Archive for August, 2009

A new report on consumer satisfaction with search engines and Internet portals says we like them more they now than this time last year. Of the major engines, only last-place AOL improved its score. The big winner? “All others.”

The American Consumer Satisfaction Index compares customer satisfaction among and across a number of companies and e-business and other sectors. It was released earlier today.

In the quarterly rankings, conducted since 2000, all the major search engines/portals have improved their scores over time, with only Ask.com and AOL now below their highest historic rankings.

Overall, Google leads the pack, with an 86 percent satisfaction rating, the same as last year. Ranked number 2 is “all others” with 78 percent, up 2.6 percent from a year ago. AOL improved by 1.4 percent to a 70 percent satisfaction rating. (See chart for details).

The survey was conducted before the announcement of Microsoft’s Bing search engine as well as the deal that replaces Yahoo search with Bing.

Among the industries surveyed, Internet Portals & Search Engines did quite well, with an overall 83 percent satisfaction rate, up 3.8 percent from last year, based on the strong showing by “all others” and the 1.4 percent improvement by AOL.

Internet News and Information ranked 71.5 percent overall satisfaction. Only USA Today showed improvement, up 1.4 percent to 74 precent. The category leader was “all others” at 75 percent. That left the New York Times, MSNBC, and ABCNews sites all showing significant decreases in consumer satisfaction over the past 12 months.

Comparing tech to other industries: Automobiles received an 84 percent satisfaction rating; Electronics (TV/DVD/VCR) 83 percent; and Major Appliances, 81 percent.

Source:

• PC World

A Novato man accused of ramming an ice cream truck in a freeway robbery attempt could face up to five years in prison under charges filed Thursday, while a second suspect was released without charges.

Joseph Victor Denatale-Watson, 24, was arraigned on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, attempted robbery, reckless driving and hit-and-run driving, said Deputy District Attorney Linda Witong.

Denatale-Watson’s bail was set at $250,000. A plea hearing is pending.

The alleged robbery attempt occurred Tuesday night on Highway 37 near the Petaluma River Bridge, when a self-employed ice cream vendor was driving his 1973 Chevy truck on eastbound Highway 37.

Police said a group of men in a green Mercury Sable approached and rammed the ice cream truck three times, spinning it out and bringing it to a halt.One witness, who declined to be named, said an occupant of the Mercury videotaped the event, and another occupant threw a bottle of beer at the ice cream truck.

After the vehicles pulled to the highway shoulder, several men emerged from the Sable and demanded money from the ice cream vendor, witnesses told the California Highway Patrol. But the bandits fled when a witness stopped and told them police had been notified and were on the way, the CHP said.

Late that night, Novato police stopped a green Mercury Sable to investigate whether the driver was intoxicated. When police checked the Mercury’s license plate number with dispatchers, it matched the suspect vehicle in the Highway 37 incident.

Denatale-Watson was arrested at the scene, as was a passenger, 18-year-old Shane Evan Maynard of Novato. The ice cream vendor identified the men as two of the three suspects who attacked him, the CHP said.

On Thursday, Maynard was released without charges after additional investigation established he did not participate in the attack, according to the district attorney’s office.

The ice cream vendor was not injured in the incident.

Source:

• Marin IJ

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Microsoft uses Marksmen to acquire Office.com.

Microsoft has acquired the domain name Office.com, but the software company appears to have taken a slightly different tact in acquiring it than it has in the past.

As I wrote after Microsoft acquired CashPerks.com and CashBack.com, the company typically uses a broker to acquire domain names. This is smart; if the seller knows Microsoft wants the domain then the price goes up.

But in previous acquisitions the acquirer didn’t identify themselves as a professional broker, or at least used a non-commercial email address such as a Gmail to transfer the domain name. This time whois records show the firm used Marksmen, an intellectual property acquisition firm. (If it used them in the past, that wasn’t evident in whois.)

Marksmen’s web site states:

Intellectual Property Acquisitions
How does an 800-pound gorilla buy a domain name? Dials Marksmen, of course. With more than 7000 successful domain name buys and other intellectual property acquisitions, including some of the best known brands on the planet, we are the go-to firm for worldwide IP owners who want to keep their identity and costs on the down low.

It may have been obvious to the owner that Microsoft was trying to buy the domain name, so using a go-between may have been for purposes other than trying to keep the purchase anonymous.

I met a representative of Marksmen at a domain conference in Seattle several years ago, but they are generally quiet in the industry. The company has offices in Los Angeles and North Carolina.

Source:

• Domain Name Wire

LegitScript, an online pharmacy verification service, and KnujOn, an Internet compliance company, have released a report analyzing Microsoft’s sponsored search results for Internet pharmacies displayed on bing.com. The report indicates that 89.7% of the Microsoft Internet pharmacy advertisements reviewed by the authors were fake or illegal Internet pharmacies.

Most of the Internet pharmacy advertisements analyzed in the report did not require a valid prescription. The authors were able to order a prescription-only muscle relaxant from a Microsoft-sponsored Internet pharmacy advertisement without any prescription.

Also, the authors ordered another prescription drug from a Microsoft-sponsored advertisement that tested positive as counterfeit.

Search engine advertising programs allow website owners to purchase visibility on the first few pages of search results, where online ads are listed as “sponsored sites.” Because Microsoft receives revenue when an Internet user clicks on a bing.com advertisement, it is generally accepted that online ads should not facilitate unlawful activity.

LegitScript President John Horton said, “We were able to purchase potentially addictive drugs without a prescription or any age verification via bing.com ads. We also received counterfeit medication. Microsoft profits from these illegal ads, which put Internet users at risk.”

The study also found disclosure gaps in bing.com’s advertising program, showing how an advertisement that appears to have been placed by a legitimate pharmacy links instead to a “rogue” online pharmacy.

“We urge Microsoft to fix this problem,” Horton and Bruen stated. “By continuing to allow these advertisements, Microsoft is facilitating prescription drug abuse and the proliferation of counterfeit drugs, both of which put our most vulnerable citizens at risk.”

The full report is available here.

Source:

• Net Security

Internet auction house eBay made a worrying admission late last week – not only did it pay almost $1bn too much for online telephony darling Skype, it also failed to secure rights to the VoIP firm’s underlying technology.

In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late last week, eBay warned that Skype depends on key technology that is licensed from third parties. The third party in this case is Sweden-based Joltid, a peer to peer technology firm run by none other than Skype’s founders and ex-owners Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis.

The technology in question, which eBay licenses from Joltid, affects Skype’s underlying peer to peer architecture and firewall traversal technology and the video compression/decompression. “Although Skype has contracts in place with its third-party technology providers, there can be no assurance that the licensed technology or other technology that we may seek to license in the future will continue to be available on commercially reasonable terms, or at all,” eBay said.

“The loss of, or inability to maintain, existing licenses could result in a decrease in service quality or loss of service until equivalent technology or suitable alternatives can be developed, identified, licensed and integrated,” the company continued.

In its filing, eBay said that Skype is developing its own alternatives to the technology it licenses from Joltid. However, the company admitted it faces technical challenges and future technology may not be backward compatible.

eBay’s concern seems to stem from a court filing in March, 2009, in which Skype and Joltid came to legal blows over the technology licensing terms. Joltid argues that because Skype does not own the underlying code for its product, it has violated the licence terms by disclosing such code in other US-based patent cases. As a result, Joltid is threatening to terminate the agreement with Skype. A trial is currently scheduled for June 2010, but eBay warns that it might have to radically change or even shutdown Skype if it loses a case against Joltid and has no other alternative.

As if that wasn’t enough to worry about, the company also expressed concerns about the net neutrality debate, and operators considering charging Skype to carry its traffic over the internet.

In late 2007, Zennstrom stepped down as CEO of Skype, just as eBay wrote down the value of the Skype acquisition, admitting that it paid almost $1bn too much for the company in 2005, when it shelled out $2.6bn.

In April, eBay announced that it plans to separate Skype from the parent company via an IPO in the first half of 2010.

Skype claimed over 480 million users at the end of June.

Source:

• Telcoms