Kaiyzen Group

The lawyers are out in full effect again.  This time it is not the RIAA bringing the pain its the majors.

Nine major record labels have filed suit against Project Playlist to stop it from keeping a searchable index of songs and allowing consumers to stream music directly from the site.

The lawsuit points out that Project Playlist has begun optimizing its site for mobile devices.  This is definitely a move to push the labels over their edge as they are grappling themselves on how to sustain their businesses in the digital world.

Project Playlist appears to be hosting their servers through hosting provider ServerPowered.net which is located out of Florida.  No hiding in international territories for the Playlist fellows.

I was unfamiliar with Project Playlist before this news but after trying out the site I can see.., and agree.., why the labels are taking action.

The Standish Group has released a report stating that Free Open Source Software is responsible for taking away $60 Billion worth of revenue from proprietary vendors.

The study taking place over the last 5 years claims that approximately 6% of the IT sotware market (estimated to be in the trillions) is eatin up by FOSS.

I am a big fan and user of Open Source software and also work in the industry.  That being said.., I am also a fan and user of proprietary software/vendors.  I look forward to the future when FOSS reaches its saturation point and we can start moving away from the “Us vs. Them” mentality.

The study costs $1,000 so I won’t be reading its details so there are a couple things I am wondering.

One, I wonder if they talk about Commercial Open Source and how much of that estimated $60 Billion was not completely removed but spent with Commercial Open Source vendors.

Secondly.., I wonder what math/logic was put into place to figure out the $60 Billion total.  Did they simply look at the installs of MySQL at an Enterprise and estimate some value between Oracle and SQL server?  If that would be the case these numbers do not carry as much weight.

Anyone who got their hands on the actual study feel free fill me in on the details.

Today was the big day for Yahoo! to report earnings.  Unsuprisingly they reported good results. Press release here.

Everyone was holding their breath waiting for Yahoo! to report lower and emplode…, only strenghthening MS’s stance of not raising their bid.

Revenue saw a 9% increase over Q1 last year totaling $1.818 Billion while gross operating income fell 28% from Q1 last year at $121 Million.

Cash flow got a nice bump with help from a one-time AT&T payment of $350 Million and net income got a lift from Alibaba’s IPO to the tune of $401 Million.

These numbers are making Yang and shareholders happy as they help solidify their stance that MS should increase their offer. I think that it is highly likely that an increase in the bid will come sometime soon. MS does not want to go the route of a hostile takeover.

Let’s sick back and watch the insuing press that comes from these earnings.

Picking things back up after a little posting break, I took the weekend off to relax a bit.  Wrapping things up this week with the beta 1 release for my product so will be getting some postings going again.., lots of doins a happenin.

The deadline has come and gone for organizations to leave their comments on the suggested behavioral targeting guidlines put forth by the FTC.

The two key areas that the FTC seems to be most concerned about are disclosure on websites that conduct data collection on their consumers (so every site pretty much), as well at the data retention policies of such sites.

This was a nice follow up to the Ehavioral Event that I attended in D.C. late last year.

Although I am not the biggest believer in regulation the online ad space is somewhere we really need the gov’t to pay more and more attention to.  With the privacy implications and potential market share questions that are rearing their head it is better they start to be involved in this type of active dialouge with companies now rather than later.

Just this past week amidst all of the Yahoo!/MS hoopla Yahoo! announced that they are looking to experiment by giving Google around 3% of their search inventory for about a two/three week period.  It took less than 24 hrs for MS to responsd citing potential hazards by allowing Google to get their hands on 90% of the search ad market.  The following day congressman John Conyers released an announcement calling for need to hold a hearing on the state of competition on the internet and online advertising.

Heading out shortly for the night and came across this Wall St Journal posting talking about Yahoo!’s largest shareholder drastically increasing their ownership in the company to almost twice its existing amount.

Capital Research & Management Co disclosed in a quarterly reporting that their 5.2% stake in the internet giant has been increased to 10.1% as of March 31st.

What is unclear is whether this ownership increase ocurred before or after the MS bid.

Supposedly in the Friday’s meeting the Yahoo! board decided that they will start having more formalized talks with AOL next week and continue their talks with MS as well.  These will no doubt mostly be to try and bait the bit up a bit.

Countdown to Yahoo!’s earnings is ten days away on the 22nd of April.  MS’s earnings will come out two days after Yahoo!’s.., a nice deal for them as I can see this being the dagger in the heart of Yang that they need to not raise their bid.  If Yahoo! slips in their earnings their stock will most likely take a good sized hit, and if MS can follow up with a stellar quarter they could receive a nice bump in their stock price thus naturally increasing the value of their bid through the two companies stock prices.  Currently the value of the original bid is down to $29.34/share at thursdays closing price from the original $31/share.

Barron’s Tech Trader Daily has a post regarding alternatives to the Yahoo! purchase suggesting they look to purchase AOL from Time Warner or perhaps MySpace.

Interesting.., yes.., a bit rediculous.., YES.  With their huge investment in Facebook MS has solidified itself in a position where it can supply the site with its display ads and take advantage of their gigantic inventory.  Also don’t forget that Google has their large deal with FIM for serving ads/search on MySpace as well as their 5% stake they tool in AOL when their re-upped their search deal with them.

Were u thinking you could make it a day w/o an update on this?  I think not!

WSJ is reporting that some shite is going down tommorrow with Yahoo!’s board as they scramble to contemplate the other alternatives to being swallowed by MS.

According to the WSJ news things will come to a head next week and insiders on both sides are thinking it will be MS by itself.., and of course.., that raising their offer will speed things up.

With Bill getting ready to psuedo step down, just think of this as his last meal.