Google issued its Q4 06 earnings report this afternoon and it hardly seems news that the search giant has, once again, posted stunning revenue and profit growth. Revenue for the Mountain View money-maker grew by 67% year-over-year to $3.2 billion, while net income nearly tripled to slightly more than $1 billion ($1.03 billion), the first time Google has broken through the billion-dollar profit threshold.
As usual, the Google execs assembled for the earnings call revealed little new information. CEO Eric Schmidt offered a teaser about YouTube, saying that “YouTube is in a bunch of all kinds of interesting deals,” which will be announced in time.
Another intriguing hint: Google is clearly eyeing the TV advertising market. When asked if the search leader will take its technology to TV, now that it has experimented with radio ad sales via its Dmarc acquisition, Schmidt said “There are many reasons to believe that the targeting technology we have invented will play well..[on TV].”
Google is specifically looking at cable or satellite set-top boxes as prime platforms for its targeted advertising technologies. “Set-top boxes can help target to end users and those set-top boxes are now addressable,” Schmidt said.
(Washington, DC) Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) said today that broadband companies can’t expect to move any legislative initiatives in Congress until the issue of net neutrality is resolved.
Speaking here at the Congressional Internet Caucus’ State of the Net Conference, Boucher, Co-Chair and Founder of the Caucus, said that “until we resolve the network neutrality issue, every positive measure that broadband providers bring before the Congress will be blocked.”
Cable and phone companies are aware of the need to do something on network neutrality, Boucher said. The telcos are taking their demands for video franchise reforms to state capitals and are steering clear of Congress, and broadband companies haven’t come to Congress with their list of legislative needs yet.
The legislative goals of cable and phone companies will be stymied until they reach a compromise on net neutrality given the power that net neutrality proponents have to kill any relevant legislation. “It is critically important that this be resolved. It was the unresolved quality of the network neutrality debate [that derailed the telecom reform bill during the last Congress],” Boucher said. “” think a compromise between the Internet centric companies and the broadband providers is critically important. I would hope that such a compromise can be achieved in the near term.”
Long an advocate of net neutrality legislation, Boucher said that “the very success of the American economy…has been led by the growth in the Internet,” success which might be jeopardized if broadband providers create a two-tiered Internet. If broadband providers establish multiple tiers of Internet service, it might “hobble the very innovation that has been the seed of all that success,” Boucher said.
The creation of a slow and fast lane on the Internet will stifle new businesses because the slow lane won’t be useful for too many innovative services. “The applications that are popular today are all high-rate applications…these really require fast lane access.”
But, Boucher concedes that any non-discriminatory requirements could harm investment in the network and might thwart socially beneficial applications. “We can’t advance content origination at the expense of network innovation,” he said. “We need both kinds of innovation to have the kind of Internet going forward that grows.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:11 AM | Print | Comments (0)For a company in the midst of turmoil, Yahoo! has a lot of ambitions. The online giant says it has plans to launch 100 web sites filled with entertainment.
It sounds more like Yahoo! plans to coordinate and make more easily accessible the sprawling mass of content it already has available on its vast Internet sites. The effort, called “Brand Universe,” is aimed at creating audiences around “individual movies, television shows, bands, celebrities, games and other types of entertainment.”
Yahoo! has already built one site around Wii and has others planned for TV shows “The Office” and “Lost,” as well as products such as the toy line Transformers. But, Yahoo! isn’t working with the products or content owners in building the sites, although it expects they’ll play along.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:34 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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