VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Veoh to get ABC content, kind of — ABC, the television network that has been the slowest and stingiest in making its content available online, has struck a deal with video site Veoh that seems, well, behind-the-times and stingy. Veoh will index ABC’s online content, but since ABC doesn’t allow sites to embed its video player, it looks like you won’t actually watch ABC shows on Veoh; the site will just offer links to ABC’s media player. ABC, in turn, will pay Veoh for the extra traffic it receives. I’m inclined to agree with NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes, who describes the deal as “a bit silly.”

U.S. venture capital industry is shrinking – Last year, 844 venture firms invested in U.S. companies, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. That’s 40 fewer firms than in 2006, and also represents a 30 percent drop from the bubble days of 2000, when there were 1200 investors.

Congress tells telecom industry that all is forgiven on domestic spying — The U.S. House and Senate have agreed on the wording of the bill that grants immunity to telecom companies that gave away their customers’ private information without receiving a warrant. As Techdirt puts it, the bill essentially gives the companies a “get out of jail free” card, a move that should make the telecom industry happy while infuriating civil liberties advocates.

Dispute between Associated Press and Drudge Retort is “closed” — The AP has released a statement about its dispute with the news blog The Druge Retort saying “both parties consider the matter closed”. The AP faced heavy criticism after asking the Drudge Retort to take down excerpts of AP articles, a move that was particularly hypocritical since the AP doesn’t abide by its own stated standards when quoting other news sources. The AP’s statement doesn’t offer any further details about how the situation has been resolved, or whether the organization’s approach to similar situations will be any different in the future.

Fifty tweets that will live in infamy – InsideCRM has compiled a list of 50 of the most embarrassing comments posted to the social messaging service Twitter. Some of their choices don’t seem terrible enough to qualify for a list dubbed “the Twitter Hall of Shame.” But the range of topics covered — from politics to society to love and family — shows Twitter’s importance and potential for misuse in practically all of modern life. Perhaps the most fascinating item is the series of “tweets” earlier this year from Yahoo’s Ryan Kuder after learning he had been laid off.

Flickr founders join exodus from Yahoo — Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, the founders of photo-sharing app Flickr, a $35 million Yahoo acquisition, have added their names to the lengthening list of Yahoo defections. Kara Swisher speculates that a boardroom brawl is underway at the embattled search company. No word on where Fake and Butterfield will head next, although with any luck it’ll be another startup.

Another $3 $1 billion for cleantech — Todd Thompson, the ex-CFO of Citi, is raising a targeted $3 billion (correction: It turns out Thompson is sticking to $1 billion after all, although the move to cleantech is confirmed) for a new cleantech-focused private equity fund, according to a tipster. Thompson was reported to be raising $1 to $2 billion for a new private equity fund last year. Originally slated for other purposes, the fund was flipped over to cleantech and carbon credits. The money will be a welcome capital influx for cleantech, which has rapidly grown to become the third-largest venture investment category.

Microsoft buys TV ad network Navic — As part of its ongoing plan to capture a share of the modern advertising market, Microsoft has snapped up Navic Networks, which makes interactive ads for TV, as well as running its own sales network.

Study predicts 100X growth in solar by 2025 — Solar of all sorts accounts for under 0.1 percent of electricity generation in the United States today, but a study co-authored by Clean Edge and Co-op America predicts that it will rise to around 10 percent by 2025. The price tag: Around $500 billion. Meanwhile, pleasingly-named Texan T. Boone Pickens is still betting on wind, and is lobbying Washington to help out.

Ad startup Zango lays off 68 employees – Zango, historically one of the foremost perpetrators of pesky pop-up ads served up by Trojan ad software, has been forced to lay off about a third of its workforce, according to John Cook at the Seattle PI. The company has actually distanced itself from pop-ups in recent years, which leads one to wonder if they should have stuck with the illicit activities.

The Westly Group’s new $130M cleantech fund — Connie Loizos of peHUB has an interview with the two principals of the Westly Group on their new cleantech fund.

Varolii gives up on IPO plans — How many companies have backed out of IPOs this year due to bad market conditions? More than you can count on your fingers, but less than if you included your toes. Varolii, a customer communications software maker in Seattle, has helped come closer to breaking the finger-toe barrier by backing out of its own IPO.

Cadence makes hostile offer for Mentor: Cadence Design Systems made a $1.6 billion offer to buy chip design software and verification firm Mentor Graphics. But Oregon-based Mentor rejected the $16 a share offer as too low. The price was a 30 percent premium over Mentor’s Monday closing price.

Associated Press starts selling “quotation licenses” — As part of its ongoing face-off with bloggers and small media outlets, the Associated Press has started selling licenses to quote its material. The lowest price: $12.50 for 5-25 words. That’s a pretty clear f— you to the new media establishment, most of which is lucky to make a cent per word of their own. The AP may just be grandstanding, but as Boing Boing points out, if it gets its way it could rewrite the existing landscape of fair usage.

Photo credits — Top: Flickr / yoz; Bottom: Flickr / weegeebored

Here’s the latest action:

The Associated Press to blogs: Don’t quote us — The Associated Press has demanded that The Drudge Retort (not to be confused with much more famous Drudge Report) take down several blog posts containing excerpts of AP stories. The objections sound pretty silly — the longest excerpt was 79 words long, and quoting and linking other articles is a popular blogging practice. AP Strategy Director Jim Kennedy’s response that the excerpts were “more reproduction than reference” isn’t particularly persuasive. Kennedy later told the New York Times that the AP’s response was “heavy-handed,” but, strangely, he said the organization isn’t backing down from its initial takedown request.

Google reveals escape clause from Yahoo partnership — It looks like Google’s deal with Yahoo, through which Google will serve ads to Yahoo’s search results, is even better for Google than was initially apparent. According to a filing with the federal Securities Exchange Commission, if the partnership ever makes less than $83.3 million in four months for Google, the search giant can terminate the agreement. TechCrunch spotted the filing, and pointed out that it’s a pretty low threshold: Yahoo makes $1.3 billion every three months. Still, here’s another reason to believe that it’s a better deal for Eric Schmidt than for Jerry Yang.

Yahoo exec Weiner joins venture firms as EIR — Speaking of Yahoo, the company has lost another executive. Jeff Weiner, who was most recently in charge of core products like Yahoo.com, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger, left to be an entrepreneur-in-residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, according to the Los Angeles Times. Weiner follows Andrew Bracchia, another Yahoo executive who left for Accel last year. Google just lost a big name as well: chief litigator Michael Kwan left for the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Google creating new services to fight for net neutrality — The network analysis tools will allow normal users to see if their Internet service providers are abiding by “net neutrality.” In other words, you’ll be able to make sure your ISP is giving you the best connection possible to the entire Internet, not just to websites that pay for better service. A Google policy director mentioned the project during a panel discussion on Friday.

XM/Sirius merger close to a done deal – The merger between the two satellite radio companies has just been recommend for approval by the staff of the Federal Communications Commission, meaning it’s unlikely at this point that the government will stop the deal.

Streamzy lets you search for music videos — Music startup Streamzy, which launched into the crowded online music market just a couple of weeks ago, has added some new features it hopes will set it apart from the competition: It has integrated video searches through YouTube and AOL’s Truveo. One of its competitors, Seeqpod, is already integrated with YouTube, but the ability to stream music performances via Truveo is something none of the other search engines are doing yet. Streamzy also plans to offer music and ringtone purchases shortly and to add playlist-sharing capabilities.

Orgoo to offer webmail service to existing social networks – The startup, previously known for a site that integrates email, instant messaging and SMS text messaging, will try to sell networking sites like Facebook and MySpace a solution that allows users to check their various email accounts through the social network.

[David Adewumi contributed to this article.]

Google is paying to licenses content from four wire agencies and will give the wire services more play on Google News — effectively stiffing newspapers and others that Google had linked to previously.

The move is controversial, because there’s already considerable tension between Google and newspapers, with Chicago’s Sam Zell, future owner of the Tribune Co., saying Google is stealing traffic.

Articles from the agencies — which include the popular Associated Press, as well as the Press Association of Britain, Canadian Press, and Agence France-Presse — will now have their articles featured with the organizations’ own brands on Google News. So Google effectively keeps the traffic. It won’t link to the versions of the wire stories that run in the newspapers and other sites that publish those same wire stories, so as to avoid duplication. That means newspapers will no longer get traffic they previous enjoyed, resulting in a potential loss of revenue, even though those newspapers pay the wire services and keep them in business. We expect some conflict to arise from this, considering Josh Cohen, business product manager of Google News, said his company will consider running advertising alongside the agencies’ articles, which will likely tick off the newspapers even more. More from Google here.

Google says it won’t be ranking the wire articles higher in its algorithm, meaning they won’t necessarily show higher in the results. However, by weeding out links to duplicate wire stories carried by other sources, the end result is that Google and the wire services will benefit over others.

Here’s an example of a AFP story under the new system. You’ll see it is hosted on Google’s servers. You’ll see a link (left in image below; see arrow) that lets you show all the articles where the story has run, including in other newspapers. However, this is an extra step now that few people are likely to take.