Daily Marauder

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Chinese Democracy, the first new Guns N’ Roses album since 1991, debuts tonight at 9 PM PST exclusively on MySpace Music, where fans can listen to it for free. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/first-guns-n-roses-album-in-17-years-debuts-tonight-on-myspace-music 11/19)

Yahoo investors say the search to replace CEO Jerry Yang should focus on a “turnaround artist” from outside who can draw Microsoft back into takeover talks. But industry figures like Peter Chernin and Meg Whitman may balk at joining a company “that’s only being prepared for a sale.” (Iwantmedia 11/19, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=aYHWXMGykxZU 11/19)

Citysearch is finally coming around to replacing its creaking site design with something a little more contemporary. Today, it is launching in a major rethink of its entire site in beta that drills deeper into neighborhoods, uses Facebook Connect as an optional identity system, and lets users vote reviews up and down. The beta will quickly become the default Citysearch experience. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/18/the-new-citysearch-launches-in-beta-goes-hyper-social-with-facebook-connect 11/18)

Even Google is getting into the downsizing spirit. It just announced that it is killing Lively, its browser-baseed virtual worlds that could be embedded into other Websites. Lively launched just last July. The death notice on the site says it will shut down on December 31, so we are adding Lively to the deadpool. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/google-kills-lively 11/19)

Today, the (for-now) non-profit Mozilla Foundation released its financial statements for 2007 (embedded below). Revenues for the organization behind the open-source Firefox browser were up 12 percent to $75 million, with search-related royalties from Google accounting for 88 percent of the total, or $66 million. (Another $2 million or so came from other search engines). Those revenues come from Mozilla’s portion of the search advertising revenues generated by the default Google search box in the Firefox browser. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/19/google-makes-up-88-percent-of-mozillas-revenues-threatens-its-non-profit-status 11/19)