Google plans to make YouTube profitable any day now

YouTube’s revenues (or lack thereof) are a source of constant speculation, with the insanely popular video site becoming the classic example of how lots of users doesn’t equal lots of money. The subject came up once again during the conference call discussing Google’s second quarter earnings, when the search giant beat expectations by a nose . A reporter asked the standard question about how YouTube’s money-making efforts are going, and Nikesh Arora, the company’s president … Continue Reading

Search engine rankings: Not much of a bang for Bing

Comscore’s latest search engine rankings reveal that Microsoft’s newest effort Bing is taking a little — but just a little — market share from Yahoo in the U.S.

Bing moved 0.4 percent over the last month to account for 8.4 percent of the total search market. Meanwhile, Yahoo declined by 0.5 percent to 19.6 percent. Google, Ask and AOL remained flat at 65 percent, 3.9 percent and 3.1 percent respectively.

The Wall Street Journal notes … Continue Reading

New Twittergate gems: Google hysteria, world domination and a "happiness committee"

Two days ago, TechCrunch received hundreds of stolen Twitter documents. After hours spent sifting through them, TC has brought a few to the fore — many of them detailing backroom meetings with Google, Microsoft and other heavyweights, as well as product planning and company goals. Prime among them: “be the pulse of the planet,” i.e. get to 1 billion users.

There’s way too much content to post and dissect here. Instead, here is a bulleted … Continue Reading

Video game sales plunge for 4th month in a row

U.S. video game revenues fell more than analysts expected in June, thanks to a dearth of new titles during the typically slow summer months, according to market researcher NPD.

Sales of hardware, software and game peripherals fell 31 percent to $1.17 billion in June, compared to $1.7 billion a year earlier. That was the fourth month in a row where sales fell short of last year’s numbers.

In some ways, it isn’t a surprise. Last … Continue Reading

Aloqa raises $1.5M for location-based mobile content

Aloqa, a mobile search company that  sends you information about events, friends and other data based on your location, launched its first product today at MobileBeat: an app for Android-based devices.

The company also announced $1.5 million in first-round funding from Wellington Partners and angel investors, and the appointment of a new CEO, Sanjeev Agrawal, an ex-head of product marketing from Google and more recently vice president of products at TellMe Networks (now part of … Continue Reading

IBM fares surprisingly well in Q2

Wall Street failed to predict how well IBM would perform this quarter, with the tech giant posting an 18 percent increase in earnings per share from 2008. Earnings per share was $2.32 in Q2, compared to analyst estimates of $2.01.

Now, IBM is showing more optimism for the year as a whole. The company has adjusted its expectations for the year from $9.20 to $9.70 per share. That seems pretty good compared to last year’s … Continue Reading

Use Cc:Betty to follow MobileBeat 2009 on the iPhone

Virtual assistant Cc:Betty started out by organizing the information in your email, but chief executive Michael Cerda says the vision goes far beyond that — starting with the Twitter integration launched last week. It looks like Cc:Betty isn’t limiting itself to standard web access either, since the service just launched an iPhone-friendly mobile site.

You can watch Cerda describe the Palo Alto, Calif., company at the DEMO conference in this video, but the basic idea … Continue Reading

TV Everywhere won't skimp on the ads

Online video has long enjoyed fewer ads than cable or broadcast television, but Comcast is looking to change that with its TV Everywhere initiative.

Programming for TV Everywhere, which will provide on-demand online television for cable subscribers only, will likely carry just as many advertisements as cable, the Wall Street Journal reports. TNT’s “The Closer” and TBS’s “My Boys,” for example, will bring all of their ads online. That means roughly four times as many … Continue Reading

Google's Q2 earnings beat expectations by a nose

Google reported $5.52 billion in revenue for the second quarter, ended June 30 — a 3 percent increase over last year’s $5.37 billion. This might not sound inspiring, but the company argues that the increase is a testament to its endurance in tough economic times. Still, the lackluster number dipped share prices by 2 percent, even though they technically topped Wall Street predictions.

Looking at Q1′s $5.5 billion in revenue, it looks like the company … Continue Reading

Oracle gets green light to acquire Sun for $7.4B

Sun Microsystems just announced that its shareholders have approved its landmark sale to Oracle for $7.4 billion at a rate of $9.50 a share. But the software titans aren’t done yet — the deal still has to survive antitrust inspection by the U.S. Department of Justice.

While the DOJ is very close to green-lighting the merger, there’s one last sticking point concerning licensing of Java. Regardless, Oracle says these loose ends should tie themselves up … Continue Reading

MobileBeat2009 now underway: Listen in at Stitcher

VentureBeat’s MobileBeat2009 conference is underway at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco today. We’ve got a great agenda of speakers lined up through 6pm. Tickets are sold out, but you can still tune in and listen to the event on Stitcher.

We’ve also got the morning sessions online now. Stitcher has posted Matt Marshall’s panel on the Recipe for a Winning Platform and our second panel on Finding a role in the new world … Continue Reading

Mozilla looks for handouts for add-on developers

Mozilla has launched the online equivalent of a tip jar for developers of Firefox add-ons to make money from generous users. There is now an optional “contribution button” that they can put on their add-on pages so that users can donate via PayPal.

Of course, no step in this process is compulsory. Even if the contributions button is there, users can still freely download and use the add-ons in question. Anything more than that would … Continue Reading

MobileBeat: Sprint says it must 'let go' to enable innovation

Sprint-Nextel Corp., the U.S.’s third-largest mobile phone company, signaled it must take a more hands-off approach to keep pace with innovation at MobileBeat’s second panel today.

“We need to let go of demanding permission,” said Russ McGuire, Sprint’s vice president of strategy. “You don’t want to move at carrier speed. You want to move at Valley speed.”

They are unusual words for a wireless carrier, underscoring Sprint’s recognition that it can’t control the consumer experience … Continue Reading

Eminem, Britney get interactive with Clikthrough

Big content is gradually wading into the waters of interactive video. One interactive video service, Clikthrough, has enlisted two more record labels and added dozens of new videos to its library.

If San Francisco-based startup Clikthrough has its way, sites like Vevo — the upcoming Web music video site spearheaded by Universal Music — will be filled with clickable streams, allowing viewers to learn about or purchase anything they see. This week, Clikthrough announced new … Continue Reading

Spinvox offers employees shares instead of salary

Spinvox, the voice-to-text startup, has been on a roll: $100 million in funding from an impressive list of backers; then, a key deal with Telefonica covering its Latin America mobile operations, which bump its userbase to 150 milion (with some other contracts it claims it has yet to announce); and just yesterday, 600 registrations for its API set, which is getting the service embedded with other fast-growing mobile applications like Audioboo.

But there are signs … Continue Reading

Treasury Dept. pitches bill to tighten grip on PE and VC activity

The U.S. Treasury Department has proposed a bill that would require hedge funds, private equity firms and venture capital funds with more than $30 million in assets to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Clearly, with a bar that low, the law would affect the vast majority of firms in the country.

Registration with the SEC would mean more detailed reporting. Firms would have to periodically disclose their assets, leverage, credit risk, trading and … Continue Reading

Google VP: "We're not rich enough" to support individual smartphones

MobileBeat 2009 got off to a snappy start in San Francisco this morning. Google VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra evangelized his company’s put-it-in-the-browser religion by declaring, “We’re not rich enough to support RIM,” nor any other proprietary application platforms. Vic likes to grandstand, so he’ll be glad to know his zinger caught on with the audience.

At Google, Gundotra’s engineers are focused on building everything for standards-compliant browsers, and pushing the responsibility onto mobile handset … Continue Reading

MobileBeat: Seven startups looking to offer killer mobile services

The first half of the startup competition at our MobileBeat conference today in San Francisco is starting now. Hosted by CNET TV’s Natali Del Conte, seven companies (selected from hundreds of applicants) will try to convince the judges that they offer the best mobile service.

Here are the companies, what they do, and the news they’re announcing on-stage:

AppStoreHQ is a discovery service for iPhone applications. Comparing itself to news aggregator Techmeme, AppStoreHQ aggregates and … Continue Reading

Nokia posts 66 percent drop in profit for Q2, share price falls immediately

This morning, mobile giant Nokia reported a 66 percent drop in profits for the second quarter, and candidly admitted that it doesn’t expect to gain market share, lowering its profitability targets going forward. Almost immediately, the company’s share price plunged 14 percent.

Sales grew even thinner throughout the second quarter, falling 25 percent overall to $14 billion. Its mobile devices division alone saw a 28 percent decline in sales, hitting $9.3 billion. Nokia says it … Continue Reading

Feed aggregator Netvibes launches new tools to become real-time dashboard

Netvibes, the service that lets users customize a homepage with their RSS, social network, Twitter and email feeds, among other widgets, has introduced several new tools in a push to become a real-time dashboard for users’ online lives.

Starting today, Netvibes users can click on any one of their friends, a screen name, hashtag, etc., drag the icon outside the widget in question and drop it anywhere else on their homepage to create a brand … Continue Reading