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BetaNews.Com (11 non lus)

Google addresses its own security bugs in Chrome stable release update

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 11:46pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The stable channel for Google's Chrome Web browser (Chrome 2) has not seen a lot of action in recent weeks, perhaps indicating just how stable it has been. But a pair of exploitable defects that Google's engineers rate as "high" and "critical" have prompted the company to issue an automatic update to its deployed Chrome 2 Web browsers, beginning after midnight last night.
Although code running in Chrome is supposed to be tightly sandboxed, as engineers admitted very early this morning, the possibility existed for a maliciously crafted regular expression (RegEx, used in local searches) to generate a heap overflow, creating a situation where arbitrary code could be executed without the need for privilege. That was the "high" problem, which could lead to the ability to trigger the "critical" problem: An already compromised browser could then be maliciously maneuvered into allocating inordinately colossal memory buffers, thus slowing down the computer (denial of service) and possibly crashing the browser along the way.
Betanews tested the latest version 2.0.172.37 in Windows XP Professional SP3 (which seems to be Chrome's favorite platform of late) to determine any evidence of a performance hit. Benchmarks running regular expression tests did run about 3.4% more slowly on average than for build 2.0.172.33 -- a very acceptable performance hit for added security.
At present, there's no evidence that working exploits of these conditions were ever tested in the field -- they appear to have been just as much news to folks who try cracking browsers, as to anyone else.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Verizon Wireless offers Congress very slightly revised exclusivity terms

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 10:52pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Now that the wireless telecommunications industry is under scrutiny by Congress and the US Department of Justice over handset exclusivity agreements and their effect on the industry, Verizon Wireless has yielded slightly to political pressure and eased up on its exclusivity. We emphasize slightly.
In a letter to congress, Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam said, "Any new exclusively arrangement we enter with handset makers will last no longer than six months -- for all manufacturers and all devices."
So VZW will be letting small wireless carriers have first crack at their handsets after a six-month exclusive period, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal this morning.
But the catch to this concession is that Verizon's definition of "small carriers" means those with 500,000 subscribers or less.
Just to provide a bit of perspective on that number: Most of the United States' Tier 2 wireless network operators -- the smaller, regional ones -- have well over a million subscribers. Leap/cricKet has an estimated 3.84 million, and metroPCS and US Cellular both have more than 6.1 million, even rapidly shrinking nTelos has more than 700,000 subscribers.
In fact, this is the smallest possible compromise Verizon could offer. As Fierce Wireless reported at the beginning of the year, there are only seven wireless networks with fewer than 7 million subscribers but greater than 250,000 in the US.
So the only carriers that will benefit from Verizon's concession are the smallest Tier 3 networks, the MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators) who lease spectrum from the bigger carriers.
McAdam went on to say, "This new approach is fair to all sides." A statement which could indicate that AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile all have roughly the same tiny amount of MVNOs in the below-500,000 subscriber range.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Gun control laws get applied to pre-paid phones

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 6:44pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

"We want a Mexico without fear; we want a free Mexico," President Felipe Calderon said yesterday, regarding the dispatch of more than 5,000 armed servicemen to Michoacan.
The Mexican government is attempting to establish order over a population fraught with organized crime; and while police respond to violence, the government and its law-abiding populace has already begun its response to criminal communications by establishing a nationwide database of prepaid cell phone users.
Similar to the way every gun sold in the US must be registered, so too must every prepaid cell in Mexico. Because of the anonymity and freedom the devices afford, they are frequently used as the central tool in intimidation, extortion, and kidnapping plots and are smuggled into jails to keep imprisoned gang members connected. Kidnapping is pandemic in Mexico, and though many go unregistered with the police, some estimate that more than 70 people are kidnapped in that country every month.
By assigning an identity to prepaid devices, legislators are hoping to see a drop in this sort of criminal activity.
The Federal Telecommunications Act was amended on February 9 this year, adding the clause that all prepaid cell users will be logged in a national register known as RENAUT. There, operators must store all call logs, texts, and voice messages associated with each user for one year. The information in this database will only be made available with a court order in legal proceedings.
[Photo credit: Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press, as posted to the Prison Photography blog on Wordpress.com.]
Since April 10 of this year, all new prepaid phones have had to be registered before they could even be activated. Existing phones must be registered with the RENAUT before April 10, 2010, within one year of the law's enactment. If not registered before April 10, the line will be suspended without liability for the service provider.
The Mexican Federal Telecommunications Commission (Cofetel) said this week that in the three months RENAUT has been in place, it has already collected data on 8.73 million mobile users out of the estimated 76.6 million total.
Users can register via a free text message, directly through their service provider, or through the RENAUT Web site, which demands that the user enter his name, address, and CURP (Clave Unica Registro Poblacion), the national ID number which is used in the same way a Social Security number is used in the United States. This also means if someone loses their prepaid phone, it must be immediately reported to the carrier.
Similar laws are coming into effect elsewhere in the world, such as in Greece, where Minister for Transport and Communications, Evripidis Stylianidis, said anonymous cell use by "drug dealers, immigrant smugglers and blackmailers" is hindering the police. In Greece, anonymous prepaid phones were used in an illegal wiretapping scheme during the 2004 Athens Olympics that targeted the Prime Minister.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Is Google optimizing Chrome 3 for Windows XP netbooks?

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 6:12pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Download Google Chrome 3.0.193.1 for Windows from Fileforum now.
Over the last few weeks, Google has been releasing development builds of its Chrome 3 Web browser in a fast and furious pace. And with each release, the browser has been leaping forward in performance, particularly in Windows XP. With yesterday's release of beta build 3.0.193.1, Chrome 3 has given Betanews reason to suspect that these performance gains are no accident.
But why would Google want to optimize its browser for Windows XP? The reason could lie with netbooks, the arena that Google seeks to invade with its own operating system, perhaps as soon as next year. Google may want to demonstrate its presence on netbooks early, and it might be able to do that by producing the best performing Web browser for netbooks in the interim.
In Betanews tests conducted yesterday, Chrome 3.0.193.1 had gained more than half a point in our performance index over the 3.0.192.1 build we tested just last week, on our physical Windows XP SP3 platform, with a record index score of 18.58. That gain alone is the equivalent of swallowing an extra 57% of the performance of Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista SP2, in just one week's time. This while the latest Chrome 3 build actually lost performance in the Windows 7 Release Candidate.
If Google is optimizing Chrome 3, it's clearly not for Windows 7. In fact, the gains it's making appear to be custom-made for XP. Specifically, Chrome 3's XP performance surged by as much as one-third over its previous build in the areas of Document Object Model management and AJAX handling, AJAX already being one of Google's strengths. There were some tradeoffs, particularly in complex math and page load speed, though they were not enough to offset these other impressive gains.
An updated word about our Windows Web browser test suite
Meanwhile in Windows 7 RC, Chrome 3 slipped from 15.85 in our index to 15.46. In Win7, the losses in math and page load speed did more than offset smaller performance gains in DOM and AJAX. And in Vista SP2, Chrome 3 overcame some earlier performance losses to regain almost a full point of performance, from 12.97 to 13.95.
A performance lead for Chrome on XP netbooks could give Google some early inroads into the netbook market, greasing its path, if you will, for a future Chrome OS onslaught. Windows XP remains the leading operating system on commercial netbooks in recent months, mainly because Vista won't fit; Microsoft promises Windows 7 will make a better fit, but OEMs may wait to see how much of a performance hit they'd have to incur. Although faster than Vista, Win7 remains slower than XP.
While Chrome 3 surges ahead, the Opera 10 Beta is trying to find its way. Yesterday Opera released the second round of its public beta 2, but without the Unite feature that makes browsers into servers. The company is saying it may not be ready for a full public beta round yet, although immediately after the public Beta 2 release, it produced a daily build of Opera 10 (build 1643) with Unite included. That's the version we tested yesterday, but we didn't notice much of a shift in Opera's performance profile: a 5.50 score in Windows 7 RC versus 5.43 for the previous daily build we'd tested.
Finally, after yesterday's early release of Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1, rushed out to address a major vulnerability that was discovered just a few days ago (let's face it people, Bugzilla tracks a zillion bugs, and just because this one was on there since July 9 doesn't mean it was exactly public knowledge), we wondered whether Mozilla had the opportunity to include some tweaks to JavaScript that it had originally planned for the 3.5.1 release.
Its logs say yes, yes, yes, but the performance profile says no, no, no. The new 3.5.1's performance profile is very much on par with the original 3.5, while our tests of earlier daily builds of 3.5.1 show measurable performance gains are still to be realized, particularly in TraceMonkey's handling of arrays in memory. Currently, the final 3.5.1 continues to post a very respectable index score of 9.08 in Windows 7 RC, a little lower than for the previous 3.5 but still sustainable in the wake of a major bug fix. Download Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1 for Windows from Fileforum now.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
New Windows Home Server beta could restore lost backup capability

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 5:04pm CEST par Scott M. Fulton, III

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In Microsoft's history, it was Windows 95 that had finally confirmed for the entire operating system market that Windows had "arrived," cementing its position as the dominant system for well over a decade to come. The place of Windows Home Server in the market Microsoft has been working to create for it, has been far more tenable -- it doesn't really have competition in its category, but Home Server has yet to prove that it has "arrived." That could change with the forthcoming introduction of Power Pack 3, which will incorporate support for Windows 7, and which also may restore some features which loyal users have, to their surprise, found missing in recent versions.
Early this morning, Microsoft announced the forthcoming availability of the first beta of Power Pack 3 for Windows Home Server. Its key feature is the ability to automatically back up the contents of hard drives elsewhere in the home network, using the same disk imaging system created for Windows Server 2008. The company is signing up participants now through Microsoft Connect, though Betanews confirmed Friday morning that the beta download has not yet been posted.
Windows 7 adds the capability for users to gather multiple directories into libraries, especially for networks where pictures and media are stored on multiple systems. Libraries make all these directories' contents addressable from one place, regardless of their location, and it will be one of Win7's key selling points. So Home Server support for libraries is critically necessary; inevitably, users will want a way to back up entire libraries from multiple locations in one place.
"After the Windows Home Server Connector software has been installed on a computer running Windows 7," reads this morning's announcement, "Windows 7 Backup warnings will be suppressed and users will no longer receive a notification to back up their computer."
But Home Server users to this point have been demanding the relative security of their backups, which is why the the sudden retraction of a key feature last year for Power Pack 1 was met with bewilderment. The company had planned to give users an automatic mechanism for backing up their backup databases, especially because the dropping of a single drive from a Home Server array could result in the loss of an entire backup catalog.
Microsoft had released additional documentation in the interim to help WHS users perform the process manually; but then that documentation itself was mysteriously withdrawn. The omission prompted WHS users to figure out a protection method on their own; late last year, one independent user figured out a method with the help of TrueCrypt and RoboCopy. Since then, Power Pack 2 was released last March, but even it didn't solve users' dilemmas.
The elevation of image-based backup to the top of the heap in Power Pack 3's features list is giving users hope that Microsoft may have reinserted the long lost feature, which at one time seemed to be imminent. But neither the installer nor the documentation is available just yet, so users may have to wait awhile for their concerns to be responded to.
One more new feature will come from Windows 7 itself: Its newest release of Windows Media Center, once extenders are installed, will elevate Home Server access to the home menu. There, Media Center users should have access to new Home Server features such as archiving (including transcoding) and restoring recorded TV shows.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Elance data breaches by parties unknown (but possibly Ukranian)

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 3:34pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

A data breach affecting users' contact information has been uncovered at Elance, an online contractor-gig site used by many tech professionals. A notice was sent out to various registered members and reposted to a Trust & Safety page of the site on Thursday.
According to the notice, some of the information in the pilfered data table -- which includes names, phone numbers and the like but not bank information or Social Security numbers -- has turned up on an unrelated site called outsourcingroom.com.
Elance says, "We've engaged with authorities to attempt to shut down a site named Outsourcingroom.com that publically displays some of the stolen information. Recently Outsourcingroom.com went offline, but they have since reappeared and we will continue our pursuit until they stop. We are also attempting to be as forthright as possible with updates."
A WHOIS look at outsourcingroom.com -- it was up when we checked at around 8:30 am EDT, though it fell offline again a few minutes later -- indicates that it's registered to "CyberBionic Systematics," a Ukranian firm, and is apparently hosted in the UK. A few registered users so far are getting unwanted e-mail and even unwanted text messages in the wake of the breach, and Elance cautions potential victims to respond cautiously if at all to unexpected solitications.
Elance says the vulnerability that caused the trouble has been sealed, but in the next few days users may expect to hear more about the problem -- and to get notice from the site that they'll need to choose new, stronger passwords.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
IBM attributes impressive Q2 to margins, margins, margins

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 3:32pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Mark Loughridge on Thursday dispensed with the introductory pleasantries; the IBM CFO dived right into the Q2 earnings per share with his second sentence. Considering how that sentence panned out, analysts probably would have forgiven him for prefacing his prepared statement with booya!
IBM blasted past expectations, delivering earnings of $2.32 per share -- a company-best EPS for a first, second, or third quarter (adjusting for stock splits), and up 35 cents year-over-year. Q2 net income was $3.1 billion, up 12% year-over-year -- impressive considering total revenues were off 13%, or 7% adjusting for currency fluctuations. Public-sector spending was once again the fastest-growing business sector at 7%.
The company's got free cash flow of $3.4 billion and a cash balance of $12.5 billion. Debt levels dropped $1.6 billion over the past two quarters, to $22.8 billion. IBM returned $2.4 billion to shareholders -- $732 million in dividends, $1.7 billion in share repurchases.
In his remarks, Loughridge said it's all about the improvement in company margins, as IBM's decade-long push to drop commodity products in favor of higher-value products pays off with the highest gross margins since 1992. The company's gross profit margin stands at 45.5%, up 2.3 points; of the last 20 quarters, this is the 19th with an increase.
As margins on old-guard IBM products (printers, computers, etc.) declined through the '90s, IBM rethought its approach, says Loughridge. "We exited commoditizing businesses, including HDD's in 2002, PCs in 2005, and printers in 2007, which represent nearly $15 billion of annual revenue. In that same time, we acquired over 100 companies for about $20 billion. This has clearly accelerated our shift to higher value capabilities. This disciplined focus on shifting our business mix, and our business model, has driven this turnaround in margins."
In a prepared statement, CEO Samuel Palmisano (not on the call) looked ahead. "We have continued our strategic investments in Smarter Planet solutions, business analytics and next generation data centers. As a result we are optimistic about how IBM is positioned to make the most of current growth opportunities as well as those that emerge as the economy recovers. We are well ahead of pace for our 2010 roadmap of $10 to $11 per share." For full-year 2009, the company raised its EPS from $9.20 to $9.70.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
What's Now: Society's to blame for the pilfering of Twitter

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 3:29pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Twitter, Google Apps, TechCrunch -- Why can't everyone be to blame for that hack?
The morning after the morning after... • Watching TechCrunch spool out those 300-odd documents lifted from Twitter has been fascinating; the two companies have been talking throughout the process about what is and isn't reasonable to reveal. Very socially-networked of them, as TheNextWeb points out. (Or, says Biz Stone, not.) Now, whom shall we keelhaul for all this?
Writing for PC World, Seth Weintraub blames Google Apps, and he's trailed by a cloud of people blaming cloud computing. Jack Margo at eWeek tried to drag Chrome OS into this. Sam Diaz at ZDNet would like everyone to not start blaming Google or the cloud.
The victim's blaming itself, sort of. InformationWeek's Michael Hickins thinks we should blame TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, arguing that he went too far by publishing the material, and that he should step down. Ryan Tate at Valleywag says Arrington hasn't gone far enough. Lori MacVittie at Web 2.0 Journal blames that pre-Web tech, e-mail (and account self-service options).
Your reporter's suggestion? Blame the person who hacked in and stole the files -- but freakin' fire the nitwit who allegedly made the password "password" -- truly, conduct unbecoming a techie. (Why be crueler to the employee than the hacker? Philosophers and Megadeth fans are directed for further explanation to the tale of the frog and the scorpion.)
Symbian gets in on the mobile-apps fun
Thursday, July 16, 2009 • Why should Apple and Palm and RIM and Nokia and Samsung and... well, it must have looked to Symbian like everyone else really was having all the fun, so it has announced a program to encourage applications development and a more orderly system of distribution. It's actually a middleman project of sorts -- the Symbian Horizon program will evaluate programs offered unto it and decide which are good enough to be offered to existing Symbian apps stores.

Are Microsoft and Yahoo finally on the cusp of an ads deal?
Week of July 20, 2009 • Rumors come and rumors go, but the rumors about an imminent advertising deal between Microsoft and Yahoo were especially thick on the ground Thursday. Neither side's talking to anyone, not even Kara Swisher at All Things D. But various sources (including Swisher) say Microsoft would hand responsibility for the search advertising business to the smaller firm (along with several billion dollars for foster-care expenses). And if this attempt at nuptial bliss fails, as so many have? That's it, forget it, no mas... just as they always say.
R.I.P. Popfly: Not social enough
August 24, 2009 > Back in 2006, Microsoft thought it was on to something with a concept called the mashup -- an online application made up of bits and pieces of other online applications fit to suit one another, whose purpose was...well, a bit of a mashup, for lack of a better word. Perhaps the "community" would come up with a great purpose.
The following year, the company launched Popfly, with the idea of inciting developers to create interesting...things that would be distributed to a multitude of computers using the Silverlight platform (and the Mono platform on Linux). For example, maybe an app could monitor a Twitter feed for things that looked like addresses, and the app could display their location on a map using Virtual Earth. Sounds like a start of something.
What Popfly ended up being notable for was games, making it a Silverlight counterpart to the Flash-based Miniclip.com. Here in one of the more noteworthy efforts of the past few years is the Popfly game "Sarah Palin Moose Hunt," where all the targets are defenseless wildlife, and your choice of weaponry is pretty much infinite. (Kind of an understandable pastime for Microsoft employees.)
But in a sad little announcement yesterday, Microsoft's John Montgomery announced the Popfly service would be shutting down in August, without much explanation. Evidently it was one of those mashups that just could not solidify enough to withstand the current economy.
Friday's tech headlines
The Register
• Is the hardware out to get you? Sadly, it's possible -- as Dan Goodin reports, all these peripherals and gadgets with embedded Web interfaces are insecure as heck. (We're slated to learn more at Black Hat, but this is great reading while we wait.)
• Martin Sutherland, the guy selling data-mining tech to MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, thinks anyone framing the debate over personal data privacy in terms of collections is "immature." Don't just sit there feeling sorry for the Brits on this one; Sutherland's firm, Detica, is looking to get into the US market.
• The state treasurer of Arizona claims that his name magically showed up on the TSA no-fly list after his old boss, Janet Napolitano, took over the agency. Revealing the gentleman's name would deprive Reg writer Austin Modine of a magical moment of snark, so you'll just have to go see for yourself.
TechCrunch (absolutely no Twitter-related content edition)
• Google is promising a "brand new shiny interface" for Google Docs in the near future, and while they prep for launch some features could behave a little strangely. MG Siegler is just positive the timing has nothing to do with Microsoft's Office 2010 plans.
San Jose Mercury News
• Mike Cassidy's column tells the story of HopeLab, a nonprofit tech incubator that hit the big time recently with an invitation to the White House to tell its story. One of the outfit's main product testers took his daddy with him to meet the President -- fair enough, since he's 12.
• The San Mateo Coroner's Office has released its findings concerning the drowning death of Rajeev Motwani, Stanford computer science professor and inspiration to, among many others, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Sadly, alcohol was a contributing factor.
Mashable
• Leah Betancourt from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has a thought-provoking guest editorial on whether crowd-funded news is the future of journalism. (Confidential to N. Mook: The redesign would look dreadful with tip jars. Forget it.)
• Google Health would be pleased to store a copy of your advance directive for you. (Your advance directives, though I'm sure you're smart enough to have made yours out already, are the instructions as to what to do if you're in medical straits such that you can't communicate your wishes re treatment and so forth.) Adam Ostrow wants to know if you'd feel comfortable giving Google that data.
• Spymaster, not content to clutter up Twitter, went live on Facebook last night. Your reporter is hoping for some sort of crossover with the equally ubiquitous Mafia Wars -- and no survivors.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Visto and Research In Motion (finally) lay down their arms

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 3:03pm CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

A patent war that stretched over two continents and over three years is set to conclude this week as Research in Motion, purveyor of the BlackBerry, agreed to settle a long-running case originally filed by Visto, a wireless e-mail firm based in California.
According to a (rather terse) jointly issued press release, "The key terms of the settlement involve RIM receiving a perpetual and fully-paid license on all Visto patents, a transfer of certain Visto intellectual property, a one-time payment by RIM of US $267.5 million, and the parties executing full and final releases in respect of all outstanding worldwide litigation."
Visto has licensing arrangements in place with Vodafone, T-Mobile, and Sprint Nextel Corp. It filed its case against RIM two months after that company settled with NTP Inc, a five-year legal jihad that nearly cut off BlackBerry service in the US. Visto's choice to shop the case to a Texas jurisdiction notorious for extravagant, often fantastical patent-suit awards, as well as the suit it filed against Microsoft five months earlier, led many observers to accuse the firm of troll-like behavior. Subsequent suits and countersuits were filed in California, Canada, and Europe.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Web-based solution for Palm Pre iTunes dilemma

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 1:00pm CEST par Tim Conneally

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Since Apple terminated iTunes' compatibility with the Palm Pre this week, there have been a number of services that have rushed to the forefront to make sure users aren't left with an unsyncable Pre for too long. This morning, Web-based syncing service Dazzboard announced its support for the Pre.
"We feel it is very unfair of Apple to penalize Palm and its growing Pre community, and we hope our free application will provide a solution for users are now left in cold due to Apple's decision," said Dazzboard CEO Tera Salonen.
Dazzboard does not require any desktop application to be installed, but does use a browser plugin which works with IE7, IE8 and Firefox 3.0 in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 RC. The service does not yet support Mac OS.
Dazzboard supports a substantial list of devices, which is not limited to phones, it also includes Mp3 players by Sony, Phillips, Sandisk, and Creative, Digital Cameras, select PNDs by Garmin and TomTom, and the PlayStation Portable.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009
Google reports Q2 profit, says market 'appears to have stabilized'

Publié: juillet 17, 2009, 12:55am CEST par Angela Gunn

By Angela Gunn, Betanews

Admitting after that the fact that "a quarter ago we had no idea where the bottom was," Google said on Thursday that the bottom was apparently a quarter ago. The company reported its lowest ever growth rate for revenues in its recently ended second quarter, expanding just 3% year-over-year.
The company reported revenues of $5.52 billion for the second quarter. Operating income (GAAP) was $1.87 billion, up about $290 million year over year, but representing a larger percentage (34% vs 29%) of revenues compared to the previous year. Net income (again, GAAP) was $1.48 billion compared to $1.25 billion in Q2'08. And EPS was... insert drum roll here... $4.66, compared to $3.92 last year, and about 25 cents/share above analysts' predictions.
CEO Eric Schmidt, CFO Patrick Pichette, SVP for Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg, and President of Global Sales and Business Development Nikesh Arora were all present for the earnings call, which spilled over into a second Q&A phoner later in the afternoon. Most of the questions presented touched on ad sales, which Pichette characterized as improving now that the larger advertisers are edging back into the game. (Business from smaller advertisers, he said, was steady throughout the worst of the downturn.)
The company confirmed that 378 jobs, mainly in the sales and marketing departments, were dropped during the previous quarter; some headcount reductions were expected after the Q1 call in April. (They want you to know they're still hiring, though -- "check the listings!") The company has $19.3 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term marketable securities available, and like many of the larger tech firms right now, Google "expect[s] to continue to make significant capital expenditures."
The company made a point of saying positive things about high-profile, negative-profit YouTube, which Schmidt sayd Thursday "is now on a trajectory that we're very pleased with." Views of ads-supported video have tripled in the past year, according to Rosenberg, and new ad models such as "pre-roll" (a short ad before the video) are on tap. Those changes are mostly slated for professionally shot videos, for quality control and other reasons. (Rosenberg correctly pointed out that most users can easily tell the difference between professionally shot videos and the rest of the YouTube universe.)
And Chrome OS? There were questions, of course, many asking how Google intends to make money from the endeavor. Schmidt said the the world "needs a faster operating system for the same reason it needs a faster browser -- everyone is doing everything on the Web." For now, though, the focus is on getting the OS ready for chipsets -- Rosenberg confirmed that talks are underway concerning both ARM and Intel -- and, as he put it, "building something truly new." As far as specific revenue models connected to the OS, "we won't really know for a year or two."
The market, perhaps distracted by IBM's more surprisingly sunny call held at the same time (1:30 pm PDT), was underwhelmed, with prices trending down in after-hours trading.
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009