VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Google’s fireworks — This has been an impressive week for Google, and it shows in the 4 percent-plus jump in Google’s stock price earlier this morning (though it has tapered in the past hour). The main driver was its stellar earnings report. But here are the side-shows:

Video: It announced a video-conferencing product acquisition this morning (see our story).

StumbleUpon lookalike: Google also released a tool that looks a lot of like StumbleUpon, the site that delivers Web sites for you based on what you’ve told it you find interesting. Google’s tool centers on a recommendation button on its Toolbar that looks like a pair of dice:

Google explains: “Click on the dice, and we’ll take you to a site that may be interesting to you based on your past searches. If you want another, just click the dice again and we’ll show you a new one. We’ll give you up to 50 new sites per day that might be of interest. If you prefer to get your information at a glance, we’ve added a recommendations tab that you can add to your personalized homepage….We’ll give you a page of recommendations that are updated daily.”

Froogle tossed — Google has relaunched its shopping engine, changing its name to the bland Google Product Search. (We think Froogle is a cool name, and should be kept for a discount version of Product Search.) Google didn’t do much marketing of Froogle. With the relaunch, they’ve changed that: In your main search results, Google will sometimes feature an item from its Product Search if it matches your search query exactly (contained atop the regular results in a so-called “onebox” area). Notably, however, there’s no change from the prior policy of using only products submitted to Googlebase. So Google is forcing merchants to play in its system — unfortunately, not trawling the Web for items objectively, the way that made Google so popular in the first place. (See our story here on this). Google is also prioritizing merchants using Google Checkout, thereby penalizing those relying on PayPal. This is another Big Company move that undercuts its image of impartiality. Too bad. (See more thorough analysis at CNET and SearchEngineLand), which obviously got previews before it was released.

Google phones will be out by the end of this year — Apparently, they’re launching with Orange and HTC, featuring Google search and email built in. They’ll sport the Texas Instruments 3G platform and EDGE, but not GPS. (Details here)

There is, however, some non-Google news:

Twitter spun out — Evan Williams, who runs Obvious, the parent of Twitter, they messaging company that is all the rage lately, says Twitter is being spun out into its own company, Twitter Inc, with a CEO in Jack Dorsey.

Mitt Romney gets private equity support — The former Bain Capital chief, Mitt Romney has raised about $257,525 from buyout professionals in the first quarter, way more than anyone else, according to PEHub.

Web 2.0 Pyramid Watch — Cambrian House, a Canadian company creating a place for people to sell their business online, is moving to Mountain View, Calif., and its latest scheme is to give a share of stock in the company to anyone who signs up for his service, according to the SF Chron. He plans to ultimately sell the company or have a public stock offering. “We really are built to flip,” he said. “I’m the only guy who says that out loud. I don’t know why everyone lies.”

Digg releases API, an answer to MySpace News — News-ranking site Digg has released its API, which gives developers tools to build other products around Digg’s data, and also to integrate it into existing sites. You can use the API to request very specific information about news stories and videos submitted to Digg, digging activity, comments, and users. This comes just as MySpace has unveiled its own Digg-like news service (see our previous coverage), built after acquiring Newroo.

Flickr has integrated Imagekind — This gives Flickr users a way to create prints of their photos, or sell them to others online. Techcrunch has story.
(Our coverage of Imagekind.)

Roundup in Silicon Valley:

FON exploits opportunity to stir up WiFi interest in San Francisco — Search engine company Google is having a heck of a time getting “crazy nut job” local SF residents to agree to its plans for a city-wide WiFi project. So while big Google is stymied, another company, FON, is hoping to slip under the regulatory radar with a grassroots campaign: Offering hundreds of its La Fonera wireless routers at an event it calls “Freedom Friday,” to be held at SF’s Union Square from Noon to 2 p.m. tomorrow. FON’s been having its own challenges drumming up interest in its product, so perhaps this will create some viral buzz? As mentioned, Google is an investor in FON.

Williams buys back podcasting company Odeo — As mentioned elsewhere, Evan Williams, who started San Francisco podcasting site Odeo after selling his blog software, Blogger, to Google, has parted ways with his his venture capitalists.

You knew things were choppy at Odeo when Williams suddenly started giving candid assessments last month about having tried too much too quickly with Odeo. He then shut down Odeo’s Audioblogger, which had let users post audio to a blogger.com blog via a telephone call.

Now we find out he’s bought Odeo from his venture capitalist backers, and renamed it Obvious. Though, from his comments on the site (”We’re not sure how it’s all going to work”), it isn’t entirely obvious. Included in the assets is Twitter, another service we’ve mentioned before — which lets friends know what you’re doing. He says it is “going to be huge.”

George Zachary, the venture capitalist at Charles River Ventures who had invested in Odeo, tells us he actually made money on the deal.

Which reminds us, Zachary has launched a blog — Perhaps the Odeo story is what made investor Zachary decide to launch his own blog, called Sense and Cents. He tells VentureBeat his goal for the blog is to navigate the core of “who we are as humans and what we need.” He notes how technology advances in communications are letting us do things we’ve never done before. He says he wants to “talk about and connect interesting sociological issues and how they integrate and show themselves with technology and experiences of consumer internet.”

Wonder if he’ll try his hand at podcasting? ;)

Are there enough shopping search engines? — Ok folks, we’ve got at least a dozen shopping search engines now, of every stripe and flavor. We just wrote about TheFind.com last night, and now we see yet another one launching: Ugenie. GigaOm has a write up. It has an office in Silicon Valley, among other places, and was founded last May by two Amazon.com alums. It has raised $5 million in funding from BlueRun Ventures and Sierra Ventures and now has 15 employees, but it is not clear what new it is bringing to the table.

Revenge of the server farms — After disappearing after the first Internet bubble burst, the server farms are back. The NYT has the story: Equinix of Foster City, Calif., is building its first new center in Chicago for $165 million and expects to open it late next year. When it opens, the server farm will be 95 percent occupied and demand 30 megawatts of power, enough electricity to power 30,000 houses.

Check out Palm’s colorful new Treo 680 — They’re getting thinner too. See image here at left.

Six Apart launches Vox, another blogging tool — Sigh, do we need another blogging software? The answer is no. But if you’re someone who has been on the sidelines, a non-techie fearful of taking the blogging plunge, this one is worth a good look. The first generation of blog software was clunky, but this latest, called Vox, has a easy and good looking finish to it. It is latest software from company Six Apart, and is free. We created this blog in three minutes, no more.

Oracle kills RedHat — Oracle introduced its open-source Linux operating system (see our wire story from this morning), and the market killed RedHat today. It lost a quarter of its value in trading. Despite the likely dire consequences for RedHat, some people are skeptical that it will help Oracle, though:

I really don’t see why anyone would pay $50,000 per CPU for a license to use a tarted-up version of Oracle Fusion Middleware when so many clever subversives on the edges of organizations are already doing all these cool Web 2.0 things now for pennies a month and there are so many really sensational, and far less expensive, enterprise-level integration solutions available or in the works.

eBuddy raises 5 million euros — See the story here on VentureBeat’s wire, from earlier today. (Another reminder to subscribe separately to our news wire, which is the RSS button on the left of homepage, if you haven’t done so already).