Hypercrit

Michael Becker writes about journalism, new media and digital culture in general.

Category: Internet News

Obama will appoint tech officer to cabinet if elected

Business Week reported on Oct. 19 that, if elected, Barack Obama will likely appoint the first Cabinet-level chief technology officer because he feels the country “is not doing nearly enough to create jobs through technology.” The CTO’s job would be to expand broadband service to even more parts of the U.S., especially rural areas into […]

Government likely to antitrust Google

The Justice Department may sue Google over its upcoming advertising partnership with Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal reports. The department has hired high-profile lawyer Sandford Litvack and has been deposing witnesses and gathering documents about the deal for weeks.
Under the ad partnership, Yahoo would show the valuable Google ads along with its own ads. The prices […]

Google counts a trillion URLs

Google reported today that its Web index now contains a trillion unique URLs. On its blog, Google said that this is more a statistical milestone than anything — the company has no way to visit all trillion sites to see how many of them offer unique content, for example, neither should this be taken as a count […]

Microsoft and Yahoo may yet do business

A new transaction may soon be on the table between Microsoft and Yahoo, one that does not involve Microsoft acquiring all of Yahoo, the companies announced Sunday.
In a written statement, Yahoo said that Microsoft “is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo! at this time.” At the same time, Yahoo is still open […]

Alphabet Soup: CBS buys CNET

The Financial Times (and every other major Web-news outlet) reported today that CBS has bought CNET for $1.8 billion. The move by CBS is one in a string of older media companies, which are slowly losing customers, buying Web portals, which are gaining customers. CNET, whose family of sites includes News.com, claims a monthly audience […]