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In a recent interview we wrote about this morning, Rupert Murdoch indicated that News Corp. may block search engines from indexing its sites. Now, it doesn't exactly look like Google's going to offer money him (or throw a fit) in response, as the search giant's more or less replied by saying "fine." Actually, depending on what sort of tone you attribute to them, some of the comments made to Emma Barnett came closer to "it's your funeral." A spokesman told her, "Google News and web search are a tremendous source of promotion for news organisations, sending them about 100,000 clicks every minute." And later, there was something approaching "make my day." The spokesman said, "If publishers want their content to be removed from Google News specifically all they need to do is tell us." So it should be interesting to see what happens. Judging solely by the comments on our earlier piece and Barnett's article, it seems that Murdoch might wind up missing "search people" (as he referred to... - Tweet Feeds

Amazon.com has just launched an online store for jeans it calls the Denim Shop. To attract shoppers to its Denim Shop, Amazon is offering free shipping on some men and women's jeans. It is also offering shoppers free returns for purchases that for whatever reason don't work out. Customers will have up to 30 days to return their jeans for a full refund. In the terms and conditions part of the site Amazon says the free shipping and free returns will be available for a limited time only. The company does not say when that offer will expire but most likely sometime after the holiday season. The Denim Shop features over 40 brands of jeans including both traditional brands such as Levi's and designer names such as Rock & Republic and 7 For All Mankind. Jeans on the Denim Shop range in price from $18 to $280. Visitors to the site can search by fit, price, brand, color and size. Related Articles: >Amazon Offers Payment Services For Charity Donations >Amazon Shows Interest In Twitter Referrals... - Tweet Feeds

It could be said that the Google Books case is becoming the new Microsoft-Yahoo deal, having created all sorts of controversy and dragged on and on. And on some more, as it turns out, since the involved parties are pushing a target date back again. A revised proposal concerning how Google and its critics could settle their differences was originally supposed to be submitted to Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan federal court a little more than a month ago. Obviously, that didn't happen, and Chin picked today (Monday, November 9th) as an alternate goal. Now, Motoko Rich has reported, "The parties to the Google book settlement, which would legalize the creation of a vast library of digital books, have asked the judge overseeing a revision of the agreement for an extension to this Friday, Nov. 13." It sounds like the lines of communication are still very much open, though, as Rich also wrote, "[T]he group indicated that it had met with the Justice Department before and after the October... - Tweet Feeds

While TV is the most common way for people to watch sports, the Internet is the most popular way for both men and women (36.1% and 32.7% respectively) to get sports news and information, according to a new report by Burst Media. The Internet is trailed by local TV programming (23.7%), national TV networks (15.1%), local newspaper (6.7%), national newspaper (3.6%), and sports radio (2.9%). Among the key age segments, 18-24 years and 25-34 years, the Internet far outweighs both local and national TV coverage as the main source of sports and news information. Adults 55 years and over still turn to local TV news over the Internet. Among all respondents sports content is in demand regardless of which media is cited as their primary source. Nearly one-half (49.2%) of respondents use the Internet to check sports scores and 41.3 percent read sports-related news stories online. Interestingly, nearly as many women as men use the Internet to check sports scores (47.3% vs.50.5%), read sports... - Tweet Feeds

Not long ago, Eric Schmidt estimated that Google would start making monthly acquisitions. Today, it's almost looking like the dial got bumped up to hourly, since following this morning's confirmed acquisition of AdMob, a report has indicated that Google's bought Gizmo5, too. Gizmo5 is a VoIP firm. Two recent company blog posts are titled "Introducing GizmoVoice - A Free Phone Line Using Google & Gizmo5" and "Add Gizmo5 Calling Directly To Gmail!" so it's clear that there are some strong links between it and Google. Two less obvious details also make them a good match, since the Gizmo5 homepage is dotted with the word "free" (as we all know, Google rarely charges for things) and the Gizmo5 site is available in nine languages (Google loves to serve lots of countries). Anyway, Michael Arrington, who was the first to write about the rumored acquisition, predicted that Gizmo5 will fill a vital role. "Gizmo5 will be the glue that puts Google Voice and Google Talk together into a single... - Tweet Feeds

CoTweet, a company that helps businesses use Twitter, released some details about a new service today, and in doing so, demonstrated that there's a real demand for such things. The CoTweet Enterprise Innovators Program already has at least six major customers despite costing $1,500 per month. Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald's, Microsoft, SunTrust, and Whole Foods are among the early adopters, which is quite impressive. Another interesting detail is that CoTweet isn't exactly begging for clients; its existence was discovered by Wall Street Journal reporter Andrew LaVallee, and businesses in fact have to request an invitation to scope out the new offering. As for what their interest (and monthly payments of $1,500) will net them, the CoTweet Enterprise Innovators Program offers engagement, influence, and reach analytics, along with archives of customer interactions and a couple other things. Anyway, this development could provide a number of clues concerning the future of Twitter. One point... - Tweet Feeds

According to Technorati’s 2009 State of the Blogosphere report, 70% of bloggers talk about products or brands on their blogs, eMarketer reports. And obviously some of these mentions would be prompted by free sample products, etc.—a practice popular enough to draw the notice of the FTC, which now requires disclosure on such review products. Interestingly, corporate bloggers were least likely to blog about brands and products (lawsuit anyone?), and hobbyist bloggers were second least likely. Technorati defined hobbyist bloggers as those that blog for fun. They don’t make money (and only some of them want to, which I think is awesome). Instead of brands and products, they mostly share “personal musings” (53% of hobbyists), and 76% blog to speak their minds. 72% of bloggers fell into this category. “Part-timers” were most likely to mention brands and products. They blog to supplement their main income. 15% of respondents, most part-timers blog to share their expertise or attract new... - Tweet Feeds

Have you ever thought about the quality of traffic Google sends you? Sure, Google sends you regular traffic, but is that traffic converting to regular visitors? I contend, it does not and the internal traffic logs of the iEntry Network across hundreds of sites bear this out. The iEntry Network, of which I am the CEO, actually consists of hundreds of sites covering mostly business, technology and gaming topics. iEntry sites are all different shapes and sizes and include the prominent news site WebProNews, the large gaming forum XBox360Forum and many other targeted search engines and niche blogs. The iEntry Network generates millions of unique visitors and pageviews. Although these numbers vary wildly from site to site, on average about one third of our visitors come from search engines, one third are direct type-ins and the remaining third are referred by Twitter, Facebook and other sites. Of the third of the traffic coming from search queries Google provides around 70 percent of those... - Tweet Feeds

Google said today it has signed an agreement to acquire mobile display advertising firm AdMob for $750 million in stock. Google says its acquisition will improve its existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice in the growing new area. Highlights of Google's purchase of AdMob include: The deal will bring new innovation and competition to mobile advertising, and will lead to more effective tools for creating, serving, and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats. This deal will benefit developers, publishers, and advertisers by improving the performance of mobile advertising, and will provide users with more free or low-cost mobile apps. The mobile advertising space will remain highly competitive, with more than a dozen mobile ad networks. The deal is similar to mobile advertising acquisitions that AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo have made in the past two years "Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium... - Tweet Feeds

If you were the folks at Twitter and you are talking about offering commercial level services that are going to eventually generate the mythical revenue that everyone is yapping about wouldn’t hate to hear about enterprise unrest among the ranks? The issue of Twitter account squatting is nothing new. There has also been little mention of it in the news as of late. I actually made the mistake to think that maybe Twitter took control and really started to crack down on the practice. Apparently not. AdAge is reporting that Twitter is in the process of ticking off more than a few of the hands that might feed them in the future. Of course, Twitter may now be in the position to tell anyone, paying now or possibly later, for their services that they will just have to wait until Twitter is good and ready. While the argument exists that they are truly that powerful it would be a shame that if they used that power as an excuse to ignore the needs of corporate clients. AdAge reports On Twitter’s... - Tweet Feeds

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Monday that his office has stopped social networking site Tagged.com from misappropriating the contacts lists and identities of its members and from sending out millions of deceptive and unsolicited emails. Through an agreement with Cuomo's office, Tagged will pay $500,000 in penalties to the state and take measures regarding the access and use of its members' personal information. "Unsuspecting users had no idea that Tagged had hijacked the email addresses of their colleagues, families and friends for the purpose of blasting them with spam," said Attorney General Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo "This agreement holds the company accountable for its invasion of privacy and puts the proper safeguards in place to keep it from happening again." In June, Cuomo announced his intent to sue Tagged for deceptive acts after his office became aware that the company had sent more than 60 million misleading emails to people stating that Tagged members had posted... - Tweet Feeds

Don't be shocked if ads for 420,000 square feet of office space start popping up all over MySpace. It seems that the social networking company no longer intends to use a particular facility, but until it can unload the space, has gotten stuck paying over $1 million per month. Matthew Garrahan reported late yesterday, "The company is locked into a 12-year lease worth about $350m that it signed in August 2008, when the number of people using MySpace was increasing and the social network was running out of space in its Beverly Hills offices." The economy in general has taken a big hit since then, however, and MySpace in particular decided in June to lay off about 400 employees. Hence the decision not to go ahead with the expansion. So MySpace has been saddled with a lot of office space in Playa Vista, California that no one (as of yet) seems interested in subleasing. And that space will in fact become more costly to MySpace over time, since payments are scheduled to increase. (If you do... - Tweet Feeds

Mozilla is celebrating the fifth birthday of its Firefox browser today. Mozilla says in the first four days of launch, more than 1 million people had downloaded Firefox 1.0 Now that number is at 330 million users globally, accounting for almost a quarter of all Internet users. Currently Firefox is available in more than 70 languages and offers users more than 7,000 add-ons to customize their browsing experience. The Mozilla Blog provides more details. "From your desktop to your mobile device, Mozilla is committed to building an open and participatory Internet. We've come so far in the past five years and we're incredibly excited about the next five." "To celebrate this milestone, Mozilla communities are hosting parties all over the globe in a special campaign called 'Light the World with Firefox' - shining the Firefox logo from Tokyo to Rome, from Paris to San Francisco, and more. For full details on parties in your area or to check out other ways to join in the celebration, head to... - Tweet Feeds