If you follow AllThingsD, and Weekend Update hopes you do, then one thing you’ve come to value is the special way the staff gets around the world to cover the important stuff and report it straight from the geek’s mouth. This week our bicoastal brigade brought the tech news as it happened, and in Boomtown’s case, from 30,000 feet.
The fight for Skype has ended. After weeks of nasty legal sparring, the Internet telephony service’s founders agreed to join the investor group purchasing it from EBay and dropped the lawsuit that had threatened to bollocks the deal.
Though eBay reported a 29 percent drop in profit for its third quarter Wednesday, the company did deliver revenue that was reasonably higher than Wall Street’s expectations. Not that it mattered much. Investors took eBay out to the woodshed anyway, beating its shares down seven percent in after-hours trading.
Three years after squeezing a settlement out of Microsoft for alleged infringements of its controversial patent on embedded Web applications, Eolas Technologies hopes to do the same to a bunch of other big tech outfits. This morning, the research and development company filed suit against nearly two dozen companies, including Amazon, Apple, Adobe and Google.
Silicon Valley luminary and Golden Geek cover model Marc Andreessen is adding another gig to his CV: Hewlett-Packard director. Andreessen, who sold his software company, Opsware, to HP two years ago for $1.6 billion, will begin serving on the board immediately, bringing its total number of directors to 11.
EBay’s plan to sell a 65 percent stake in Skype to a group of private investors is going to be a bit more difficult to pull off than expected. This afternoon, Joltid, a company owned by Skype’s founders, filed a copyright suit against eBay and the consortium of investors that just paid $1.9 billion for a majority interest in it.
August has been a lucrative month for the Wikimedia Foundation. Last week, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia received a $500,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Now it has been given a $2 million grant from the Omidyar Network.
What a costly blunder Skype has proven to be for eBay. A $2.6 billion purchase price. A $1.4 billion asset impairment charge. Missed financial targets. And now this: eBay’s plans to spin off Skype next year are being threatened by a legal dispute over the telephony service’s underlying technology.
If eBay shares were to be listed among the company’s other auctions, buyer feedback would more likely be negative than not. Hurt by the souring economy and increased competition, eBay reported its third consecutive earnings decline Wednesday.
Yahoo announced some updates to its homepages today–mobile and Web both. Designed to make them more personally relevant to their users, the pages are more customizable than they’ve been before. The release in full, after the jump.
This Weekend Update is particularly exciting because of all the things happening here at All Things Digital. There is, of course, the upcoming D7 Conference, which promises to be more tech-extravaganza fun than a tweet from @sockington (if only half as cute), but this past week has also seen the launch of our very own iPhone app, meaning that ATD has gone mobile–smart news for your smartphone (we’re still working out potential taglines).
Cosmetics giant L’Oréal is 0-5 in its legal cases against eBay over the counterfeit perfumes and face creams listed on the auction site. Today the High Court in London ruled that eBay was “not jointly liable” for trademark infringements committed by its users, though it could do more to prevent them.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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