In This Update:
• Google Says Microsoft’s Yahoo Buy Might Hurt Internet
• China Blocks YouTube After Videos of Tibet Protests Are Posted
• Expedia Acquires CarRentals.com
• Video Firm Roo To Consolidate All Subsidiaries; Moving To Dubai
• CBS Launches Ad Network For Local Sites
• NBCU Takes 35 Percent Stake In DriverTV; Seeks Ad Dollars In Online Car Shopping
• Microsoft Licenses Adobe Mobile Software
• eBay Brings Affiliate Marketing Program In-House
• ‘Mind Gaming’ Could Enter Market This Year
• Facebook To Launch Instant Messaging Service
• Japanese ISPs Agree to Ban Illegal File-Sharers from the Internet
• BrightRoll Launches HD Video Web Ads
• WebVisible Gets $12 Million Second Round
• Bungee Labs Takes $8 Million Series C
• PopJax Raises $4.7 Million for Web Video Trivia
• Web Creator Rejects Net Tracking, Behavioral Targeting
• Report: YouTube Accounts for One Third of All Videos Viewed

Google Says Microsoft’s Yahoo Buy Might Hurt Internet
REUTERS
Google Inc, the world’s leading search engine, said on Monday it was concerned about the free flow of information on the Internet if Microsoft Corp were to succeed in acquiring Yahoo Inc. “We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft,” Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told reporters. “We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the Internet, but I doubt it would be.” Schmidt pointed to Microsoft’s past history and “the things that it has done that have been so difficult for everyone”, but he did not elaborate.
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China Blocks YouTube After Videos of Tibet Protests Are Posted
AP via NEW YORK TIMES
Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular American video Web site. The blocking added to the Communist government’s efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule. Access to YouTube.com, usually readily available in China, was blocked after videos appeared on the site Saturday showing foreign news reports about the Lhasa demonstrations, montages of photos and scenes from Tibet-related protests abroad.
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Expedia Acquires CarRentals.com
MEDIAPOST
Expedia has acquired carrentals.com, an online car rental aggregation and marketing firm. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the New York-based company will become a division of Hotwire, Expedia’s discount travel brand. CarRentals.com will continue to operate as an independent entity, as Expedia has said that it has no plans to make changes to the car rental service’s brand name, operations or employee base. “And the senior leadership team will remain intact,” the company said in a statement.
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Video Firm Roo To Consolidate All Subsidiaries; Moving To Dubai
PAIDCONTENT
Roo Group, the OTC-traded and troubled video aggregator and IPTV provider in which News Corp (NYSE: NWS) has a stake, has been going through its share of management troubles, and is now taking the next step: it is moving out of the city and relocating its corporate headquarters/executive management from New York and Australia to Dubai. Also, it is buying its Australian subsidiary Sputnik, and Gavin Campion, the managing director of Sputnik, is the new president of the overall company. This is in keeping with the company’s efforts to simplify its corporate structure.
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CBS Launches Ad Network for Local Sites
WEBPRONEWS
CBS has launched a local ad network for local TV stations, local bloggers and social media sites in CBS-owned station’s markets. CBS will syndicate local news widgets to local blogs and social media sites. The widgets can be embedded in Web pages and will feature local headlines, images, links to videos, and text stories. The widgets will include banner ads that CBS sells. The local widgets create a new Web inventory for CBS stations to sell. Sites that partner with CBS receive a portion of the revenue from the ads embedded in the widget.
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NBCU Takes 35 Percent Stake In DriverTV; Seeks Ad Dollars In Online Car Shopping
WALL STREET JOURNAL
In an effort to snare more of the automotive advertising dollars migrating online, NBC Universal is buying a sizable stake in DriverTV, a Web site and video-on-demand channel that specializes in videos aimed at car shoppers. NBCU is paying about $6 million for a 35% stake in DriverTV, which has about $8 million in annual revenue, according to people familiar with the matter. Currently all DriverTV’s ad revenue comes from car makers, but the company, which is partly owned by the TV- and ad-production firm Radical Media, is hoping eventually to attract advertisers from other auto-related industries such as insurance.
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Microsoft Licenses Adobe Mobile Software
AP via SAN FRANCISO CHRONICLE
Microsoft Corp. has licensed Adobe’s software for viewing online videos and other files on cell phones, the companies said Monday. Microsoft will distribute Flash Lite and Reader programs from Adobe Systems Inc. to cell phone makers who use its Windows Mobile software. Flash also allows users to interact with more Web sites. It’s the software behind most shopping sites where you can view an item in different colors or try out house paint colors on a virtual home. Over half a billion mobile devices have shipped worldwide with Flash preinstalled, amounting to a 150 year-over-year percent growth, Adobe said.
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eBay Brings Affiliate Marketing Program In-House
CNET
eBay was set to announce on Monday that it is bringing its affiliate marketing program in-house instead of outsourcing it to ValueClick. Scheduled to launch April 1, the new eBay Partner Network will give eBay a direct relationship with the more than 100,000 Web sites that drive traffic to eBay through ads and links. As a result, eBay will have better insight into what ad campaigns boost traffic. Up until now, the affiliate marketing programs for eBay and Half.com were managed by ValueClick’s Commission Junction platform.
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‘Mind Gaming’ Could Enter Market This Year
PHYSORG
In an adapted version of the Harry Potter video game, players lift boulders and throw lightning bolts using only their minds. Just as physical movement changed the interface of gaming with Nintendo’s Wii, the power of the mind may be the next big thing in video games. And it may come soon. Emotiv, a company based in San Francisco, says its mind-control headsets will be on shelves later this year, along with a host of novel “biofeedback” games developed by its partners. Several other companies – including EmSense in Monterey, California; NeuroSky in San Jose, California; and Hitachi in Tokyo – are also developing technology to detect players´ brainwaves and use them in next-gen video games.
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Facebook To Launch Instant Messaging Service
TECHCRUNCH
Facebook has been testing a new instant messaging service and will be launching it to the public soon, perhaps in the next week. The service will be built into user’s Facebook pages and allow them to web chat with their Facebook friends. Like Gtalk, it will be built on the Jabber open source platform, allowing users to add the service to many popular Instant messaging clients like Trillian (Windows) and Adium (Mac).
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Japanese ISPs Agree to Ban Illegal File-Sharers from the Internet
TORRENTFREAK
Following a huge increase in complaints from the music, movie and software industries, the four major Japanese ISP organizations have agreed that they will work with copyright holders to track down copyright infringing file-sharers and disconnect them from the internet. The agreement would see copyright holders tracking down file-sharers on the Internet using “special detection software” and then notifying ISPs of alleged infringers. ISPs would first send out emailed warnings to those traced, then interrupt the Internet connection if action to cease the activity isn’t taken. For persistent breaches, the ISP would ultimately terminate the accounts of its subscribers.
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BrightRoll Launches HD Video Web Ads
WEBWARE
San Francisco-based BrightRoll is offering advertisers the ability to run large-format, high-quality video ads across its network of Web site publishers. The ads initially appear as banner ads on the page. When a user click on one, a large separate window opens up on top of the Web page. There are trade-offs for serving up high-definition video in terms of time it takes for them to load, but these ads seem to load pretty fast, according to Bobby Tulsiani, a consumer video analyst at Jupiter Research. “The critical thing is that it doesn’t get in the way of the user experience,” he says. “For advertisers, the higher quality matters for the brand recognition, especially ads showing off a car, or travel ads in which the scenery is important.”
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WebVisible Gets $12 Million Second Round
MASHABLE
Interactive advertising company WebVisible has received 12 million dollars in its second round of funding. WebVisible tracks the consumer’s location by partnering with many companies which have this info via cookies or other means, such as Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Local.com and others. Then, they sell their advertising products to local business customers of large media companies and online service providers, such as AT&T, British Telecom, and Earthlink. This round of funding was led by Sutter Hill Ventures with $8 million; previous investor Redpoint Ventures also joined in with another $4 million.
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Bungee Labs Takes $8 Million Series C
TECHCRUNCH
Bungee Labs has raised $8 million Series C in a round that included Wasatch Venture Fund and existing investors North Bridge Venture Partners and Venrock Associates. Orem, Utah based Bungee Labs offers Bungee Connect, a web-based Ajax environment for creating interactive web applications. Bungee Connect allows developers to “efficiently create and instantly deliver rich web applications for the small-to-medium business market” by providing an online environment where developers and clients don’t have to install anything. Bungee Connect also automates SOAP and REST based web services.
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PopJax Raises $4.7 Million for Web Video Trivia
NEWTEEVEE
PopJax, a company devoted to games about web video, is launching tomorrow. The year-old company has raised $4.7 million from Shasta Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Selby Ventures (where it was incubated). San Francisco-based PopJax has hired professional gameshow writers to seed 10,000 questions in categories like “Super Bowl Ads,” and “Oscars Greatest.” “We’re going to build out everything to be the Trivial Pursuit of the Internet age,” PopJax CEO Doug Barry said.
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Web Creator Rejects Net Tracking, Behavioral Targeting
BBC
The creator of the web has said consumers need to be protected against systems which can track their activity on the internet. Sir Tim Berners-Lee told BBC News he would change his internet provider if it introduced such a system. Plans by leading internet providers to use Phorm, a company which tracks web activity to create personalised adverts, have sparked controversy. Sir Tim said he did not want his ISP to track which websites he visited. “I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that’s not going to get to my insurance company and I’m going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they’ve figured I’m looking at those books,” he said.
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Report: YouTube Accounts for One Third of All Videos Viewed
VNUNET
YouTube.com accounted for one-third of the 9.8 billion videos viewed online in the US during the month, according to new research. The total number of videos viewed in January was down slightly from the more than 10.1 billion viewed during a record-breaking December 2007, according to new data comScore. The market watcher noted that Google Sites once again ranked as the top US video property in January with nearly 3.4 billion videos viewed (34.3 per cent share of videos), gaining 1.7 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com was found to have accounted for more than 96 per cent of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 584 million (6 per cent), followed by Yahoo Sites with 315 million (3.2 per cent) and Microsoft Sites with 199 million (2 per cent).
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