Report: Google And Microsoft About To Bid On Digg
March 8, 2008
According Michael Arrington’s super-secret sources, Digg is about to be courted by both Google and Microsoft.
And the TechCrunch founder says it won’t come cheap. According to the unnamed source, Digg was floating around a price tag of $300 million to sell previously, but is willing to take less.
Supposedly Google is willing to bid between $200-$225 million, and Arrington’s source that would be acceptable to Digg.
Microsoft’s offer will reportedly be a chunk less than that, but it only makes sense. After all, much of the website’s revenue comes from a substantial three year deal that was made with Microsoft last July.
It’s expected that the terms of the sale would give Microsoft an option to bail out of the current deal.
Naturally, if Google were to bid on the big kahunu and win, it’s most likely we’d be seeing Adsense on the site in no time flat.
Microsoft Does 180 On Internet Explorer 8 Default Standards
March 4, 2008
It looks like Microsoft has changed their position on the default settings of the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 after receiving massive criticism from the design community.
At first, Microsoft’s gameplan was to make IE 7 compatible behavior as the default setting for IE 8. But Ray Ozzie, chief software architect for Microsoft, said that’s no longer the strategy.
“We have now decided to make our most current standards-based mode the default in IE 8,” he said.
The new browser will still have three different configuration modes altogether – the “super standards” mode, which is now the default. Next is the an IE7 standards mode, which will act like the current browser. And last is IE6’s “standards mode” which is not expected to get much use at all.
Ozzie said the decision would result in “concrete benefit to Web designers if all vendors give priority to interoperability commonly accepted standards as they evolve.”
Baidu Sued Once Again By Music Industry
March 3, 2008
Baidu, the largest search engine in China, is once again in trouble with the music industry.
The search engine apparently gets substantial traffic because of a service that links to MP3s, with quite a few being of the not kosher variety.
Now the Music Copyright Society of China has sued the search engine, alleging that it provided “music listening, broadcasting and downloading services in various forms on its website without approval, and through unfettered piracy, earning huge advertising revenue on its huge number of hits.”
AP is reporting that the suit was filed in in a Beijing court in January and that the Society is demanding compensation for what it claims is 50 songs used illegally.
Baidu had been sued previously by the The International Federation of Phonographic Industries, which also had problems with the site linking to illegal music.