Microsoft's compliance with a U.S. antitrust settlement will remain under court supervision for another two years, in part because the company delayed producing documentation required by the court, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia extended the court's supervision through Nov. 12, 2009, writing that the 2002 settlement had not fully taken effect. Several U.S. states involved in the case had sought a five-year extension, despite opposition from the Department of Justice.
As part of the settlement, Microsoft is required to document information on communication protocols, making it easier for other software manufacturers to create products that work well with the Windows OS.
The documentation has been a sticking point between the company and the government. Microsoft has been ordered to rewrite the documentation, which was supposed to have been complete by February 2003, to make it clearer.
In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly blamed Microsoft. "Although the technical documentation project is complex and novel, it is clear, at least to the Court, that Microsoft is culpable for this inexcusable delay," she wrote.
But she also wrote that the company had been "overwhelmingly cooperative" in the years after the antitrust settlement, and that this latest extension should not be viewed as a sanction.
Microsoft will continue to comply with the antitrust ruling and has built its latest operating system, Vista, to comply with the rules, the company said.
"We are gratified that the court recognized our extensive efforts to work cooperatively with the large number of government agencies involved," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel and senior vice president.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
SAP profit drops 6 percent in fourth quarter
SAP reported a 10 percent rise in revenue for the fourth quarter, but earnings fell 6 percent compared to a year earlier, dragged down in part by the cost of launching Business ByDesign, a new offering for the mid-market, the company said Wednesday.
Revenue for the fourth quarter totalled €3.24 billion (US$4.77 billion as of Dec. 31, the last day of the period reported), up 10 percent from €2.95 billion a year earlier, but net income fell 6 percent to €756 million.
Software and related services revenue grew at 13 percent year on year, while consulting activities, representing around a fifth of SAP's revenue, remained stagnant.
For the full year, revenue rose to €10.25 billion, up 9 percent from €9.39 billion, while net income rose to €1.92 billion, up 3 percent from €1.87 billion.
The results do not include any revenue gains from SAP's $6.8 billion acquisition of French business intelligence software vendor Business Objects, which the companies only completed on Jan. 16, 2008, although they do include €61 million in acquisition-related costs.
SAP's operating margin for the year fell from 27.4 percent in 2006 to 26.7 percent in 2007, but if the effects of exchange rate fluctuations and the company's investment in Business ByDesign were excluded, the operating margin would have risen to 28.2 percent, Chief Financial Officer Werner Brandt said in a conference call.
Developing Business ByDesign cost the company €125 million in 2007, €40 million of it in the fourth quarter, and the company expects to spend at least a further €175 million in 2008. An additional €50 million of expenditure will fall in late 2008 or early 2009.
Sales and related services for subscription-based products like the new ByDesign contributed just €53 million in the fourth quarter, up 47 percent year on year.
Looking ahead, CEO Henning Kagermann expects mid-market products like ByDesign to boost growth in 2008, he said during the conference call.
Another growth driver will be SAP's acquisition of Business Objects, which will help the company increase its penetration of the business user sector, Kagermann said.
SAP expects full-year revenue from software and software-related services to grow at between 24 percent and 27 percent. Excluding the contribution of Business Objects, SAP's existing activities will contribute between 12 and 14 percentage points, the company said.
Revenue for the fourth quarter totalled €3.24 billion (US$4.77 billion as of Dec. 31, the last day of the period reported), up 10 percent from €2.95 billion a year earlier, but net income fell 6 percent to €756 million.
Software and related services revenue grew at 13 percent year on year, while consulting activities, representing around a fifth of SAP's revenue, remained stagnant.
For the full year, revenue rose to €10.25 billion, up 9 percent from €9.39 billion, while net income rose to €1.92 billion, up 3 percent from €1.87 billion.
The results do not include any revenue gains from SAP's $6.8 billion acquisition of French business intelligence software vendor Business Objects, which the companies only completed on Jan. 16, 2008, although they do include €61 million in acquisition-related costs.
SAP's operating margin for the year fell from 27.4 percent in 2006 to 26.7 percent in 2007, but if the effects of exchange rate fluctuations and the company's investment in Business ByDesign were excluded, the operating margin would have risen to 28.2 percent, Chief Financial Officer Werner Brandt said in a conference call.
Developing Business ByDesign cost the company €125 million in 2007, €40 million of it in the fourth quarter, and the company expects to spend at least a further €175 million in 2008. An additional €50 million of expenditure will fall in late 2008 or early 2009.
Sales and related services for subscription-based products like the new ByDesign contributed just €53 million in the fourth quarter, up 47 percent year on year.
Looking ahead, CEO Henning Kagermann expects mid-market products like ByDesign to boost growth in 2008, he said during the conference call.
Another growth driver will be SAP's acquisition of Business Objects, which will help the company increase its penetration of the business user sector, Kagermann said.
SAP expects full-year revenue from software and software-related services to grow at between 24 percent and 27 percent. Excluding the contribution of Business Objects, SAP's existing activities will contribute between 12 and 14 percentage points, the company said.
MySpace to launch developer platform next week
MySpace Wednesday will begin letting programmers pre-register for its developer platform program, which will open for business next week.
Interested developers will be able to sign up on the site to receive information about the MySpace Developer Platform, announced in October. Then next Tuesday, the developer site will become fully operational and feature documentation and API tools to build and test applications for MySpace, the world's most popular social networking service.
Although over the years MySpace has allowed, on a case-by-case basis, some external developers to put their widgets on the social networking site, the upcoming program potentially opens the door to any coder by providing open APIs and makes it possible for developers to generate revenue from those applications.
"This gives developers deeper access to our community through APIs so they'll be able to build richer applications and also gives them an opportunity to build their business directly on MySpace. It's a natural step in the evolution of how we've worked with third party developers," said Amit Kapur, who has just been appointed chief operating officer after being in charge of business development for several years.
In October, the move was widely seen as a competitive response to rival Facebook's successful opening of its platform to outside developers in May, which has resulted in the creation of about 14,000 applications and widgets for that social networking site.
Other social networking companies have also followed suit and decided to let external developers create applications for their sites. Moreover, in November, Google launched its OpenSocial initiative to promote industry-wide adoption of common APIs for social applications, so that developers can more easily port their applications to different sites. MySpace, along with others, has indicated it supports OpenSocial.
As it gears up for the launch of the application development platform, MySpace has taken special care to put safeguards in place to prevent security and privacy breaches from third-party applications, Kapur said.
"A key interest we have as we launch this platform is to protect the user experience against things like application spam and security holes, so that'll be a major part of our launch. We're extremely committed to safety and security," he said.
Facebook has been dealing with this problem, as some over-eager developers have built self-promotion features into their applications to spur their adoption. Since its platform launch, Facebook has tweaked its tools and APIs several times to address the problem of applications that annoy users with intrusive displays and unsolicited messages, and seems to have the issue well under control now.
Interested developers will be able to sign up on the site to receive information about the MySpace Developer Platform, announced in October. Then next Tuesday, the developer site will become fully operational and feature documentation and API tools to build and test applications for MySpace, the world's most popular social networking service.
Although over the years MySpace has allowed, on a case-by-case basis, some external developers to put their widgets on the social networking site, the upcoming program potentially opens the door to any coder by providing open APIs and makes it possible for developers to generate revenue from those applications.
"This gives developers deeper access to our community through APIs so they'll be able to build richer applications and also gives them an opportunity to build their business directly on MySpace. It's a natural step in the evolution of how we've worked with third party developers," said Amit Kapur, who has just been appointed chief operating officer after being in charge of business development for several years.
In October, the move was widely seen as a competitive response to rival Facebook's successful opening of its platform to outside developers in May, which has resulted in the creation of about 14,000 applications and widgets for that social networking site.
Other social networking companies have also followed suit and decided to let external developers create applications for their sites. Moreover, in November, Google launched its OpenSocial initiative to promote industry-wide adoption of common APIs for social applications, so that developers can more easily port their applications to different sites. MySpace, along with others, has indicated it supports OpenSocial.
As it gears up for the launch of the application development platform, MySpace has taken special care to put safeguards in place to prevent security and privacy breaches from third-party applications, Kapur said.
"A key interest we have as we launch this platform is to protect the user experience against things like application spam and security holes, so that'll be a major part of our launch. We're extremely committed to safety and security," he said.
Facebook has been dealing with this problem, as some over-eager developers have built self-promotion features into their applications to spur their adoption. Since its platform launch, Facebook has tweaked its tools and APIs several times to address the problem of applications that annoy users with intrusive displays and unsolicited messages, and seems to have the issue well under control now.
Stanford center turns to Sun Blackbox for extra capacity
When the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center wanted to increase its computing capacity last year it considered a satellite datacenter or an extension to the existing building, but in the end it chose a faster and more novel approach: it ordered a datacenter in a box.
The center, which does high-energy physics research for the U.S. Department of Energy, was one of the first customers for Sun Microsystems' Project Blackbox, which takes standard shipping containers 20 feet by 8 feet by 8 feet (6.1m x 2.4m x 2.4m) and turns them into mini datacenters that can be delivered and operational in a few weeks, according to Sun.
SLAC's Blackbox was delivered in July last year and was up and running by September. Aside from a few challenges -- like figuring out how to service the unit when it's raining -- the center is pleased with its choice and in the process of installing a second unit.
It is one of four customers that Sun identified Tuesday to illustrate momentum for Project Blackbox. It also renamed the product the Sun Modular Datacenter, or Sun MD. The boxes start at US$559,000 without the "payload," or the computers inside, and Sun will ship them around the world for an extra fee. Delivery to Amsterdam by air, for example, costs about $15,000.
SLAC turned to Project Blackbox because it needed to expand its compute capacity fairly quickly. "The datacenter here was at its capacity, especially in terms of the electrical service to the building and the amount of heat we could take back out. And the experiments needed their next year's worth of computing," said Chuck Boeheim, SLAC's assistant director of computing services.
Modifying its existing datacenter to accommodate another major electrical feed and "chiller plant" would have taken one to two years and cost several million dollars. "We also looked at doing a satellite datacenter in a smaller building, but with the approvals and lead time that was a couple of years out as well. Blackbox was something we could do very quickly," Boeheim said.
The raw shipping containers are customized by a subcontractor, and Sun typically installs the payload before delivery. SLAC's Blackbox arrived on a flat-bed truck last July, fitted with 252 Sun Fire X2200 rack-mount servers, the same type it uses in its datacenter. Sun had also wired the servers to a Cisco Catalyst 6509 switch that SLAC provided before delivery.
Boeheim described the process in a white paper on his Web site, along with photos and time-lapse videos that show the box being hoisted into place by a crane.
Customers can put other vendors' hardware in the unit, but not all equipment will fit. SLAC bought some Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers that it wanted to put in its second Blackbox, but they were too long for the server racks. Instead it will move some existing Sun servers to the box from its datacenter, and put the Dell machines inside the building instead.
The computing center already had a 4-megawatt substation serving its area of the site. "So it was a fairly simple matter to put a 220-kilowatt power pane on the outside of that and bring up a fairly standard chiller unit and put that on a concrete pad next to the Blackbox. Both of those things could just be fork-lifted in and connected up," Boeheim said.
SLAC wanted to do a rigorous installation that would last several years, so it spent a few weeks getting the unit hooked up. It had to reconnect about half the power cords which had shaken loose during the truck ride. Aside from that the installation went smoothly and the machines were turned on for batch work Sept. 25, about two months after delivery. The 60-ton chiller and the outside power unit were also delivered in that time.
Servicing the unit has presented some challenges. "We're trying to figure out how to do it on a day like today when it's pouring with rain," Boeheim said recently. "The wind doesn't have to be blowing very hard for the rain to blow in the end, and you pretty much have to open both ends of the box to service it,"
It's quite cramped in the box, he said, and both ends need to be open so that a person can maneuver when a server rack is slid out into the narrow central aisle.
"Our stance right now is to wait for a clear day to open it up," he said. Two people are needed to service the box in case one gets trapped inside or injured, he wrote in the white paper on his Web site. SLAC put a phone in the box in case someone gets locked in.
The first Blackbox gave the center a roughly 25 percent boost in computing capacity, and the servers have been running as smoothly as their counterparts inside the datacenter, Boeheim said. "Once we got them turned on they just ran. We went a full 30 days not even opening the thing." He put rack servers in the box rather than storage gear, because storage gear tends to need servicing more often, he said.
Sun's Blackbox won't be for everyone. Brookhaven National Laboratory, on Long Island, New York, considered a Blackbox but decided on a new wing for its datacenter instead, Boeheim said. SLAC's experience may have been easier than that of an average business because it is a federal government site located on county land. A business in a city may need more planning permissions and permits.
A few other companies offer comparable products, such as the Ice Cube from Rackable Systems, and the Infrastructure Express from American Power Conversion.
Sun said it is happy with the momentum for Blackbox, although it wouldn't say how many customers it has. The other three it named are Hansen Transmissions, a Belgian industrial manufacturer that is using one at a new plant in India; Mobile TeleSystems, Russia's largest mobile operator; and the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands.
Most of the customers had no room to add capacity in their datacenters, said Darlene Yaplee, vice president for integrated platforms in Sun's systems marketing group. "Half the customers are using it while they build extra datacenter capacity, and then it will remain for disaster recovery," she said.
The next size up in standard shipping containers is 40 feet long. "We could do 40 feet technically, but most people have been happy with 20 feet," Yaplee said. Boeheim said he'd probably choose a wider box rather than a longer one, which would accommodate his Dell 1950 servers.
The center, which does high-energy physics research for the U.S. Department of Energy, was one of the first customers for Sun Microsystems' Project Blackbox, which takes standard shipping containers 20 feet by 8 feet by 8 feet (6.1m x 2.4m x 2.4m) and turns them into mini datacenters that can be delivered and operational in a few weeks, according to Sun.
SLAC's Blackbox was delivered in July last year and was up and running by September. Aside from a few challenges -- like figuring out how to service the unit when it's raining -- the center is pleased with its choice and in the process of installing a second unit.
It is one of four customers that Sun identified Tuesday to illustrate momentum for Project Blackbox. It also renamed the product the Sun Modular Datacenter, or Sun MD. The boxes start at US$559,000 without the "payload," or the computers inside, and Sun will ship them around the world for an extra fee. Delivery to Amsterdam by air, for example, costs about $15,000.
SLAC turned to Project Blackbox because it needed to expand its compute capacity fairly quickly. "The datacenter here was at its capacity, especially in terms of the electrical service to the building and the amount of heat we could take back out. And the experiments needed their next year's worth of computing," said Chuck Boeheim, SLAC's assistant director of computing services.
Modifying its existing datacenter to accommodate another major electrical feed and "chiller plant" would have taken one to two years and cost several million dollars. "We also looked at doing a satellite datacenter in a smaller building, but with the approvals and lead time that was a couple of years out as well. Blackbox was something we could do very quickly," Boeheim said.
The raw shipping containers are customized by a subcontractor, and Sun typically installs the payload before delivery. SLAC's Blackbox arrived on a flat-bed truck last July, fitted with 252 Sun Fire X2200 rack-mount servers, the same type it uses in its datacenter. Sun had also wired the servers to a Cisco Catalyst 6509 switch that SLAC provided before delivery.
Boeheim described the process in a white paper on his Web site, along with photos and time-lapse videos that show the box being hoisted into place by a crane.
Customers can put other vendors' hardware in the unit, but not all equipment will fit. SLAC bought some Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers that it wanted to put in its second Blackbox, but they were too long for the server racks. Instead it will move some existing Sun servers to the box from its datacenter, and put the Dell machines inside the building instead.
The computing center already had a 4-megawatt substation serving its area of the site. "So it was a fairly simple matter to put a 220-kilowatt power pane on the outside of that and bring up a fairly standard chiller unit and put that on a concrete pad next to the Blackbox. Both of those things could just be fork-lifted in and connected up," Boeheim said.
SLAC wanted to do a rigorous installation that would last several years, so it spent a few weeks getting the unit hooked up. It had to reconnect about half the power cords which had shaken loose during the truck ride. Aside from that the installation went smoothly and the machines were turned on for batch work Sept. 25, about two months after delivery. The 60-ton chiller and the outside power unit were also delivered in that time.
Servicing the unit has presented some challenges. "We're trying to figure out how to do it on a day like today when it's pouring with rain," Boeheim said recently. "The wind doesn't have to be blowing very hard for the rain to blow in the end, and you pretty much have to open both ends of the box to service it,"
It's quite cramped in the box, he said, and both ends need to be open so that a person can maneuver when a server rack is slid out into the narrow central aisle.
"Our stance right now is to wait for a clear day to open it up," he said. Two people are needed to service the box in case one gets trapped inside or injured, he wrote in the white paper on his Web site. SLAC put a phone in the box in case someone gets locked in.
The first Blackbox gave the center a roughly 25 percent boost in computing capacity, and the servers have been running as smoothly as their counterparts inside the datacenter, Boeheim said. "Once we got them turned on they just ran. We went a full 30 days not even opening the thing." He put rack servers in the box rather than storage gear, because storage gear tends to need servicing more often, he said.
Sun's Blackbox won't be for everyone. Brookhaven National Laboratory, on Long Island, New York, considered a Blackbox but decided on a new wing for its datacenter instead, Boeheim said. SLAC's experience may have been easier than that of an average business because it is a federal government site located on county land. A business in a city may need more planning permissions and permits.
A few other companies offer comparable products, such as the Ice Cube from Rackable Systems, and the Infrastructure Express from American Power Conversion.
Sun said it is happy with the momentum for Blackbox, although it wouldn't say how many customers it has. The other three it named are Hansen Transmissions, a Belgian industrial manufacturer that is using one at a new plant in India; Mobile TeleSystems, Russia's largest mobile operator; and the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands.
Most of the customers had no room to add capacity in their datacenters, said Darlene Yaplee, vice president for integrated platforms in Sun's systems marketing group. "Half the customers are using it while they build extra datacenter capacity, and then it will remain for disaster recovery," she said.
The next size up in standard shipping containers is 40 feet long. "We could do 40 feet technically, but most people have been happy with 20 feet," Yaplee said. Boeheim said he'd probably choose a wider box rather than a longer one, which would accommodate his Dell 1950 servers.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
IBM adds Linux apps support to Unix servers
IBM has added a new capability to its virtualization platform that will allow Linux applications to run on IBM's Unix servers, the company announced Tuesday.
The "Lx86" capability, to be included in IBM's PowerVM virtualization software, allows x86-based Linux applications to run on IBM's System p and Power-based Unix systems without modification, according to IBM. The systems will automatically detect and run Linux-based binaries designed for x86 environments.
"Lx86 is a way to say 'Whatever you have, it can run," said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM Power Systems.
The capability will simplify the consolidation of Unix and Linux server sprawls, Handy said. Running Linux applications in the Unix environment can reduce the cost of server consolidation and energy consumption and increase asset utilization, he argued.
Lx86 will be a useful tool for people looking to migrate from Linux systems to other IBM systems, IBM said. The company offers both Unix and Linux operating systems on its servers.
The capability will be included in all editions of IBM's PowerVM platform, which it also renamed Tuesday from the Advanced Power Virtualization platform.
The software now includes an Express edition targeted at small- and medium-size businesses. It allows customers to create up to three partitions on a server and control the use of processor cycles to get optimal performance. The Express edition will be shipped to customers soon, priced at US$40 per core. PowerVM is also available in Standard and Enterprise editions.
IBM also announced that it will update its i5/OS operating system with support for Power6 processors. The update, called V6R1, includes improved performance, storage and security features, according to IBM.
The update supports IBM's Power6 EnergyScale technology for controlling energy use. The company also updated its Rational software tool set for the i5/OS, Handy said.
The i5/OS V6R1, for IBM's System i servers, will ship in March. It will also work with the company's new BladeCenter H server chassis, Handy said.
The "Lx86" capability, to be included in IBM's PowerVM virtualization software, allows x86-based Linux applications to run on IBM's System p and Power-based Unix systems without modification, according to IBM. The systems will automatically detect and run Linux-based binaries designed for x86 environments.
"Lx86 is a way to say 'Whatever you have, it can run," said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM Power Systems.
The capability will simplify the consolidation of Unix and Linux server sprawls, Handy said. Running Linux applications in the Unix environment can reduce the cost of server consolidation and energy consumption and increase asset utilization, he argued.
Lx86 will be a useful tool for people looking to migrate from Linux systems to other IBM systems, IBM said. The company offers both Unix and Linux operating systems on its servers.
The capability will be included in all editions of IBM's PowerVM platform, which it also renamed Tuesday from the Advanced Power Virtualization platform.
The software now includes an Express edition targeted at small- and medium-size businesses. It allows customers to create up to three partitions on a server and control the use of processor cycles to get optimal performance. The Express edition will be shipped to customers soon, priced at US$40 per core. PowerVM is also available in Standard and Enterprise editions.
IBM also announced that it will update its i5/OS operating system with support for Power6 processors. The update, called V6R1, includes improved performance, storage and security features, according to IBM.
The update supports IBM's Power6 EnergyScale technology for controlling energy use. The company also updated its Rational software tool set for the i5/OS, Handy said.
The i5/OS V6R1, for IBM's System i servers, will ship in March. It will also work with the company's new BladeCenter H server chassis, Handy said.
Yahoo's Q4 sales up, profit down
Yahoo's fourth-quarter revenue grew, but net income fell as the struggling Internet giant tried to put its house in order and improve its ability to compete against Google and other rivals.
Revenue for the period, ended Dec. 31, came in at US$1.832 billion, up 8 percent compared with 2006's fourth quarter, the company said Tuesday. Subtracting the commission that Yahoo pays to sites in its advertising network, revenue was $1.403 billion, up 14 percent but missing the $1.406 billion consensus expectation from financial analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
Meanwhile, net income fell to $206 million, or $0.15 per share, from $269 million, or $0.19 per share. On a pro forma basis, which includes one-time items, net income was $280 million, or $0.20 per share, down from $297 million, or $0.21 per share. Analysts expected Yahoo to post earnings per share of $0.11.
As had been rumored, Yahoo will lay off staffers. About 1,000 employees will be let go in mid-February, and Yahoo will record a related cash charge of between $20 million and $25 million, Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said during a conference call to discuss the results.
The details of the staff reduction weren't exactly clear, since Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang characterized the move as a reallocation and realignment of resources, saying that alongside "targeted reductions," Yahoo will make "targeted investments" while reducing "bureaucracy" and "redundancies."
While acknowledging that the company will likely face "headwinds" this year, Yang tried to put a positive spin on the results, saying that the company is starting to see the fruits of a multiyear turnaround plan launched several months ago.
Among the company's main priorities are to grow its audience by positioning itself as people's preferred Internet "starting point" and becoming a "must-buy" provider of online advertising.
The online advertising market is still young and growing, which gives Yahoo a real opportunity to increase its share of the market by capitalizing on opportunities, Yang said.
To grow its audience Yahoo will continue to invest in strengthening key Web properties, such as its home page, My Yahoo, search, Yahoo Mail and its mobile offerings, to make Yahoo the center of people's Internet activities. "We feel a real sense of urgency to address the opportunities we face," Yang said.
At the same time, Yahoo has been phasing out a number of sites and services that it doesn't believe fit into this scheme, so aggregate metrics for Yahoo properties may not reflect the success of this strategy, especially when looking at unique monthly visitors, said Yahoo President Sue Decker.
Instead, to properly evaluate whether Yahoo is succeeding in growing its traffic, Decker argued that one needs to consider visits to Yahoo's key properties.
Once seen as a clear leader on the Internet, Yahoo has reacted slowly in recent years to technology and business shifts, letting small and large competitors elbow it out of the hottest markets. Starting around 2003, Google ran away with the search and advertising market, and in later years Yahoo failed to establish leading services in online video, social networking and blogging.
Along the way, its sales and profits have disappointed for the past two years, leading to several management shakeups in late 2006 and 2007.
For the full fiscal year, Yahoo had revenue of $6.969 billion, an 8 percent increase, and net income of $660 million, or $0.47 per share, compared to $751 million, or $0.52 per share, in 2006.
Yahoo expects first-quarter revenue to be in the range of $1.680 billion and $1.840 billion, and between $7.200 billion and $8.000 billion for the full fiscal 2008 year.
Separately Tuesday, Yahoo announced a multiyear extension to its partnership with AT&T that offers both companies "significant" advertising-based revenue opportunities by offering joint services to consumers. Yahoo and AT&T's original partnership dates from 2001.
Yahoo also announced the appointment of Aristotle Balogh as chief technology officer. Balogh comes to Yahoo from Verisign, where he was also CTO.
Revenue for the period, ended Dec. 31, came in at US$1.832 billion, up 8 percent compared with 2006's fourth quarter, the company said Tuesday. Subtracting the commission that Yahoo pays to sites in its advertising network, revenue was $1.403 billion, up 14 percent but missing the $1.406 billion consensus expectation from financial analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
Meanwhile, net income fell to $206 million, or $0.15 per share, from $269 million, or $0.19 per share. On a pro forma basis, which includes one-time items, net income was $280 million, or $0.20 per share, down from $297 million, or $0.21 per share. Analysts expected Yahoo to post earnings per share of $0.11.
As had been rumored, Yahoo will lay off staffers. About 1,000 employees will be let go in mid-February, and Yahoo will record a related cash charge of between $20 million and $25 million, Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen said during a conference call to discuss the results.
The details of the staff reduction weren't exactly clear, since Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang characterized the move as a reallocation and realignment of resources, saying that alongside "targeted reductions," Yahoo will make "targeted investments" while reducing "bureaucracy" and "redundancies."
While acknowledging that the company will likely face "headwinds" this year, Yang tried to put a positive spin on the results, saying that the company is starting to see the fruits of a multiyear turnaround plan launched several months ago.
Among the company's main priorities are to grow its audience by positioning itself as people's preferred Internet "starting point" and becoming a "must-buy" provider of online advertising.
The online advertising market is still young and growing, which gives Yahoo a real opportunity to increase its share of the market by capitalizing on opportunities, Yang said.
To grow its audience Yahoo will continue to invest in strengthening key Web properties, such as its home page, My Yahoo, search, Yahoo Mail and its mobile offerings, to make Yahoo the center of people's Internet activities. "We feel a real sense of urgency to address the opportunities we face," Yang said.
At the same time, Yahoo has been phasing out a number of sites and services that it doesn't believe fit into this scheme, so aggregate metrics for Yahoo properties may not reflect the success of this strategy, especially when looking at unique monthly visitors, said Yahoo President Sue Decker.
Instead, to properly evaluate whether Yahoo is succeeding in growing its traffic, Decker argued that one needs to consider visits to Yahoo's key properties.
Once seen as a clear leader on the Internet, Yahoo has reacted slowly in recent years to technology and business shifts, letting small and large competitors elbow it out of the hottest markets. Starting around 2003, Google ran away with the search and advertising market, and in later years Yahoo failed to establish leading services in online video, social networking and blogging.
Along the way, its sales and profits have disappointed for the past two years, leading to several management shakeups in late 2006 and 2007.
For the full fiscal year, Yahoo had revenue of $6.969 billion, an 8 percent increase, and net income of $660 million, or $0.47 per share, compared to $751 million, or $0.52 per share, in 2006.
Yahoo expects first-quarter revenue to be in the range of $1.680 billion and $1.840 billion, and between $7.200 billion and $8.000 billion for the full fiscal 2008 year.
Separately Tuesday, Yahoo announced a multiyear extension to its partnership with AT&T that offers both companies "significant" advertising-based revenue opportunities by offering joint services to consumers. Yahoo and AT&T's original partnership dates from 2001.
Yahoo also announced the appointment of Aristotle Balogh as chief technology officer. Balogh comes to Yahoo from Verisign, where he was also CTO.
Sprint said to be back in talks with Clearwire
Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are back in talks about a possible WiMax joint venture after a previous attempt to work together fell apart last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.
Sprint's continued downhill slide, spurred by defecting Nextel customers, means the deal would make even more sense now, Nadine Manjaro, a senior analyst with ABI Research, told IDG News Service.
"They've lost so much from iDEN defections, they don't really have the money to invest in WiMax," she said. IDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) is the push to talk technology used in Nextel's network, which Sprint bought in 2005 and continues to struggle to digest.
Clearwire and Sprint, which own the bulk of 2.5GHz spectrum in the country, said in July last year that they planned to jointly build a nationwide WiMax network. But in November the companies said they had failed to reach a final agreement, and terminated their letter of intent.
Since then, Sprint hasn't managed to improve its fortunes. The third-largest operator in the U.S., Sprint's subscriber base declined by 337,000 in the quarter ending Sept. 30. "Sprint is not doing so well now," Manjaro said.
Rather than building a scaled-down network with the assets it has, Sprint would do better if it partnered with Clearwire and also opened up to outside investors, said Manjaro, who worked for Sprint until last April.
From the beginning, she said, Sprint hoped to attract investors to help build the network. "They realized it would take a lot of money," she said. Attracting other parties has now become more urgent. "They didn't anticipate being in the financial position they are in now," she said.
Ideally, Sprint and Clearwire would create a joint venture that would allow each company to retain a stake in the company but also attract other companies, possibly Intel or Google, to provide needed capital, she said. A combined company would be able to negotiate better deals from vendors, she said.
Clearwire has already built wireless broadband networks in 16 U.S. states. Sprint has launched services in Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, D.C., under the Xohm brand.
Spokespeople from Clearwire and Sprint declined to comment on the possibility of any renewed talks.
Sprint's continued downhill slide, spurred by defecting Nextel customers, means the deal would make even more sense now, Nadine Manjaro, a senior analyst with ABI Research, told IDG News Service.
"They've lost so much from iDEN defections, they don't really have the money to invest in WiMax," she said. IDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) is the push to talk technology used in Nextel's network, which Sprint bought in 2005 and continues to struggle to digest.
Clearwire and Sprint, which own the bulk of 2.5GHz spectrum in the country, said in July last year that they planned to jointly build a nationwide WiMax network. But in November the companies said they had failed to reach a final agreement, and terminated their letter of intent.
Since then, Sprint hasn't managed to improve its fortunes. The third-largest operator in the U.S., Sprint's subscriber base declined by 337,000 in the quarter ending Sept. 30. "Sprint is not doing so well now," Manjaro said.
Rather than building a scaled-down network with the assets it has, Sprint would do better if it partnered with Clearwire and also opened up to outside investors, said Manjaro, who worked for Sprint until last April.
From the beginning, she said, Sprint hoped to attract investors to help build the network. "They realized it would take a lot of money," she said. Attracting other parties has now become more urgent. "They didn't anticipate being in the financial position they are in now," she said.
Ideally, Sprint and Clearwire would create a joint venture that would allow each company to retain a stake in the company but also attract other companies, possibly Intel or Google, to provide needed capital, she said. A combined company would be able to negotiate better deals from vendors, she said.
Clearwire has already built wireless broadband networks in 16 U.S. states. Sprint has launched services in Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, D.C., under the Xohm brand.
Spokespeople from Clearwire and Sprint declined to comment on the possibility of any renewed talks.
NY AG pushes e-safety bill, Facebook, MySpace back it
New York's attorney general and state legislative leaders presented a bill on Tuesday aimed at protecting people from sexual predators on the Internet, as Facebook, MySpace and Yahoo backed the effort.
In a press conference, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced legislation they called "groundbreaking" in its proposed restrictions and controls of sexual offenders' online activities.
"Today I believe we're proposing the most comprehensive, smartest, toughest law in the nation to keep people safe online, especially minors," Cuomo said.
The Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) responds to the widely documented use that sexual offenders make of the Internet, in particular social-networking sites, to stalk and victimize people, particularly minors.
Specifically, e-STOP would require convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses, instant message screen names and any other online identifiers with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. That data would then be made available to social-networking companies and other online services so that they can then block access to sexual offenders and remove them from their sites.
The bill also calls for allowing sentencing courts and the state's Parole Board to restrict the online activities of sex offenders who used the Internet to commit their crimes, victimized a minor or are considered highly likely to repeat their offenses. In particular, the bill would ban many sex offenders from using social-networking sites.
There are more than 627,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., about 25,000 of whom are in New York, according to Cuomo's office.
State attorneys general have been very vocal about their concerns over online safety, in particular of minors who are preyed upon by sexual offenders on social-networking sites, which are widely used by teens.
The attorneys general have often criticized Facebook, MySpace and other sites for, in their view, not doing enough to protect minors, but the two sides have recently seemed to get on better terms and have rolled out several joint security initiatives, partnerships and agreements.
The e-STOP bill is needed to help social-networking companies keep their sites safer and will complement these companies' in-house security efforts, Cuomo said.
MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam agreed and said laws need to keep up with the times and technology. "We hope [e-STOP] becomes a model for other states to follow," Nigam said.
"As Facebook and other Internet companies do our best to exclude [from our sites] those who would do our users harm, we need help from the government," said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer.
Ideally, legislation like e-STOP would get enacted widely in U.S. states and also at the federal level, Cuomo said.
In a press conference, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced legislation they called "groundbreaking" in its proposed restrictions and controls of sexual offenders' online activities.
"Today I believe we're proposing the most comprehensive, smartest, toughest law in the nation to keep people safe online, especially minors," Cuomo said.
The Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act (e-STOP) responds to the widely documented use that sexual offenders make of the Internet, in particular social-networking sites, to stalk and victimize people, particularly minors.
Specifically, e-STOP would require convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail addresses, instant message screen names and any other online identifiers with the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. That data would then be made available to social-networking companies and other online services so that they can then block access to sexual offenders and remove them from their sites.
The bill also calls for allowing sentencing courts and the state's Parole Board to restrict the online activities of sex offenders who used the Internet to commit their crimes, victimized a minor or are considered highly likely to repeat their offenses. In particular, the bill would ban many sex offenders from using social-networking sites.
There are more than 627,000 registered sex offenders in the U.S., about 25,000 of whom are in New York, according to Cuomo's office.
State attorneys general have been very vocal about their concerns over online safety, in particular of minors who are preyed upon by sexual offenders on social-networking sites, which are widely used by teens.
The attorneys general have often criticized Facebook, MySpace and other sites for, in their view, not doing enough to protect minors, but the two sides have recently seemed to get on better terms and have rolled out several joint security initiatives, partnerships and agreements.
The e-STOP bill is needed to help social-networking companies keep their sites safer and will complement these companies' in-house security efforts, Cuomo said.
MySpace Chief Security Officer Hemanshu Nigam agreed and said laws need to keep up with the times and technology. "We hope [e-STOP] becomes a model for other states to follow," Nigam said.
"As Facebook and other Internet companies do our best to exclude [from our sites] those who would do our users harm, we need help from the government," said Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer.
Ideally, legislation like e-STOP would get enacted widely in U.S. states and also at the federal level, Cuomo said.
New Microsoft Word attacks pose as news about Tibet
New attacks using rigged Microsoft Word documents have been launched, a security company said Tuesday as it warned users to be leery of mail touting news about Tibet.
Phony e-mails purporting to contain news about Tibet and its government in exile are making the rounds, according to Trend Micro Inc., which explained that the messages carry attachments that are malformed Word documents designed to exploit a vulnerability in parsing the popular word processing system's file format.
When opened, the malicious documents deposit a Trojan horse on the victim's Windows PC, said Trend Micro in a post to its security blog.
Trend Micro said the names on the fake Word documents include the following:
-- CHINA';S [sic] OLYMPIC TORCH OUT OF TIBET 1.doc
-- 2007-07 DRAFT Tibetan MP London schedule.doc
-- DIRECTORY OF TIBET SUPPORT GROUPS IN INDIA.doc
-- Disapppeared [sic] in Tibet.doc
Another security firm, Symantec Corp., confirmed the new attacks but said that it has received only "a small number" of submissions from customers regarding the exploit.
"This social engineering technique has been seen before," said Trend Micro researcher Jake Soriano on the TrendLabs Malware blog. "In October, a Trojan rode on the newsworthiness of the monk-led protests in Myanmar ... arriving as an attachment to spam [that] purported to be a message of support from the Dalai Lama to the monks."
Symantec repeated the long-standing advice that users consider banning Office documents that originate from unknown senders and exercise caution in dealing with unsolicited e-mails, particularly those with attachments.
Microsoft Corp. has patched Word several times in the past two years -- most recently in May 2007, when it holes in the way the application handles documents. The company has also been promoting its newest suites, Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac, as being more secure on the file format front than their predecessors, and it has locked down Office 2003 by limiting the number of formats users can open.
Phony e-mails purporting to contain news about Tibet and its government in exile are making the rounds, according to Trend Micro Inc., which explained that the messages carry attachments that are malformed Word documents designed to exploit a vulnerability in parsing the popular word processing system's file format.
When opened, the malicious documents deposit a Trojan horse on the victim's Windows PC, said Trend Micro in a post to its security blog.
Trend Micro said the names on the fake Word documents include the following:
-- CHINA';S [sic] OLYMPIC TORCH OUT OF TIBET 1.doc
-- 2007-07 DRAFT Tibetan MP London schedule.doc
-- DIRECTORY OF TIBET SUPPORT GROUPS IN INDIA.doc
-- Disapppeared [sic] in Tibet.doc
Another security firm, Symantec Corp., confirmed the new attacks but said that it has received only "a small number" of submissions from customers regarding the exploit.
"This social engineering technique has been seen before," said Trend Micro researcher Jake Soriano on the TrendLabs Malware blog. "In October, a Trojan rode on the newsworthiness of the monk-led protests in Myanmar ... arriving as an attachment to spam [that] purported to be a message of support from the Dalai Lama to the monks."
Symantec repeated the long-standing advice that users consider banning Office documents that originate from unknown senders and exercise caution in dealing with unsolicited e-mails, particularly those with attachments.
Microsoft Corp. has patched Word several times in the past two years -- most recently in May 2007, when it holes in the way the application handles documents. The company has also been promoting its newest suites, Office 2007 for Windows and Office 2008 for Mac, as being more secure on the file format front than their predecessors, and it has locked down Office 2003 by limiting the number of formats users can open.
Google fixes Gmail IMAP problem on Windows Mobile
Google said it has fixed a problem that was causing Windows Mobile phone users to receive blank Gmail messages.
In October, Google began supporting IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) for Gmail. That means messages that mobile users send or receive from their phones are synched with their Gmail accounts, appearing the next time users access their accounts from a computer. But shortly after the announcement, Windows Mobile users began complaining in online forums about problems.
In some cases, Windows Mobile users said that HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) e-mail messages showed up blank on their phones. Others said that while they could read message headers, all messages appeared blank.
Google acknowledged the problem and listed it on its known issues page. Late last week, some users of Windows Mobile 6 and its predecessor, Windows Mobile 5, began writing on the online forum that the problem appeared to be fixed. A Google spokeswoman said that it was fixed on Friday, although on Monday it was still listed as a known issue. On Tuesday, the known issues page no longer included the problem.
Google has also posted instructions for configuring the Gmail IMAP capability on Windows Mobile 6 phones.
Windows Mobile users don't have to do anything to take advantage of the fix, the spokeswoman said. They should simply be able to properly receive Gmail messages on their phones now, she said.
In October, Google began supporting IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) for Gmail. That means messages that mobile users send or receive from their phones are synched with their Gmail accounts, appearing the next time users access their accounts from a computer. But shortly after the announcement, Windows Mobile users began complaining in online forums about problems.
In some cases, Windows Mobile users said that HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) e-mail messages showed up blank on their phones. Others said that while they could read message headers, all messages appeared blank.
Google acknowledged the problem and listed it on its known issues page. Late last week, some users of Windows Mobile 6 and its predecessor, Windows Mobile 5, began writing on the online forum that the problem appeared to be fixed. A Google spokeswoman said that it was fixed on Friday, although on Monday it was still listed as a known issue. On Tuesday, the known issues page no longer included the problem.
Google has also posted instructions for configuring the Gmail IMAP capability on Windows Mobile 6 phones.
Windows Mobile users don't have to do anything to take advantage of the fix, the spokeswoman said. They should simply be able to properly receive Gmail messages on their phones now, she said.
Trend Micro stresses 'tested' patent in trade case
Barracuda Networks plans to focus on finding prior art to defend itself and the open-source ClamAV project against patent claims by rival antivirus vendor Trend Micro, which stressed Tuesday that it owns a tested and valid patent.
Barracuda, facing a Trend Micro complaint before the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC), will work on showing the agency that other companies used gateway antivirus scanning before Trend Micro received its patent in 1997, Barracuda said Tuesday. Barracuda, based in California, uses ClamAV code in some of its products.
"In their claim, Trend Micro is seeking an interpretation of its ... patent such that would give it exclusive control of gateway antivirus scanning," said Kylie Heintz, spokeswoman for Barracuda.
"We believe that neither our products, nor the free and open-source ClamAV software, infringe the patent, and further we believe that the patent itself is invalid due to prior art," Heintz said.
The USITC launched a formal investigation of the patent claims in December.
Barracuda's announcement that it intended to find prior art spurred action in the open-source community. Early Tuesday, Groklaw, a blog focused on open-source legal issues, posted an announcement asking for help finding prior art.
But Trend Micro, which filed the USITC complaint in November, has a "known and time-tested patent," said Michael Sweeny, a spokesman for Trend Micro. The company won a similar dispute with rival Fortinet before the USITC in May 2005, Trend Micro noted. Fortinet later settled the patent claims, getting a license from Trend Micro.
In addition, Trend Micro filed a similar complaint against Panda Software International and Panda Distribution, which use a proprietary software package, said Mark Davis, Trend Micro's outside counsel. Trend Micro has not targeted the ClamAV project, he said. "This is purely against commercial competitors," Davis added.
Commercial software vendor Sourcefire purchased the ClamAV project in August. Sourcefire declined to comment on the patent dispute.
Open-source software is not the issue in the USITC complaint, Sweeny added. "We can't see how this would negatively impact open-source development," he said.
Barracuda CEO Dean Drako called scanning for viruses at the gateway "an obvious and common technique" used by most businesses. Almost anyone, including the owners of more than 1 million ClamAV installations, could be sued by Trend Micro if the company's patent claims hold up, he said in a statement.
Barracuda, maker of hardware containing cybersecurity products, has won support in the dispute from the Software Freedom Law Center, a group working to protect open-source software. The law center is grateful to Barracuda for fighting the patent, said Eben Moglen, the center's founding director. "Collective defense from software patents is a shared responsibility for everyone in the free software ecosystem," he said in a statement.
Barracuda has a pending lawsuit seeking to invalidate the patent in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division.
Trend Micro is misusing the USITC because it's filing a trade complaint asking the agency to bar importation of a product against a company based in the U.S., Barracuda added. "Barracuda Networks designs and manufactures all of the products in question in the United States," Drako said in his statement. "We believe Trend Micro's actions are a blatant abuse of the U.S. legal system."
But Trend Micro said the USITC is an appropriate venue for the patent complaint. The 2005 Fortinet ruling was also against a company based in the U.S., Davis said. "There appear to be several components that are imported," he said.
Trend Micro's USITC complaint says Barracuda uses code from ClamAV, which is written in part in Europe and Australia. Barracuda also imports hardware components, the complaint says.
Barracuda, facing a Trend Micro complaint before the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC), will work on showing the agency that other companies used gateway antivirus scanning before Trend Micro received its patent in 1997, Barracuda said Tuesday. Barracuda, based in California, uses ClamAV code in some of its products.
"In their claim, Trend Micro is seeking an interpretation of its ... patent such that would give it exclusive control of gateway antivirus scanning," said Kylie Heintz, spokeswoman for Barracuda.
"We believe that neither our products, nor the free and open-source ClamAV software, infringe the patent, and further we believe that the patent itself is invalid due to prior art," Heintz said.
The USITC launched a formal investigation of the patent claims in December.
Barracuda's announcement that it intended to find prior art spurred action in the open-source community. Early Tuesday, Groklaw, a blog focused on open-source legal issues, posted an announcement asking for help finding prior art.
But Trend Micro, which filed the USITC complaint in November, has a "known and time-tested patent," said Michael Sweeny, a spokesman for Trend Micro. The company won a similar dispute with rival Fortinet before the USITC in May 2005, Trend Micro noted. Fortinet later settled the patent claims, getting a license from Trend Micro.
In addition, Trend Micro filed a similar complaint against Panda Software International and Panda Distribution, which use a proprietary software package, said Mark Davis, Trend Micro's outside counsel. Trend Micro has not targeted the ClamAV project, he said. "This is purely against commercial competitors," Davis added.
Commercial software vendor Sourcefire purchased the ClamAV project in August. Sourcefire declined to comment on the patent dispute.
Open-source software is not the issue in the USITC complaint, Sweeny added. "We can't see how this would negatively impact open-source development," he said.
Barracuda CEO Dean Drako called scanning for viruses at the gateway "an obvious and common technique" used by most businesses. Almost anyone, including the owners of more than 1 million ClamAV installations, could be sued by Trend Micro if the company's patent claims hold up, he said in a statement.
Barracuda, maker of hardware containing cybersecurity products, has won support in the dispute from the Software Freedom Law Center, a group working to protect open-source software. The law center is grateful to Barracuda for fighting the patent, said Eben Moglen, the center's founding director. "Collective defense from software patents is a shared responsibility for everyone in the free software ecosystem," he said in a statement.
Barracuda has a pending lawsuit seeking to invalidate the patent in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose division.
Trend Micro is misusing the USITC because it's filing a trade complaint asking the agency to bar importation of a product against a company based in the U.S., Barracuda added. "Barracuda Networks designs and manufactures all of the products in question in the United States," Drako said in his statement. "We believe Trend Micro's actions are a blatant abuse of the U.S. legal system."
But Trend Micro said the USITC is an appropriate venue for the patent complaint. The 2005 Fortinet ruling was also against a company based in the U.S., Davis said. "There appear to be several components that are imported," he said.
Trend Micro's USITC complaint says Barracuda uses code from ClamAV, which is written in part in Europe and Australia. Barracuda also imports hardware components, the complaint says.
European court strikes blow against music industry
In a blow against the music industry, the European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that E.U. countries don't have to require Internet service providers to reveal subscriber data for use in civil cases.
The Luxembourg court said E.U. nations may decide on their own whether to require such disclosure, but advised them to seek a balance between disclosing personal information and protecting intellectual property.
Existing E.U. directives on intellectual property do not require disclosure of personal data to ensure effective protection of copyright, the court said in a news release.
The court's decision means that music and film industry groups may have to find other ways in some countries to identify those suspected of illegally sharing files without the permission of the copyright holder.
It also bolsters prevailing opinions in Europe that an IP (Internet protocol) address -- which identifies the computer used by a person -- is personal data that should be protected.
The case, initiated in June 2006, arose after Spanish operator Telefónica resisted turning over subscriber data to Promusicae, a nonprofit organization for music and video publishers in Spain.
Promusicae sought to identify people using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing program. Promusicae asked Telefónica to name the people who held accounts connected with the IP address of the computer used to share files.
Telefónica contended the data could only be released in the course of a criminal investigation or a national or public security matter.
The IP address of a computer can often be linked to the person who holds an account with an Internet service provider, although it won't indicate who was using the computer when the illegal activity happened.
Music industry groups have typically sought to receive damages from those found to be illegally sharing files. Those lawsuits, however, have often been filed against people who hold subscriptions with a provider. In those cases lawyers have argued, mostly unsuccessfully, that the alleged file sharing was perpetrated by people other than those who held the subscriptions.
The Luxembourg court said E.U. nations may decide on their own whether to require such disclosure, but advised them to seek a balance between disclosing personal information and protecting intellectual property.
Existing E.U. directives on intellectual property do not require disclosure of personal data to ensure effective protection of copyright, the court said in a news release.
The court's decision means that music and film industry groups may have to find other ways in some countries to identify those suspected of illegally sharing files without the permission of the copyright holder.
It also bolsters prevailing opinions in Europe that an IP (Internet protocol) address -- which identifies the computer used by a person -- is personal data that should be protected.
The case, initiated in June 2006, arose after Spanish operator Telefónica resisted turning over subscriber data to Promusicae, a nonprofit organization for music and video publishers in Spain.
Promusicae sought to identify people using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing program. Promusicae asked Telefónica to name the people who held accounts connected with the IP address of the computer used to share files.
Telefónica contended the data could only be released in the course of a criminal investigation or a national or public security matter.
The IP address of a computer can often be linked to the person who holds an account with an Internet service provider, although it won't indicate who was using the computer when the illegal activity happened.
Music industry groups have typically sought to receive damages from those found to be illegally sharing files. Those lawsuits, however, have often been filed against people who hold subscriptions with a provider. In those cases lawyers have argued, mostly unsuccessfully, that the alleged file sharing was perpetrated by people other than those who held the subscriptions.
EBay unveils lower fees and tighter seller standards
EBay unveiled changes to its online marketplace Tuesday that the company characterizes as sweeping and historic and that are aimed at boosting sales by making the shopping experience simpler and safer.
The changes, which include lowering some fees and raising merchant standards, were announced at the company's eCommerce Forum by John Donahoe, who will succeed Meg Whitman as president and CEO in March.
The changes, which will be implemented at different points in the coming weeks and months, come at a time when eBay is struggling to boost growth of transaction volume and revenue amidst increased competition from the likes of Amazon.com, which in recent years has attracted many merchants away from eBay.
Donahoe said last week during a conference call to discuss eBay's fourth-quarter financials that the eBay marketplace business hasn't been growing as fast as he would like and that changes would be coming to make the shopping experience easier and safer.
EBay's fourth-quarter earnings and revenue exceeded Wall Street's expectations, but its outlook for this year was considered generally disappointing. For example, the conservative 2008 forecast, coupled with slowing growth in the marketplace business, led Citigroup to downgrade the stock to "hold."
While eBay's marketplace "playbook" has served it well for the past 10 years, the e-commerce game has changed significantly so the company must now try bold, new plays, Donahoe said during Tuesday's presentation, which was webcast.
Specifically, buyers have much higher expectations about online shopping than 10 years ago, so eBay must adapt and make their experience on the marketplace a better one, he told more than 200 of the company's largest merchants at the Washington, D.C. event. Likewise, eBay has to do a better job of helping its best merchants be more successful, he said.
"The Web has evolved around us, and what sellers and buyers have come to expect has evolved right along with it. Today, buyers want a very high level of value, selection and convenience. They want to shop on their own terms in a safe, easy-to-use environment. Sellers want a platform that meets the reality of doing business online today and that scales to their needs," Donahoe said.
In short, eBay finds itself at a crossroads where it can't afford to make just incremental changes if it wants to remain a leader and meet its customers' expectations, said Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces. "We need to redo our playbook, we need to redo it fast and we need to take bold actions," he said.
Donahoe announced that eBay will introduce an insertion fee reduction in the U.S. Feb. 20 by cutting the cost of listing items by 25 percent to 50 percent. By reducing the impact of items that don't sell, eBay hopes merchants will list more products. In turn, eBay is increasing the so-called "final value" fees it charges merchants when items are sold. The insertion fee cuts apply to auction and fixed-price items.
For example, the insertion fee for a $25 auction or fixed-priced item will drop from $1.20 to $1.00, while the final value fee will increase from 5.25 percent to 8.75 percent. A full rundown of new fees can be found here.
EBay will also do away with fees it charges U.S. merchants for its "gallery" option, in order to encourage merchants to include more photos with their listings. Fee changes will vary by country.
These two changes will reduce fees for most eBay merchants and, while eBay will see a cut in its fees revenue, it believes the moves are necessary for the overall health of the marketplace, he said. "Our goal is to reduce your risk, improve the overall buyer experience and align our success with yours," he said.
In addition, eBay will alter its search engine so that merchants with lower rates of customer satisfaction get less exposure on search results. Meanwhile, sellers with higher buyer satisfaction ratings will get better exposure in search results.
In particular, eBay wants to penalize sellers that charge excessive fees for shipping and handling, which the company has found is a major turnoff for buyers, said Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, who spoke after Donahoe.
EBay will also require a "safe payment option," such as PayPal or a major credit card, from merchants with lower customer satisfaction and from those in product categories that generate many buyer complaints. This gives buyers more protection when transacting with these merchants, Cobb said. Moreover, eBay will also raise the requirements for qualifying as a PowerSeller and update its feedback system.
Regarding PowerSeller status, eBay will require, starting in July, that to qualify for the program a merchant have a minimum 4.5 DSR (Detailed Seller Rating) score, in addition to the existing requirements of a 98 percent positive feedback rating and a certain level of sales, Cobb said.
The DSR rating lets buyers not only leave an overall feedback rating of positive, neutral or negative, but also rate the seller specifically in four areas with a scale of one to five stars: accuracy of item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges.
DSR ratings will be used also to determine which merchants get heightened or lowered exposure in eBay's search rankings, Cobb said. "We're linking search with seller performance," Cobb said.
Moreover, for the first time, PowerSellers will get discounts based on high DSR ratings obtained in the previous 30 days. Those with at least 4.6 on all four DSR areas get 5 percent off final value fees, and 15 percent off with ratings of least 4.8.
If these discounts were in place today, about 60 percent of PowerSellers -- about 100,000 -- would qualify for them, Cobb said.
EBay will also revamp its feedback system, in particular to curb what Cobb called "a disturbing trend" of sellers using it to retaliate against buyers by giving them low ratings. This discourages buyers from leaving honest feedback and drives many of them away from eBay.
So, starting in May, sellers will only be allowed to leave positive feedback for buyers, Cobb said. However, eBay will also add protections for sellers against inaccurate feedback from buyers, such as removing negative and neutral feedback when a buyer fails to respond to an "unpaid item" inquiry. In addition, eBay will remove all the negative and neutral feedback from buyers who are suspended.
In addition, PowerSellers will get increased protection from PayPal, which will no longer require them to ship to confirmed addresses for items sold on eBay. PayPal is also lifting its $5,000 annual seller protection coverage limit for PowerSellers and making it unlimited, Cobb said.
More details about these and other changes can be found in a blog posting Cobb made on Tuesday morning.
The changes, which include lowering some fees and raising merchant standards, were announced at the company's eCommerce Forum by John Donahoe, who will succeed Meg Whitman as president and CEO in March.
The changes, which will be implemented at different points in the coming weeks and months, come at a time when eBay is struggling to boost growth of transaction volume and revenue amidst increased competition from the likes of Amazon.com, which in recent years has attracted many merchants away from eBay.
Donahoe said last week during a conference call to discuss eBay's fourth-quarter financials that the eBay marketplace business hasn't been growing as fast as he would like and that changes would be coming to make the shopping experience easier and safer.
EBay's fourth-quarter earnings and revenue exceeded Wall Street's expectations, but its outlook for this year was considered generally disappointing. For example, the conservative 2008 forecast, coupled with slowing growth in the marketplace business, led Citigroup to downgrade the stock to "hold."
While eBay's marketplace "playbook" has served it well for the past 10 years, the e-commerce game has changed significantly so the company must now try bold, new plays, Donahoe said during Tuesday's presentation, which was webcast.
Specifically, buyers have much higher expectations about online shopping than 10 years ago, so eBay must adapt and make their experience on the marketplace a better one, he told more than 200 of the company's largest merchants at the Washington, D.C. event. Likewise, eBay has to do a better job of helping its best merchants be more successful, he said.
"The Web has evolved around us, and what sellers and buyers have come to expect has evolved right along with it. Today, buyers want a very high level of value, selection and convenience. They want to shop on their own terms in a safe, easy-to-use environment. Sellers want a platform that meets the reality of doing business online today and that scales to their needs," Donahoe said.
In short, eBay finds itself at a crossroads where it can't afford to make just incremental changes if it wants to remain a leader and meet its customers' expectations, said Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces. "We need to redo our playbook, we need to redo it fast and we need to take bold actions," he said.
Donahoe announced that eBay will introduce an insertion fee reduction in the U.S. Feb. 20 by cutting the cost of listing items by 25 percent to 50 percent. By reducing the impact of items that don't sell, eBay hopes merchants will list more products. In turn, eBay is increasing the so-called "final value" fees it charges merchants when items are sold. The insertion fee cuts apply to auction and fixed-price items.
For example, the insertion fee for a $25 auction or fixed-priced item will drop from $1.20 to $1.00, while the final value fee will increase from 5.25 percent to 8.75 percent. A full rundown of new fees can be found here.
EBay will also do away with fees it charges U.S. merchants for its "gallery" option, in order to encourage merchants to include more photos with their listings. Fee changes will vary by country.
These two changes will reduce fees for most eBay merchants and, while eBay will see a cut in its fees revenue, it believes the moves are necessary for the overall health of the marketplace, he said. "Our goal is to reduce your risk, improve the overall buyer experience and align our success with yours," he said.
In addition, eBay will alter its search engine so that merchants with lower rates of customer satisfaction get less exposure on search results. Meanwhile, sellers with higher buyer satisfaction ratings will get better exposure in search results.
In particular, eBay wants to penalize sellers that charge excessive fees for shipping and handling, which the company has found is a major turnoff for buyers, said Bill Cobb, president of eBay North America, who spoke after Donahoe.
EBay will also require a "safe payment option," such as PayPal or a major credit card, from merchants with lower customer satisfaction and from those in product categories that generate many buyer complaints. This gives buyers more protection when transacting with these merchants, Cobb said. Moreover, eBay will also raise the requirements for qualifying as a PowerSeller and update its feedback system.
Regarding PowerSeller status, eBay will require, starting in July, that to qualify for the program a merchant have a minimum 4.5 DSR (Detailed Seller Rating) score, in addition to the existing requirements of a 98 percent positive feedback rating and a certain level of sales, Cobb said.
The DSR rating lets buyers not only leave an overall feedback rating of positive, neutral or negative, but also rate the seller specifically in four areas with a scale of one to five stars: accuracy of item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges.
DSR ratings will be used also to determine which merchants get heightened or lowered exposure in eBay's search rankings, Cobb said. "We're linking search with seller performance," Cobb said.
Moreover, for the first time, PowerSellers will get discounts based on high DSR ratings obtained in the previous 30 days. Those with at least 4.6 on all four DSR areas get 5 percent off final value fees, and 15 percent off with ratings of least 4.8.
If these discounts were in place today, about 60 percent of PowerSellers -- about 100,000 -- would qualify for them, Cobb said.
EBay will also revamp its feedback system, in particular to curb what Cobb called "a disturbing trend" of sellers using it to retaliate against buyers by giving them low ratings. This discourages buyers from leaving honest feedback and drives many of them away from eBay.
So, starting in May, sellers will only be allowed to leave positive feedback for buyers, Cobb said. However, eBay will also add protections for sellers against inaccurate feedback from buyers, such as removing negative and neutral feedback when a buyer fails to respond to an "unpaid item" inquiry. In addition, eBay will remove all the negative and neutral feedback from buyers who are suspended.
In addition, PowerSellers will get increased protection from PayPal, which will no longer require them to ship to confirmed addresses for items sold on eBay. PayPal is also lifting its $5,000 annual seller protection coverage limit for PowerSellers and making it unlimited, Cobb said.
More details about these and other changes can be found in a blog posting Cobb made on Tuesday morning.
Open Solutions Alliance creating European office
The Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) is adding a chapter based in Europe, the group is expected to announce Tuesday.
OSA, a nonprofit vendor alliance formed in early 2007, advocates for the use of open-source software and works on interoperability issues.
The group hopes that the European chapter will be followed by the additions of other regions, such as Asia and Latin America, according to OSA. The chapters are meant to cater to varying regulatory environments and cultural differences globally, the organization said.
Meanwhile, open-source software has gained major momentum in Europe, according to OSA. Citing figures from the research firm Pierre Audoin Conseil, OSA said the market in France alone for open-source software was €730 million (US$1.07 billion) in 2007, up 66 percent over 2006.
OSA Member companies in Europe include hosted ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor Openbravo, project-management company Onepoint and data-integration firm Talend.
Despite plans to create specialized chapters, OSA's overarching goal will remain the same. "We will all work together on interoperability projects -- interoperability is global," said Yves de Montcheuil, vice president of marketing at Talend.
OSA, a nonprofit vendor alliance formed in early 2007, advocates for the use of open-source software and works on interoperability issues.
The group hopes that the European chapter will be followed by the additions of other regions, such as Asia and Latin America, according to OSA. The chapters are meant to cater to varying regulatory environments and cultural differences globally, the organization said.
Meanwhile, open-source software has gained major momentum in Europe, according to OSA. Citing figures from the research firm Pierre Audoin Conseil, OSA said the market in France alone for open-source software was €730 million (US$1.07 billion) in 2007, up 66 percent over 2006.
OSA Member companies in Europe include hosted ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor Openbravo, project-management company Onepoint and data-integration firm Talend.
Despite plans to create specialized chapters, OSA's overarching goal will remain the same. "We will all work together on interoperability projects -- interoperability is global," said Yves de Montcheuil, vice president of marketing at Talend.
Intel likely to reveal details of Silverthorne next week
Intel will offer a detailed look at a new processor next week during a presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) that should set the stage for an unexpectedly close battle with Taiwan's Via Technologies.
Intel's presentation will cover technical details of an unnamed low-power processor that is made using a 45-nanometer process and designed for mobile Internet devices, according to an abstract contained in the ISSCC program. That's the same general description used by Intel to describe its upcoming Silverthorne processor.
Intel executives declined to confirm whether the ISSCC presentation covers Silverthorne but said the abstract provided an accurate description of the unspecified processor. If the chip described is indeed Silverthorne, the presentation appears set to confirm many rumored details of the chip's architecture and characteristics.
Most importantly, Silverthorne is rumored to be an in-order processor, the same as the processor Intel will detail next week, according to the abstract.
In layman's terms, this means the chip functions like a factory with a single assembly line and is capable of processing one operation at a time. An in-order processor must complete that operation before it can move on to another operation. This is a different chip architecture from that used in Intel's other processors but it's the same as Via Technologies' low-power C7 chip, which has proved popular among the portable device makers that are Silverthorne's target market.
The processor that Intel will discuss next week is also a dual-issue processor, just as Silverthorne is rumored to be. This feature -- which Intel is likely to emphasize at ISSCC -- allows two instructions to be issued at a time and should give Silverthorne a performance advantage over the C7, which can issue only one instruction at a time.
If these rumored characteristics of Silverthorne are confirmed next week, the stage will be set for an unexpectedly close contest between Intel and Via's upcoming low-power Isaiah processors, which are also designed for small, portable computers.
Tiny by comparison to Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, Via has nevertheless managed to carve out a comfortable niche selling the inexpensive, low-power C7. Beset by a dying third-party chipset business, Via hopes to become a mainstream processor supplier with its upcoming Isaiah processors, which the company unveiled last week.
Unlike the C7 and Silverthorne, Isaiah uses a superscalar, out-of-order processor architecture. This architecture, which is used in high-end chips from Intel and AMD, generally offers better performance than an in-order design and is akin to a factory equipped with multiple assembly lines capable of processing different operations at the same time.
The performance of Isaiah is further enhanced by being superscalar, or having the ability to process multiple instructions during every clock cycle.
Centaur, the Via subsidiary that handles processor design for the company, is confident that Isaiah will outperform Silverthorne, even though an accurate comparison of both chips won't be possible until the two processors can be benchmarked and assessed by independent observers.
Nevertheless, Isaiah looks good on paper. Via chips based on the new architecture will offer 1M byte of L2 cache and support a front-side bus running at speeds up to 1.3GHz. By comparison, the chip that Intel will reveal next week has 512K bytes of cache and a 533MHz front-side bus.
But the ISSCC abstract raises as many questions as it appears to answer. For example, it doesn't specify how many cores the new Intel chip will use and gives no indication for how fast these cores will run.
Silverthorne, and a related processor called Diamondville, are widely expected to be available in single-core and dual-core versions. They are also expected to run at roughly the same clock speeds as the Isaiah chips, will be available in versions running from 400MHz up to 2GHz.
Intel's presentation will cover technical details of an unnamed low-power processor that is made using a 45-nanometer process and designed for mobile Internet devices, according to an abstract contained in the ISSCC program. That's the same general description used by Intel to describe its upcoming Silverthorne processor.
Intel executives declined to confirm whether the ISSCC presentation covers Silverthorne but said the abstract provided an accurate description of the unspecified processor. If the chip described is indeed Silverthorne, the presentation appears set to confirm many rumored details of the chip's architecture and characteristics.
Most importantly, Silverthorne is rumored to be an in-order processor, the same as the processor Intel will detail next week, according to the abstract.
In layman's terms, this means the chip functions like a factory with a single assembly line and is capable of processing one operation at a time. An in-order processor must complete that operation before it can move on to another operation. This is a different chip architecture from that used in Intel's other processors but it's the same as Via Technologies' low-power C7 chip, which has proved popular among the portable device makers that are Silverthorne's target market.
The processor that Intel will discuss next week is also a dual-issue processor, just as Silverthorne is rumored to be. This feature -- which Intel is likely to emphasize at ISSCC -- allows two instructions to be issued at a time and should give Silverthorne a performance advantage over the C7, which can issue only one instruction at a time.
If these rumored characteristics of Silverthorne are confirmed next week, the stage will be set for an unexpectedly close contest between Intel and Via's upcoming low-power Isaiah processors, which are also designed for small, portable computers.
Tiny by comparison to Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, Via has nevertheless managed to carve out a comfortable niche selling the inexpensive, low-power C7. Beset by a dying third-party chipset business, Via hopes to become a mainstream processor supplier with its upcoming Isaiah processors, which the company unveiled last week.
Unlike the C7 and Silverthorne, Isaiah uses a superscalar, out-of-order processor architecture. This architecture, which is used in high-end chips from Intel and AMD, generally offers better performance than an in-order design and is akin to a factory equipped with multiple assembly lines capable of processing different operations at the same time.
The performance of Isaiah is further enhanced by being superscalar, or having the ability to process multiple instructions during every clock cycle.
Centaur, the Via subsidiary that handles processor design for the company, is confident that Isaiah will outperform Silverthorne, even though an accurate comparison of both chips won't be possible until the two processors can be benchmarked and assessed by independent observers.
Nevertheless, Isaiah looks good on paper. Via chips based on the new architecture will offer 1M byte of L2 cache and support a front-side bus running at speeds up to 1.3GHz. By comparison, the chip that Intel will reveal next week has 512K bytes of cache and a 533MHz front-side bus.
But the ISSCC abstract raises as many questions as it appears to answer. For example, it doesn't specify how many cores the new Intel chip will use and gives no indication for how fast these cores will run.
Silverthorne, and a related processor called Diamondville, are widely expected to be available in single-core and dual-core versions. They are also expected to run at roughly the same clock speeds as the Isaiah chips, will be available in versions running from 400MHz up to 2GHz.
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