Some Quick Notes: What’s Up In The Industry?

July 1, 2008

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I will post here some of the latest and most important quick notes on what is happening in this industry:

AdSense Referrals Program to End in August 2008; Note: Referrals is being retired during the last week of August 2008, so we recommend that you do not implement referral ad code on your site at this time.
eBay Gets Hit For Allowing Sale Of ‘Fakes’: A court in France ordered eBay to pay 38.6 million euros (30.6 million pounds) to luxury goods group LVMH for allowing the sale of counterfeit goods on its online auction site. Monday’s decision, a month after eBay was ordered by another French court to pay handbag maker Hermes 20,000 euros for allowing the sale of fakes, is the latest episode in a long fight between luxury goods makers and the online auctioneer.
Digg Recommendation Engine (Beta) Launching This Week: The feature will be in beta and presented to registered Digg users first, based on a random sampling of logged-in users. Look for the red beta flag on your Upcoming tab - this means you now have access to the Recommendation Engine. We hope to roll it out to everyone within the week or so.
Flash to be made visible by search engines: Adobe is providing optimized Adobe® Flash® Player technology to Google and Yahoo! to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash file format (SWF) and uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines.
Doubleclick Performics is now Google Affiliate Network!: This is already discussed here.
Google and Creator of ‘Family Guy’ Strike a Deal For AdSense Syndication: Advertising will be incorporated into the clips in varying ways. In some cases, there will be “preroll” ads, which ask viewers to sit through a TV-style commercial before getting to the video. Some advertisers may opt for a banner to be placed at the bottom of the video clip or a simple “brought to you by” note at the beginning.
Hackers Hijack Critical Internet Sites: Turkish hackers Thursday defaced the official sites of the international organizations that oversee the Internet’s critical routing infrastructure and regulate domain names, researchers said Friday.A group calling itself “NetDevilz” claimed responsibility for the hack, which Thursday morning temporarily redirected visitors to the sites for IANA ( Internet Assigned Numbers Authority ) and ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
Google Tests iGoogle Social Networking: Google Inc. has quietly begun limited testing of several new social features created for its iGoogle personalized start page. The updates include chat, activity streaming and a new interface for the gadgets offered on the start page.
Google Media Server: Desktop to TV: Google Media Server is a Windows application that aims to bridge the gap between Google and your TV
Judge Orders Facebook Origins Settlement Enforceable: Facebook agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of cash and stock to settle a long- running legal battle
Yahoo Tells Shareholders : Google Is Better For Us Than Microsoft: In a new letter to its shareholders on Wednesday, Yahoo once again explained why a search advertising deal between Yahoo and Google is far superior to an alternate proposal that Microsoft had made to buy Yahoo’s search business.
For those following the tit-for-tat of public statements between Microsoft and Yahoo, the letter offers little that is new, except for the following tidbit: The Microsoft proposal “would also have given Microsoft veto rights on certain future Yahoo actions, including a sale of Yahoo,” Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock and Chief Executive Jerry Yang wrote.Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment.