Rojo: Googlopoly; Extreme Web 2.0; Blogger Vigil
Top Stories For the Week of April 16 - April 20
Google bought DoubleClick for an eye-popping $3.1 billion in cash, and set off a blogging frenzy. Don Dodge asks whether Google overpaid for a company that was valued at just $1 billion two years ago . Google made the buy because it needs relationships, says Publishing 2.0 - hyper-efficiency won't always win in a branding-driven world, and brands mean relationships . Google already has relationships with DoubleClick itself, since the two companies have long worked together, swapped staff, and even share the same New York building, writes PaidContent.org.
Having lost the bidding war, Yahoo, AT&T and even Microsoft are making antitrust noises ( no irony there) about GoogleClick's monopoly on Internet ads - 80 percent, if Andy Beal has the numbers right. Moooo-mmmmyyyy! laughs Paul Kedrosky . But All About Microsoft theorizes that Redmond may have wanted to lose - it just hung in long enough to inflate DoubleClick's price. 
Google's stock rose slightly on the news as did stocks of DoubleClick competitors who are now in greater demand , (via alarm:clock) but A VC figures GOOG now has bigcompany-itis: They're the new Microsoft, the big, powerful company everyone hates . While the spotlight was on Google's bags of cash, Eric Schmidt sort-of-quietly announced that Google has a PowerPoint clone, thus completing a suite the Mountain View chief insists isn't a threat to MS Office. Well, except maybe for people who use the Web, Schmidt told the crowd at Web 2.0 Expo (via Monkey Bites).
Speaking of Irrational Exuberance 2.0, O'Reilly Radar covers Web 2.0 Expo appearances by Tim O'Reilly, Jeff Bezos, John Battelle, and Adobe's Kevin Lynch, who demoed the Apollo 
runtime environment. But the corporate jury is still out on Web 2.0 technology: A McKinsey & Co. report says companies are wary of losing command and control online (via Micro Persuasion ) while Coca-Cola is running a contest to design a Coke machine within Second Life (via Mashable!).
In other conference news, TechCrunch announced that the TechCrunch20 Conference will feature 20 demos in two days by companies that Michael Arrington, Jason Calacanis et al. will choose based on merit. And if you'd like to stay in the 
realm of Big Thoughts, you're invited to TED (sort of). TED Blog announces that a wide range of TEDTalks are now available online - no $6,000 ticket required.
In media news, the much-hyped Portfolio magazine launched. Gawker calls it Vanity Fair for the finance set with a l-o-n-g Tom Wolfe piece on hedge funds and a Michael Lewis expose of subprime mortgages. Meanwhile, new royalty rules may reshape Internet radio so say goodbye to free streaming music, writes The Next Net. Netflix also announced it is creating an Internet TV division (via Download Squad) while Will Ferrell launched a comedy site called Funny or Die that's like Hot or Not meets YouTube comedy.
In the week's sadder news, bloggers had plenty of first- and second-hand accounts 
of Monday's Virginia Tech rampage, where text-message and e-mail warnings almost certainly reduced the body count. Cybersoc.com rounded up plenty of victims' and near-victims' accounts while the death toll was still low, while CNN's iReport experiment in citizen journalism also got a workout (via NewTeeVee). 
BuzzMachine thinks tech's role in covering the shooting increases the need for new types of news organizations. Andrew Sullivan is just creeped out at Michelle Malkin's blaming campus gun-control policies for the high death toll. If only there were more concealed weapons... 
And mass murder is about the only thing that could have delayed Alberto Gonzales's appearance before Congress - and Huffington Post blogs that his non-stop cramming for the hearings has turned him into a sweaty, unpredictable maniac.
Get the best of the blog world every week in your inbox with the Week in Rojo email newsletter. It's free! Sign up here. Or click the Rojo tile to subscribe 
to the Rojo Blog feed.
Note: You are receiving this message because you signed up to receive The Week in Rojo via email. To unsubscribe, reply to this message with "UNSUBSCRIBE" in the subject line and you will no longer receive this email. If you have any problems, questions, or need help unsubscribing, please email us at feedback@rojo.com.
Rojo Networks, Inc. 548 4th St., San Francisco, CA 94107
)
