Report: Google Increases U.S. Search Market Share in April

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New York – Google (NASD: GOOG) increased
its share of the U.S.
search market by 2% during the month of April, and now claims 71% of the total
market, according to a report from Hitwise.

Meanwhile, Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) lost 1% of the
search market in March, and now counts 14.66%, and Microsoft’s (NASD: MSFT) Bing lost 2%,
and sits at 9.43%.

IAC’s (NASD: IACI) Ask.com posted a 37% decline in April, and now
represents 2.18% of U.S.
search market share.

 

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/w15nc

Nintendo Reports 18% Drop in Profits as Wii Sales Slow

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Tokyo
– As sales of its Wii console slowed, Nintendo reported an 18% decline in
profits for its fiscal year ended March 31, citing in part a Wii price cut and lackluster
new games.

The company sold 20.5 million Wii consoles worldwide last year, down
from 26 million the previous year; Nintendo now forecasts it will sell 18
million Wii consoles in the current fiscal year.

"This fiscal year,
business performance was negatively impacted by a price reduction on Wii
hardware, fewer strong Wii software titles in the first half and appreciation
of the yen," the company said in a statement.

Nintendo also sold 27.11
million units of its DS handheld game system last year, down from 31.18 million
in the previous year.

The company is expected to introduce a new version, the 3DS, at
the E3 Expo this year.

 

Related Links:
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(AFP)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-20004295-235.html

Digg Lays Off 10% of Staff

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New York
– Digg, the news aggregation and ranking service, has laid off about 10% of its
staff, according to an email sent to employees by CEO Kevin Rose that the
company posted on its blog.

"This is one of the hardest decisions we’ve
had to make recently but we strongly believe that it is the right decision for
the long-term health of the company," Rose wrote.

"In order to
achieve our goals, we are putting more emphasis on the engineering and
development efforts. In fact, we are still hiring for these teams as they are
critical in getting us to where we need to be for the future, for our impending
upcoming redesign and much beyond."

The layoffs come a month after the departure
of Digg CEO Jay Adelson.

 

Related Links:
http://about.digg.com/blog/we-just-sent-following-email-staff

http://snipurl.com/w14h5
(PaidContent)

DormNoise Raises $500,000 for Campus Event Calendars

0

Cranston,
R.I.
– DormNoise, a provider of
online event organizing applications designed for college students, announced
on Thursday that it has raised $500,000 of investment capital from DN Ventures
and Present e-Learning Systems.

Cranston, R.I.-based DormNoise is an
interactive collegiate calendar system that gives students a series of
interconnected personal, student group, and campus-wide calendars to organize
all their events, and lets them sync everything to popular calendar
applications and smartphones.

Prior to this round of funding, DormNoise raised three
rounds of "friends and family" financing that totaled $450,000.

 

Related Links:
http://dormnoise.com

RapidShare

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Google Asks Judge to Declare RapidShare Search Links Legal

1

Los Angeles
– Google (NASD:  GOOG) has asked a federal judge to declare that its search engine does not
infringe copyrights when its search results provide links to copyrighted works
hosted on file-hosting service RapidShare, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The company was sued by independent record label Blue Destiny Records last
year, which claimed that Google — along with Microsoft’s (NASD:  MSFT) Bing — was violating
copyrights by linking to unauthorized content hosted on RapidShare.

While Blue
Destiny withdrew its claims in March, it reserved the right to refile copyright
claims, prompting Google to ask the court for a declaratory judgment in its
favor.

"If Google can win this case and get favorable treatment on appeal,
it could go a long way toward clearing a big chunk of its potential copyright
liability," the article speculated.

 

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/w13pi

(Hollywood Reporter)

AT&T iPhone Exclusive Extended Until 2011

1

New York
– AT&T’s (NYSE: T) exclusive carrier deal with Apple (NASD: AAPL) for the iPhone has been extended
by six months, due to the contract-free data plan offered for the iPad,
Business Insider reported, citing Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall.

While
AT&T’s exclusive on the iPhone was due to expire this summer, it will now
extend until 2011.

The carrier is not making consumers sign up for a contract
for 3G network access on the iPad, which Marshall
correlated to the extra period of iPhone exclusivity granted to AT&T.

 

Related Links:
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(Business Insider)

Will Page of PRS: The State of the Music Industry

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In the video below, Will Page, Chief Economist at PRS (UK) provides a
report on the state of the music industry with many slides and charts.
His presentation, which was given a few weeks ago at Born to be Wide,
Edinburgh, points out that while the major labels continue to see
declining revenue, there are other parts of the industry that are
doing quite well.

Will Page PRS presentation from Andrew Dubber on Vimeo.

Trademark Settlement Gives U.K. Users Gmail.com Addresses

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London – Google (NASD: GOOG) users in the U.K. are now
able to register Gmail.com email addresses, following the settlement of a
trademark lawsuit with British research firm Independent International
Investment Research. To this point, U.K. users of Google’s email service
have been assigned email addresses using the domain googlemail.com.


 

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/w0etd

(Google Gmail blog)