Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA by Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Microsoft said Thursday at a meeting with financial analysts at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., that it would soon begin providing Web search services and associated advertisements by the end of the year on the American portion of Facebook. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/business/media/25adco.html?ref=media 7/25)

Users will be able to stream movie rentals to their PCs beginning this summer, with prices starting at $2. Titles will be available online the same day as DVD releases. The Dallas Morning News (7/24)

Google has announced that its search index, which chronicles the vast majority of the internet, has hit a major milestone: 1 trillion unique URLS. That’s 1,000,000,000,000 pages – more than twice as many as there are stars in the Milky Way. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/25/surprise-google-says-the-web-is-really-really-big 7/25)

Redlasso, the video site that allows bloggers to post clips of television content, has shut down its beta in response to a recently filed lawsuit by Hulu-backers Fox and NBC. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/25/redlasso-shuts-down-in-response-to-foxnbc-lawsuit 7/25)

Continuing the tradition of selling bad Web businesses for less than they were bought for (in the vein of Cnet selling Webshots for $45 million three years after paying $70 million for it), AOL is trying to unload online storage service Xdrive. Three years after buying Xdrive for a rumored $30 million (never officially disclosed), the price it is now trying to fetch is $5 million, and going south, says a source. Maybe AOL should put it on eBay. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/25/want-to-buy-xdrive-aol-is-trying-to-sell-it-for-5-million 7/25)

The as-yet unlaunched MySpace Music will likely partner with Amazon to handle all music ecommerce transactions, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Apple and Rhapsody are also bidding for the business, however, and one source says a final decision hasn’t yet been made. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/25/amazon-to-power-upcoming-myspace-music-downloads 7/25)

Netflix Inc.’s second-quarter profit crept up 4 percent, beating analyst expectations as the online DVD rental leader signed up 168,000 new customers while spending less money to attract them to the service. (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Earns-Netflix.html?ref=technology 7/25)

Looking to cut down its main competition and most high-profile copycat in the growing market for social gaming, Hasbro has sued the two Indian brothers behind the popular Web game Scrabulous, which has more than half a million regular users on the social network Facebook. (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/hasbros-notches-triple-word-score-against-scrabulous-with-lawsuit/index.html?ref=technology 7/24)

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