BERLIN (Reuters) — German police are investigating a couple after their 8-month-old son appeared for sale on the auction Web site eBay.
Renee Beck, a police spokesman in the Bavarian town of Krumbach, west of Munich, said Saturday that the boy’s mother, 23, said the auction listing had only been a joke. But he said the baby had been put in state custody while the police were investigating.
A number of people called authorities across Germany after seeing the offer on eBay that read: “Baby — collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long.”
The opening bid was one euro, $1.58. There were no bidders during the two hours before the offer was removed, the police said.
The mother was quoted in the Bild newspaper as saying: “It was only a joke. I just wanted to see if someone would make an offer. They’ve taken my son to a hospital and I’ve got to take psychiatric tests next week.”
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Global Dreams for a Wireless Web
SITTING on the porch at Finca Torrenova, his 800-acre retreat on this Mediterranean island, Martin Varsavsky ticks off the credentials of the group of Internet entrepreneurs finishing lunch at a nearby table.
“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,” Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests — many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.
These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No stranger to success — he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s — he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.
Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.
The swaps, in theory, would allow “Foneros” to have ubiquitous, global wireless access while traveling for business or pleasure. But despite $55.2 million in backing from such corporate heavyweights as Google and BT, the former British Telecom, as well as newer enterprises like Skype and a handful of venture capital firms, FON and Mr. Varsavsky are still missing a crucial ingredient: scale.
At the moment, there are just 830,000 registered Foneros around the world, and only 340,000 active Wi-Fi hotspots run FON software. Because it’s built upon the concept of sharing Wi-Fi access, FON works well only if there are Foneros everywhere.
And as he struggles to expand the FON network, Mr. Varsavsky faces particular hurdles now that the Internet’s commercial side has reached a crossroads. Born a few decades ago as an anarchic, digital version of a barn-raising, the wireless Internet is now a battleground between two giant technology consortiums seeking to rein in the Web’s chaotic openness in favor of creating uniform, global access built upon wireless data networks.
The two camps, known as WiMax and L.T.E., for “long-term evolution,” are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.
But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of conformity on software development.
For his part, Mr. Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground — deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate approach to expansion.
Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the company also has a growing number of devotees.
“The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex — it can be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,” said Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former FON board member. “In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON can and will change this.”
But others have their doubts.
“I know that the people at Google like this idea,” said John Saw, the chief technology officer at Clearwire, the WiMax start-up of Craig McCaw, which recently announced a $14.5 billion joint venture to build a nationwide WiMax network with Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast and others. “But we’re skeptical.”
Undeterred, Mr. Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.
“Our army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing a signal,” he says. “We believe WiMax operators will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.”
MR. VARSAVSKY has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, Calif., last fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.
During that 90-minute meeting, Mr. Varsavsky says, the two men discussed why a partnership might make sense.
Apple has sold millions of its Wi-Fi routers to residential customers, and its community of Wi-Fi users who share router access would be an ideal platform for FON. For his part, Mr. Jobs had developed an interest in Wi-Fi sharing because of the expanding number of iPhone users who are often frustrated by locked Wi-Fi access points.
But, Mr. Varsavsky says, from the moment that he and Mr. Jobs met, their discussion devolved into an argument. (Mr. Jobs did not respond to requests to comment on the meeting.)
“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,” Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests — many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.
These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No stranger to success — he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s — he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.
Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.
The swaps, in theory, would allow “Foneros” to have ubiquitous, global wireless access while traveling for business or pleasure. But despite $55.2 million in backing from such corporate heavyweights as Google and BT, the former British Telecom, as well as newer enterprises like Skype and a handful of venture capital firms, FON and Mr. Varsavsky are still missing a crucial ingredient: scale.
At the moment, there are just 830,000 registered Foneros around the world, and only 340,000 active Wi-Fi hotspots run FON software. Because it’s built upon the concept of sharing Wi-Fi access, FON works well only if there are Foneros everywhere.
And as he struggles to expand the FON network, Mr. Varsavsky faces particular hurdles now that the Internet’s commercial side has reached a crossroads. Born a few decades ago as an anarchic, digital version of a barn-raising, the wireless Internet is now a battleground between two giant technology consortiums seeking to rein in the Web’s chaotic openness in favor of creating uniform, global access built upon wireless data networks.
The two camps, known as WiMax and L.T.E., for “long-term evolution,” are both top-down, highly structured approaches that will cost billions of dollars to build and may close a door on some of the architectural openness that led to the rapid growth of the Internet.
But their potential advantage is that closed standards can encourage the kind of growth that offers more access to mainstream consumers and business users, as occurred when Microsoft imposed a measure of conformity on software development.
For his part, Mr. Varsavsky hopes that FON can offer a middle ground — deploying the original, bottom-up strengths of the early Internet movement and at the same time wedding them to a more formal, corporate approach to expansion.
Although FON faces huge obstacles in realizing those ambitions, the company also has a growing number of devotees.
“The wireless Internet market today is fragmented and complex — it can be accessed through 3G operators, through WiMax, through private hotspots, through paid hotspots and through corporate networks,” said Michael Jackson, a partner at Mangrove Capital in London and a former FON board member. “In summary, it is a nightmare for a consumer. FON can and will change this.”
But others have their doubts.
“I know that the people at Google like this idea,” said John Saw, the chief technology officer at Clearwire, the WiMax start-up of Craig McCaw, which recently announced a $14.5 billion joint venture to build a nationwide WiMax network with Sprint, Google, Intel, Comcast and others. “But we’re skeptical.”
Undeterred, Mr. Varsavsky says that what he currently lacks in scale he can make up for in huge cost savings, particularly because FON avoids the expensive proposition of having to build a worldwide network of cellular towers and Wi-Fi nodes from scratch.
“Our army of Foneros is a much more efficient way of distributing a signal,” he says. “We believe WiMax operators will be happy to have some customers use their services for free and save billions in infrastructure deployment.”
MR. VARSAVSKY has worked overtime trying to line up more high-profile partners for FON. To that end, he traveled to Cupertino, Calif., last fall to meet with Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple.
During that 90-minute meeting, Mr. Varsavsky says, the two men discussed why a partnership might make sense.
Apple has sold millions of its Wi-Fi routers to residential customers, and its community of Wi-Fi users who share router access would be an ideal platform for FON. For his part, Mr. Jobs had developed an interest in Wi-Fi sharing because of the expanding number of iPhone users who are often frustrated by locked Wi-Fi access points.
But, Mr. Varsavsky says, from the moment that he and Mr. Jobs met, their discussion devolved into an argument. (Mr. Jobs did not respond to requests to comment on the meeting.)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Yahoo Gets Ready for Proxy Fight
Yahoo nominated 9 of its 10 existing directors for re-election to the company’s board on Thursday, setting the stage for a showdown with dissident shareholders at its annual shareholder meeting.
Yahoo also postponed its annual meeting from July 3 and said it now expected to hold it at the end of July.
The Internet media company also disclosed in a regulatory filing that shareholders other than the investor Carl C. Icahn planned to nominate candidates to its board. Yahoo said it did not believe these shareholders had complied with its company bylaws.
Mr. Icahn, who recently amassed 10 million Yahoo shares and options to buy an additional 49 million, started a proxy campaign last week to replace Yahoo’s board with directors who would reopen merger talks with Microsoft.
Microsoft walked away from its sweetened $47.5 billion offer for Yahoo this month.
Yahoo also postponed its annual meeting from July 3 and said it now expected to hold it at the end of July.
The Internet media company also disclosed in a regulatory filing that shareholders other than the investor Carl C. Icahn planned to nominate candidates to its board. Yahoo said it did not believe these shareholders had complied with its company bylaws.
Mr. Icahn, who recently amassed 10 million Yahoo shares and options to buy an additional 49 million, started a proxy campaign last week to replace Yahoo’s board with directors who would reopen merger talks with Microsoft.
Microsoft walked away from its sweetened $47.5 billion offer for Yahoo this month.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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Monday, May 19, 2008
Pursuit of Yahoo Shows Microsoft Needs a Franchise
Microsoft said on Sunday that it had approached Yahoo, this time with an ostensibly narrower aim: a collaboration on Internet advertising. But it hinted that it could still seek a takeover down the road.
The renewed talks reflect both Microsoft’s fears and Yahoo’s potential ills. Microsoft wants to head off any collaboration on advertising between Yahoo and the market leader, Google. At the same time, Microsoft is seeking to capitalize on the perceived weakness of Yahoo, which is facing a proxy battle with the activist investor over the failed takeover talks.
Mr. Icahn, who has made a career out of agitating for change at some of the nation’s largest companies, bought a stake in Yahoo after the Microsoft takeover negotiations collapsed. He has named a slate of directors and threatened to unseat Yahoo’s management — or at least push Yahoo back into Microsoft’s arms.
Microsoft released a brief statement on Sunday disclosing the renewed talks, a surprising reversal just weeks after it withdrew its $47.5 billion bid for Yahoo and said it had “moved on.”
In an e-mail message to Microsoft employees on Sunday afternoon, a senior Microsoft executive seemed to acknowledge that moving on might be difficult.
In his memo, Kevin Johnson, the executive in charge of Microsoft’s Internet business, emphasized the urgency felt at Microsoft about its failure to make more progress in catching up to Google.
“Regardless of the outcome of any new discussions,” he wrote, “it is important that we continue to move forward to strengthen our online services business. The fact is that we are not where we want to be in this business yet and we’ve been in this position longer than we’d all like.”
Mr. Johnson then outlined Microsoft’s ambitious agenda in Internet search and online advertising, exploiting the company’s strengths in desktop software and newer fields like cellphone software. Among the goals enumerated in the memo are to “innovate and disrupt in search,” “win in display” ads online and “reinvent portal and social media experiences.”
Microsoft’s hastily revived effort to reach some kind of deal with Yahoo seems to suggest that the software giant has doubts about whether it can achieve those goals on its own.
Indeed, Microsoft’s on-again, off-again interest in Yahoo has raised questions from analysts, investors, customers and employees about its strategy. Amid the discussions, Microsoft is scheduled to present its online strategy to advertisers at a gathering this week.
People involved in the confidential discussions between Microsoft and Yahoo said the talks centered on a partnership or joint venture for search-related advertising to compete against Google. When Microsoft first made its unsolicited bid of $31 a share for Yahoo in February, it said it was doing so as part of its battle to increase its relatively small slice of the search-related advertising market against Google, a giant with about 60 percent of the United States market, according to the measurement firm .
By comparison, Yahoo has about 21 percent of the market, and Microsoft has about 9 percent, comScore said.
The timing of Microsoft’s new approach may be a turning point in the months-long story or just an opportunistic effort to further insert itself into a dance between Yahoo and Google. Yahoo has been racing to complete its own partnership with Google and was expected to announce a formal agreement as early as this week. A Yahoo-Google partnership, which would likely face antitrust scrutiny, could make Yahoo a less desirable partner or takeover candidate for Microsoft.
The Google-Yahoo discussions have been centered around the notion of Google delivering ads alongside some Yahoo searches. Such a deal would help Yahoo generate more cash, because Google’s search advertising technology is more sophisticated and is used by more advertisers. As a result, Google earns more on every search than its competitors, on average.
A similar partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft might not have the same effect, because Microsoft’s base of advertisers is smaller than Yahoo’s. People involved in the confidential discussions said that search advertising was certainly a part of Microsoft’s renewed interest in Yahoo, but they cautioned that any relationship being discussed might be different from the one the company had been contemplating with Google.
A Google representative did not return a phone call seeking comment.
It is unclear whether Microsoft would pursue a takeover bid again. In its statement on Sunday, Microsoft insisted it was not making such a bid, but hinted that it could be persuaded to reverse course.
“Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo or Microsoft or with other third parties,” the company said.
The new discussions also come as Yahoo is facing increasing pressure from shareholders, some of whom are furious that its board did not work harder to reach a deal to sell the company to Microsoft. Last week, Mr. Icahn said the directors had “acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders.” People close to Microsoft and Mr. Icahn say that neither has been in contact with the other.
Yahoo released a statement late on Sunday saying that it continues to explore strategic alternatives and remains open to any proposals that are good for its shareholders.
“Yahoo’s board of directors will evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value,” the statement said. Yahoo also said that it had confirmed with Microsoft that the software giant was not interested an outright acquisition of Yahoo at this time.
Shares of Yahoo closed last week at $27.66, far above the $19 a share they traded at before Microsoft’s first bid, in anticipation that a deal of some sort will be reached. Shares of Microsoft closed Friday at $29.99, roughly half their peak price in December 1999.
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