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Mergers: Commission clears proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google — Mergers: Commission clears proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google … Google operates an Internet search engine that offers search capabilities for end users free of charge and provides online advertising space on its own websites.
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Salon, CNET News.com, VentureBeat, Google Watch, eWeek, Threat Level, paidContent.org, WebProNews, Business Wire, Tech Trader Daily, Digital Destiny and Searchviews
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EU approves Google's DoubleClick acquisition; Here comes the display ad ripples — European regulators on Tuesday approved Google's purchase of DoubleClick setting up the search giant's big splash in the display advertising market. — According to the EU's competition committee …
Discussion:
New York Times, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, Ars Technica, IDG News Service, Tech Beat, The Register, paidContent.org, Electronista and Mashable!


Searchme: A New Visual Search Engine — [Updated with correct funding of $31 million and note that Google has a similar effort in its labs.] — Today, Sequoia Capital, which has been a key investor of search giant Google (GOOG), as well as Yahoo, will unveil its latest investment in search, a visual search engine called: Searchme.
Discussion:
paidContent.org, CNET News.com, The Boy Genius Report, Web Analytics World, VoIP Blog, Screenwerk and VentureBeat
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SearchMe Launches New Search Engine With Heavy Backing From Sequoia — Mountain View based SearchMe has been around since 2005 and has raised $31 million from Sequoia, DAG Ventures and Lehman Brothers. But until last weekend when I met founders Randy Adams and John Holland I knew next to nothing about them.
Discussion:
Gizmodo

We've officially acquired DoubleClick — I'm pleased to share the news that we completed our acquisition of DoubleClick today. Although it's been nearly a year since we announced our intention to acquire DoubleClick last April, we are no less excited today about the benefits that the combination …
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Google's drop in paid clicks: Part of the grand plan — After ComScore reported a recent decline in Google's paid clicks, the Net ratings service followed up, noting evidence that the drop was due to “Google's own quality initiatives that result in a reduction in the number of paid listings and …

Testing Over, Hulu.com to Open Its TV and Film Offerings This Week — SAN FRANCISCO — Hulu.com, the long-gestating Internet joint venture between NBC Universal and Fox, emerges from limited testing on Wednesday to make its catalog of TV shows and video clips available to anyone on the Web.
Discussion:
Medialoper, Seeking Alpha, Contentinople, Mashable!, Clickety Clack, paidContent.org and Lost Remote
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A WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Guide — As you might know, WordPress 2.5 is about to be released, and we wanted to encourage WordPress users to upgrade. To Movable Type. — The truth is, there are lots of good blogging tools out there, and they're all good at different things.
Discussion:
STARTUP CHATTER, Bb's RealTech, David Dalka, Favorite {fvrit} Blog, Like It Matters, The Blog Herald and Changing Way
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Hostility Has Its Rewards — MENLO PARK, Calif. — “It's crazy to say you will only grow through innovation,” Larry Ellison, the hard-charging chief executive of Oracle, was telling me last week. “It's bizarre that there's a stigma to buying something rather than building it yourself.”
Discussion:
The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
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20% Of Valley Startups Can't Get To Their Cash
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FOXBusiness.com


CBSSports.com Opens March Madness On Demand Video For Easy Access From Any Site — Seeking more online viewers for games and ads, CBSSports.com and the NCAA are announcing a “developer platform” for March Madness on Demand. It's not the kind of developer concept where people are encouraged to build apps …


MacPro, Mac Book Air get software updates — While we slept last night, Apple released two updates for two of their less common hardware offerings: the MacBook Air and select Mac Pros. They aren't terribly exciting and, as always, the descriptions are fairly vague.
Discussion:
PC World, AppleInsider, MacUser, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Apple Gazette and Macsimum News


The “Nuclear Disaster” At SXSW Was Nothing More Than A Witch Burning — Based on the Twitter messages and blog posts I saw yesterday emerge real time from the SXSW conference, it sounded like Sarah Lacy's interview of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was, truly, a career ending, never seen before train wreck of epic proportions.
Discussion:
Jeremy Toeman's LIVEdigitally, Profy.Com, Scobleizer, broadstuff, PDA, Master of 500 Hats, Chip Griffin, Geek Gestalt, 901am, MYBLOG by Ouriel, BoomTown, VentureBeat, bub.blicio.us, Telegraph Blogs, IanSchafer.com, ClickZ News Blog, Smalltalk Tidbits …, techipedia, robhyndman.com, deal architect and Bb's RealTech


R.E.M. launching album on social networking site — NEW YORK (Billboard) - Forget the traditional radio premiere: R.E.M.'s new album, “Accelerate,” is set to debut on the social networking application iLike. — The roll-out, the first of its kind for a major act, will allow fans to stream and share …

Where Every Ad Knows Your Name — Just how personal can advertising from the Web giants get? That's a question you may be wondering after reading my article in Monday's Times and the related blog post. With big Internet companies, which already have a lot of data about users …
Discussion:
Wikinomics

How to Tap IT's Hidden Potential — Too often, there's a wall between a company's information-technology department and everything else. That wall has to go. — Some of the biggest names in the business world have used information technology to their competitive advantage: Merrill Lynch …