The Next Web

Microsoft buys Ciao.com’s mother company, will it plug its products?

Written on August 29, 2008 – 10:46 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

The folks in Redmond have recovered from their unsuccessful attempt to buy Yahoo and are, once again, on a buying spree. Microsoft is about to acquire web-based survey company Greenfield Online for $486 million.

This acquisition gives Microsoft access to Ciao.com, a popular price comparison and consumer reviews site in Europe. Of course this immediately brings up questions about whether Ciao.com’s validity stays in tact. What if Microsoft plugs it Xbox games a little too much in the video games section?

It definitely looks like Microsoft gets particularly excited about Ciao.com, as it will sell of Greenfield Online’s main business, namely the Internet survey solutions, to an unknown buyer. Reuters reports that this part of the company accounts for about 75 percent of Greenfield Online’s overall revenue.

With major companies like Microsoft and Google buying media outlets, the validity of formerly trustworthy tools like search machines and comparisons sites becomes doubtful. I earlier reported about Google ranking its own content higher in the search results (i.e. Knol above Yahoo! Answers), the same might be happening with Ciao.com.

Hopefully, these developments might spur an anti major media company sentiment. While we’ve agreed with multinationals buying news papers (Murdoch et al), it may be easier to develop alternatives to sites like Ciao.com. Will “has no mother company” become a popular marketing slogan?

I hope you like that post!

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google, Knol, Microsoft, video game, World Wide Web, xbox, yahoo, Yahoo Answers

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What is on tonight? Not Joost.com

Written on January 9, 2008 – 9:00 am
Guest blogger, sharing views on The Next Web

Michael Volpi must either have a great plan for innovation this year, or he must be feeling like the walls are closing in.

Joost started the race for Internet TV way before everyone else with a product unlike any other, with the promise of unprecedented flexibility on targeted ads so the advertisers would get the best bang for their buck.

However it seems like way too many people have jumped on the Internet TV space, with many different and innovative approaches.

During the last weeks, I’ve started noticing how some big players are merging with Hulu.com’s embeddable content and how some of them are trying to get into your living room.

Last year I told David Clark, North American VP of Joost at the NY Video Meetup that many people have said that Joost should create a Set-Top Box device, or to partner up with a TV manufacturer and get Joost on the TV, but probably one of the things they’ve not thought about is to port Joost into an Xbox Live downloadable application and make a deal with Microsoft. Of course this was in front of hundreds of people and he just gave me a politically correct answer and went on.

If I could have a chance to talk to Michael Volpi, I’d suggest a couple of crazy ideas, which have been implemented during the past week by no other than Microsoft, Veoh.com, and the Big G. (more…)

Deadpool, gubatron, hulu, joost, Michael Volpi, Microsoft, xbox, youtube

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