Yahoo and AP Make a New Licensing Deal

Yahoo and AP Make a New Licensing Deal

The Associated Press and Yahoo have come to a new content licensing deal.

The Associated Press has signed a licensing deal with Yahoo Inc. that gives the news cooperative a steady stream of revenue at a time less money is flowing in from newspapers and broadcasters. The announcement by both companies Monday didn’t disclose the financial terms of the agreement, which allows Yahoo to continue posting AP content on its site. The AP says it is still negotiating to renew its online licensing agreements with two other companies with far deeper pockets, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Google stopped posting fresh AP content on its Web site in late December.

Stung by the AP’s first downturn in revenue in years, AP’s management has said the cooperative needs to make more money from the online rights to its stories, photographs and video as more people flock to the Web for information and entertainment. It’s unclear whether the AP achieved its financial objectives in the Yahoo deal.

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., described the AP as an important part of its efforts to keep its nearly 600 million worldwide users informed. “We look forward to continuing our long-standing partnership with AP for many years to come,” the company said in a statement.

The duration of the new contract wasn’t disclosed. Yahoo has been posting AP content on its site since 1998. Its Web site also relies on other services, including AP rival Reuters, as well as reporters that it employs. The formula has worked well for Yahoo, even as it has struggled in other key areas, such as Internet search and social networking. Yahoo pulls in the biggest U.S. Internet audiences in news, sports and finance, according to the research firm comScore Inc.

The not-for-profit AP finds itself at a critical juncture in its 164-year history because the Internet’s popularity is draining advertising revenue from U.S. print publication and broadcasters, which have been the AP’s traditional funding sources and still account for about 40 percent of the cooperative’s revenue combined.

The ad slump’s ripple effects have prompted the AP to reduce its fees from those outlets and cut its payroll costs by about 10 percent. The concessions to newspapers and broadcasters cost the AP $30 million in revenue last year and a projected $45 million this year. The AP’s 2009 financial statement, which hasn’t been released yet, is expected to show a revenue decline of about 6 percent to roughly $700 million.

Besides pumping Internet companies for more money, the AP also wants more cooperation in its effort to ensure its material isn’t appearing on unauthorized sites. As part of its crackdown, the AP is testing a system that tracks where its stories are being read. Yahoo pledged to enforce “the strictest standards” to protect the AP’s content. Leading up to Yahoo agreement, AP CEO Tom Curley said the cooperative was considering whether to separate its online content into different tiers so exclusive stories might cost more than breaking news reports widely available elsewhere on the Web.

The Yahoo deal doesn’t include such a tiering provision, according to a person familiar with the agreement, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure clause in the new contract. In a statement, New York-based AP said Yahoo “has always recognized the value and importance of original, authoritative news. We are pleased Yahoo and AP will continue that valued relationship.”

Yahoo also has formed a business bond with the U.S. newspapers that own the AP. More than 800 U.S. newspapers have joined forces with Yahoo to sell more advertising on their Web sites.

By contrast, many publishers believe Google has profited unfairly from their newspapers by drawing upon snippets of their stories to attract more traffic to its dominant search engine so it can sell more of the ads that generate most of its income. And the AP bickered with the Google over how its stories were summarized for several years before finally striking a licensing agreement in 2006.

Google says it helps drive more traffic to newspaper sites and honors any request from a publisher that doesn’t want to be included in its search engine. The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., has said it believes U.S. law allowed it to excerpt AP stories even before it obtained licensing rights.

Source: digitaltrends.com

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Google executive running for Vermont governor post

Google executive running for Vermont governor post

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt. – Internet search giant Google is based in Silicon Valley, yet it runs its community affairs operation out of a former bread factory in an old New England railroad town, hard by the confluence of the White and Connecticut rivers.

Matt Dunne, 40, the man in charge of Google's efforts to burnish its image in the places where it has offices, keeps up with corporate headquarters through a broadband link from two video screens in the bakery's former walk-in cooler.

Dunne's use of that technology — and the broadband Internet connection supporting it — is an example of what he touts as the key to Vermont's economic future as he campaigns for the 2010 Democratic nomination for governor.

"We need to, and I believe have an opportunity to, go from one of the lowest broadband penetration states in the country to the first state that brings fiber-optic high-speed Internet to every home in the state," Dunne said in an interview. "And that's an incredible opportunity for us to move from a state that's not thought of as being a technological center to being a technological center."

Dunne, who is married and the father of two young children, faces a crowded field of four other Democrats and the incumbent Republican lieutenant governor, Brian Dubie, all vying to replace the retiring Gov. Jim Douglas. Dunne said he hopes his combination of experiences in the public and private sectors will distinguish him. Dunne won the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in 2006, but lost to Dubie.

Eric Davis, a retired Middlebury College political science professor, said he did not see Dunne's Google pedigree being a big factor in the campaign unless the candidate can use his Google contacts to help him build a Web site with new and innovative tools that make it stand out against other campaign Web sites.

A rival was less than impressed.

"I don't seem terribly fazed one way or another by it," said Democratic gubernatorial candidate Sen. Susan Bartlett, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. She noted another candidate, Sen. Peter Shumlin, runs a student travel company.

"I guess you could say Shumlin's a travel executive. What's that got to do with it?" Bartlett asked.

Dunne grew up in nearby Hartland, attended Brown University and won election to the Vermont House at 22. He served four two-year terms there and two in the Senate, where he gained a reputation as a champion of economic development legislation. When Dunne was 29, President Bill Clinton appointed him to head up the AmeriCorps-VISTA program, in which he oversaw the work of 6,000 full-time volunteers. He was reappointed by President George W. Bush and held the job until 2002.

In the private sector, Dunne is the former marketing director for Vermont-based software startup and has worked for Google since 2007.

Deploying broadband and improving cell phone service statewide are keys to other issues on which Dunne is focusing his campaign. He wants to streamline and improve education through greater use of distance learning. Vermont's shrinking school-age population is making it less economical for schools to offer a full range of languages, for example. Dunne envisions a teacher traveling between schools, supplementing face-to-face student interaction with video-based classes.

On energy, Dunne thinks "smart metering," which can tell electric customers moment-to-moment how much power they're using, combined with Vermonters' famed frugality, will enable the state to shave megawatts off its power demand.

But if Dunne's campaign has an overriding issue it is to reverse the demographic trend in which Vermont has the second-fastest aging population in the country and make the state more attractive to young people. And a key to doing that is technology, he said.

"I've heard from business people in the state of Vermont that they have difficulty recruiting engineers, because when they recruit engineers even from the University of Vermont, that engineer finds out that the home they could afford as a first home as a young engineer doesn't have broadband, they go someplace else. When they find out they don't have cell (phone) reception, even at their place of work, they choose to go someplace else."

Davis did say Dunne might be able to make a pitch about using technology to make government operate more efficiently — a goal much talked about recently given that Vermont, like many other states, faces serious budget troubles.

"Many other states allow people to do more things online and present things (on state Web sites) in a more citizen-friendly way than does Vermont," Davis said.

Dunne said he wants to move Vermont's state government to a leadership position in its use of technology. And he said he would try to import some of Google's culture as he does so.

"Google intentionally runs a flat, fast, innovative organization, where people with new ideas to solve problems are celebrated, not shut down," Dunne said. "And that's the kind of approach that we need to take in Vermont if we are going to transform the way that we do government."

Source: Yahoo NEWS

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Yahoo Shutting Down for The Holidays

Yahoo Shutting Down for The Holidays

Most Yahoo employees will be off next week due to mandatory office closings--though they've had since April to figure out what to do.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Yahoo is shutting down everything except for certain "essential functions" during the week between Friday, December 25, and Friday, January 1.

A Yahoo representative confirmed the Journal report Tuesday--however, according to the representative, Yahoo employees were informed of this plan in April, a detail lacking from several reports about the shutdown, although Reuters had pointed it out at the time.

Yahoo has certainly looked to cut costs this year, its first with CEO Carol Bartz and CFO Tim Morse. Layoffs, a search-outsourcing deal with Microsoft, and a reassessment of business priorities were high on the company's to-do list in 2009.

The shutdown, which requires employees to take unpaid leave or vacation days, would be the first ever in Yahoo's history, though other tech companies, notably Hewlett-Packard and Adobe Systems, also shut down for the holidays.

Yahoo will have customer support people working over the break, and it obviously plans to keep its Web site up and running, the representative said. Outside the United States, employees will either have paid time off or unpaid time, depending on local laws.

source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10420320-265.html

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