Techmeme: Google Takes Another Big Step to Retain Employees: Autonomous Business Units (Sarah Lacy/TechCrunch)

7:05 PM ET, December 17, 2010

Top Items:

What's Next for Delicious — Many of you have read the news stories about Delicious that began appearing yesterday. We're genuinely sorry to have these stories appear with so little context for our loyal users. While we can't answer each of your questions individually …

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Has Hit Rock Bottom And Is In “Absolute Disarray” — Yahoo has hit rock bottom. They've now, finally, had their layoffs. Those that are left are keeping their resumes fresh and don't expect to stay there over the long term. Everything we hear from employees boils down to this - the company is in “absolute disarray.”

Discussion: CNNMoney.com, Computerworld, GigaOM, MediaPost, SmoothSpan Blog, virtualeconomics, TUAW and eSarcasm

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Yahoo Trying To Unload Del.icio.us, Not Shut It Down — Yesterday, a leaked internal Yahoo slide brought us the news that Yahoo will soon be shuttering Del.icio.us, the bookmarking service it bought a few years back. Today, Yahoo has released a statement on the group's blog.

Discussion: This is going to be BIG!, digiphile, SAI, Regular Geek, Lifehacker and ProgrammableWeb

Sarah Lacy / TechCrunch:

Google Takes Another Big Step to Retain Employees: Autonomous Business Units — There's a lie that companies and entrepreneurs tell themselves in order to commit to an acquisition. … It usually works for a little while, but big company bureaucracy- whether it's HR, politics or just endless meetings- almost always creeps in.

Discussion: SAI, Pulse2, Electronista and Gizmodo

Gideon Wald / Google Webmaster Central Blog:

New hacked site notifications in search results — Today we've added a new notification to our search results that helps people know when a site may have been hacked. We've provided notices for malware for years, which also involve a separate warning page.

Discussion: The Register, MediaMemo, eWeek, Search Engine Land, ZDNet, Pulse2, Erictric, Krebs on Security and The Official Google Blog

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Word Lens Translates Words Inside of Images. Yes Really. — Ever been confused at a restaurant in a foreign country and wish you could just scan your menu with your iPhone and get an instant translation? Well as of today you are one step closer thanks to Word Lens from QuestVisual.

Sean Hollister / Engadget:
Word Lens augmented reality app instantly translates whatever you point it at

Discussion: MobileWhack.com, Gizmodo and 9 to 5 Mac

Om Malik / GigaOM:

RIM In Talks To Buy Gist — RIM, the company behind the iconic mobile-messaging platform BlackBerry, is said to be in talks to acquire Seattle-based startup Gist, according to industry sources. While the deal is said to be nearly done, there is always a fair chance that the two parties might not come to an agreement.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Pulse2, SocialTimes.com, mocoNews, IntoMobile, FierceMobileContent, Know Your Cell, Electronista, TechFlash and Xconomy

Wall Street Journal:

Amazon Can't Dent iTunes — On the day Apple Inc. rolled out the Beatles' catalog on its iTunes Store, Amazon.com Inc. fired back with a digital exclusive of its own: The latest album from rap-rocker Kid Rock—whose music still isn't available on iTunes—for just $3.99.

Discussion: Examiner, MediaPost, TechEye, TUAW, The Tech Report, MacRumors, Beyond Search, blogs.chron.com, SlashGear, Music Ally, 9 to 5 Mac, The Next Web, Digital Trends, hypebot and iLounge, more at Mediagazer »

Jacqui Cheng / Ars Technica:
Apple owns 66% of online music market, Amazon second at 13%

Discussion: Pulse2, Techland and Gearlog

Nicholas Carlson / SAI:

Facebook Stock Sold At $56 Billion Valuation In “Significantly Oversubscribed” Auction — Private shares market Sharespost just sold 165,000 Facebook shares for $25 each. That price implies a $56 billion valuation of Facebook. — In an email to members, Sharespost said that because the auction was …

Discussion: VatorNews, All Facebook, Pulse2 and Shades of Green

Peter Kafka / MediaMemo:

Rupert Murdoch's “Daily” iPad Newspaper Set for January Launch — Want to get a gander at “the Daily,” Rupert Murdoch's much-discussed but still sorta-secret iPad newspaper? Wait a month. — News Corp. plans to launch the publication the week of January 17, multiple sources tell me.

Discussion: App Advice, Fortune, MediaPost, MacRumors, 9 to 5 Mac, Pulse2, Digital Trends, The Next Web, MacStories, Poynter, SlashGear, Macgasm, BGR, Electronista, everythingiCafe, Know Your Mobile, iGadgetsReport, Erictric, TUAW and SAI, more at Mediagazer »

Alastair Goldfisher / PE Hub Blog:

Facebook To Make About 15 Talent Acquisitions in 2011 — Next year, look for Facebook to make plenty of small acquisitions to beef up its engineering expertise, like it did with Hot Potato and Drop.io this fall. — That was the message from Michael Brown, corporate development manager at Facebook …

Discussion: Social Business Blog, All Facebook, ReadWriteWeb and The Atlantic Online

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Google Rejects Connecticut Request for Wi-Fi Data — Connecticut's attorney general said Friday his office may take legal action against Google Inc. after the Internet company rejected his request to turn over personal data it collected inadvertently from unsecured wireless networks.

Discussion: CNET News, L.A. Times Tech Blog, Between the Lines Blog, SAI, TechEye, Mercury News, Reuters and Electronista

Vint Cerf / The Official Google Blog:

Governments shouldn't have a monopoly on Internet governance — The beauty of the Internet is that it's not controlled by any one group. Its governance is bottoms-up—with academics, non-profits, companies and governments all working to improve this technological wonder of the modern world.

Discussion: 901am, Thanks:hornokplease

John Hilvert / iTnews:
UN mulls internet regulation options

Discussion: CNET News, As Seen Through PeriVisioN, The Huffington Post and p2pnet

Alexia Tsotsis / TechCrunch:

Confirmed: Tumblr Raises $25 Million [Update: It's Actually $30 Million] — For the past several weeks there's been reports of blogging platform Tumblr raising a boatload of money. That was confirmed today in a SEC filing with numbers on the round. $25 million to be exact.

Discussion: VentureBeat

Andrew Miller / Google Mobile Blog:

Under the hood of Google Maps 5.0 for Android — (Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog) — Yesterday we introduced Google Maps 5.0 for Android with two significant new features: 3D interaction and offline reliability. In order to create these features, we rebuilt Maps using vector graphics …

Discussion: Pocket-lint, SiliconANGLE, GT Mobiles, Android Phone Fans, Softpedia News, Inquirer and Search Engine Roundtable

Christopher Finke / Less Talk, More Do:

Tapsure: Better password input on mobile devices — Typing passwords on mobile devices sucks. If you have even a reasonably strong password (one that includes letters, numbers, and special characters), it can take more than a few seconds to type it out on a phone's keypad or on-screen keyboard.

Jon Ying / The Dropbox Blog:

Dropbox hits 1.0! — Hey everyone! — We're super excited to announce the new hotness that we've been cooking up for the past few months: Dropbox 1.0! In addition to hundreds (yep, hundreds) of bug fixes, vastly reduced resource usage (think of it as the Prius model of Dropbox) …

Jim Romenesko / Poynter Online:

Memo: 'Gawker tech team didn't adequately secure our platform' — “On several fronts — technically, as well as customer support and communication — we found ourselves unprepared to handle this eventuality,” says Gawker chief technology officer Thomas Plunkett's memo to staff.

Neil Hughes / AppleInsider:

Apple bulking up iOS development team with navigation software experts — Apple this week put out a call for a number of new software engineers for its iOS development team, indicating it wants candidates that have experience developing navigation software.

Discussion: SAI, MacRumors, pocketnow.com, RCR Wireless News and TUAW

Patricia Cohen / New York Times:

In 500 Billion Words, New Window on Culture — With little fanfare, Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities.

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:

Google To Expand And Market Movie Streaming Service In 2011 — Google is expanding its feature film streaming service, says a source who's been briefed on the product. The service will likely be an expansion of the current movie rental/streaming test launched by Google earlier this year.

Discussion: Electronista

Horace Dediu / asymco:

92 percent of RIM's sales growth came from outside the US — First, a round-up of the quarter's numbers: — 14.2 million devices shipped, sell-through: 12.3 million — expect to ship 14.5 to 15 million units in the next quarter — ASP of approximately $315 — US, UK and Canada are 56% of sales

Discussion: GigaOM, IntoMobile and MediaPost

Nilay Patel / Engadget:

Palm's tablet is codenamed ‘Topaz,’ keyboard accessory leaks out — Okay, it's not exactly the new webOS hardware we've been waiting for, but we just got this shot of a Palm Bluetooth keyboard from a trusted source — we're told it's an accessory for Palm's upcoming tablet, which is codenamed “Topaz.”

Discussion: Erictric, PhoneDog.com, Everything webOS, SlashGear, PreCentral.net and Electronista

Panos Ipeirotis / A Computer Scientist …:

Mechanical Turk: Now with 40.92% spam. — At this point, Amazon Mechanical Turk has reached the mainstream. Pretty much everyone knows about the concept. Post small tasks online, pay people cents, and get thousands of micro-tasks completed. — Unfortunately, this resulted in some unfortunate trends.

Discussion: Forbes, ReadWriteWeb and SAI

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