For more info check out CNBC.

The original lawsuit was rejected, when it was determined that Allen’s action was too vague.  It is based around a number of what Allen believes are infringements, relating to (amongst other things) the way that websites generate “related content”.  An example of this is the way that sites like amazon, will offer you a related purchase, when you buy something.

Google, as well as Google properties such as YouTube and Android, have been specifically names in this suit, causing many to speculate that this is an attack on Microsoft’s closest rivals, rather than being financially motivated.  Allen is already extremely wealthy.

Whatever the motivation, it remains to be seen if the new suit will be more effective than the previous one.  For more depth on this story and a pdf copy of the filing, check out Brier Dudley’s superb post in The Seattle Times.

Following some poorly handled announcements, it seems that Yahoo Buzz and delicious.com are being axed, scaled back or sold (depending on which announcement you heard.)

Bartz was brought in by Yahoo share holders as chief executive and paid $47,000,000 (yes that’s 47 million dollars), in her first year.  Her job was/is to try and transform the ailing giant’s fortunes, however, it’s still unclear what real progress Yahoo is making.  Having sacked hundreds of people and cut back on the number of Internet properties they own, it’s clear that Bartz is seeking to make Yahoo a leaner business.  Is it likely to unseat Google in search or email?  Is it likely to even gain significant ground?

The big question that remains unclear, following the latest round of sackings and cuts is this:

Is Yahoo a sleeping giant, waiting to be brought back from the brink by the brilliance of Bartz, or an ailing giant about to become acquired by a former competitor?

What say you?

Windows Phone 7: Not the game-changer we were promised?

Just a few weeks ago, the tech news jungle was buzzing with reports of a new “game-changing” phone OS.  Then, suddenly, reports started to come out slamming it!  Maybe the strongest post came from InfoWorld, with Windows Phone 7 – Don’t bother with this disaster.  This is to be expected, right?  Even the original iPhone drew some negatives for lack of certain features, like cut-n-paste (remember?).

But now it seems that even the most vocal supporters of Microsoft, like respected Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott, have started preparing us for a far less game-changing OS than we were originally promised.  When people like Thurrott start preparing us to be underwhelmed, I take notice.  He is extremely well connected with Microsoft and is currently writing “Windows Phone Secrets” having been given a device by Microsoft for the book.

I’m guessing here, but I believe Microsoft’s PR people (the worst in the industry) saw all the buzz about how revolutionary the Windows 7 Phone OS would be, and knew they needed to crank it down a bit.  If I am correct, (1st time for everything) this is not a good scenario for any of us!

Why?

Because you don’t have to be a Microsoft fan to want this device to be a success.  When a new OS comes out, which raises the bar, it causes everyone else to up their game.  Look at the speed of the developments to the iPhone OS, since Android started being taken seriously.  Equally, iPhone 4 is causing Android developers to up their game too.  With a new, truly revolutionary OS in the game, iPhone and Android would benefit (as well as Windows users, of course.)

What do you think?  Will Windows Phone 7 fly or flop?

“Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search.” “…It is only half our business; it’s 99.9% of their business. They’ve got to find other things to do.”

Yahoo has often been accused of over diversifying and acquiring dozens of great websites, which often fade into nothing after the acquisition.  This prompted Mike Arrington’s techcrunch to famously proclaim that Yahoo is; “where start-up’s go to die!  Those sites that have managed to survive, like photo sharing site Flickr, have been called out for Yahoo’s failure to brand them as part of Yahoo.

Google: Only known for search?

Carol Bartz’s claims that Google is only known for search, will come as a bit of a surprise to hundreds of millions of Gmail and Google Docs users – As well as those of us using the Google Chrome browser or the Android phone OS, and the dozen or so Google Buzz users (just kidding.)  In fact, Google is more used to being attacked by its rivals for being too diverse!

Yahoo is very successful in some areas, with yahoo.com usually ranked in the top 4 most visited sites in the world.  However, this  latest blast at Google’s business model seems odd to say the very least.  Maybe next time she will be teaching ‘Zuck how to grow Facebook’s user base?

Twitter business model to include advertising?

This got me thinking.  In recent weeks, Twitter has made a number of significant improvements to the functionality of the main Twitter website.  Most recently we saw the addition of the superb Twitter Lists feature, but Twitter are ALSO working on a new retweet feature too.  These improvements have one thing in common; they render web-based apps like Tweetdeck and (my favourite) Seesmic Desktop less and less essential.

Both Tweetdeck & Seesmic Desktop are superb apps, but they are also a lot more resource hungry, than simply using a browser to access the Twitter website. Now that users are able to get all the core functionality direct from Twitter.com, using their favourite lightweight browser – There’s less motivation for NEW Twitter users to bother installing the aforementioned Twitter apps.

The Twitter team are actively, suddenly doing everything they can to make Twitter.com stickier.  Obviously, this keeps MORE new users on Twitter.com.

Here’s why I think these recent moves by Twitter are so interesting, from a business model point of view.

Twitter’s business model puzzle

One of the biggest challenges Twitter has had to deal with, is how to turn the popularity of the service into an effective business model.  A big reason that this has been such a challenge, is that only a small percentage of tweets are sent via Twitter.com.  As a result, Twitter gets just a small percentage of the ‘eyeballs’ it could have; rendering Twitter.com far less attractive for potential advertisers.

I believe the recent introduction of Twitter Lists, project retweet and now the new ‘updates’ feature,  show that Twitter is focusing hard on developing a key part of their business model around advertising on Twitter.com.  As I mentioned some time ago, Twitter users in some Asian countries already see small banner ads on Twitter.com.

Conclusion

Whilst many longer term users will want to stick with their favourite Twitter desktop apps, there’s less and less reason for new desk-based users to want to use them.  This should see a significant increase in the number of people using Twitter.com and as a result, transform the site into a more attractive platform for future advertisers.

Very few users of Twitter are likely to object to ads, particularly if they are somehow targeted around the user’s tweets, so they are relevant.  Maybe Twitter users with an objection, could opt to pay a fee to have these ads removed; like wordpress.com do for their users.

What do you think?

BTW: You can follow me on Twitter here @thetechnewsblog

DSGi, one of the UK’s biggest computer retailers, said that they have had more pre-orders for Windows 7 in the past 3 weeks than they had for Windows Vista in a year!

Windows 7 free upgrade from Vista – The argument

As long time readers will know, I believe Windows 7 should be given to Windows Vista users, as a free upgrade.

Many Windows Vista users feel they were unpaid beta testers and that Microsoft has used their time and their error reporting with Vista, to help them produce Windows 7.  I agree!  In fact, many people have suggested that Windows 7 should have been rolled out as a Service pack for Vista.

These users should either get a free copy of Windows 7 OR AT LEAST a massively discounted copy.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 PR blunder

Microsoft’s latest OS is superb and if you are a Widows user, you will almost certainly love it.  It’s just a pity that Microsoft didn’t use the launch of Windows 7, to win back some good faith from millions of angry Vista users.  These people are now using an inferior OS and have to cough-up if they want to use an OS, which I believe they deserve for free.  I blogged about this here.

What do you think?

Should you have to pay for Windows 7, if you already own Vista?

For blogs like this, that offer full disclosure, this means we finally get a level playing field; at least within the USA.  Readers expect bloggers to be able to run a financially successful blog, they just want sponsor information made available.  Sadly, many bloggers fail to disclose it.

The FTC and Twitter’s Controversial SUL

Will bloggers on this list NOW have to declare it in their Twitter-related posts?
This raises a question about the highly controversial way that Twitter has randomly ‘gifted’ certain bloggers with (literally) hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of traffic, via their Suggested User List or SUL.

I assume this means that blogs like mashable.com, will now have to declare, in each post they write about Twitter, that Twitter gifted them a place on Twitter’s Suggested User List?  After all, in mashable’s case, this gift from Twitter has gained them ONE AND A HALF MILLION new followers since they joined it and (apparently) a huge surge in traffic.

For blogs like mashable, traffic equals money.  This massive increase in traffic dramatically increases their advertising income and as such, is of enormous financial benefit to them.

The irony is that the most trusted bloggers, are those who clearly disclose their advertisers or sponsors.  When Robert Scoble’s blog was sponsored by Seagate, he did not need to include a disclaimer in every post. He simply made it possible for every reader to identify what the business model behind his blog was.  If they were interested, readers could see that the blog’s sponsors was Seagate.  This did not stop the scobleizer blog becoming massively successful or people trusting what Robert wrote.  I don’t always agree with Robert, but I trust him.

Open and honest works great!

Blogging 101 is to give your readers what they want.  When it comes to news related content, people tell us time and time again that what they want is openness.  It really is that simple.

The top 10 countries for broadband quality are:

• South Korea
• Japan
• Hong Kong
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Netherlands
• Singapore
• Luxembourg
• Denmark
• Norway

Those countries are defined as already having broadband coverage that is designed for future needs.

However, outside of that elite group, we find a disappointing picture!  There’s a second group of countries, who have broadband access which, on average, is comfortably able to handle the broadband requirements of today – but not the future.

Here’s the full list of countries in this second group:

• Switzerland
• Czech Republic
• Norway
• United States
• Slovakia
• Portugal
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Hungary
• Russia
• Belgium
• Slovenia
• Taiwan
• Austria
• Hong Kong

Every other country is defined as unable to comfortably meet the requirements of broadband users today or unable to meet their needs at all!  The UK comes an embarrassingly low 25th out of the 66 countries in Cisco’s research.

It’s hard to believe that so few countries have the infrastructure to cope with the needs of high-end web users today or ‘regular’ web users of the near future.  This lack of capability will make it harder for developers to bring us next generation web technologies, because they will lack the market share required to run broadband intensive services.

On behalf of everyone in a country outside of the top list:

Sort the broadband infrastructure out – you backward thinking, regressive, tech-illiterate idiots!

This comes after T-Mobile UK have been locked in talks since July, with the UK’s three biggest mobile phone carriers; O2, Vodafone and Orange.

The new company will have around 38% of the UK phone market’s overall revenues and annual sales of around £8.2bn ($13.5bn.)

Although this deal will be scrutinised by the Office of Fair Trading, the UK has 5 different mobile phone providers and such a merger would be unlikely to be blocked.

O2 is currently the UK’s largest mobile phone company, with around 37% market share.