coondoggie writes to mention that the three largest companies in the billing aggregation market have been hit with a $1.9 million fine in response to the more than $30 million in bogus charges added to consumer’s bills. The ringleader of the scam however, Willoughby Farr of Nationwide Connections, has been hit with $35 million and a lifetime ban. “Today’s settlement would prohibit the companies from misrepresenting that consumers are obligated to pay for telecommunications charges that have not been expressly authorized. It also would be barred from billing or submitting any telecommunications charges for billing on a consumer’s telephone bill unless such charge has been expressly authorized. […] The FTC still has a case pending against other principals in this case: Yaret Garcia, Erika Riaboukha, and Qaadir Kaid. One other defendant Mary Lou Farr, has already settled with the FTC.”

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Filed under: Video, Web services, web 2.0

SXSW 2008: Guy Kawasaki speaks to Download Squad from Download Squad on Vimeo.
We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview Guy Kawasaki about his latest venture, Alltop.com. We wrote about Alltop last month and were really impressed with the service and the interface. Guy goes into more detail about how categories and top sites are chosen, the role Twitter has played in the project and more.

If you want an iPod/iPhone compatible file, click here.

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Filed under: Deals, Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), News Corp’B’ (NWS)

It looks like we’ve now entered the when, not if, stage of Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) acquiring Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and we will soon be saying good-bye to the Yahoo we know for something else.

You’ll find this splattered across the internet today: Microsoft presents its vision of a combined company to Yahoo executives in what appears to be the first meeting since Microsoft made its unsolicited offer for Yahoo, reports The Wall Street Journal [subscription required].

On January 31, 2008, a buyout offer of $44.6 billion was made by the software giant to combine forces with Yahoo!, against the supposedly next evil empire, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Google has stolen Yahoo’s thunder, and try as it might, Yahoo has not been able to get it back. Its stock has stagnated. Even as GOOG shareholders have watched their stock plummet some 40% this year, Google is still the current web star when it comes to search and advertising revenue. Microsoft hopes to steal this mantle by combining MSN with Yahoo.

For two months, Yahoo leadership has been struggling to find a White Knight to rescue it from the clutches of MSFT’s CEO Steve Ballmer. But its alternatives have been dwindling as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NYSE: NWS) turned away.

It looks like this meeting around the watering hole is just Yahoo saying to Microsft, “So what do you boys have in mind?,” which will probably progress into, “I believe we have the ability to hang around with you fellas for a while.”

From my perspective, any deal that ties MSN and Yahoo together will add some value to the internet combination, but it isn’t certain that Yahoo under the wing of Microsoft will not lose some valuable freedom and much of its charm.

I would be much more in favor of Microsoft spinning off its internet assets into a separate company and combining that with Yahoo to create a new web powerhouse. That would pass regulators hurdles more easily and the unit would be free to add still more web properties — perhaps even a MySpace, or dare I say it, perhaps even AOL.

It is hard to know what the end result of Monday’s meeting in terms of deal structure, price, management and timing will bring in the end, but we can be sure Yahoo! and the internet landscape continues to morph anew.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the design and research principal for an architecture & planning firm. He writes Chasing Value and Serious Money columns. Disclosure: I own shares of AOL parent company TWX.

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Filed under: Deals, Competitive strategy, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), News Corp’B’ (NWS)

It looks like we’ve now entered the when, not if, stage of Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) acquiring Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and we will soon be saying good-bye to the Yahoo we know for something else.

You’ll find this splattered across the internet today: Microsoft presents its vision of a combined company to Yahoo executives in what appears to be the first meeting since Microsoft made its unsolicited offer for Yahoo, reports The Wall Street Journal [subscription required].

On January 31, 2008, a buyout offer of $44.6 billion was made by the software giant to combine forces with Yahoo!, against the supposedly next evil empire, Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Google has stolen Yahoo’s thunder, and try as it might, Yahoo has not been able to get it back. Its stock has stagnated. Even as GOOG shareholders have watched their stock plummet some 40% this year, Google is still the current web star when it comes to search and advertising revenue. Microsoft hopes to steal this mantle by combining MSN with Yahoo.

For two months, Yahoo leadership has been struggling to find a White Knight to rescue it from the clutches of MSFT’s CEO Steve Ballmer. But its alternatives have been dwindling as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NYSE: NWS) turned away.

It looks like this meeting around the watering hole is just Yahoo saying to Microsft, “So what do you boys have in mind?,” which will probably progress into, “I believe we can hang around with you fellas for a while.”

From my perspective, any deal that ties MSN and Yahoo together will add some value to the internet combination, but it isn’t certain that Yahoo under the wing of Microsoft won’t lose some valuable freedom and much of its charm.

I would be much more in favor of Microsoft spinning off its world wide web assets into a separate company and combining that with Yahoo to create a new web powerhouse. That would pass regulators hurdles more easily and the unit would be free to add still more web properties — perhaps even a MySpace, or dare I say it, perhaps even AOL.

It is hard to know what the end result of Monday’s meeting in terms of deal structure, price, management and timing will bring in the end, but we have the ability to be sure Yahoo! and the internet landscape continues to morph anew.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the design and research principal for an architecture & planning firm. He writes Chasing Value and Serious Money columns. Disclosure: I own shares of AOL parent company TWX.

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Filed under: Earnings reports, Analyst reports, Forecasts, Bad news, Competitive strategy, Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), Economic data, Recession

There was a lot of car company news recently. Chrysler management elected to close the company for two weeks this summer to save money. Negative comments from Wall Street analysts pushed Ford (NYSE:F) and GM (NYSE:GM) to multi-year lows.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “Auto makers have been expecting a difficult first half in 2008, but new data suggested an even grimmer outlook.” A Lehman Brothers report earlier in the week stated that rising metals costs will add $350 to the expenses of each automobile made this year. Gas prices are keeping buyers out of dealers.

Detroit’s answer to this will be to try to cut costs again. But, that may not be possible. Of course, some jobs can be cut and factories closed, but most of the large savings came with a new UAW contract and huge layoffs and down-sizing that began in 2006.

Both GM and Ford expected 2009 to be the year when they would make money in North America. That is not going to happen. The stocks in both companies trade where they did when there was talk of bankruptcies two years ago. Things could be almost that bad now. GM and Ford may have to raise more money toward the end of this year or beginning of next.

That’ll kill the share prices of both companies for a long, long time.

Douglas McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall Street

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Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999

Open Savings Accounts, Money Market Accounts

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Falstaff writes “Exonerated RIAA defendant Tanya Andersen is expected to refile her malicious prosecution lawsuit against the RIAA this day. The refiling will mark a significant watershed in the RIAA’s fight against P2P users because for the first time, the group’s tactics, secret agreements, and fee splitting with MediaSentry are apt to come to light, thanks to discovery. Andersen’s attorney states he’ll be ‘digging into agreements between the RIAA, RIAA member companies, MediaSentry, and the Settlement Support Sentry. Part of that will involve looking at compensation, like how much MediaSentry gets from each settlement. “I’d love to know what kind of bounty MediaSentry got paid to supply erroneous identities to the RIAA,” Lybeck says.’ The judge has barred further motions to dismiss the complaint, which means the RIAA will have to face the music. ‘Unlike the thousands of lawsuits filed so far, the RIAA does not have the luxury of walking away from this case if there’s a real chance of embarrassing information being released. “Once discovery happens in the cases the RIAA brings, they run,” Lybeck says. “This is our case now, and they can’t run.”‘”

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I don’t believe in imaginary property writes “The flagship physics journal Physical Review Letters doesn’t grant authors to submit material to Wikipedia, or blogs, that is derived from their published work. Recently, the journal withdrew their acceptance of two articles by Jonathan Oppenheim and co-authors because the authors had asked for a rights agreement compatible with Wikipedia and the Quantum Wikipedia. Currently, many scientists ‘routinely do things which violate the transfer of copyright agreement of the journal.’ Thirty-eight physicists have written to the journal requesting changes in their copyright policies, saying ‘It is unreasonable and absolutely at odds with the practice in the field. Scientists want as broad an audience for their papers as possible.’ The protest might be having an effect. The editor-in-chief of the APS journals says the society plans to review its copyright policy at a meeting in May. ‘A group of excellent scientists has asked us to consider revising our copyright, and we take them seriously,’ he states.”

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psycho12345 sends in an article in News.com on a study, sponsored by Verizon and Yale, finding that if P2P software is written more ‘intelligently’ (by localizing requests), the effect of bandwidth hogging is vastly reduced. According to the study, redoing the P2P into what they call P4P can reduce the number of ‘hops’ by an average of 400%. With localized P4P, less of the sharing occurs over large distances, instead making requests of nearby clients (geographically). The NYTimes covers the development from the practical standpoint of Verizon’s agreement with P2P company Pando Networks, which will be involved in distributing NBC TV shows next month. So the network efficiencies will accrue to legal P2P content, not to downloads from The Pirate Bay.

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I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “Wired is reporting that the FBI hid Patriot Act abuses with retroactive and flawed subpoenas, and used them to illegally acquire phone and credit card records. There were at least 11 retroactive, ‘blanket’ subpoenas that were signed by top counter-terrorism officials, some of which sought information the FBI isn’t granted to have. The FBI’s Communication Analysis Unit also had secret contracts with AT&T, Verizon and MCI, and abused National Security Letters by issuing subpoenas based on fake emergencies.”

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