Ballmer On Loose In Paris: ‘Search Still In Infancy’, New R&D Drive -- More on that search R&D centre Microsoft in June told advertisers it would build in Europe... CEO Steve Ballmer fronted the launch in Paris this morning for a “Search Technology Centre” (STC), which will actually be split between three centres of excellence in Paris, London and Munich and will be Microsoft’s second in the world, the other in Beijing. MS is pulling Jordi Ribas, GM of its Connected TV group, to head the centre. Though Google seems to be making a tidy buck from search already, Ballmer (via release) said: ”We believe search is still in its infancy. Developers at the Search Technology Centre will play a key role in helping us redefine search as they create new search products and services for consumers and advertisers. We need to draw on the world’s smartest, most creative minds. Increasingly, we are finding the talent we need here in Europe.”

Mail.ru Owner Wants Czechs’ Google Beater Seznam, $850 Million Price Tag -- Russian tech investor Digital Sky Technologies (DST), which took a controlling stake in its native Mail.ru portal in July, is amongst the leading contenders to buy the top Czech search site Seznam, according to a local report. The Financni Novini paper also said Apax Partners and Warburg Pincus, which owns the competing Centrum.cz and Atlas, were interested in bidding but may not be able to make an $850 million asking price due to the credit crunch. Seznam has a 62 percent share against Google’s (NSDQ: GOOG) 29 percent, claiming 4.4 million monthly uniques and forecasting $90 million 2008 income, Yakov notes: “Should the deal go ahead, it will be the largest internet acquisition in eastern Europe.”

ThomsonReuters Maintains Outlook Despite Economic Deterioration -- The last time we checked in on Reuters, right after the Lehman failure, CEO Tom Glocer maintained his optimism, but admitted that a sustained global depression would not be good for anyone. Since then, there hasn’t been much to make the economic picture look prettier. But Glocer is sticking to his guns: He told analysts in London that despite it all, the company would not lower its forecast. And if there are any problems, he says, they won’t be long term. For 2008, revenue is expected to grow, organically, by 6 to 8 percent.

YouTube Video Ads Goes Post-Roll; Ad Overlays Are Not Enough -- While YouTube and its parent Google (NSDQ: GOOG) have been promoting ad overlays as the best format for supporting online video, the video site has been slowly employing post-roll the past few weeks, NewTeeVee has confirmed. YouTube began considering using post-rolls to augment its pre-roll and overlay ads this summer. But the decision to go ahead with the format represents something of a reversal for the site. In July, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company had evidence that embedded video ads were much more effective than both pre- and post-roll. Users probably won’t feel too put out by the introduction of post-roll, which can obviously be avoided since the video a user chose has already concluded. But it does suggest that YouTube is still struggling with its ad strategy. And as NewTeeVee pointed out, post-roll only runs on a sliver of the roughly 4 percent YouTube videos uploaded by official partners taking part in the site’s revenue-share deal.

For instance, in Czech Republic Seznam has 62.5% share to Google's 24.8%

Russia, Yandex has 45.9% to Google 33%

China, Baidu.com has 66.5% to Google 11.3%

South Korea, Naver 57.7%, Lycos 18.4%, Google 8.5%

Japan Yahoo 51%, Google 39.5%

As with all markets... there's opportunity. And, there will be a niching process that evolves so that even these shares get eroded as people switch to niche search firms or bespoke search tools.

In the Czech Republic among the major search engines is seznam.cz, which is to be sold. Cena o której się mówi to miliard dolarów. Price of which it says is one billion dollars. Do walki staje m.in. The battle becomes, among others Google. Google.

On the Czech internet market, Google is only 29 percent.Powerful is seznam.cz from more than 62-percent share.

Seznam.cz is, however, will soon be sold for ...niebagatela one billion U.S. dollars! This struggle for power of the Czech market becomes obviously the Google search engine, which will have to deal with Warburg Pincus fund, which holds in the Czech Republic's second-largest portal seznam.cz generated in 2008, more than 90 million dollars of income, and benefited from it 4.4 million members.

IAC’s Life123 Comes To Life; Goals Include Saving You Time, Ranking Well In Search -- If you must think of every new thing as the “something-killer” then you’d probably call Life123 an About.com-killer, or a Mahalo killer, or a Google Knol killer. Fortunately, as Robert Deutsch, VP of content development & operations at the new IAC-owned unit, assured me, About.com doesn’t have to die for Life123 to thrive. We first broke the news that IAC was cooking up a new how-to aggregator back in April. At the time, we knew it as Life333.com, which was in fact an early name for the project. Turns out, in testing, users didn’t like the concept of dividing content into 3-minute, 30-minute and 3-hour chunks so that named got ditched for the current one. The new site still offers users the chance to dive into a topic at various depths from quick and dirty summaries to more thorough explorations.

24/7 Real Media’s COO Hsu Upped To CEO; Moore To Stay On As Chairman -- David Moore, the ad exec who has helped lead WPP Group interactive shop 24/7 Real Media since its days as a startup 12 years ago, is stepping aside as CEO and handing the reins to Jonathan Hsu effective immediately. Hsu, 36, previously served as 24/7’s EVP/COO. As part of the move, Moore will take a wider focus on crafting strategic relationships, recruitment and business development. He’ll also still work with WPP Digital on getting the various parts of the company to be more tightly integrated.

Yahoo Japan boss has not discussed sale of shares with Softbank or Yahoo -- Yahoo Japan's chief executive stated he has not discussed the potential sale of Yahoo Japan shares owned by Softbank or Yahoo. Cited in a Wall Street Journal report, Masahiro Inoue said he had not talked about any such sales with officials from California-based internet company Yahoo or Softbank, the Japanese mobile-telecoms group. Should Yahoo decide to sell its Yahoo Japan stock, Softbank would have the right of first refusal, Inoue pointed out. He added his belief that investment in the Asian region is important at a time when the Asian internet-services industry is experiencing strong growth, the report said. The piece noted that the company announced a first-quarter net profit of JPY 19.16bn (USD 177.6m), up 18% on the previous year; sales rose 16% to JPY 65.56bn. Source: mergermarket.

Google, Mediatel and several financial groups interested in acquiring Seznam -- Google, Mediatel, the Czech privately-owned publishing group, and some financial groups are interested in acquiring Seznam, the privately-owned Czech Internet portal, reported E15. The brief report cited another report in Ekonom.cz but did not name any sources for the information. It said the minimum price being asked was USD 900m. The report said it is understood that Microsoft has not been approached yet over buying Seznam. E15 said Ivo Lukacovic, Seznam’s majority owner, continued to deny that Seznam was being sold. Seznam is the largest Czech Internet portal, as earlier reported. Source: mergermarket.

Sohu.com Q2 Revs Up 162 Percent; Income Soars; Will IPO Games Unit Separately -- The major Chinese portals continue their torrid pace of growth, as Sohu.com (NSDQ: SOHU) announced Q2 revenue growth of 162 percent to $102 million. GAAP net income of $40.2 million or $1.02 per share was up over 600 percent from last year. The top-line was helped by 53 percent ad revenue growth, as well as 450 percent growth in non-advertising revenue, largely from online games. The company’s in-house developed MMO Tian Long Ba Bu grew 11.5 fold since its inception in May 2007. In addition to boosting the top line, it also helped expand profitability: Gross margins stood at 76 percent, compared to 61 percent in the year ago period.

Da ne bom dolgovezila (prepozno, sem že začela)...

Danes sem imela že zjutraj nekaj hudo pregrešnih misli:

• zjutraj prestavit radijsko postajo (antiswinger dejanje),
• vpiti po mestu "wicked are what wicked do" in naključne nesimpatične mimoidoče mahniti s torbo,
• pofotkati ljubek grafit, ki me spravi v romantični mood, ko grem mimo njega,
• prenehati pisati blog, če ne bi bilo do petih popoldan nobenega komentarja (hvala ti Zvita, na žalost si rešila blog; še boste trpeli, če boste hoteli :???: ),
• napisati tale seznam pregrešnih misli.

Kaj od zgornjega mi je dejansko uspelo? Pa poglejmo:

• prestavila sem radijsko postajo in po začetnem ugovarjanju je ostala prestavljena celo do maloprej (juhu!),
• "wicked are what wicked do" sem vpila samo v glavi in zato sama sebe parkrat prav pošteno mahnila s torbo po glavi (tole zdaj pišem z narekom, ker imam roke zvezane na hrbtu),
• grafit sem pofotkala, sliko bom objavila kasneje, ko mi odvežejo roke,
• bloga nisem prenehala pisati (živi dokaz so te besede), ker je Zvita rešila moj svet in ugnobila vašega,
• napisala sem zgornji seznam in še tega, ker imam rada sezname (tako jasni in glasni so, pa še tile krogeci spredaj so mi všeč - sploh niso krogeci?!).

To je vse za zdaj, kmalu serviram še obljubljen golaž. Špecjaln golaž. Še posode ne bo treba zanj :mrgreen:

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