Google Acquires Video Editing Service For YouTube
TechCrunch
In a rare acquisition, Google's YouTube acquired startup Omnisio, a service that lets users edit videos.
Omnisio lets users extract sections of video clips found on YouTube, Google Video or Blip.tv and then mash them up to form their own embeddable video clips. According to TechCrunch, the all-cash deal is worth $15 million.
Omnisio, which was founded by Australian trio Ryan Junee, Julian Frumar and Simon Ratner, has only been around since March 2008; TechCrunch points out that the sale is another win for owner Y Combinator, which invests small amounts of capital in companies at the idea stage. Reddit, acquired in 2006, TextPayMe, bought by Amazon in 2007, and Auctomatic and Anywhere.FM, acquired earlier this year, are other former Y Combinator companies. - Read the whole story...
Google To Open VC Unit
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is planning to start its own venture capital unit. The venture will be lead by David Drummond, Google's SVP of corporate development and chief legal officer, and William Maris, a 33-year-old former entrepreneur. But details, such as how the group will be structured and what sorts of investments it will pursue, remain murky. In fact, the plans could still fall through.
Google would join such tech and media giants as Intel Corp., Motorola, Comcast, Amazon and Walt Disney in setting up its own formal venture capital arm. Their respective investment records have been spotty at best, in part because corporate venture capital units face different challenges from traditional VCs, which invest in private startups at an early phase in hopes of a big payout when the company is sold or goes public.
Startups, meanwhile, are sometimes wary of taking corporate money because the agreements often come with requirements like a buyout clause if the company becomes successful. These funds also don't usually allow senior employees to invest their own money, whereas VC firms typically do. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, corporate funds' share of the overall VC market fell to 7% in the first half of 2008 from 8.4% in 2007. - Read the whole story...
Google Reveals Search Targeting Practices
The New York Times
We know that Google gathers lots of data about its users, but we've never known how the search giant uses it to filter individual search results. However, earlier this week, the company decided to shine a little light on that process, explaining how it customizes search results in a blog post. In short, Google uses search data to guess where you are and what you're most likely searching for.
Now, a small note in the upper-right-hand corner of the results page will alert users when this is happening. For example, the note could read, "customized for the San Francisco metro area." The text may also provide a link to a page that has additional information. There, Google displays the IP address it used to determine that the search came from San Francisco. It also identifies the search terms it has taken into account to determine this. Not only that, but the page also includes a link to the search results that would have come up if Google hadn't taken into account the user information. This way, Google is allowing people to make choices about how much information to give to Google.
In his report, The New York Times' Saul Hansell applauds Google for taking steps toward helping people understand what the company is doing with their information. That said, it doesn't answer questions about how Google uses this information on its other pages. The disclosure only refers to search results, not advertising, which is the second important area where Google leverages user data. As Hansell says, "I'd like to be able to see what data was used in deciding to show an ad to me and who will get what information if I click on it. Yes, some of this may be seen as "proprietary" information, but to my mind a company that wants to use my "proprietary" history of Web surfing needs to come clean about what it is doing with that data." - Read the whole story...
