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Wired: Tech Biz
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Dispatches from Silicon Valley.
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Cablevision Buys Newsday for $650 Million
Cablevision says it is buying Newsday from Tribune for $650 million. Word of the deal came after Rupert Murdoch withdrew a bid of $580 million bid on Saturday.
 
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China to Make Its Own Jumbo Jets
State media reports Sunday that the Chinese central government and the Shanghai government are major shareholders in a homegrown company that will make passenger jumbo jets. The idea is that China Commercial Aircraft will make the country less dependent on Boeing and Airbus.
 
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News Corp. Pulls Bid for Newsday
Despite Rupert Murdoch's boast lthat he was about to close a deal for the Long Island newspaper, a News Corp. rep says the company has withdrawn its $580 million bid to purchase Newsday. News Corp. already owns two New York papers, WSJ and New York Post.
 
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Proposed Google-Yahoo Partnership Draws Fire
Even though no official deal exists, the proposed advertising partnership between the two internet giants draws the wrath of various consumer groups who fear Google will smother the online advertising market.
 
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Levi Strauss Scores Viral Gold With Back-Flipping Jeans Clip
A clever stealth campaign featuring guys jumping into blue jeans bounces to the top of the YouTube charts.
 
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Microhoo Tea Leaf Watch: Proxy Directors Set Free
Microsoft has released potential directors in a hostile takeover of Yahoo, in what the Wall Street Journal calls a "clear sign" the Redmond giant is really, truly walking away. Will this defining moment end once and for all the speculation which has helped Yahoo shares to remain comfortably above pre-takeover-talk levels? Of course not.
 
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So, What Is 'Plan C' for Microsoft Search?
Microsoft isn't saying much -- though Bill Gates does keep saying they are going to go it alone now. But having attempted to independently create a search that would rival Google, and then to try to buy into the game by taking over Yahoo, what exactly is "Plan C?"
 
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Google Wants a Yahoo Ad Deal
Google still hopes to link up with Yahoo on advertising, a deal that would almost certainly be lucrative to both companies and make Yahoo a tougher takeover target for, say, a certain Redmond software concern. Google co-founder Sergei Brin says there was a two-week test last month but doesn't say how far along the talks are.
 
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Let's See Microsoft Innovate Its Way Out of This
News from Portfolio.com
From way over in Indonesia, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates let it be known that Microsoft never needed to buy Yahoo to make headway in search and advertising. It just kind of wanted to.
"We have always felt we could do very well on our own and now that's the path we are focused on," Gates told AP in Jakarta on Friday. "The standard strategy for us is to just hire great engineers and surprise people at how well we can compete, even with a company that's got a strong lead."
Actually, that may be the first bit of sense out of Microsoft since the Yahoo thing first emerged. That is exactly what Microsoft is good at: identifying market leaders in interesting new tech markets, then systematically destroying them. In fact, Microsoft is probably better at it than maybe any company in history. Netscape, Lotus, WordPerfect, Novell, Real Networks ... there's a long list of companies that invented something that Microsoft then copied and took down. And Windows, of course, was a copy of what Apple and Xerox were doing. Now Microsoft's Zune is taking aim at the iPod.
Microsoft is at its best when it does this. It spends billions of dollars a year on Microsoft Research, but has yet to invent an entirely new business. (Microsoft did once get out in front of a tech development, creating travel site Expedia early on. So surprised was Microsoft that it did this, the company soon thereafter spun out Expedia -- perhaps so Expedia would not contaminate the Microsoft culture with actual market innovation.)
The thing is, though -- search so far is looking like Microsoft's Waterloo. Yeah, it's won every big battle so far, but Microsoft has spent vast amounts of time and money trying to crack search -- and so far has failed. Can it beat Google at Google's own game? That seems unlikely. Can it outwit Google and create an innovative new version of search that Google never thought of? That would be very un-Microsoftian.
So ... now what?
 
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Soon, Your Space on MySpace Can Be Everybody's Space
The social networker plans to allow its customers to share their personal data with websites operated by Yahoo, eBay and others, a move that would change the nature of social networking.
 
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