Yahoo CEOs Daughter Tells Guard To Google Her

Now it's rather ironic when Yahoo CEOs daughter says "Google me, you dumb f**k!" Not just because it's very rude and unkind, it's also promoting the competition. It's unfortunate that Courtenay Temel had to be in the drunken state to have blurted out those words. Ending up in this rather messy lawsuit.

Isn't Yahoo already in enough trouble as it is? Last October 30, Jaroslaw Jarczok claims he was working security last August at 4 in the morning at PureNightclub when Courtenay was "quite intoxicated due to alcohol and/or chemical or other substances."

Apparently it got out of hand because Terry Semel's daughter was eventually handcuffed to which she said, "Do you even know who I am, f**king idiot?...Google me, you dumb f**k."

And that will go down in history as one of the worst things she could have said, ruining not only herself but her dad as well. Haven't heard about Semel as Yahoo's CEO in business terms, it's such a shame his name is dragged in mud as a result of his daughter's drunken escapade.

Google Getting Sued Again! This Time By Viacom Bec Of Piracy Issues On Youtube

There have been just articles upon articles on privacy issues for online use. And I agree that is imperative that people be able to retain online privacy at some point. Companies like Google though make a living out of collecting personal information from users. This allows them to profile clients, enhance advertising and improve the user experience online.

But in cases like this when Viacom sues them, that information also becomes a threat. After illegally posted clips of "The Colbert Report' was posted on Youtube, Viacom cried foul and demanded to know who was doing this.

This then started the avalanche of online piracy and online privacy nightmares for everyone concerned. The judge just ruled that Google would have to turn over user information for Youtube, and although I don't think it's really a big deal as long as they find the culprit and put the case to rest just so we can all go on with our lives, it's still sensitive that this amount of powerful data can fall indeed be transferred and can indeed fall into the wrong hands.

At this point though, Google and Viacom have come out publicly to say that they will do everything they can to retain people's anonymity. Yeah right!

Yahoo Dumped Microsoft Buy-out For Google Non-Exclusive Partnership. Has the Courtship Ended? Or is it just beginning?

Yahoo has finally made their call. They have finally said "NO" to Microsoft. Yes Microsoft got dumped. Yahoo didn't want a buy-out or maybe they did, but they just didn't think Microsoft's offer was good enough.

What they have done instead is partnered with Google. They have ceded their search capacity to Google. So right now, the ads that will come out on Yahoo are essentially Google ads. That's what it means.

The business strategy here being that revenues could potentially increase for Yahoo search. However the flip-side is that this gives Google even more power in the market. It's now closing into monopoly if I may say so myself as Google supplies other smaller search engines like Ask.com

CNet reports that Yahoo expects the revenue to help the company invest in its dual-pronged advertising strategy that's designed to offer advertisers an easy ability to buy text ads on search results and to buy graphical "display" ads elsewhere on Yahoo's considerable Internet properties.

"This agreement provides a source of funds to both deliver financial value to stockholders from search monetization and to invest in our broader strategy to transform display advertising and advance our starting-point objectives with users," Yahoo President Sue Decker said in a statement. "It enhances competition by promoting our ability to compete in the marketplace where we are especially well-positioned: in the convergence of search and display."

Under the deal, Yahoo will select the search terms for which Google will supply ads, the companies said. The ads will be displayed in the United States and Canada, and Decker took pains to say how Yahoo controls which Google results are displayed and when.

Yahoo's search ad engine, Panama, is competitive with Google's for many popular queries, but Yahoo plans to use Google with less common searches, Decker said. "Yahoo monetizes very competitively with Google for query ads but is not as competitive in the tail," she said, referring to the long statistical tail consisting of a large number of infrequent searches.

Google Takes Top Online Property Position For The First Time With Barely 1 Million Visitors Over Yahoo

Wow I always thought Yahoo had the edge in terms on online property, but recent study has shown that Google was victorious this month in routing visitors to their sites.



For more details on this web ranking report - visit Marketing Charts

The World's Number 1 Brand Goes To Google. Big Surprise... Not!

Companies in the industry of technology are growing ever more powerful and do not seem daunted by the mounting pressures of the stock market. Do you know why? Let me tell you a little secret... it's because the prevalence of the online world is just beyond the normal boundaries of trading and consumer goods. Online services are not normally real products but knowledge sharing that is not affected by the rising prices of crude oil! Well not directly anyway... but you get my point.

Technology companies, including Google, Microsoft and Apple, accounted for 28 of the top 100 brands in Millward Brown's survey. They represented a combined brand value of $US187.5 billion.

Anyway Google tops the list of Millward Brown's survey. According to Sydney's Morning Herald, the search engine's marque is worth more than $86.1 billion ($94 billion), up 30% on last year, according to the Brandz list from Millward Brown Optimor published yesterday, which calculates the proportion of sales driven by brand.

The top five is unchanged from 2007, with Google followed by General Electric, Microsoft, Coca Cola and China Mobile. Wal-Mart, Citi and Toyota dropped down the rankings.

Salesforce Plus Google Apps Available As An Integrated Product On Monday! Microsoft Watch Out!

On Monday, the Google and Salesforce will announce that they have integrated Salesforce’s customer relationship management software and Google’s suite of office productivity applications, which includes e-mail, word processing and spreadsheets programs, into a single software package. Like most of the software the two companies create, the package will not require a download or installation, but rather will be delivered as a service over the Web according to NY Times

The offering will compete with Microsoft’s customer relationship management software, which is integrated with the its Office suite. The alliance could help Google, whose productivity programs are used largely by individuals, make inroads into businesses, where it is seeking to challenge Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar Office franchise.

Already customers of Google’s and Salesforce’s programs can use them side by side. But Dave Girouard, Google’s vice president and general manager, said the integrated offering would bring users new functions.

For example, users would able to keep track of e-mail sent to a customer right on that customer’s sales record, and a group of people collaborating on a sales account would be able to communicate by instant message with one another, he said.

“In the history of hosted software to date, applications could be like islands,” Mr. Girouard said. “They don’t really work together seamlessly. This is a first of its kind.”

Microsoft, which dominates the productivity software market but is a smaller player in customer relationship management software, or C.R.M., brushed aside concerns about competition from the Google-Salesforce alliance.

“Salesforce has belatedly recognized that it is important to link C.R.M. apps to productivity tools,” said Brad Wilson, general manager for Microsoft’s C.R.M. unit. “It has been core to our product since we launched five years ago. It validates our strategy.”

Google and Salesforce, two of the most important proponents of the idea of delivering software as a service over the Web, have grown increasingly close over the last several months. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so that makes Google my best friend,” said Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com.

When Google introduced its package of productivity applications in February 2007, Salesforce was one of the few large companies committed to using the software. In June, the two companies began integrating Google’s AdWords advertising technology into Salesforce, and in November, Salesforce joined OpenSocial, an alliance of companies then led by Google that was establishing standards for creating applications for social networks.

Salesforce for Google Apps, as the integrated product is called, will be available to Salesforce customers at no additional cost starting Monday.

Google Has The Business Model To Beat -- Sucking The Life Out of Competitors And Old Meda

Henry Blodget, a Wall Street analyst during the dot-com heyday who now runs Silicon Alley Insider, published a report Friday that examines Google's advertising growth in 2007 against those of 17 online and traditional media rivals, including Yahoo, Microsoft, Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, CBS, and Clear Channel.

From the story:

"The year-over-year growth of revenue (in 2007) on Google.com (U.S.)--approximately $2 billion--was more than twice as much the growth of ad revenue in all of the offline media companies in this sample combined. This is such an amazing fact that it bears repeating: A single media property, Google.com (US), grew by $2 billion. All the offline media properties owned by the 13 offline media companies above, meanwhile--all of them--grew by about $1 billion."

Here are the statistics on Google's growth

• Total US ad revenue across all 17 companies grew 9% from 2006 to 2007, from $53 billion to $58 billion

• Online ad revenue grew 28%, from $14 billion to $18 billion.

• Offline grew only 3%, from $39.5 billion to 40.6 billion. This was helped significantly by the inclusion of affiliate fees and (and global revenue) at CBS, Viacom, and News Corp.

• Online ad revenue grew by $4 billion.

• Offline ad revenue--in all other media--grew by $1 billion.

So advertising revenue is flowing online at a frantic rate. That's the whole story? No. Let's look at how that online revenue breaks down.

• Online ad revenue grew 28%, or $4 billion.

• Online ad revenue at Google grew 44%, or $2.7 billion.

• Online ad revenue at Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL grew only 15%, or $1.3 billion.

• Google captured 2X as much revenue as its closest three competitors combined.

The confirms it, Google has got the business model to beat at this point. Because right now Google is sucking the life out of old media and greatly shifting ad spend towards its direction.

Even Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg Needs Help When It Comes To Growth Online

As this Wall Street Journal article suggests, even multi-million dollar Facebook needs help every now and then. Read on to learn Facebook's struggle for growth online.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Inc.'s 23-year-old chief executive, is finding that he and his company have to grow up at Internet speed. The latest sign: He has poached a top Google Inc. executive, Sheryl Sandberg, to help expand his social-networking company.

Sheryl Sandberg

Ms. Sandberg, a six-year Google veteran who has been the search giant's vice president of global online sales and operations, will become Facebook's chief operating officer. In that role, the 38-year-old executive will try to help expand the privately held company's operations, revenue and international reach. She will also lead sales, business development, public policy and communication. Ms. Sandberg will report directly to Mr. Zuckerberg, who has been searching for a second-in-command for several months.

Ms. Sandberg's appointment comes as Mr. Zuckerberg is trying to adjust to being head of a company that is quickly outgrowing its position as one of Silicon Valley's hottest startups while preparing himself to be able to lead it to Google-like international heft. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Facebook is a social-networking site that allows users to create personal Web pages and communicate with one another.

It has grown fast in the four years since Mr. Zuckerberg founded it. Sales reached $150 million in 2007, but the company's operations are concentrated in the U.S., and it is still burning up more cash than it is generating in revenue, according to a person familiar with the company's finances. Facebook declines to comment on its performance.

In early December, the CEO had a conversation with one of his mentors, Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee, in which he admitted he was having a tough time with some new pressures he was facing as chief. "Is being a CEO always this hard?" he asked, according to Mr. McNamee, a managing director at private-equity firm Elevation Partners who has a personal stake in Facebook.

In an interview, Mr. Zuckerberg says he doesn't recall the specific conversation with Mr. McNamee, but acknowledges the CEO job "is hard -- I do sometimes whine to Roger about it."

Weeks prior, Mr. Zuckerberg had faced protests from users and privacy groups after launching a new advertising program. One element of the program tracked users' activities on Web sites outside of Facebook and shared those activities with their friends. Some Facebook members complained that this violated their privacy, and one local blog dubbed Mr. Zuckerberg "the Grinch." Around the same time, personal information about Mr. Zuckerberg, including material from his Harvard University application, was posted on a Web site for Harvard alumni.

Facebook's advertising initiative was a turning point in the public's perception of Facebook and its young CEO, who had enjoyed years as a Silicon Valley darling and was now the brunt of a backlash.

A Self-Assured CEO

After founding Facebook as a college student four years ago, Mr. Zuckerberg saw almost instant success. Millions of users flocked to his Web site and top Silicon Valley investors rushed to fund it. Mr. Zuckerberg also become known as a self-assured, even arrogant, CEO. Some of his early business cards read, "I'm CEO ... b -- ." (A Facebook spokeswoman says the cards were meant as a joke.) In a speech in March 2007, he said: "Young people are just smarter."

Mr. Zuckerberg is now finding that young people aren't enough. Like other technology startups, the key skills for Facebook employees in the early days were technology know-how and product development. To keep growing, the company needs to tap people with more traditional skills, including the ability to woo advertisers, manage a big staff and handle public relations.

"I coded the original site and managed the engineering teams," Mr. Zuckerberg says in an interview, adding that his next task is to "work on bringing really talented people into the company to help it scale." Mr. Zuckerberg declined to comment on his personal style or his reputation as a CEO.

Mr. Zuckerberg's experience is emblematic of Silicon Valley's accelerated culture, where startups change more in a few years than most companies do in decades -- forcing CEO-founders to adapt quickly in order to survive in their roles. The founders of Google, Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc. all handed the reins to outsider CEOs within three years of founding their companies.

To season himself, Mr. Zuckerberg in recent years has reached out to high-profile mentors like Mr. McNamee and Don Graham, CEO of the Washington Post Co. Last year, Facebook brought in trainers including Bill Clinton's former speaking coach to help the CEO improve his speaking style.

Ms. Sandberg joins a roster of recent Facebook hires that includes Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu, formerly CFO at YouTube, and Vice President of Product Marketing and Operations Chamath Palihapitiya, a former head of AOL's instant-messaging business. Mr. Zuckerberg is also seeking to hire a new general counsel and a vice president of communications and public policy, says Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker.

Part of the Struggle

Part of the struggle for quickly maturing startups is that founders don't want to lose their stamp on the company -- something they fear may happen if they hand the reins to a hired CEO. Mr. Zuckerberg says he is trying to build Facebook on his own terms, and indicated recently that he doesn't want another No. 1 in the company. Owen Van Natta, chief revenue officer who previously held the role of Facebook COO, last month said he was leaving the company. The departure was related to Mr. Van Natta's ambitions to be CEO of a company, a title Mr. Zuckerberg isn't willing to relinquish, both men say.

In Ms. Sandberg, whose appointment was confirmed yesterday, Mr. Zuckerberg is seeking an experienced hand who can also enable him to hold on to the reins. "It's going to be very valuable for me to have a partner [to help] me to think about how to do operations, especially as the organization grows very large and as we scale internationally," says Mr. Zuckerberg.

Mr. Zuckerberg built an early Internet venture in October 2003, during his sophomore year at Harvard. He acknowledged hacking into the school's online student directory and accessing students' photos, according to an article published at the time in the Harvard Crimson, the school newspaper. Then he put up a Web site that invited visitors to judge students' attractiveness based on those photos. He was harshly criticized by fellow students for the project and quickly closed it down. Ms. Barker declined to comment on the incident.

His next project was Facebook, which let people create online "profiles," or personal Web pages, through which users could interact with one another. In 2004, he left Harvard and moved to Palo Alto with a few friends. Once in Silicon Valley, he raised funding to expand the Web site, which at first only college students could access.

For a while, he kept up his college lifestyle. Early on, he and his friends worked out of a rented house in Palo Alto, which they allegedly left "in total disarray," with barbecue ashes and broken glass spread on the deck, according to court documents posted on the Web site of "02138," a magazine for Harvard alumni. The documents relate to a lawsuit filed in U.S. district court in Boston in which some former Harvard classmates have alleged that Mr. Zuckerberg stole the idea for a social-networking site from them. Through his spokeswoman, Mr. Zuckerberg declined to comment on the documents or the lawsuit.

When the company moved to an office in downtown Palo Alto, he wore Adidas flip-flops to work and often arrived in late morning and worked until the middle of the night, say people who worked for him at the time. Mr. Zuckerberg has been described by colleagues as shy -- sometimes so uncomfortable socially that he comes across as stiff.

Others describe Mr. Zuckerberg as a quietly thoughtful executive willing to learn from others. "A lot of times, when people meet with Mark for the first time, he's really quiet, and people assume he's not engaged or paying attention," says Matt Cohler, vice president of product management for Facebook. "Actually, he's really engaged and he's trying to listen."

In September 2006, Mr. Zuckerberg's profile grew when Facebook began letting in anyone with an email address, not just students. Around that time, Facebook added a feature called the "news feed" that made it easier for people to track friends' activities on the site. When thousands complained that it violated their privacy, Mr. Zuckerberg upset some further with a blog post telling them to "Calm down. Breathe. We hear you." Later, Facebook changed its privacy settings to make it easier for users to manage how their information is shared.

In May 2007, Mr. Zuckerberg wore his flip-flops onstage at a San Francisco event, where he announced he would let other companies offer services such as games within the Facebook site. Mr. Zuckerberg's investors began urging him to focus on finding a way to turn Facebook's popularity into revenue, say people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Zuckerberg sought seasoned help. He brought on Messrs. Yu and Palihapitiya. Michael Sheehan, a communications coach who has advised Mr. Clinton, came in to teach the CEO how to improve his wooden image, in part by coaching him in public speaking.

He asked friends like the entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who founded Web-browser company Netscape when he was 22 years old, for advice in keeping Facebook's fast-paced, communicative culture intact as Facebook grew, says a person familiar with the matter. Ms. Barker said Messrs. Zuckerberg and Andreessen discuss business regularly but declined to comment on their conversations. Mr. Zuckerberg also turned to Mr. McNamee. He says he encouraged Mr. Zuckerberg not to sell Facebook or give up his CEO role.

All the while, Facebook kept growing. Last year, Microsoft Corp. invested $240 million in the company, valuing the startup at $15 billion. That gives Mr. Zuckerberg a net worth on paper of at least $3 billion. According to comScore Inc., a Web tracking firm, Facebook had 101 million visitors in January, up from 25 million in January 2007. Facebook's social-networking rivals include MySpace, owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Last summer, Facebook began working on a project that involved attaching ads to messages about a user's activities on the site. These ads would then be seen by the user's friends. The company also designed a feature called Beacon that took this idea a step further: It tracked people's activities on sites outside of Facebook. If someone made a purchase on Overstock.com, for example, Facebook would notify the user's friends through a message, sometimes without explicit permission. Vendors partner with Facebook to participate in the service, and Facebook can make money by displaying tailored ads from the vendors on users' profiles.

At an event in New York in November for top advertisers, Mr. Zuckerberg unveiled the ad program, including the Beacon feature. Efe Cakarel, who runs a service within Facebook that lets users watch independent movies, was with Mr. Zuckerberg and recalls suggesting that advertisers might worry that attaching ads in this way could turn off users. He says Mr. Zuckerberg shrugged off the concern, saying, "They'll like it when they see how well it works." Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Zuckerberg says he doesn't remember the conversation but that it could have happened.

Privacy Complaints

Instead, people complained that Beacon was a privacy invasion. The watchdog group MoveOn.org Civic Action started a petition against Beacon, and companies including online retailer Overstock.com Inc. pulled out of the program or raised concerns about it.

That's when Mr. Zuckerberg complained to Mr. McNamee, asking whether the CEO job was "always this hard." Mr. McNamee recalls answering, "Only if you're successful. And if you're successful, it's really hard, but it's also worth it."

Mr. Zuckerberg deliberated for hours over a public apology letter about Beacon, says a person familiar with the matter. "We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it," he finally posted on Facebook's blog. He also began requiring users' permission to share their details via Beacon.

Mr. Zuckerberg says he also spoke with Mr. McNamee in December about how to structure his management team. That "led me to consider bringing in someone like Sheryl," he says, "starting a few other executive searches and making some other changes on the team."

Mounting Pressure

Ms. Sandberg had joined Google in 2001 when it had fewer than 300 employees. She helped build it into a global company and run its cash-cow AdWords and AdSense programs. Her unit, which has thousands of staff, now handles sales for about 99% of Google's advertisers.

Late last year, Mr. Zuckerberg met Ms. Sandberg at a holiday party. In January, Ms. Sandberg asked Mr. McNamee for career advice about another job opportunity she was weighing, and he suggested she talk to Facebook before making any moves. Mr. Zuckerberg then met again with Ms. Sandberg over dinner and elsewhere before clinching the hire.

Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg will face mounting pressure to find a better business model. Facebook's Web traffic continues to rise. But industry watchers are now questioning whether that growth will ever translate into Google-size revenue.

According to a person familiar with the company's finances, Facebook hopes to double revenue to $300 million to $350 million this year, its fourth full year in business. Google had revenue of $440 million in its fourth year, a fivefold jump from the previous year.

Mr. Zuckerberg's growing fame has included some unexpected challenges. On a recent trip to Los Angeles, for example, paparazzi caught him leaving a restaurant with a woman and heckled him with suggestions that he was cheating on his longtime girlfriend. The video showed up on the gossip site TMZ.com, but it turned out that the woman was in fact Mr. Zuckerberg's girlfriend.

Microsoft's New Business Strategy - Share The Technology

Seeking to satisfy European antitrust officials, Microsoft said on Thursday that it would open up and share many more of its technical secrets with the rest of the software industry and competitors according to this NYTimes.com article

It is now the era of convergence. If Microsoft does not open up, then it is set to fail. I think this is the reason for this sudden generosity. The world's standards have now evolved and Microsoft has been forced to evolve with it.

Microsoft executives, in a conference call, the article mentions that they have characterized the announcement as a “strategic shift” in the company’s business practices and its handling of technical information. They also portrayed the moves as only partly a nod to the continuing challenge Microsoft faces from Europe’s antitrust regulators.

The broader goal, they said, is to bring Microsoft’s flagship personal computer products — the Windows operating system and Office productivity programs — further into the Internet era of computing. Increasingly, people want a seamless flow of documents, data and programming code among desktop PCs and the Internet, especially as they make the shift from using software on a PC to using services on the Web.

“These steps are being taken on our own,” said Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive. The move, he said, was a recognition of Microsoft’s “unique legal situation,” but it was also the company’s effort to adapt to “the opportunities and risks of a more connected, more services-oriented world.”

Microsoft’s first step will be to put on its Web site 30,000 pages of technical documentation detailing how its Windows desktop and Microsoft server programs communicate and share information. Until now, that information was treated as a trade secret and was available only under a special license.

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, said that by sharing more information, Microsoft would make it easier for others to write Internet programs that tap into personal information on a PC.

That, Mr. Ozzie added, should bring new sets of Web services that, for example, might match a person’s calendar information with a doctor’s schedule. Then smart software could make an appointment. At home, he noted, someone’s digital collection of music, movies and family photos would be more easily shuffled to different devices and screens.

“The Internet opens up a world of potential innovation,” Mr. Ozzie said. “And I think we’ve just scratched the surface.”

Microsoft announced other plans to open up its technology, like allowing developers to add more non-Microsoft document formats to its Office word processing and spreadsheet programs. Microsoft also made commitments to increase its support for industry standards and work with open-source software developers.

European regulators and others have long accused Microsoft of using its dominance in PC operating systems and software to lock out competitors. Last October, after a nine-year confrontation and a ruling against the company by Europe’s second-highest court, Microsoft agreed to share information with rivals on terms it had long resisted. Then, after fresh complaints from Microsoft’s competitors, the European antitrust regulators last month announced that they were opening new investigations of the company.

The new inquiry focuses partly on whether Microsoft has withheld essential information from competitors that want to make products that work smoothly with its Office programs. The Office products were not part of the previous European action against Microsoft.

After the Microsoft announcement on Thursday, the European Commission issued a skeptical statement. The commission said it “would welcome any move towards genuine interoperability,” or allowing software programs from different companies to work smoothly together. But the commission noted that “today’s announcement follows at least four similar statements by Microsoft in the past on the importance of interoperability.”

Asked about the commission’s statement, Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said that the company’s moves were “qualitatively and quantitatively different from anything we’ve done in the past.”

“People will test us not just by our words but by our actions,” Mr. Smith added.

The industry is taking a wait-and-see stance on Microsoft’s plan. Linux, an open-source competitor to Windows, stands to benefit from Microsoft’s more open posture. Regulators and competition are “forcing Microsoft to change the way it does business,” said James Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium.

The change comes as Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo, a huge deal that, if it proceeds, will be closely scrutinized by antitrust officials worldwide. The European regulators typically take a harder line than their American counterparts in challenging takeovers.

“To get the deal approved, Microsoft has to convince the European regulators that it has changed its spots on interoperability, no longer acting like a proprietary monopoly,” said Ken Wasch, president of the Software and Information Industry Association, a trade group that includes Microsoft competitors like I.B.M., Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat.

Microsoft is also trying to win approval from an international standards body for its new document format, Office Open XML. Microsoft contends its format is “open,” meaning files in the format can be created and read by anyone.

A different format standard for Internet-based computing, the OpenDocument Format, is supported by I.B.M., Google, Oracle and other Microsoft rivals. They assert that the proposed Microsoft standard is complex and layered with the company’s own features, making it effectively a corporate standard instead of a truly open one.

Last September, Microsoft failed to win enough support for its standard from the International Organization for Standardization. But the standards body will review that decision in proceedings that begin next week.

(image from istartedsomething.com)