo's own strategy and long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed to your Panama paid search system."
Yahoo President Sue Decker disputed that assertion in the second part of my interview with her Monday. Decker says the Yahoo-Google search test was "helpful" but that Yahoo will remain a "principal" in both search and display. (For part one of the interview, click here.) She didn't rule out a possible deal with AOL or a stand-alone strategy.
Decker acknowledged the anger and disappointment among some Yahoo employees who wanted the Microsoft deal. But, she added, there's a "greater sense of urgency" now at Yahoo, and "I think you'll find as many excited to show the world what they can do."
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Microsoft raises offer for Yahoo
By Michael Liedtke
Microsoft Corp. finally dangled a higher takeover bid in front of Yahoo Inc. Friday, hoping to reach a friendly deal after weeks of saber rattling.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker upped its offer beyond the original value of $44.6 billion, or $31 per share, according to a person familiar with the matter. The specifics of the new offer weren't known by this person, who didn't want to be identified because the negotiations are still confidential.
The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, reported Microsoft boosted the offer by "by several dollars" per share, lending weight to the assertion by many market analysts that Microsoft can afford to pay up to $35 a share.
Representatives from Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment on the negotiations. The talks were expected to continue into the weekend.
In an intriguing twist, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Yahoo President Susan Decker were both expected to be in Omaha, Neb. this weekend to attend Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s annual meeting. Both Gates and Decker are on the board of the company led by famed investor Warren Buffett.
The prospect of a sweetened offer lifted Yahoo shares 80 cents in extended trading after surging $1.86, or nearly 7 percent, to finish the regular session at $28.67.
Sunnyvale-based Yahoo began pressing for a higher offer shortly after Microsoft made its unsolicited bid in February. That offer, which was made half in cash and half in stock, is currently valued at $42.3 billion, or $29.40 per share, reflecting the decline in Microsoft shares since it began its pursuit of the Internet pioneer.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer had held firm, insisting the original offer was fair in light of Yahoo's eroding profits during the past two years. He threatened an attempt to oust Yahoo's board if the 10 directors, including Chief Executive Jerry Yang, didn't accept the offer by April 26.
Now that Yahoo has forced the issue by letting the deadline pass, Ballmer appears ready to put more money on the table.
Microsoft's board reportedly met earlier this week to consider raising the bid as high as $33 per share, or about $47.5 billion.
Several of Yahoo's shareholders are reportedly holding out for at least $35 per share, a price that would value the deal at about $50 billion.
Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for about $40 per share during confidential discussions held in early 2007, but Yahoo's struggles since then make it unlikely the revised bid will be that high.
In a comments to Microsoft employees Thursday, Ballmer said he has a price in mind but didn't reveal it.
"I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth to me, exactly," Ballmer told the employees, according to a transcript filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "I won't go a dime above, and I will go to what I think it's worth if that gets the deal done."
Most analysts have predicted all along that Microsoft eventually would buy Yahoo for $32 to $35 per share, so the news of Friday's negotiations wasn't a major surprise.
"It's all going according to script," said Ken Marlin, a New York investment banker specializing in technology deals.
The outcome of the weekend talks will likely ripple across the Internet.
If Microsoft and Yahoo shake hands on a deal, it will mark a significant step toward uniting two high-tech powerhouses whose online services are used by more than 500 million people worldwide. An amicable transaction also would make it easier to meld the two companies' disparate technologies and cultures.
Should the two sides remain at loggerheads, Microsoft could still try to force a sale by trying to replace Yahoo's board with 10 directors more inclined to approve a deal.
But that risky maneuver, known as a proxy contest, would likely entail several months of mudslinging with no guarantee of success.
Even if Microsoft were to prevail in a hostile takeover, it could wind up with buyer's remorse because the hard feelings provoked by the battle would drive off many of the Yahoo employees needed to make the deal pay off, said Arthur Dudley, a New York lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions.
"The trick for Microsoft is to figure out where the tipping point is," Dudley said. "They probably don't want to do a hostile takeover and just wind up with some more computer software and a bunch of empty desks."
Ballmer also has said Microsoft might simply withdraw its offer and walk away from Yahoo. Most analysts doubt Microsoft will give up the chase because Yahoo's still-prized Internet franchise would give the software maker its best chance to chip away at Google Inc.'s dominance of the booming Internet search and advertising market.
Google's specter may have prodded Microsoft's higher bid. Yahoo is reportedly nearing a long-term deal that would allow Google to sell ads on its Web site. Although the alliance might be blocked by antitrust obstacles, Microsoft likely wouldn't want to risk the chance of Google gaining access to Yahoo's vast audience.
Yahoo executives think the company is well positioned to bounce back from its recent malaise, but Dudley doubts the company's board will resist Microsoft if its new offer is sweet enough.
"Yahoo's board won't have a lot of choice if the price is right," Dudley said. "Now, everyone is just scratching their heads trying to figure out what the number is."
AP Technology Writer Jessica Mintz in Seattle contributed to this story.
Microsoft Corp. finally dangled a higher takeover bid in front of Yahoo Inc. Friday, hoping to reach a friendly deal after weeks of saber rattling.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software maker upped its offer beyond the original value of $44.6 billion, or $31 per share, according to a person familiar with the matter. The specifics of the new offer weren't known by this person, who didn't want to be identified because the negotiations are still confidential.
The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, reported Microsoft boosted the offer by "by several dollars" per share, lending weight to the assertion by many market analysts that Microsoft can afford to pay up to $35 a share.
Representatives from Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment on the negotiations. The talks were expected to continue into the weekend.
In an intriguing twist, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Yahoo President Susan Decker were both expected to be in Omaha, Neb. this weekend to attend Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s annual meeting. Both Gates and Decker are on the board of the company led by famed investor Warren Buffett.
The prospect of a sweetened offer lifted Yahoo shares 80 cents in extended trading after surging $1.86, or nearly 7 percent, to finish the regular session at $28.67.
Sunnyvale-based Yahoo began pressing for a higher offer shortly after Microsoft made its unsolicited bid in February. That offer, which was made half in cash and half in stock, is currently valued at $42.3 billion, or $29.40 per share, reflecting the decline in Microsoft shares since it began its pursuit of the Internet pioneer.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer had held firm, insisting the original offer was fair in light of Yahoo's eroding profits during the past two years. He threatened an attempt to oust Yahoo's board if the 10 directors, including Chief Executive Jerry Yang, didn't accept the offer by April 26.
Now that Yahoo has forced the issue by letting the deadline pass, Ballmer appears ready to put more money on the table.
Microsoft's board reportedly met earlier this week to consider raising the bid as high as $33 per share, or about $47.5 billion.
Several of Yahoo's shareholders are reportedly holding out for at least $35 per share, a price that would value the deal at about $50 billion.
Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for about $40 per share during confidential discussions held in early 2007, but Yahoo's struggles since then make it unlikely the revised bid will be that high.
In a comments to Microsoft employees Thursday, Ballmer said he has a price in mind but didn't reveal it.
"I know exactly what I think Yahoo is worth to me, exactly," Ballmer told the employees, according to a transcript filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. "I won't go a dime above, and I will go to what I think it's worth if that gets the deal done."
Most analysts have predicted all along that Microsoft eventually would buy Yahoo for $32 to $35 per share, so the news of Friday's negotiations wasn't a major surprise.
"It's all going according to script," said Ken Marlin, a New York investment banker specializing in technology deals.
The outcome of the weekend talks will likely ripple across the Internet.
If Microsoft and Yahoo shake hands on a deal, it will mark a significant step toward uniting two high-tech powerhouses whose online services are used by more than 500 million people worldwide. An amicable transaction also would make it easier to meld the two companies' disparate technologies and cultures.
Should the two sides remain at loggerheads, Microsoft could still try to force a sale by trying to replace Yahoo's board with 10 directors more inclined to approve a deal.
But that risky maneuver, known as a proxy contest, would likely entail several months of mudslinging with no guarantee of success.
Even if Microsoft were to prevail in a hostile takeover, it could wind up with buyer's remorse because the hard feelings provoked by the battle would drive off many of the Yahoo employees needed to make the deal pay off, said Arthur Dudley, a New York lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions.
"The trick for Microsoft is to figure out where the tipping point is," Dudley said. "They probably don't want to do a hostile takeover and just wind up with some more computer software and a bunch of empty desks."
Ballmer also has said Microsoft might simply withdraw its offer and walk away from Yahoo. Most analysts doubt Microsoft will give up the chase because Yahoo's still-prized Internet franchise would give the software maker its best chance to chip away at Google Inc.'s dominance of the booming Internet search and advertising market.
Google's specter may have prodded Microsoft's higher bid. Yahoo is reportedly nearing a long-term deal that would allow Google to sell ads on its Web site. Although the alliance might be blocked by antitrust obstacles, Microsoft likely wouldn't want to risk the chance of Google gaining access to Yahoo's vast audience.
Yahoo executives think the company is well positioned to bounce back from its recent malaise, but Dudley doubts the company's board will resist Microsoft if its new offer is sweet enough.
"Yahoo's board won't have a lot of choice if the price is right," Dudley said. "Now, everyone is just scratching their heads trying to figure out what the number is."
AP Technology Writer Jessica Mintz in Seattle contributed to this story.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
H.P. Reports Big Advance in Memory Chips
By JOHN MARKOFF
Hewlett-Packard scientists reported Wednesday in the science journal Nature that they have designed a simple circuit element that they believe will make it possible to build tiny powerful computers that could imitate biological functions.
R. Stanley Williams, Hewlett-Packard’s director of the quantum science research group, and his team designed a circuit element that may make it possible to build tiny powerful computers.
The device, called a memristor, would be used to build extremely dense computer memory chips that use far less power than today’s DRAM memory chips. Manufacturers of today’s chips are rapidly reaching the limit on how much smaller chips can be.
The memristor, an electrical resistor with memory properties, may also make it possible to fashion advanced logic circuits, a class of reprogrammable chips known as field programmable gate arrays, that are widely used for rapid prototyping of new circuits and for custom-made chips that need to be manufactured quickly.
Potentially even more tantalizing is the ability of the memristors to store and retrieve a vast array of intermediate values, not just the binary 1s and 0s conventional chips use. This allows them to function like biological synapses and makes them ideal for many artificial intelligence applications ranging from machine vision to understanding speech.
Independent researchers said that it seemed likely that the memristor might relatively quickly be applied in computer memories, but that other applications could be more challenging. Typically, technology advances are not adopted unless they offer large advantages in cost or performance over the technologies they are replacing.
“Whether it will be useful for other large-scale applications is unclear at this point,” said Wolfgang Porod, director of the Center for Nano Science and Technology at the University of Notre Dame.
The technology should be fairly quickly commercialized, said R. Stanley Williams, director of the quantum science research group at Hewlett-Packard. “This is on a fast track.”
The memristor was predicted in 1971 by Leon Chua, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. There have been hints of an unexplained behavior in the literature for some time, Mr. Chua said in a phone interview on Tuesday.
He noted, however, that he had not worked on his idea for several decades and that he was taken by surprise when he was contacted by the Hewlett-Packard researchers several months ago. The advance clearly points the way to a prediction made in 1959 by the physicist Richard Feynman that “there’s plenty of room at the bottom,” referring to the possibility of building atomic-scale systems.
“I can see all kinds of new technologies, and I’m thrilled,” he said.
The original theoretical work done by Mr. Chua was laid out in a paper, “Memristor — The Missing Circuit Element.” The paper argued that basic electronic theory required that in addition to the three basic circuit elements — resistors, capacitors and inductors — a fourth element should exist.
The Hewlett-Packard research team titled their paper, “The Missing Memristor Found.”
The Hewlett-Packard researchers said that the discovery of the memory properties in tiny, extremely thin spots of titanium dioxide came from a frustrating decade-long hunt for a new class of organic molecules to serve as nano-sized switches. Researchers in both industry and academia have hoped they would be able to fashion switches as small as the size of a single molecule to someday replace transistors once the semiconductor industry’s shrinking of electronic circuits made with photolithographic techniques reached a technological limit.
The memristor is a radically different approach from another type of solid state storage called phase-change memory that is being pursued by I.B.M., Intel and other companies. In phase-change memory, heat is used to shift a glassy material from an amorphous to a crystalline state and back again. The switching speed of these systems is both slower and requires more power, according to the Hewlett-Packard scientists.
The Hewlett-Packard team has successfully created working circuits based on memristors that are as small as 15 nanometers (the diameter of an atom is roughly about a tenth of a nanometer.) Ultimately, it will be possible to make memristors as small as about four nanometers, Mr. Williams said. In contrast the smallest components in today’s semiconductors are 45 nanometers, and the industry currently does not see a way to shrink those devices below about 20 nanometers.
Because the concept of a memristor was developed almost 40 years ago by Mr. Chua, it is in the public domain. The Hewlett-Packard scientists, however, have applied for patents covering their working version of the device.
The most significant limitation that the Hewlett-Packard researchers said the new technology faces is that the memristors function at about one-tenth the speed of today’s DRAM memory cells. They can be made in the same kinds of semiconductor factories that the chip industry now uses, however.
Hewlett-Packard scientists reported Wednesday in the science journal Nature that they have designed a simple circuit element that they believe will make it possible to build tiny powerful computers that could imitate biological functions.
R. Stanley Williams, Hewlett-Packard’s director of the quantum science research group, and his team designed a circuit element that may make it possible to build tiny powerful computers.
The device, called a memristor, would be used to build extremely dense computer memory chips that use far less power than today’s DRAM memory chips. Manufacturers of today’s chips are rapidly reaching the limit on how much smaller chips can be.
The memristor, an electrical resistor with memory properties, may also make it possible to fashion advanced logic circuits, a class of reprogrammable chips known as field programmable gate arrays, that are widely used for rapid prototyping of new circuits and for custom-made chips that need to be manufactured quickly.
Potentially even more tantalizing is the ability of the memristors to store and retrieve a vast array of intermediate values, not just the binary 1s and 0s conventional chips use. This allows them to function like biological synapses and makes them ideal for many artificial intelligence applications ranging from machine vision to understanding speech.
Independent researchers said that it seemed likely that the memristor might relatively quickly be applied in computer memories, but that other applications could be more challenging. Typically, technology advances are not adopted unless they offer large advantages in cost or performance over the technologies they are replacing.
“Whether it will be useful for other large-scale applications is unclear at this point,” said Wolfgang Porod, director of the Center for Nano Science and Technology at the University of Notre Dame.
The technology should be fairly quickly commercialized, said R. Stanley Williams, director of the quantum science research group at Hewlett-Packard. “This is on a fast track.”
The memristor was predicted in 1971 by Leon Chua, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. There have been hints of an unexplained behavior in the literature for some time, Mr. Chua said in a phone interview on Tuesday.
He noted, however, that he had not worked on his idea for several decades and that he was taken by surprise when he was contacted by the Hewlett-Packard researchers several months ago. The advance clearly points the way to a prediction made in 1959 by the physicist Richard Feynman that “there’s plenty of room at the bottom,” referring to the possibility of building atomic-scale systems.
“I can see all kinds of new technologies, and I’m thrilled,” he said.
The original theoretical work done by Mr. Chua was laid out in a paper, “Memristor — The Missing Circuit Element.” The paper argued that basic electronic theory required that in addition to the three basic circuit elements — resistors, capacitors and inductors — a fourth element should exist.
The Hewlett-Packard research team titled their paper, “The Missing Memristor Found.”
The Hewlett-Packard researchers said that the discovery of the memory properties in tiny, extremely thin spots of titanium dioxide came from a frustrating decade-long hunt for a new class of organic molecules to serve as nano-sized switches. Researchers in both industry and academia have hoped they would be able to fashion switches as small as the size of a single molecule to someday replace transistors once the semiconductor industry’s shrinking of electronic circuits made with photolithographic techniques reached a technological limit.
The memristor is a radically different approach from another type of solid state storage called phase-change memory that is being pursued by I.B.M., Intel and other companies. In phase-change memory, heat is used to shift a glassy material from an amorphous to a crystalline state and back again. The switching speed of these systems is both slower and requires more power, according to the Hewlett-Packard scientists.
The Hewlett-Packard team has successfully created working circuits based on memristors that are as small as 15 nanometers (the diameter of an atom is roughly about a tenth of a nanometer.) Ultimately, it will be possible to make memristors as small as about four nanometers, Mr. Williams said. In contrast the smallest components in today’s semiconductors are 45 nanometers, and the industry currently does not see a way to shrink those devices below about 20 nanometers.
Because the concept of a memristor was developed almost 40 years ago by Mr. Chua, it is in the public domain. The Hewlett-Packard scientists, however, have applied for patents covering their working version of the device.
The most significant limitation that the Hewlett-Packard researchers said the new technology faces is that the memristors function at about one-tenth the speed of today’s DRAM memory cells. They can be made in the same kinds of semiconductor factories that the chip industry now uses, however.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)