Microsoft announced today that it has agreed to acquire Tellme, a Mountain View, California-based voice search provider. Yesterday, Microsoft and Tellme briefed The Kelsey Group about the pending acquisition. Neither side would disclose the size of the deal, but we have learned from credible sources that it is worth at least US$800 million. This figure …

Simeon Simeonov has a good post on the mysterious and long rumored Google phone, complete with screen shots. No confirmation about whether this is true or not, but Simeon’s blog is a good read.

From Nokia’s 4Q earnings call transcript (courtesy of 123Jump.com):
“Nokia, the maker of mobile phones, reported profit growth of 19% to EUR 1.27 billion from EUR 1.07 billion a year earlier, exceeding analysts’ forecasts. The company shipped 106 million handsets, up 19% sequentially and 26% from a year ago. The estimated market share was 36%, unchanged …

AP reported that Copiepresse, a copyright protection group that represents 17 French and German-language Belgian newspapers, asked Yahoo! to remove links that point to the newspapers’ content. At issue is whether a cached page (a copy of content that is hosted on a search engine’s server) constitutes copyright infringement.
Groklaw’s Sean Daly interviewed Margaret Boribon of …

Nielsen/NetRatings has announced U.S. search share rankings for December 2006. Google Search tops the list with an estimated 3 billion search queries, representing 51 percent of all search queries conducted last month.

The Observer has an interesting story about Hyper-Localism. This idea has several manifestations. In one version a newspaper creates Web content around niche groups like high school football teams or cats in trees and the brave city workers who save them. Another version of hyper-local involves a new print product. Here the idea is to …

The European Interactive Advertising Association released portions of a study showing increases for online conversion rates across several categories. The chart below, part of the release, shows the product categories with the fastest growing “conversion rates” from 2005 to 2006.
The conversion rates in this study are measuring the percentage of people that research online and …

Local.com continues to expand into related local search verticals announcing a partnership with Oodle.com. Strategically, the addition of classified verticals to local search platforms has driven incremental consumer usage as users navigate across the two offerings.
According to Heath Clarke, CEO of Local.com: “Oodle has good breadth and depth of listings across a wide number of …

Bob Smith was the founder of AOL's Digital City, the first nationwide city guide service. Given that ILM is this week in Philadelphia and roughly 10 years have passed since the local Internet city sites started, I thought it would be interesting to get Smith's view on the past, present and future landscape. He will …

Google and Fox Interactive signed a three-year and nine-month agreement worth $900 million, assuming certain traffic levels are achieved. As part of the deal, Google will become the exclusive search and text-based ad partner for Fox Interactive properties including MySpace. Google will power search across the properties. A search tool bar, currently …

Google will start distributing video clips from MTV Networks shows as a source of content and revenues for its video affiliate partners. The deal includes 100 hours of programming, including "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," "SpongeBob SquarePants" and MTV’s Video Music Awards. "The partnership will expand video through Google’s advertising network to a variety …

Taiwan-based Alpha Networks is planning to mass produce a Wi-Fi mobile phone that includes Google Talk functionality. According to Alpha Networks CTO Tim Kang, "In addition to its voice functionality, Alpha Networks’ first Google Talk-enabled WiFi phone will also support Google’s Gmail" and phones will be equiped "with a video communications application." (Source: DigiTimes)

New to the college orientation agenda this year are warnings about the consequences of posting on social networking sites. A few colleges across the country have been telling students that employers are starting to check student profiles. In some instances, disciplinary action has been taken and criminal charges have been filed after students have posted …

Intel is in discussions to build a new broadband network with Woosh Wireless in New Zealand. Recently, Intel invested $A37 million in a Sydney-based wireless company called Unwired. Intel's investments in WiMax networks are part of a larger strategic initiative pushing the wireless broadband standard. Computers that include Intel's WiMax chipsets hit the market in …

Yahoo! and Canaan Partners have invested US$8.6 million in BharatMatrimony, a group of India-based wedding, lifestyle and vertical search sites. This is the first investment in India by both Canaan and Yahoo!. Canaan was an original investor in Match.com in 1995. BharatMatrimony was founded in 1997 and had been self-funded before this …

Páginas Amarelas SA (Yellow Pages) launched a new tourist guide for Portugal in both Portuguese and English. A total of 220,000 copies have been printed of the complimentary guide and distributed to 1,500 distribution outlets. The guide maintains a tourism-related focus and includes maps, tourist locations, restaurants, hotels, car rental and train locations. Telephone numbers …

Jonathan Miller informed employees that AOL will eliminate 5,000 of 19,000 positions, or about 25 percent of its workforce. The reductions will take place over the next six months as the company focuses on advertising instead of dial-up subscriptions. A majority of the reductions will come from operations in Europe, where AOL has been in …

Google has entered an agreement to compensate the Associated Press for stories and photographs. Google suggested that the content will become the basis of a new product that will launch in the next several months. The as-yet-undefined product will complement the popular Google news offering. The Associated Press is a 160-year-old nonprofit news cooperative that …

The upgrade of the popular MSN Spaces, renamed Windows Live Spaces, had a bumpy start. According to the official blog: "We know we disappointed a bunch of you with the issues we had in our rollout last night. There was a period of over 12 hours where Spaces at best were extremely slow to render, …

Revenues increased 7 percent over first-quarter 2006 (or $200,000 better than guidance) to $3.4 million. Local search revenues were $1.7 million for the second quarter, representing growth of 46 percent (or $100,000 better than guidance) versus the previous quarter. The national search distribution network revenues fell to $1.7 million in the second quarter from $2.1 …