Day: April 13, 2007

Wow. Google is buying Doubleclick for $3.1 BILLION… that is with a “B!” Wow!

Google Buys DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion

“Google reached an agreement today to acquire DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies announced, an amount that was almost double the $1.65 billion in stock that Google paid for YouTube late last year. The sale offers Google access to DoubleClick’s advertisement software and, more importantly, its relationships with Web publishers, advertisers and advertising agencies. For months, Google has been trying to expand its foothold in online advertising into display ads, the area where DoubleClick is strongest. Google made its name and still generates most of its revenue from search and contextual text ads. DoubleClick, which was founded in 1996, provides display ads on Web sites like MySpace, The Wall Street Journal and America Online as well as software to help those sites maximize ad revenue. The company also helps ad buyers — advertisers and ad agencies — manage and measure the effectiveness of their rich media, search and other online ads. DoubleClick has also recently introduced a Nasdaq-like exchange for online ads that analysts say could be lucrative for Google.”

What will this mean for the “monetization” process of the web and web sites? I suspect we will see really soon!

Say it ain’t so! Well, maybe… we’ll see!

iTunes subscription service expected

“Major record companies are expected to ask Apple iTunes to change their 99c-per-song download model to a subscription-based service, according to industry insiders. At talks to be held next week, Apple will be negotiating with music label Universal and has reportedly already began talks with Sony-BMG, Warner Music and EMI to renew contracts for iTunes content. Amid industry fears that music sales are steadily falling, media labels are said to be looking to negotiate a more lucrative business model with iTunes, where labels would take a share of monthly subscription payments. Although rumors of a subscription service have been circulating for the past few years, insiders say it is far more likely now in light of Apple’s DRM (digital rights management)-free deal with EMI.”

Well, as you know, CentOS Linux is based on the Open Source code of Red Hat. CentOS is binary compatible in every way with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so now that RHEL V5.0 is out, CentOS has followed suit.

CentOS Linux Web Site

Notes on upgrading: plan on downloading the CDs and do an upgrade from the CDs to be safe. Also, there are many changes, so read the Release Notes and plan carefully!

Here’s what CentoS says:

“The best and most recommended way to get your existing CentOS-3/CentOS-4 machine running CentOS-5 is to update the machine via the installer. This involves booting the machine with the install media, and running a normal installation path. You will be given an option to upgrade the
machine if an older CentOS install is found on the installable harddrive. You will still need to check for rpm orphans once the machine has booted into CentOS-5. Packages from non-CentOS repositories might need special attention. There is a wiki page starting now at https://wiki.centos.org/Migration/5 to document the process’s and experiences of people – so as to create a single combined knowledge base about updating to CentOS-5 from CentOS-3/4 as well as from other Distributions. So do join in and contribute.”