We are here!

Google Maps just launched its Street views. Great service. netvibes' offices in San Francisco are at 840, Battery Street. Just click here to get there :-)

PS: No, the guy on the picture ain't me :-))

What future for Yahoo!?

Is the Search engine market share game over?
Many think so.
In April, Google has again gain market share (+1.4%) to be close to 50% (49.6), on the back of Yahoo! losing -0.7% (26.8%) and Live.com -0.6% (10.3%)

So, what would be your advice for Yahoo! moving forward?
Just for sake of ending the never-ending rumors about a Microsoft take over.... to have Microsoft buy them? :-)
Cut exclusive content deal in video streaming and downloading, to preserve juicy ad revenues?
Jump in the Social networking bandwagon to get in a game Google isn't yet and take on MySpace and FaceBook?

What would your advices?

Case study

After the classic strategy dilemma between the razor and the blades, the decent slowdown in airline seats demand presents another interesting marketing case study.

I'm asking for your opinion, and if doable some arguments to sustain it thru commenting this post. Don't be shy, top airlines CEOs are in opposite disagreement about the right solution moving forward. For those curious and French readers, I've asked the same case question on the French version of this blog, Le eMini Blog.

Case study:
In 2006, booming demands for airlines seats had major airlines adding more planes and flights. Recent slowdown in growth has 2 major airlines offering opposing solutions.
> AA says they will increase the number of seats per plane and reduce the number of planes
> Southwest confirmed the additional 4 737s for 2007 and won't change an inch from current plans: same number of planes, flights and seats per plane.

If you were an airline CEO, which strategy would you pick? and why?

King of Thailand stronger than Viacom?

Threatened by another lawsuit, Google has accepted to remove 4 videos from YouTube that Thailand King found offensive.
How do you think this decision will impact their dispute with Viacom?
[very interesting article in NY Times here]

Late April fool?

A California based company, Media Rights Technology (MRT), is going against the biggest giants like Microsoft, Apple, Adobe... because those companies are infringing its rights by... not using its technology. "actively avoiding" is the technical term for this guilty behavior.

And what does MRT do?... Copyright protection!

So, let me picture this:
the accusation to not protect copyright comes from a copyright protection company because they believe not protecting copyrights violates their copyrights. (gee, my head hurts now!)

Marketing coup or bad joke? Would have been funny on April 1st...

[great post on this story here]

Pimp your netvibes

Jealous of Ben Harper, Mandy Moore, Ben Harper because their netvibes looks much more personalized than yours?

That's it now.

You too, pimp your netvibes to the max. As of now, go to "Settings" and follow the "new" signs (or go to the netvibes blog, here)

Even better, you like an image, a photo on the net, you'd like to get a netvibes looking like a theme on MySpace or Twitter? Just select the source of your choice and... voila!

So, go crazy and post your netvibes creation on FlickR, here. Did you know, searching for "netvibes" on FlickR, get you more than 1100 returns already?

Don't be shy. Share your netvibes :-)

iGoogle vs netvibes: Round 1 to netvibes

Interesting article on Web Worker Daily.. today.
iGoogle vs netvibes and... we just won Round 1.

Now, don't be afraid of my biased mind (I'm netvibes COO, heading Netvibes US operations, based in San Francisco) to answer my simple question:

Who should win this match? why?

Ready, Aim...Shoot in comments :-)

The Web 2.0 Trial

So, it seems it is finally going to happen.

Google is calling the bluff on Viacom's $1B claim for copyright infringement and replied with a "see in court" type reaction.

How can the suit not to happen now? it will as both parties seem to be short in option to keep face in what is already the most visible disput of the over bubble era.
Philip Beck of law firm Bartlit Beck, who argued President George W. Bush's side in the Florida vote-counting case following the 2000 election, is one of the attorneys from two outside firms named to represent Google. The Chicago-based attorney also defended Merck in the Vioxx drug case. [all story here]

No doubt that content, and user content will get generated and will get numerous books about it, if not a movie.

This, to me, is definitely the trial of the Web 2.0 that will set the stage for user content generation and how can a user share content across the Internet.
Without sounding too dramatic, shall this trial happen, this might be an inflection point of the Internet...