Google CFO Reyes to retire by end of year
Google CFO Reyes to retire by end of year
Published in August 28th, 2007
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Reuters - 1 hour 25 minutes ago
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google said on Tuesday that George Reyes plans to retire as chief financial officer by the end of the year, and that the company will begin a search for a replacement.
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Reyes, 53, has served as CFO of Google, the world's leading provider of Web search and online services, since 2002. He helped spearhead the company's initial public offering in August 2004.
A veteran of Silicon Valley high-tech companies, Reyes previously served as interim CFO of optical networking equipment company ONI Systems before it was sold to Ciena in 2002.
For 13 years, he held various financial executive positions at computer maker Sun Microsystems
Reyes serves on the board of directors of two Silicon Valley-based software makers: Symantec and BEA Systems.
(Reporting by Eric Auchard)
European phone companies push ahead on Internet television
Published in August 28th, 2007
BERLIN: Several European phone companies this week plan to announce major expansions of Internet protocol television, or IPTV, led by Deutsche Telekom, which is spending €3 billion and so far has wired 15 million German households, or roughly 4 in 10, for broadband TV.
The moves will put Europe, which some analysts say already leads the globe in Internet TV, further ahead of the United States and Asia in this field. But despite the flurry of interest in digital video, skeptics say that it is not clear that IPTV has a future as a stand-alone business for telephone companies.
With IPTV, subscribers pay a monthly fee of €30 to €60, or $41 to $82, to receive digitized broadcasts sent via the phone companies' networks to their television sets and personal computers. These are part of so-called triple-play TV packages that also typically include flat-rate Internet surfing and domestic, fixed-line voice calls. The TV lineup usually comprises a standard set of 50 broadcast channels plus 60 or more premium channels, some not available elsewhere.
“IPTV's decisive advantage is its ability to link programming with interactive services,” said Timotheus Höttges, a Deutsche Telekom board member with responsibility for IPTV. “Consumer viewing habits as a result are going to fundamentally change.”
Companies like Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia and Vodafone are using the Internationale Funkausstellung, the largest consumer electronics convention in Europe, which opens Friday, to present their IPTV expansions. More than 200,000 people are expected to attend show, which lasts five days.
“Europe is now the most aggressive market for IPTV,” said Steve Rago, an analyst for iSuppli, a research firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, that covered the electronics industry. “Even countries like Lithuania and Slovakia are introducing IPTV.”
About half of the IPTV consumers in Western Europe are in France, according to the consulting firm International Data Corp., which says there are 2.3 million paid subscribers to IPTV in Europe, less than 5 percent of households. By 2011, IDC expects the service to reach about 10 percent of households.
ISuppli estimates that phone operators this year will spend $9 billion globally - $3 billion in Europe - building video-ready VDSL and ADSL2+ broadband networks. VDSL sends data at up to 50 megabits per second and ADSL2+ at 16 megabits. The phone operators, faced with dwindling voice traffic, are looking to IPTV to fill the gap.
“I can't think of a single country in Europe where operators are not introducing IPTV,” said Tiann Schutte, vice president for multimedia at the French company Alcatel-Lucent, a maker of IPTV components. “The marketplace is expected to grow aggressively over the next decade.”
Some experts, however, question whether telephone companies will eventually reap the same payoff as equipment makers from IPTV, which faces a challenge luring TV viewers from established terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasters. The technology, launched in Europe in 2001 by the Italian company FastWeb, began appearing widely in 2004.
In France, four operators - France Télécom, Free, Neuf Cegetel and Telecom Italia's Alice - and two resellers, Darty, a French retailer, and Tele2 of Sweden, are competing for IPTV business. Bouygues Telecom, a unit of Bouygues, is also planning IPTV service. France became the IPTV leader in Europe because the country lacked dominant satellite and cable broadcasters, said Jill Finger Gibson, IDC's research director in London.
Jean-Christophe Dessange, leader of European IPTV development at Cisco, which sells IPTV equipment, said French broadcasters and operators agreed early on a way to split revenue, with telecom operators owning the set-top boxes made by Cisco, Thomson, Philips, Motorola, Alcatel-Lucent and others, and generating revenue from premium channels.
French broadcaster Canal+, however, controls the billing of IPTV customers and derives revenue from its standard package of about 50 channels. Most French triple-play packages of TV, Internet and voice calling begin at €30.
“The French were successful because the broadcasters and operators didn't each demand too big a share of the pie,” Dessange said. “They realized they both had a self-interest in making IPTV work, namely to help them each retain customers and possibly add new ones.”
In Germany, where terrestrial digital and cable broadcasts are available in most households, only 40,000 people currently subscribe to IPTV, according to GFU, organizer of the IFA convention. The technology also faces potential political hurdles. The European Commission is suing the German government, which still owns 31 percent of Deutsche Telekom, for barring competitors from Deutsche Telekom's new VDSL broadband network.
In Britain, satellite broadcaster BSkyB and cable monopoly Virgin Media dominate the pay TV market. BT's IPTV service, BT Vision, began operations in December.
NBC Universal buys 18 Hallmark channels outside the U.S.
Published in August 28th, 2007
LONDON: NBC Universal said Tuesday that it had agreed to buy a group of international pay television outlets, including 18 versions of the Hallmark channel outside the United States, as it moved to increase its exposure to fast-growing TV markets in Asia, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
NBC Universal, which is controlled by General Electric, agreed to buy Sparrowhawk Holdings, which owns the channels, from the private equity firms 3i and Providence Equity Partners, and from David Elstein, a British television executive.
The companies declined to specify a price, though reports in Britain have put it at about £175 million, or $350 million. The investors paid $242 million for the channels two years ago.
Jeff Zucker, chief executive of NBC Universal, has made global expansion a priority as the company tries to catch up internationally with other U.S.-based media conglomerates. With less than 20 percent of its revenue coming from outside the United States, NBC Universal trails Walt Disney, which owns ABC, and News Corp., which owns the Fox network, in developing a global footprint. Zucker has said he wants to generate 30 percent of revenues outside the United States by 2010.
“In isolation, this deal isn't going to get us there,” said Peter Smith, president of NBC Universal International. “We're going to need to do a fair bit more.”
The acquisition of Sparrowhawk, which analysts say has an estimated $200 million in annual revenue, is the first big international acquisition since Smith was named to his post last year. In addition to acquisitions, NBC Universal plans to start new channels and expand existing ones into new markets.
Smith said the international Hallmark channels - the U.S. version is not included in the deal - would complement NBC Universal's existing international channels because their programming was popular with women. Existing NBC Universal channels, including the Sci-Fi channel, are more popular among men.
In addition to the Hallmark channels, Sparrowhawk owns Movies 24, which shows made-for-TV films in Britain. It also plans to start a channel for children called KidsCo in Central and Eastern Europe, and one in Britain called Diva TV that will be aimed at women.
Russian music site says it will reopen
Published in August 28th, 2007
MOSCOW: The owners of the Russian music site AllofMP3.com have announced plans to reopen barely two months after they were forced to close the site amid allegations they were running an illegal online music store.
“The service will be resumed in the foreseeable future,” said a statement on the site Tuesday, inexplicably dated Aug. 31. “We are doing our best at the moment to ensure that all our users can use their accounts, top up balance and order music.”
The site was shut shortly before a July 1 meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in Maine. The timing suggested that the Kremlin was nervous about a U.S. threat to block Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization over its poor protection of intellectual property rights.
A Moscow court this month acquitted AllofMP3.com's former owner, Denis Kvasov, of violating intellectual property laws, citing insufficient evidence. MediaServices, the company that runs AllofMP3.com, said in a statement on the Web site that the court ruling showed AllofMP3.com had not broken the law.
Igor Pozhitkov, the plaintiff in the lawsuit and director of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in Russia, said that assertion was incorrect. “The court's decision was not about the activities of AllofMP3,” but about the activities of its director, Denis Kvasov, Pozhitkov said. “It is erroneous for anyone to interpret the court decision as allowing MediaServices to resume its activities.”
The absence of a court decision banning the Web site has created a legal vacuum that is being exploited by AllofMP3, said Yevgeny Ariyevich, an international partner at Baker & McKenzie specializing in intellectual property law. “The owners obtained a favorable decision and there is yet no verdict forcing them to close the site,” so they can operate, he said,
Pozhitkov countered that law enforcement officials should close the site. A spokeswoman for Maxim Medvedkov, Russia's chief negotiator for WTO accession, agreed. AllofMP3 claimed 5.5 million subscribers and sold songs for 10 to 20 cents each.
Product could heal soil after fires (AP)
Published in August 28th, 2007
GREEN BAY, Wis. - The millions of acres scorched by wildfires and left susceptible to mudslides could be shored up by spreading inexpensive granules that a lawn care entrepreneur says will keep soil in place when the rainy season arrives. ADVERTISEMENT
U.S. Forest Service scientists have been testing a product that bonds the clay inside soil to form a “net” to help vegetation recover. Called PAM-12 and developed by a Green Bay lawn care company called Encap, the product is a synthetic chemical that looks like salt and is wrapped in recycled paper.
Soil scientists have found few other ways to control large-scale erosion after a fire aside from straw, which absorbs and retains moisture like mulch but doesn’t actually strengthen soil.
“The concept of using soil itself to prevent erosion and establish new plant life, it’s exciting,” said Mike Krysiak, president and chief officer of Encap.
Already this year, nearly 7 million acres have burned across the country, and about 40 fires of at least 500 acres each were raging this week, most in Montana and Idaho.
After smoke infiltrates soil, the ground tends to repel water instead of absorb it. So rain stays on the surface and carries away topsoil and nutrients when it cascades downhill.
PAM-12 can help prevent that by causing the dirt to form tiny clumps and opening pores for water to soak into. The result is soil that’s more absorbent and less apt to be washed away, even on slopes as steep as 60 degrees.
“I know from my experience it works under the right conditions,” said Robert Davidson, a soil scientist with the Forest Service in Provo, Utah. “I’m trying to have the Forest Service test it more so it can be recommended as a treatment for post-fire use.”
Davidson is not affiliated with Encap and said he has no financial stake in the company.
In 2006, he decided to test a variety of treatments that were applied to a section of the Uinta National Forest in Utah two years after fire scorched 587 acres. He found that PAM-12 improved soil absorption rates, decreased erosion and stimulated more plant life than other applications, including the standard straw treatment.
While lauding the results, Davidson noted that PAM-12 has only been tested in certain climates with soil compositions likely to bond well with the granules. Calcium-rich soil with a high clay content works best, he noted, but soil chemistry is so variable that it’s hard to know how effective the treatment could be until a post-fire assessment is completed.
PAM-12 costs about half as much as current treatments. Agricultural straw costs about $1,000 per acre, while PAM-12 costs about $500 per acre.
It might be 10 to 15 years before government agencies amass enough research data to advocate Krysiak’s product or others like to treat soil after a fire.
“When there’s an emergency situation, we want to use proven products,” said soil scientist Jeff Bruggink, also of the U.S. Forest Service. “If this is tested and proven in a variety of soil types and climates, we welcome it as another tool in the toolbox.”
Forestry officials say several companies have approached them with comparable soil-treatment products but none has shown similar promise. PAM-12 is based on PAM, or polyacrylamide, a synthetic carbon-based chemical.
Soil scientists say PAM breaks down into organic material and nitrogen within about 12 months and doesn’t pose a toxic threat to people or crops. Farmers and builders have used variations of it for decades to condition soil and prevent erosion, and Krysiak said no health risks have been identified.
The company name Encap stands for “encapsulation,” a nod to the company’s early attempts to wrap seeds in a protective coat of nutrients to improve their chances of taking root. Encap also has a line of consumer products for lawns and gardens, each relying on substances like PAM to make soil more fertile.
Krysiak declined to reveal revenue numbers. But Inc. magazine recently ranked Encap 110th on a list of the top 500 fastest growing private companies in America. To qualify, companies had to have 2003 revenue of at least $200,000 and 2006 revenue of at least $2 million.
Krysiak isn’t shy about his hopes for Encap, which he intends to keep private. He expects it will take about five years before forestry officials begin to use PAM-12 more regularly, and he predicts continued sales growth in the consumer sector.
“If we play our cards right, we could be half a billion dollars (in revenue) in 10 years,” he said.
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Chinese anti-graft game proves popular (AP)
Published in August 28th, 2007
BEIJING - A Chinese government-sponsored online game that allows players to battle corrupt officials and their bikini-clad mistresses has been overwhelmed by user demand, state media reported Tuesday. ADVERTISEMENT
The Ningbo Haishu District Discipline Commission in Zhejiang province launched “Incorruptible Warrior” to show people how to fight corrupt officials, Xinhua News Agency said.
But demand for the game was too great.
“It has been closed so it could be updated as more and more users have registered, overloading the server,” Xinhua quoted an unidentified commission official as saying.
Corruption remains widespread among high-level officials in China, despite public anger and repeated campaigns by the ruling Communist Party to uproot graft.
“The game requires players to learn government anti-corruption measures and to kill corrupt officials while avoiding attacks by their henchmen and mistresses clad in bikinis,” Xinhua said.
The game was released on July 25 and had reportedly attracted more than 10,000 players by Aug. 1. However, the game server could only accommodate 600 players at a time, according to head designer Hua Tong.
“The game is a new method of anti-corruption education,” Hua said.
It is not known when the game would be back online, Xinhua said.
Russian pirate music download site to reopen
Published in August 28th, 2007
Russian pirate music download site to reopen
Reuters - 1 hour 40 minutes ago
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian music download site www.allofmp3.com has said it will resume business soon, after a Moscow court ruled its operation is in accordance with Russian law.
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No music is currently on sale, but a statement on the Web site says business will begin shortly, with enhanced payment procedures and a larger selection of music.
The statement was dated August 31, but did not make clear whether that was when the site would resume business.
Earlier this month the Cheryomushki Court in Moscow ruled that Denis Kvasov, allofmp3's former head, was not guilty of intellectual property theft, and had not violated Russian copyright laws.
Neither Kvasov nor a representative from allofmp3's parent company, Media Services, could be reached for comment.
The U.S. Commerce Department in 2006 called allofmp3 "the world's highest-volume online seller of pirated music", and made its closure a key point in bilateral trade negotiations for Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization.
The site was closed in early July ahead of a summit between the Russian and American presidents, though Internet visitors were directed to a similar Web site where allofmp3 credit could be used to purchase music.
Allofmp3 sold digitally encoded music across a wide range of artists and genres at prices significantly lower than Apple's popular iTunes or the newly legalised version of Napster.
The Russian site also paid no music industry royalties, saying it was in compliance with Russian law by instead paying 15 percent of its profit to a non-commercial partnership that traffics in licensing and payment for digital media.
"We pay royalties to those who sign up with us and ask for them. But none of the majors, among them I mean labels like EMI and Universal, want their money," said Oleg Nezus of the Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems.
"I've been sending them letters since November of 2005, stating there's a dividend. The labels don't respond."
Kvasov and allofmp3 were being sued by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) on behalf of media companies EMI group, NBC Universal and Time Warner Inc. for more than one trillion dollars.
"From a Russian law point of view, these sites aren't legal because they go through pseudo-official licensing agencies and don't have direct agreements with copyright holders," said Igor Pozhitkin, regional representative of the IFPI.
France, Greece get more time in gaming case
Published in August 28th, 2007
France, Greece get more time in gaming case
Reuters - 1 hour 43 minutes ago
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France and Greece have been given two more months to respond to legal steps taken by the European Commission over alleged barriers to foreign gaming firms, the European Union executive said on Tuesday.
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The Commission took France and Sweden to within one step of European Court of Justice action in June when it also gave Greece an initial warning that it too was at risk over its gaming laws.
It gave all three countries two months to respond.
"The deadline for Greece and for France is now 29 October," said Oliver Drewes, a spokesman for the executive's Internal Market Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, on Tuesday.
"We have not seen anything from Sweden so far but they did not ask for an extension so we assume it's on its way," Drewes said.
The situation in France had changed since a court ruling last month was favourable to EU law, Drewes said.
France's top court overturned a ruling that banned a Maltese firm, Zeturf, from offering online horse race betting in France, adding to pressure from Brussels for France to end the state's lucrative monopoly.
The French case will trigger a retrial which could take up to a year to come to court.
Separately, a complaint from La Francaise des Jeux led to the arrest last September of two executives from Austrian online gambling firm Bwin.com during a trip to France.
Drewes said there were good contacts with the Greek authorities.
Greek betting monopoly OPAP is a listed company and one of Europe's biggest betting firms but competition is restricted — even though OPAP competes in neighbouring Cyprus.
Sports betting and gambling is a state-owned monopoly in many EU countries, generating large amounts of revenue for governments but thwarting attempts by private-sector rivals to get a piece of the multi-billion-euro business.
McCreevy has said there was no agreement among EU states to adopt pan-EU rules on gaming due to a wide range of views but he was ready to use his legal powers to stop unjustified restrictions on the free movement of services in the bloc.
