In This Update:
• Microsoft Closing In On Search Deal With Verizon Wireless
• Vacation Rental Site Raises $250 Million
• Dentsu to Acquire McGarry Bowen
• Accel India Venture Fund Closes $60 Million Seed And Early Stage Fund
• Flipswap Lands $14 Million In Series B Funding
• Two Mobile Operating Systems, One Phone
• Verizon to Offer Mobile App for Disney Vacationers
• Google Launches Video Chat for Gmail
• Surging on an iPhone Commercial, Loopt Looking to Sell or Raise Money?
• Sling.com Almost Ready for Its Close-Up

Sponsored by:
McCarter & English, LLP
The law firm of new media. Major offices in New York, Boston, Newark, Stamford, and other cities. Advising new media companies from start-up to exit. Venture capital, IP protections and disputes, employment matters, outsourcing, joint ventures, acquisitions, to name just a few.

Microsoft Closing In On Search Deal With Verizon Wireless
PAIDCONTENT
Microsoft is finally close to edging out Google on a search deal, and this one is on the mobile side: Under the deal, it would become the default search provider on the Verizon Wireless’s phones, and is even offering guaranteed payments to the carrier of approximately $550 million to $650 million over five years, or roughly twice what Google offered, reports the WSJ, citing sources. These revenues would be against the ads that MSFT would be able to serve up in mobile searches. Verizon’s talks with Google are still on, but it is leaning towards MSFT because of better financial incentives. This is similar to the Facebook deal MSFT did last year.
Source>

Vacation Rental Site Raises $250 Million
NEW YORK TIMES
HomeAway, the largest online vacation rental marketplace, announced Tuesday that it has raised $250 million in venture capital, an extraordinarily large amount of money for an Internet company. The new round, which is the biggest a tech company has raised since 2000, brings the four-year-old start-up’s total venture funding to $405 million.
Source>

Dentsu to Acquire McGarry Bowen
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Despite the U.S. ad slowdown, Japanese advertising heavyweight Dentsu on Wednesday unveiled plans to acquire McGarry Bowen, one of the largest independent ad boutiques in New York. The deal is part of an aggressive plan by Tokyo-based Dentsu to bolster its presence in the U.S. — after years of flirtation. It currently gets only about 10% of its revenue from markets outside of Japan. While Dentsu, one of the world’s biggest advertising companies, has long tried to increase its revenue from the U.S. by acquiring small American ad firms, it has failed to become a major player in the U.S.
Source>

Accel India Venture Fund Closes $60 Million Seed And Early Stage Fund
TECHCRUNCH
Accel India Venture Fund , which came out of Accel’s recent absorption of Indian VC firm Erasmic, as predicted has closed $60 million in a second round of funding (the earlier round was $12mn) from institutional investors from North America, Europe and Asia, according to Pluggdin .
Accel believes that seed and early stage markets continue to be under served in India, despite being one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, attracting less than 5% of the total venture capital funds. The firm stated there will not be a significant shift in the multi-sector investment strategy of Accel.
Source>

Flipswap Lands $14 Million In Series B Funding
SOCALTECH
Los Angeles-based FlipSwap, which operates an electronics trade-in service for mobile phones and other electronics, said Wednesday that it has raised $14M in a Series B funding round. The funding came from RRE Ventures, and cleantech VC NGEN. FlipSwap’s services provide incentives for consumers to trade in their old mobile phones and other electronics. The firm provides its software to retailers to give consumers credit for their old technology, based on the condition of the device, market demand, and inventory.
Source>

Two Mobile Operating Systems, One Phone
NEW YORK TIMES
VMware Brings Virtualization To Mobile Phones. VMware, a company known for their virtualization software for the desktop and datacenter, recently announced their plans to bring that software to mobile phones through their new VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP). The software is built on technology the company acquired from Trango Virtual Processors just last month. With this new technology, you would no longer have to carry both a work phone and a personal phone. Instead, your I.T. department could just deploy the corporate phone’s profile to your personal device where it would then run in a virtualized space.
Source>

Verizon to Offer Mobile App for Disney Vacationers
CNET
Verizon Wireless and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts are teaming up to create a new mobile application to help families plan their trips and get the most out of their Disney vacations. With more than 90 percent of its guests walking through the gates with mobile phones, Disney Parks and Resorts executives see cell phones as a perfect way to connect with their customers.
Source>

Google Launches Video Chat for Gmail
WEBWARE
Google is rolling out video and voice capabilities for the chat function that is embedded in the Gmail interface. It’s a bare-bones voice and video-conferencing service, but it’s simple to install and use and is a very good addition to Gmail. It’s no Skype, though. Gmail Video and Voice, as it’s called, can’t connect to the plain phone network, as Skype’s paid service can. And there are plenty of other optional features missing, like a voice call recorder. I found a demo of voice and video quality on the service excellent, although to be fair I was connected from CNET’s corporate network to someone at the Google campus.
Source>

Surging on an iPhone Commercial, Loopt Looking to Sell or Raise Money?
VENTUREBEAT
It looks as if Loopt may be looking for an out – or more likely, an insane new round of funding. The location-based social network for mobile devices has supposedly hired the investment band Allen & Co. to find a potential sale or investment partner. But what’s crazy is the apparent valuation Allen & Co. is putting Loopt at: Over $500 million. Now, I like Loopt as much as the next guy, and am bullish on the eventual success of location-based services, but a half billion dollars, in this market, for a network that is far from established? Come on.
Source>

Sling.com Almost Ready for Its Close-Up
CNET
Sling Media no longer wants to be put into a box–the theoretical kind, anyway.
Previously just a maker of hardware like the Slingbox, and related software, the company is now thinking bigger. With the official launch of Sling.com fast approaching, the small Silicon Valley company–bought last year by EchoStar–is making a bid to be taken seriously as an entertainment company. Currently in private beta until November 24, Sling.com is a shiny new video portal that pulls in TV episodes, clips, full-length movies, and professionally produced Web videos to a single destination. The free content is provided by the NBC-Fox partnership Hulu, along with CBS (parent company of CBS Interactive, CNET’s publisher), PBS, BBC America, and Web video sites like College Humor and Break.com, to name just a few. There are short ads before and during the videos.
Source>

Tags: Accel, API, Asia, BBC, Boston, CBS, CNET, College, Disney, eBook, EchoStar, Europe, Facebook, Fox, GMail, Google, Hulu, Ike, India, iPhone, ISP, Japan, LTE, Microsoft, Mobile, NBC, New York, New York Times, NYT, Opera, Ovi, PRI, SEC, Seed, Skype, Sling.com, TV, U.S., VC, Venture, Venture Capital, Verizon, Video, VMware, Web Video, WSJ, Zed