The confidentiality inherent in this closed industry kept jealousy at bay, and it no doubt encouraged many executives who were successful to stay with their current employers. You have to wonder if the large sums of money made by a few Dex executives may encourage some telco executives to consider opportunities in top management positions …

I'm in Hotlanta (where there's plenty of evidence of global warming) . . . at the DMA convention on a panel about "marketing to a consumer who is in control." Meanwhile, things keep happening.
Here is today's third-quarter Yahoo! earnings rundown from Reuters' Eric Auchard (Google is up next). Also Yahoo! acquired Whereonearth per John Battelle …

To anyone who hadn't guessed, that's Español for open vs. closed. Here's a fascinating post at SiliconBeat about the brewing debate, ignited in part by the Craigslist objection to Oodle's scraping.
I had a conversation about the whole thing with Healthline's Tony Gentile the other day on why Indeed (jobs aggregator) is OK …

One of the things I've always liked about Yahoo! Maps is the ability to plot a point — say the Hilton Hotel in downtown Atlanta — and then perform category-based local searches in relation to that point. This is the main way I use Yahoo! Maps.
Right now I need to find a place to …

The ever vigilant crew at SiliconBeat has identified another interesting mapping/real estate "mashup" (Google Maps) + meta search. There's a lot happening with maps, and real estate is the leading edge of practical, monetizable apps.
Check out Trulia (proving how hard it is to get good domains these days). And watch for HomePages.com (coming very …

Here's more from the Search Engine Watch blog on Google's bid to provide free Wi-Fi to San Francisco. We've discussed the implications of such a service before. It would allow for super precise location targeting, among other things (e.g., Wi-Fi ubiquity also would promote VoIP).
More details here also.

SiliconBeat thoroughly covers the new launch of this health search engine/destination. Blogger and sometime Kelsey Group conference panelist Tony Gentile disappeared from the radar, and this is where he landed as VP of product.
Vertical search is about niches generally. So is health a niche? Not really. According to the Pew folks, eight in 10 …

This is something of a surprise. But maybe not. More from John Battelle and Search Engine Watch. I'm in a meeting (secretly blogging) and will write more later.

Yellow Brick Road (YBR), the European directories holding company, has come out on top in bidding for Denmark’s TDC Directories, the latest publisher to split off from a parent telecommunications company. The purchase price was 650 million euros.
YBR, itself newly acquired by Australia’s Macquarie Bank, has changed its name to European Directories SA.
The …

Speaking at a recent "investor day" event in Canada, Yellow Pages Group CEO Marc Tellier urged the national government to go easy on the income trust model, which has become a popular tax-advantaged ownership structure in Canada. Tellier is clearly concerned that the government, which is making noise that the trusts cost the treasury, will …

Interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle about how some advertisers and competitors are responding to the growth of companion books. The article suggests SBC’s use of companions as a competitive weapon against its rival Valley Yellow Pages may be working but not without collateral damage. Some advertisers, it says, resent the introduction of another …

At the recent Directory Driven Commerce conference, Ezana Raswork of Canada’s Yellow Pages Group gave a presentation detailing how YPG has phased out the inclusion of paid advertising on its directories’ front covers. Part of the logic is that the front cover is valuable real estate for promoting the directory brand (not the brand of …

Swedish publisher Eniro has been very consistent in pursuing its strategy of shedding assets in small, emerging Eastern European markets so management can focus on making the company the biggest and best publisher in the Nordic markets. To this end, the company recently sold off its Russian operation to a local investor for 5 million …

I'm technically off today. But check out HomePages.com.
It's real-estate mapping and accompanying monetization taken to the "next level," with a great deal of local info built around the map. Unlike mashups such as HousingMaps.com, HomePages has complete MLS information.
There were a couple of bugs for me, but it's a very rich product. We'll …

Here's Yahoo!'s new and improved news search with a dash of blog search. (This is probably not a full-blown Yahoo! blog-search offering.)
In this example for "local search," see the right column. Yahoo is also integrating Flickr content and audio/video results.
While integrating all these different types of content into search results may prove challenging …

A new report from Bank of America Securities (summarized by Editor and Publisher) reflects that national advertisers have not in fact abandoned newspapers and are shifting ad dollars to the Internet more slowly than widely perceived:
The report found that, indeed, more than one-third of ad dollars flowing out of newspapers are moving to the Internet. …

The WSJ and others are reporting that Wednesday Yahoo! and MSN will announce consumer IM "interoperability."
The conventional wisdom being widely repeated is: This now puts pressure on AOL, the IM leader, which has twice the market share of either Yahoo! (No. 2) or MSN (No. 3).
I don't necessarily agree (unless you haven't yet …

Google has introduced tagging (bookmarks) to its personalized/search history functionality, which can also now be added as a content module to the personalized home page (Fusion). This new tagging capability allows users to create a directory of sites, which can also be annotated.
Google explains:
When browsing your Search History, just click the star next …

In September, ConsumerReports.org announced it had passed the 2 millionth subscriber milestone, which is quite impressive considering that consumers still resist paying for content online. CR's online success goes to the power of its trusted brand, its relatively unique content, and some skillful SEO and distribution deals.
However, earlier today I got an email solicitation …

There are some generally interesting, new consumer findings from Yahoo! (reported in MediaPost) about students' and parents' use of and attitudes toward traditional media and the Internet (specifically search engines).
I haven't got lots of time to write about this, but here's the top level . . .
College students rated search engines as the best …