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By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday released the agenda and speakers for its upcoming workshop, “From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” The workshop has been organized to consider the emerging issues of an increasingly internet oriented society. As more consumers turn to the internet for news and information, print news organizations have begun to struggle with the declining ad market. Besides the simple economics of the matter, as online news expands many wonder how the two news formats can successfully coexist. “The workshop will consider a wide range of issues,” stated an FTC news release, “including: the economics of journalism in print and online; the wide variety of new business and non-profit models for journalism online; factors relevant to the new economic realities for news organizations, such as behavioral and other targeted online advertising, online news aggregators, and bloggers; and the ways in which the costs of journalism could be reduced without reducing quality. The just-released agenda will feature a diverse group of speakers to discuss these topics. These participants include Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp. and Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post. Other panelists represent groups...

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By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 15, 2009 - The government of the United Kingdom defined the term “carbon neutral” this month after holding a public consultation on the subject. The Department of Energy and Climate Change, which was established in 2008, said that “carbon neutral means that – through a transparent process of calculating emissions, reducing those emissions and offsetting residual emissions – net carbon emissions equal zero.” The term “carbon neutral” has been used by a number of prominent UnitedStates companies – including tech firms such as Yahoo, Google, and Dell -- but what exactly the phrase means has not been clear. The David Suzuki Foundation, for example, holds that “Going carbon neutral is an easy way to take responsibility for the greenhouse gas emissions we create every time we drive our cars, take a plane, or turn on our computers. It's based on the principle that, since climate change is a global problem, an emission reduction made elsewhere has the same positive effect as one made locally. Here's how it works: if you add polluting emissions to the atmosphere, you can effectively subtract them by purchasing 'carbon offsets'.” Yahoo has defined its goal of going...

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By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com

A technology that allows a user to make phone calls using a broadband internet connection instead of an analog phone line could soon become legal in the United Arab Emirates for the first time in years, according to an Arab news web site. International internet-based calls using voice over internet protocol (VoIP) through providers such as Skype and Yahoo have been illegal in the UAE since 2004 and the related Web sites have been blocked, Maktoob.com reported last month. The country’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority has been working on an official proposal governing VoIP for several years. Currently, two domestic telecommunications service providers, Etisalat and Emirates Integrated Telecommunications, have been offering VoIP services within the country. If TRA comes up with a new policy for international calls it will only allow licensed providers to offer the services. That would mean that most likely Etisalat and Emirates Integrated Telecommunications will be the first legal providers of the service. Yahoo announced in August 2009 that it would acquire Maktoob.com, which reported the...

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By Winter Casey, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, November 9, 2009 - While some tech companies have sought to reduce their carbon footprint in the world, a number of them have been reluctant to do this. Instead, they have been buying into environmentally-friendly projects meant to offset their carbon emissions. While technology companies have considered carbon offset projects, such as investing in a forest sequestration project to balance out there carbon emissions, more are opting to place greater emphasis on developing innovative solutions to reduce energy consumption within company walls. But companies such as Google and Dell, who have committed themselves to being “carbon neutral,” say that they have needed the carbon offset projects to meet their goals. Other companies, such as Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo, have moved away from offset investments. Google Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl’s wrote in a blog post in May 2009 that the company has been honoring its 2007 commitment to being “carbon neutral” through calculating its global carbon footprint and purchasing high-quality carbon offsets. “We'll continue to invest in offset projects until we reach carbon neutrality,” read the blog. However, Google’s blog notes that “While offsets with strong additionality can achieve real emissions reductions in unregulated sectors at a relatively...

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Editor’s Note: The following commentary is written by Andrew Feinberg, Deputy Editor, BroadbandCensus.com. The news operations of BroadbandCensus.com strive to produce accurate and objective reporting about the national broadband plan, the broadband stimulus, and wireless broadband. We do run commentaries by outside individuals and entities. Please send them for consideration to commentary@broadbandcensus.com. In this piece, Andrew Feinberg offers his perspective on one of the big news items of the week. The opinions below do not express the company view of either Broadband Census News LLC, or of Broadband Census Data LLC. See below for more information about BroadbandCensus.com.

By Andrew Feinberg, Deputy Editor, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, September 23, 2009 – Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski's announcement of his intention to codify the commission's 2005 Internet Policy Statement into actual, enforceable federal regulations using a valid legal process drew expected reactions from the usual parties. Everybody in this debate means well. I will not suggest evil motives on anyone's part, because my observation as a journalist is that everyone involved in creating and sustaining today's online ecosystem wants it to succeed. But sometimes hyperbole can exceed the reality of the situation. Yesterday, Adam Thierer and Berin Szoka, two senior fellows at the Progress...

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News

By Cassandre Durocher, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, July 15 – After testifying Tuesday morning about their internet advertising agreement in the Senate, Google and Yahoo executives trekked to the other side of the capitol to address concerns of the House Judiciary Committee in the afternoon. Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said that the committee's Task Force on Competition Policy and Antitrust Laws was concerned about competition on the Internet – but he was concerned about the prospect that Microsoft might seek to acquire Yahoo. Addressing a June 12 agreement between Google and Yahoo, in which the top two online search companies announced a collaboration on a range of technologies, Yahoo General Counsel Michael Callahan said it is an opportunity to accelerate competition. The deal is “good for consumers, good for advertisers, and yes, good for Yahoo,” he said. The strictly commercial arrangement is one in which the “two companies ... will remain autonomous and compete aggressively - in search and display advertising, mobile, news, e-mail, finance - you name it,” said Callahan. Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said that there should be no worries, for Yahoo, that the marketplace is competitive, robust and dynamic. Further, web site operators will have “better ad matching technology, potentially increasing the...

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News

By William G. Korver, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, July 15 – Yahoo founder Jerry Yang said that if Yahoo and Google agreed to merge, competition in the search engine industry would cease, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday. Yang made the comments in a meeting with Microsoft executives on June 8, according to Smith, who attending the meeting. Yang’s view was that if Google remained on one pole, and Yahoo and Microsoft were on another, competition in the industry would continue, according to Smith. But With Yahoo and Google aligned in a close business relationship, Smith said, the viability of Microsoft would diminish. The result would be a “monopole,” said Smith. Smith recounted the meeting to a rapt audience as one of the witnesses for the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights hearing on “The Google Yahoo Agreement and the Future of Internet Advertising." After being reminded that he was under oath, Smith, also a senior vice president at the Redmond, Wash., based software giant, adamantly reaffirmed his statement. He said that no single company should control 90 percent of a market owing to an agreement with its largest competitor. Smith said that the government should...

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News

By William G. Korver, Reporter, BroadbandCensus.com

WASHINGTON, June 25 – The congressman who represents the headquarters of telecommunications giant AT&T used a Wednesday subcommittee hearing on the impact of online advertising to raise concerns about the recent agreement between Google and Yahoo! Since "competition is always a good thing," the recent advertising agreement between the world's two largest web sites is a cause for concern, said Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas. Gonzalez made the remarks at a House Small Business Subcommittee on Regulations, Health Care and Trade Hearing, "The Impact of Online Advertising on Small Firms." He is chairman of the subcommittee. The domination of the online advertising industry by one company is never healthy, said Gonzalez. The fact that the two search engines combine to boast almost 80 percent of the total amount of searches on the Internet is a cause of serious concern, said Gonzalez. The Texas Democrat has repeatedly raised anti-competitive concerns about Google, particularly when the web site has pushed for Net Neutrality over the opposition of Bell companies. While some may suggest that "temporary monopolies" are a product of today's rapid changes in technology , the basic principle that competition promotes innovation remains, Gonzalez added. Rob Snell, co-owner of Gun Dog...

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