Roundup: Google sees results in Washington, sex offenders out of MySpace, Motorola’s big loss and more

February 4, 2009 | MG Siegler | Comments |
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Here’s the latest action:

Google is making friends in Washington — After Microsoft and AT&T’s lobbying power killed its Yahoo search deal, Google has proven to be the quick study in politics and now seems to have friends in high places…the highest places, the White House. The Wall Street Journal breaks it all down.

Sex offenders no longer welcome on MySpace — The social network banned some 90,000 of them — so they moved to Facebook? That’s what a security tech firm says that represents a bunch of social networks, including MySpace…but not Facebook. TechCrunch has more.

Motorola posts a $3.6 billion loss — Guess those RAZRs aren’t selling so well anymore. The New York Times explains.

IBM’s supercomputer for the Energy Department — The system runs at 1.026 petaflops, which is a little more than a quadrillion calculations per second. CNET has the scoop.

Gmail emphasizes labels — A new toolbar makes labeling and moving emails easier — people used to call these label eareas “folders,” but Google seems opposed some reason. Probably because folders are the de facto domain of Outlook. The Gmail Blog discusses the change.

A Chinese Kleiner Perkins partner resigns — Ian Goh is out for unknown personal reasons, and peHUB has more.

Amazon’s casual game store — The store specializes in games under $10 for the PC. CNET has more.

FriendFeed search gets more advanced — You can now search in a number of new ways, including by number of “likes” and comments. Ego-searchers rejoice! FriendFeed Blog breaks it down.

Zazzle cuts 40 — This represents 15 percent of the online custom printer of t-shirts, mugs, mousepads, etc., according to VentureWire.

RNA Network gets $7 million — This is the first round for the Portland startup specializing in memory virtualization software. TechFlash has more.

Angels are bailing on startups — In case it wasn’t already obvious over the past several months, the New York Times elaborates.

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Photo of MG Siegler

About the Author, MG Siegler

MG Siegler writes about technology trends and new media for VentureBeat, with a focus on mobile topics, social elements and key news stories. Before that, MG wrote about technology on his blog, ParisLemon. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan where he studied film. He's previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where he did web development. He now lives in San Francisco.

  • Bill Bliss
    Re: GMail Labels vs. Outlook Folders. There is a fundamental difference between labels and folders.

    A folder is a container where the message actually "lives" -- just like a folder on a hard disk. For that reason, a message in Outlook can't be in more than one folder at a time.

    Labels, however, are hierarchical tags instead of containers. They don't "live" in the label because labels aren't containers. For that reason, a message in GMail can have any number of labels associated with it.

    Now IMO GMail's made that distinction rather blurry by using a word like "Move" but since the difference is a subtle one, most people won't notice the difference.

    Personally, as hard disks and storage space get bigger and bigger, I think the Google approach is superior to Outlook's, if you can assume ubiquitous and fast search. (I was one of the founding members of the Outlook '97 team at Microsoft. The folder vs. label semantics is something we discussed a lot. Folders were not something we had a choice about though -- that came from the Exchange/MAPI team.)
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