google

Tech Firms Push to Hire More Workers From Abroad

April 11, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Mr. Sankhla got a master’s degree in electrical engineering nine years ago from the University of Southern California, followed by a job at Cisco, then at a start-up that attracted $4.5 million in financing from Silicon Valley investors. There was only one wrinkle: he was in the country on a temporary work visa, with no idea whether or when he would get permanent residence.

He remains in limbo, which preoccupies him almost as much as running his business. “It’s a constant distraction,” said Mr. Sankhla, who is 32. “You can’t really settle down because your visa status is uncertain.”

Silicon Valley is battling in Washington to make the immigration process easier for thousands of people like Mr. Sankhla, many of them Indian engineers, while also pushing to hire many more guest workers from abroad.

Rarely has the industry been so single-mindedly focused on a national policy issue, with executives like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and John T. Chambers of Cisco personally involved. Its efforts seem to be paying off, as a group of eight senators negotiate details of a comprehensive immigration deal to be announced early next week.

Several lobbyists and advocates who have spoken to Senate staff members say they are optimistic about at least two items high on their wish list: a fast-track green card line for math and science graduates like Mr. Sankhla, no matter which country they come from, and a near doubling of the visas for temporary workers.

“I think we are going to get a balanced outcome, which takes advantage of the value that immigrants bring to the economy and be protective of U.S. workers,” said Scott Corley, director of Compete America, an industry coalition that includes Google and Intel.

The contentious piece of this is the potential increase in temporary workers from abroad. Critics fear that is a ruse for lowering wages. Those critics are likely to get at least one boon from a revamped law: a requirement that companies try to find qualified American workers before hiring from abroad. The law may also make it more expensive to bring in guest workers.

The new immigration measure will almost certainly fix a situation that keeps people like Mr. Sankhla stuck in limbo for so long. The current law limits how many green cards can be issued to people from any single country, no matter how populous.

That effectively means that applicants from countries like India and China, with a large supply of young engineers often educated in American universities, wait far longer for permanent residence than those from almost every other country. The temporary employment visa, usually an H-1B, has become a kind of way station for them.

The Senate is considering eliminating the per-country quotas for those who graduate from United States universities with math, science and engineering degrees. The debate in Congress perfectly illustrates how immigration law, codified in 1965 and last revamped substantially in 1990, has lagged behind the demands of a rapidly changing economy. Unemployment in the technology industry hovers below 4 percent, far less than the national average.

In that climate, temporary visas are in such heavy demand that the total number available for the coming year — 65,000 for skilled workers and 20,000 for those with a master’s degree or higher — were snatched up in less than five days. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services said Monday that it had received 124,000 applications in that time and had resorted to a lottery to make the final cut.

The measure being considered by lawmakers could nearly double the H-1B visas allotted yearly and possibly admit more temporary workers during periods of high demand, said several advocates who have discussed the matter with Congressional staff members and who declined to be named because the final language has not yet been released.

“If you were the human resources vice president of the United States, you would want to have a rule that says if things get busy and you need skilled people you can bring in people,” said Dan Siciliano, a law professor at Stanford. “At the same time you would want a way to bring highly skilled people in and perhaps at your choosing convert them to status that lets them stay much longer.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/technology/tech-firms-push-to-hire-more-workers-from-abroad.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: google, mark zuckerberg, university of southern california

Web Site Answers Question of What to Do

April 7, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

That is the proposition behind a new Web site called Daybees, which went live in Britain last month and plans to expand to other countries, including the United States, soon. Daybees bills itself as “the world’s largest events search engine,” with a database of more than 1.5 million happenings of all kinds, whether Bon Jovi concerts or bake sales.

Daybees is one of the growing number of so-called vertical search engines, which aim to carve out a niche for themselves in the lucrative online search business, which is dominated by Google and coveted by other Internet giants like Microsoft and Facebook.

In areas like online shopping, travel or real estate, vertical search sites are well established. But Daybees says it is the first site, at least in the English-speaking world, to offer such a comprehensive listing of entertainment options without being tied in to any commercial arrangements with the organizers.

While 1.5 million might sound like a lot of events, Daybees lets people fine-tune their searches for things to do by keyword, by location or by time and date. And Daybees argues that its results are more focused than those turned up by Google.

“I love Google,” said Gary Morris, the founder and chief executive. “I use it umpteen times a day. But if I want to find an event that’s taking place at a certain time on a certain day, 2,000 feet from my front door or wherever, it’s impossible.”

“I was relying a lot on concierges and locals for information,” he added. “And what I found was that people’s knowledge of local events was not very good.”

While companies like Ticketmaster operate online listings, these tend to be limited to events with which the companies have commercial arrangements. Daybees says it is independent, and gets no commissions — at least not yet — though it does offer links to sites that sell tickets.

Independence comes at a price. So far Daybees, set up with an investment of about $1 million from Mr. Morris and Andrew Molasky, a partner and director, earns no revenue; not only does it not accept commissions, it has eschewed advertising, too. Mr. Morris and Mr. Molasky said advertising was a possibility, along with partnerships with ticket-selling firms, but added that they wanted to establish the site better first.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t have a profit motive,” said Mr. Molasky, a Las Vegas real estate developer with a background in the entertainment business. “Our approach is, if you build it, it will come.”

That approach has fueled the imaginations of countless start-up founders — and dashed the dreams of almost as many.

Vertical search is a hot area, with more and more ventures seeking to cash in on people’s desire to tailor search engines to specific needs. The growth of vertical search has been fueled by the spread of mobile Internet use, which has increased demand for customized, localized information, rather than the more extensive lists of results turned up by general search engines like Google or Microsoft’s Bing.

But Google has not stood still, fine-tuning its search engine and rolling out an ever-growing number of vertical offerings of its own, like online shopping and videos. Often, these are linked to other Google services like maps.

Analysts say that in Europe, where Google is especially strong, with more than 90 percent of the search market, compared with about three-quarters in the United States, it is particularly difficult for vertical search engines to establish themselves. Indeed, the European Commission, in its antitrust investigation of Google, is looking into whether Google favors its own services in its search results, to the detriment of would-be rivals.

“Their ability to build scale or users has to be quicker than Google’s ability to innovate and incorporate such features,” said Chris Whitelaw, chief operating officer of the British arm of iProspect, a digital marketing agency. “I think Daybees probably has a window of opportunity, but they need to use it, otherwise Google will pinch their lunch.”

For many start-ups, including vertical search firms, getting on the radar screen of Google, Facebook or another Internet giant is exactly the point. That way, even if revenue proves difficult to generate, there is always the possibility of another way to cash in — a takeover.

“For some of these companies, the business model seems to be, How can we best annoy Facebook?” said Andreas Pouros, chief operating officer of Greenlight, a search advertising agency in London.

Mr. Morris, a Briton with a background in the television business, and Mr. Molasky say their focus for now is on building the business. They developed the algorithms that drive the search engine in-house, with a small team of engineers.

The site lists some American events, and Daybees plans to have a U.S.-focused site within six months, Mr. Molasky said. The name Daybees, he said, comes from the fact that “we are all busy bees, and it’s about filling your day.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/technology/08iht-search08.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: comprehensive listing, google, organizers

Bits Blog: Facebook Seeks to Be Mobile ‘Home’ of Android Users

April 4, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Jim Wilson/The New York Times Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday.

2:58 p.m. | Updated Added more details and analysis.

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and chief executive of Facebook, announced on Thursday that the company had developed new software, called Home, to showcase the social network on mobile devices using Google’s Android operating system.

“Today our phones are designed around apps, not people,” Mr. Zuckerberg said at a news conference at Facebook’s headquarters. “We want to flip that around.”

Home converts the Facebook news feed into the home screen on the user’s phone. Pictures take up most of the real estate, with each news feed entry scrolling by like a slide show. Messages and notifications pop up over the home page. To “like” something on the news feed requires no more than a double-tap. Facebook apps are in easy reach.

The company will not show ads immediately on the phone home screen, which Facebook is calling the Cover Feed, but it is very likely to do so in the future.

The first phone with the new package installed will be made by HTC and will be sold in the United States with ATT service for about $100, starting April 12. Users of some other HTC and Samsung Android phones will also be able to download the software starting on that day, with Facebook planning to roll it out more broadly to other Android devices in the coming months.

It will be available in Europe soon with Orange as the carrier, Mr. Zuckerberg said. He stressed that he wanted the new product to enable a mass, global audience to connect to Facebook, especially those who have yet to go on the Internet. “We want to build something that’s accessible to everyone,” he said.

The new product is also intended to prompt Facebook users to return to their news feeds even more frequently than they do now. Every time they glance at their phones, at the supermarket checkout line or on the subway to work, they will effectively look at their Facebook pages.

“It’s going to convert idle moments to Facebook moments,” said Chris Silva, a mobile industry analyst with the Altimeter Group. “I’m ‘liking’ things, I’m messaging people, and when ads roll out, I’m interacting with them and letting Facebook monetize me as a user.”

Mr. Silva added that the no-frills Samsung and HTC phones that will support the new interface suggest that Facebook wants to target consumers who have yet to buy an Internet-enabled phone, both in the United States and abroad. After the United States, the largest blocs of Facebook users live in emerging markets like Brazil and India, and their numbers are growing much faster there than in Facebook’s home market.

But getting millions of less-affluent global users glued to Facebook will not be easy. The service will rack up huge data charges for users, unless Facebook manages to negotiate affordable packages with carrier companies.

It is also unclear whether anyone, including the phone carriers, will be enthusiastic about the device.

Jan Dawson, a telecommunications analyst at Ovum, said that the iPhone and many Android smartphones already do a good job of including Facebook. And he said phone carriers are unlikely to give an HTC-made Facebook phone much support because HTC’s past attempt at a Facebook phone — the ChaCha, which had a physical button for posting photos on Facebook — sold poorly.

“HTC may be desperate enough to do this, but carriers aren’t likely to promote it heavily,” Mr. Dawson said. “As a gimmick, it may bring customers into stores, but they’ll mostly end up buying something else.”

At Facebook headquarters Thursday, HTC’s chief executive, Peter Chou, showed off a model of his new Facebook phone, called HTC First, in lipstick red. “HTC First is the ultimate social phone,” he said. “It combines the new Facebook Home and great HTC design.”

The new interface places a heavy emphasis on photos, much like the recent changes made to Facebook’s news feed feature on the Web.

“We think this is the best version of Facebook there is,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

Brian X. Chen contributed reporting.

Article source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/04/facebook/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: google, mark zuckerberg, mobile devices

Slipstream: In Privacy Laws, an Incomplete American Quilt

March 30, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

That was the message of a report from the Republican Party a few weeks ago on how to win future presidential elections.

It’s also the strategy that Peter Fleischer, the global privacy counsel at Google, recently proposed for the United States to win converts abroad to its legal model of data privacy protection. In a post on his personal blog, titled “We Need a Better, Simpler Narrative of U.S. Privacy Laws,” he describes the divergent legal frameworks in the United States and Europe.

The American system involves a patchwork of federal and state privacy laws that separately govern the use of personal details in spheres like patient billing, motor vehicle records, education and video rental records. The European Union, on the other hand, has one blanket data protection directive that lays out principles for how information about its citizens may be collected and used, no matter the industry.

Mr. Fleischer — whose blog notes that it reflects his personal views, not his employer’s — is a proponent of the patchwork system because, he writes, it offers multilayered protection for Americans. The problem with it, he argues, is that it doesn’t lend itself to simple storytelling.

“Europe’s privacy narrative is simple and appealing,” Mr. Fleischer wrote in mid-March. If the United States wants to foster trust in American companies operating abroad, he added, it “has to figure out how to explain its privacy laws on a global stage.”

Other technology experts, however, view the patchwork quilt of American privacy laws as more of a macramé arrangement — with serious gaps in consumer protection, particularly when it comes to data collection online. Congress should enact a baseline consumer privacy law, says Leslie Harris, the president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a public policy group that promotes Internet freedom.

“I don’t think this fight is about branding,” Ms. Harris says. “We’ve been trying to get a comprehensive privacy law for over a decade, a law that would work for today and for technologies that we have not yet envisioned.”

Many Americans are aware that stores, Web sites, apps, ad networks, loyalty card programs and so on collect and analyze details about their purchases, activities and interests — online and off. Last year, both the United States and the European Union proposed to give their citizens greater control over such commercial data-mining.

If the American side now appears to be losing the public relations battle, as Mr. Fleischer suggested, it may be because Europe has forged ahead with its project to modernize data protection. When officials of the United States and the European Union start work on a free trade agreement in the coming months, the trans-Atlantic privacy regulation divide is likely to be one of the sticking points, analysts say.

“We really are an outlier,” says Christopher Calabrese, legislative counsel for privacy-related issues at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington.

For the moment, officials on either side of the Atlantic seem to be operating at different speeds.

In January 2012, the European Commission proposed a new regulation that could give citizens in the E.U.’s 27 member states some legal powers that Americans now lack. These include the right to transfer text, photo and video files in usable formats from one online service provider to another. American consumers do not have such a national right to data portability, and have to depend on the largesse of companies like Google, which permits them to download their own YouTube videos or Picasa photo albums.

A month after Europe proposed to update its data protections, the Obama administration called on Congress to enact a “consumer privacy bill of rights” that would apply to industries not already covered by sectoral privacy laws. These could include data brokers, companies that collect details on an individual’s likes, leisure pursuits, shopping habits, financial status, health interests and more.

The White House’s blueprint for legislation, for example, would give Americans the right to some control over how their personal data is used, as well as the right to see and correct records that companies hold about them. The White House initiative broadened the historical American view of privacy as “the right to be let alone” — a definition put forward by Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren in 1890 — to a more modern concept of privacy as the right to commercial data control.

“We can’t wait,” a post on the White House blog effused at the time.

A year later, the data protection regulation proposed by the European Commission has been vetted by a number of regulators and committees of the European Parliament. The document now has several thousand amendments, some developed in response to American trade groups that had complained that certain provisions could hinder innovation and impede digital free trade. Peter Hustinx, the European data protection supervisor, said last Wednesday that European officials hoped to enact the law by next spring.

In the United States, by contrast, a year after the Obama administration introduced the notion of a consumer privacy bill of rights, a draft has yet to be completed, let alone made public.

Cameron F. Kerry, the general counsel of the Commerce Department and the official overseeing the privacy effort, was not available to comment last week. In a phone interview in January, however, Mr. Kerry said that the agency was working on legislative language to carry out the White House’s plan.

“The idea is to have baseline privacy protections for those areas not covered today by sectoral regimes,” Mr. Kerry said. He added: “We think it is important to do it in a way that allows for flexibility, that allows for innovation, and is not overly prescriptive.”

Chris Gaither, a Google spokesman, said his company was “engaging on important issues” like security breach notification and declined to comment on consumer privacy legislation. But at least some American technology companies suggest that a baseline privacy law could benefit both consumers and companies. In a statement last year, Microsoft said national privacy legislation could help ensure “that all businesses are using, storing and sharing data in responsible ways.”

With stronger European data rights and trade negotiations pending, Ms. Harris, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, says Congress may feel pressure to pass privacy legislation. That would represent a big change for American consumers as well as a better privacy sound bite abroad.

“We either have to enact our own law or we are going to have to comply with other countries’ laws,” Ms. Harris says. “But doing nothing may no longer be the answer.”

E-mail: slipstream@nytimes.com.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/technology/in-privacy-laws-an-incomplete-american-quilt.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: google, patchwork quilt, privacy law

Samsung Plays on Apple’s Turf to Introduce Galaxy S 4 Smartphone

March 14, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

At a packed event at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Thursday, Samsung showed off the Galaxy S 4, which has a screen slightly larger than the latest iPhone.

The device has quirky software features, including Smart Scroll, in which the front camera detects when someone is looking at the phone, and scrolls the screen according to the angle the phone is tilted. The phone can also be controlled with hand gestures. Waving a hand down in front of the phone will scroll up on a Web page, for example.

“Once you spend time with the Galaxy S 4, I’m very confident you’ll find how its innovations make your life simple and fuller,” said JK Shin, president of Samsung Mobile Communications, at the company’s first promotional event for its flagship smartphone.

With the prominent introduction of the phone, Samsung is trying to end its role as understudy to its more celebrated competitor, especially in the crucial American market, where Apple still rules. Even as Samsung has surpassed Apple in global market share, it is often criticized in the United States as an effective copycat, taking most of its product cues from Apple. But Samsung has begun flexing its marketing muscle more aggressively here to try to change that perception.

“This is Samsung’s time right now,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. “They are clearly gaining more attention this time around than they ever have.”

Apple itself is showing signs of concern. In an unusual move on the eve of the Samsung event, Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, gave several interviews in which he discussed flaws in mobile devices based on Android, the Google operating system used by most of Samsung’s smartphones.

But Apple still has many big advantages that allow it to defend its position in the mobile business. Its iPhone 5 was the best-selling smartphone in the world in the holiday quarter, even though Samsung’s vast portfolio of phones is bigger than Apple’s. By charging a premium for its products, Apple raked in 69 percent of the profits in the smartphone business last year, compared with 34 percent for Samsung, according to a report by T. Michael Walkley, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity.

While analysts like Mr. Munster expect Samsung to gain market share in the United States in the coming two quarters, they predict Apple is likely to still dominate the crucial holiday shopping season, when gift shoppers buy mobile devices in droves. That is when sales of the iPhone typically outperform all other devices. By unveiling its flagship phone just before spring, Samsung is striking at Apple months before a new iPhone is expected to be released.

“Everyone stays out of the zone of iPhone launch periods,” said Horace Dediu, a blogger and analyst with Asymco.

Apple’s iPhones fly off the shelves in the United States, but Samsung is still the top seller of smartphones worldwide. And in the United States, Samsung is gaining.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, sales of Samsung devices accounted for 30 percent of the American smartphone market, up from 21 percent the previous year, according to NPD Group, the research firm. For the same time period, Apple’s iPhone accounted for 39 percent of the market, down from 41 percent the previous year.

Samsung is far exceeding Apple in its rate of growth worldwide. In the holiday quarter last year, Samsung shipped 63.7 million smartphones, up 76 percent from the previous year, according to IDC, the research firm. Apple sold 47.8 million, up 29.2 percent from the previous year.

Samsung has won the global volume race by releasing multiple models of smartphones at different prices and sizes, while Apple has released one new model every year. Along with the Galaxy S III, the Note II, a Samsung phone with an even bigger screen, has been a popular seller.

“Samsung’s momentum has been tremendous if you look at where they were three years ago to where it is today in the smartphone market,” said Chris Jones, an analyst at Canalys.

Apple of Cupertino, Calif., is famous for products that create markets, as was the case with the iPhone and iPad. Apple has accused Samsung of stealing many of its best ideas in the mobile market. Last year, it convinced a jury that Samsung had infringed Apple patents, winning a $1 billion award that a federal judge in the case recently reduced to $600 million, a figure that could change as the case develops. Some recent moves by Apple have appeared to be in response at least in part to competition from Samsung. It released a smaller iPad and a bigger iPhone after Samsung had been selling smaller tablets and smartphones with bigger screens for a while.

“Right now Apple is the challenger, and basically the power dynamics have changed already,” said Tero Kuittinen, an analyst at Alekstra, which helps companies reduce their phone bills. “Suddenly, Apple looks a little defensive.”

Before Thursday’s introduction, Samsung’s new smartphone generated nearly as much discussion and excitement in technology blogs as a new iPhone. “This is like the hype around the iPhone was two years ago,” Mr. Kuittinen said. “A year ago nobody cared about Samsung Galaxy S III. It’s not like the tech blogs wrote five posts a day about it.“

The Galaxy S 4 has several notable features. One, Dual Camera, allows the user to take a photograph with the front and rear-facing cameras simultaneously. At a basketball game, for example, a user can shoot a photograph of the game with the rear camera and the user’s reaction to it with the front camera; the two shots appear in one photograph.

Before Thursday’s event, a Samsung employee said the Smart Scroll feature would rely on tracking eye movements to determine where to scroll. When asked about the lack of eye-controlled scrolling in the new phone, David Park, a manager of Samsung’s mobile division, said the company had experimented with several approaches and decided to use the tilting method.

Samsung also added Group Play, which will allow multiple Galaxy phones to link together to play a game together. It uses Wi-Fi to bridge a connection.The phone will be available next quarter on Verizon Wireless, ATT, T-Mobile USA and Sprint. The older model, the Galaxy S III, was extremely popular because of its large screen and software capabilities; for a while it even outsold the iPhone. The company did not reveal a price for the Galaxy S 4, but said it should be the same as other premium Samsung phones, which have cost $200 with a contract.

To defend its lead in the market, Samsung will have to introduce capabilities in devices and set trends, said Chetan Sharma, a mobile communications consultant. But Mr. Kuittinen of Alekstra said Samsung has been setting the trends for a while. This year, Apple should introduce an iPhone with an even bigger screen, he said.

“They knew that if you do a phone with a huge 5-inch display, it will have big demand because it turns out people really want to have a phone with an enormous screen,” he said. “Apple didn’t know that.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/technology/samsung-introduces-new-galaxy-phone.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: google, piper jaffray, radio city music hall

Media Decoder Blog: The Breakfast Meeting: Time Warner to Spin Off Time Inc., and Facebook’s New Look

March 7, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Time Warner announced Wednesday that it would spin off its Time Inc. magazine unit into a separate, publicly traded company, Amy Chozick writes. The announcement came hours after negotiations on a possible merger between Meredith Corporation and many Time Inc. titles fell through. The deal did not work out in part because of Time Inc.’s concern about flagship titles Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money, which Meredith had decided not to pursue. Time Warner found it made more economic sense to spin off all its titles rather than retain a few of them, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said. Time Inc. is the nation’s largest magazine publisher, and the breakdown in talks threw into sharp relief how once-glamorous magazines have become troubled assets.

Facebook plans to announce a redesign to its News Feed, the page of cascading posts every user sees upon logging in, on Thursday, Somini Sengupta reports. The makeover is designed to keep users, many of whom are growing disenchanted with the social networking site, engaged, while also providing advertisers with new ways to appeal to consumers, with bigger photos and video. The adjustments will reflect Facebook’s precarious balance as a public company that has not performed well on Wall Street: draw users to the site without alienating them with the targeted advertisements that are Facebook’s chief source of revenue.

Google executives are working on a version 2.0 of an unusual advertising initiative to show how technology can be compatible with traditional Madison Avenue methods like emotional storytelling, Stuart Elliott writes. The initiative, called Art, Copy and Code, will start with a Volkswagen campaign designed by Deutsch L.A. (Adidas and Burberry will be involved later.) Volkswagen will offer a mobile app and Web service called Volkswagen Smileage that will allow drivers who use the new Google Plus sign-in program to share their smile-inducing driving experiences.

Content Partners, a financial boutique that buys cash flow owed to stars and musicians, said on Wednesday that it would buy the half of the long-running crime drama “C.S.I.” owned by an affiliate of Goldman Sachs, Michael Cieply and Bill Carter write. Terms were not disclosed, but it was reported that Goldman sought more than $400 million for their half of the franchise (CBS owns the other half). Content Partners will now own half of the production company revenue from old episodes, as they are sold abroad or through on-demand media, and from future episodes. The “C.S.I.” shows have been among the most profitable television properties for more than a decade; the firm Media Metrics reported that the original show was the most-watched program in the world for five of the last seven years.

Advertisements in a public education campaign by New York City that seeks to reduce teenage pregnancy have drawn mounting criticism, Kate Taylor reports. The ads, which have been placed in bus stands in neighborhoods with high teen pregnancy rates and will soon appear in subway stations, feature sad-looking children alongside slogans like “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.” Planned Parenthood denounced the ads, saying they stigmatized teen parents while ignoring the various factors that contribute to the issue. The mayor’s office responded that it had to send a strong message that teenage pregnancies often have powerfully negative consequences for the child and parent.

American cardinals who will vote in the conclave to elect the next Roman Catholic pope have run into a problem with addressing the media, Rachel Donadio and Laurie Goodstein write. Their American forthrightness conflicts with the Vatican, a secretive Italian institution more known for leaked information than news conferences. The tension is certain to be on the minds of the cardinals who, though they have been told to discredit reports in the media, may well be swayed by what they hear in the news. The College of Cardinals has agreed not to give interviews, even as news continues to leak to Italian outlets.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/the-breakfast-meeting-time-warner-to-spin-off-time-inc-and-facebooks-new-look/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: google, stuart elliott, time inc

Europe Expected to Levy Big Fine Against Microsoft

March 5, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

It would be the first time the European Union has punished a company for neglecting to comply with the terms of an antitrust settlement. Microsoft and European antitrust officials reached a settlement over the browser-access issue in 2009. But last October, the Union’s antitrust chief, Joaquín Almunia, charged Microsoft with failing to live up to its terms.

Mr. Almunia’s office could not be reached, and Microsoft officials declined to comment, although the company has previously emphasized that the failure was a mistake it regretted.

Mr. Alumunia had warned Microsoft last summer that on some occasions its software was still not providing users to the full access to competing Web browser programs, as called for in the 2009 settlement. The company apologized in July, calling it a technical problem of which it had only recently become aware.

In October Mr. Almunia put Microsoft on notice that it must include adequate access to rival browsers in European versions of its next-generation operating system, Windows 8, which was about to go on sale.

The significance of the action expected Wednesday could reach beyond Microsoft. It come as Mr. Almunia’s office is negotiating with Google to try to settle the commission’s concerns about that company’s dominance of the Internet search and advertising markets.

“It’s important for the commission to show it’s serious in this case because this will set a precedent, and because the commission increasingly uses settlements to help reach solutions more quickly especially in the fast-moving technology sector,” said Nicolas Petit, a professor in competition law and economics at the University of Liege in Belgium.

“The commission also has an incentive to slap on a big fine in this case to ensure that companies, which are hard to monitor, get the message that it will be costly down the road if they get caught defying settlement orders,” said Mr. Petit.

In theory, Mr. Almunia can levy a fine totaling up to 10 percent of a company’s global annual l revenue. In Microsoft’s case that could mean a penalty of $7 billion, but analysts say it is highly unlikely to reach that level.

The largest single fine ever levied by the European authorities in an antitrust case was €1.1 billion, or $1.4 billion, in 2009 against Intel for abusing its dominance in the computer chip market. Intel is still appealing that ruling.

Microsoft has paid a long series of fines to European regulators over the past decade.

In 2008, Microsoft was fined nearly €900 million in so-called periodic penalties for defying a decision that regulators had imposed on the company.

In June, the General Court, the second-highest in the Union, handed a small victory to Microsoft by reducing the fine by €39 million to €860 million after finding that the commission had miscalculated the amount.

Microsoft also paid fines of €497 million and €281 million for separate but related offenses, bringing the total to €1.7 billion during its battles so far with European regulators.

Although Microsoft has lodged court appeals in the past against punishment handed down by the commission, it may be reluctant to do so this time to put the previous acrimony to rest as it focuses on its rivalry with Google. Microsoft is among the companies that have complained about Google’s business practices to the commission.

The latest dispute stemmed from the settlement of a case concerning Microsoft’s dominance in Internet browsers — a dominance that the company has relinquished to market forces in recent years.

In Microsoft’s 2009 settlement, the company did not pay a fine but instead committed to installing a system called Browser Choice Screen with Windows. It was intended to offer users alternatives like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox to counter the strength of Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s own browser product. The choice must be offered for five years, according to the agreement.

Millions of European users of the Windows 7 SP1 version of the software may not have been offered a choice of browsers between February 2011 and July 2012, Mr. Almunia said.

The company said it only learned of the error when the commission sent a notification about reports it had received indicating that alternative browsers were not being offered on some personal computers.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/technology/europe-expected-to-levy-big-fine-against-microsoft.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: google, law and economics, technology sector

German Copyright Law Takes Aim at Google Links

March 1, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

As originally proposed by the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel last year, the law was seen as a clear attempt by a European government to force big Internet companies like Google to share some of the billions of euros they earn from the sale of advertising placed alongside the news that Google links to.

But a last-minute change, proposed last week by the Free Democratic Party, the junior partner in Ms. Merkel’s government, allowed for the use of “individual words or the smallest excerpts of text” free, meaning that only those companies who reproduce full texts for commercial use will be required to compensate the news publishers.

The weakened bill passed Germany’s lower house, the Bundestag, 293 to 243. But it will require approval by Germany’s upper house, the Bundesrat, which is controlled by the Social Democrats and the Greens, in the opposition, which have sought to have the bill scrapped altogether.

“No one except for a few big publishers wants this law,” said Tabea Rössner, a member of the Greens and a media expert, in the debate before the vote on Friday. “Certainly no one in the online world.”

Google welcomed the fact that only a weakened version had passed but made clear its opposition to any form of legislation.

The company had bitterly opposed the original proposal and waged a campaign called “Defend Your Net,” both online and through full-page ads in the same publications that would profit from the proposed law, known as an ancillary copyright law because it extends copyright to new areas.

Google argued that the law would impinge on the free flow of information and innovation online.

“As a result of today’s vote, ancillary copyright in its most damaging form has been stopped,” said Ralf Bremer, a spokesman for Google in Germany, who argued that the law was “not necessary because publishers and Internet companies can innovate together, just as Google has done in many other countries.”

Google does not sell advertising on its German news aggregation service, which displays snippets of articles and links to the originating sites. But the company earns billions of euros from advertising on its search engine and other services.

Most German newspaper publishers, on the other hand, generate only minuscule revenue online from advertising or other sources, like so-called pay walls around their content.

Consequently, they welcomed the law, even in its weakened form, as an instrument that would allow them to determine the conditions under which material produced by their journalists and writers could be used by search engines and other third-party aggregators that reproduce their material online.

“With the ancillary copyright law, publishing houses now have a right that other intermediaries have long had,” the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers said.

Members of the European Publishers Council, a lobbying group in Brussels that has been pushing for a fundamental change in the relationship between publishers and Google, also hailed the law as an important step toward recognizing “clearly in copyright law both the value and the cost of investment in professional journalistic content.”

“The E.P.C. believes that this law will help establish a market for aggregator content,” said Angela Mills Wade, the council’s executive director. “New innovative business models can now be built based on legally licensed content.”

But critics contend that a watering-down law not only fails to grant full legal clarity to either of the two sides but also opens the door to long legal disputes over the exact definition of a snippet and how much text can be legally reproduced by the search engines without incurring charges.

“The Bundestag passed a law today that will make neither the publishers, nor the critics nor the general public happy,” the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote in an opinion piece. “Who is helped by a law that does not have any winners, only both sides somehow lose?”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/technology/german-copyright-law-targets-google-links.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: chancellor angela merkel, google, social democrats

German Copyright Law Targets Google Links

March 1, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

As originally proposed by the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel last year, the law was seen as a clear attempt by a European government to force major Internet companies like Google to share some of the billions of euros they earn from the sale of advertising placed alongside the news that Google links to.

But a last-minute change, proposed this past week by the Free Democratic Party, the junior partner in Ms. Merkel’s government, allowed for the use of “individual words or the smallest excerpts of text” free of charge, meaning that only those companies who reproduce full texts for commercial use will be required to compensate the news publishers.

The weakened bill passed Germany’s lower house, the Bundestag, by a vote of 293 to 243. But it will require approval by Germany’s upper house, the Bundesrat, which is controlled by the Social Democrats and the Greens, in the opposition, which have sought to have the bill scrapped altogether.

“No one except for a few big publishers wants this law,” said Tabea Rössner, a member of the Greens and a media expert, during the debate before the vote on Friday. “Certainly no one in the online world.”

Google welcomed the fact that only a weakened version had passed, but made clear its opposition to any form of legislation.

The company had bitterly opposed the original proposal and waged a campaign dubbed “Defend Your Net,” both online and through full-page ads in the very publications that would profit from the proposed law, known as an ancillary copyright law because it extends copyright to new areas.

Google argued that the law would impinge on the free flow of information and innovation online.

Most German newspaper publishers, on the other hand, generate only minuscule revenue online from advertising or other sources, like so-called pay walls around their content.

“With the ancillary copyright law, publishing houses now have a right that other intermediaries have long had,” the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers said.

Members of the European Publishers Council, a lobbying group in Brussels which has been pushing for a fundamental change in the relationship between publishers and Google, also hailed the law as an important step toward recognizing “clearly in copyright law both the value and the cost of investment in professional journalistic content.”

“The E.P.C. believes that this law will help establish a market for aggregator content,” said Angela Mills Wade, the E.P.C.’s executive director. “New innovative business models can now be built based on legally licensed content.”

But critics charge that by watering down the law, it not only fails to grant full legal clarity to either of the two sides, but opens the door to lengthy legal disputes over the exact definition of a snippet and how much text can be legally reproduced by the search engines without incurring charges.

“The Bundestag passed a law today that will make neither the publishers, nor the critics nor the general public happy,” wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung in an opinion piece about the law. “Who is helped by a law that does not have any winners, only both sides somehow lose.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/technology/german-copyright-law-targets-google-links.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: google, google links, tabea

Music Industry Reports a Rise in Sales, Crediting Digital

February 27, 2013 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

The increase, of 0.3 percent, was tiny, and the total revenue, $16.5 billion, was a far cry from the $38 billion that the industry took in at its peak more than a decade ago. Still, even if it is not time for the record companies to party like it’s 1999, the figures, reported Tuesday by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, provide significant encouragement.

“It’s clear that 2012 saw the global recording industry moving onto the road to recovery,” said Frances Moore, chief executive of the federation, which is based in London. “There’s a palpable buzz in the air that I haven’t felt for a long time.”

For years, the music industry’s decline looked terminal, with the record companies seemingly unable to come up with digital business models that could compete with the lure of online piracy. Last year, however, digital sales and other new sources of revenue grew significantly enough to offset the continuing decline in CD sales.

“At the beginning of the digital revolution it was common to say that digital was killing music,” said Edgar Berger, chief executive of the international arm of Sony Music Entertainment. Now, he added, it could be said “that digital is saving music.”

Digital revenue comes in a variety of forms. Sales of downloaded singles and albums, from services like Apple’s iTunes, continue to grow. More promising for the industry, however, are subscription-based offerings, including Spotify, Rhapsody and Muve Music. The number of subscribers to services like these grew by 44 percent last year, to 20 million, the federation said.

Several new entrants are expected soon, including subscription services from Apple and Google, promising additional subscriber fees and licensing revenue for the record companies. Other sources of revenue, including royalties from musical performances and marketing uses of music, have also been growing.

The industry’s state of health remains highly uneven around the world. Over all, eight of the 20 biggest music markets showed growth last year, but in some countries that the industry classifies as “emerging,” like Russia and China, piracy remains endemic and legitimate digital services struggle.

There are also worrying signs in some more developed markets that had previously been relatively robust, like Britain. There, the recent bankruptcy of the leading retail music chain, HMV, has prompted fears about an acceleration of the decline in CD sales.

In the United States, sales slipped slightly last year. But Enders Analysis, a research firm in London, predicted in a separate report published Tuesday that a turnaround there would begin this year, with revenue rising to $5.35 billion from $5.32 billion.

Alice Enders, a senior analyst at the firm, said growth in the coming years was likely to remain slow as CD sales continued to plunge. Still, given that industry executives had grown accustomed to more than a decade of falling revenue, the performance last year was encouraging.

“It’s huge,” she said. “It’s a milestone.”

Even if the music business never bounces back to anything near its former size, it could still return to robust profitability in coming years, Ms. Enders said. That is because the shift to digital delivery of music lowered the record companies’ costs.

Record companies were initially reluctant to embrace digital methods of distribution, seeing only the threat from online piracy, rather than the opportunities of new business models. Over time, digital business models that were initially dismissed — free, advertising-supported music like one of Spotify’s services, for example — were brought back in from the cold.

By last year, according to the industry federation, the music business generated 34 percent of its revenue from digital sources, putting music substantially ahead of other media. In several countries, including the United States, India, Norway and Sweden, digital sales already make up more than half of music revenue.

Now music executives, having been written off as dinosaurs, are finding their skills and knowledge back in demand.

Book publishers in London and New York, for example, have been hiring digital experts away from record companies, analysts say, as they seek to build up their e-book businesses.

Had the music industry been more open to change in 1999, some analysts say they believe, it might not have taken more than a decade to get to this stage.

“If there is a lesson to take away, it is probably that the earlier you can embrace new business models and services, the better,” said Paul Brindley, chief executive of Music Ally, a consulting firm in London. “Whether this is signaling a turnaround that will lead to inexorable growth, who knows? But it does at least signal a bottoming out, with room for growth.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/technology/music-industry-records-first-revenue-increase-since-1999.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: google, international federation of the phonographic industry, rhapsody

Recent News

Partners