That’s what Snapdeal and its investors are betting on. The India e-commerce marketplace is coming off of a $50 million Series C investment round, which included participation by eBay, pushing total funding past $100 million.

Snapdeal cofounders Rohit Bansal (left) and Kunal Bahl

The 800-person company started as a site that listed deals for services, but has since shifted to one that sells everything from consumer electronics to women’s shoes — all from third parties, akin to the Amazon Marketplace.

I sat down with CEO Kunal Bahl earlier this week, while he was on one of his biannual U.S. visits where he meets with investors and other e-commerce entrepreneurs. Here’s an edited version of our conversation:

Jason Del Rey: You started as a deals site, a la Groupon. Why the switch to a broad online marketplace model?

We started in February 2010 as a local merchants marketplace for services. Merchants would come and list their discounted services for an entire year. It wasn’t valued for just one day, like daily deals. It helped us build a lot of traffic and become a household name. Within six months, there were 50 players in the space.

By mid-2011, something interesting was happening. Merchants started reaching out, saying, “You have a lot of reach, and I manufacture watches, or men’s footwear. Can I list these on Snapdeal?” We started testing out listing physical products and showing early progress. Then we took a trip to China that convinced us this was the way forward.

What was that trip?

At the end of 2011, we visited China and did the same trip there that we do here, where we meet with investors and e-commerce companies. It gave us a very deep understanding of where India is headed in the next six or seven years. It’s very hard for us to relate to eBay or Amazon, because they are 20 years ahead of us. But Chinese companies are a lot scrappier, and maybe only six or seven years ahead of us. It’s a lot easier for us to empathize with them.

How much of your business is still the deals business?

One percent. This is the pivot Groupon always wanted to make. But they wouldn’t have been able to make it, because eBay and Amazon are already there.

But eBay, for example, is also in India, right?

EBay came to India in 2004. They’ve done a pretty good job, but are focused on C-to-C. Our focus is B-to-C, primarily. Globally, marketplaces are moving more and more to B-to-C.

Why’s that?

It’s very difficult to build trust in C-to-C. In B-to-C, you really know who the seller is. It’s typically high-trust, and tends to get faster traction.

And here is the macro reason: India retail is about 600 billion, out of which about 7 percent is modern, organized retail like big-box stores. Everything else is small mom-and-pops, export/import businesses. No individual fashion brand does more than $200 million in sales. There’s huge fragmentation from the supply side and retail distribution. The marketplace is really set up to aggregate long-tail of supply on one side and demand on the other.

You say you have 20 million registered users. How many visit the site each month?

About 14 to 15 million.

How do you market to them right now?

Mostly email. We create customer segments, and email at different frequency with different segments. We’ve also put a lot of effort into personalization and recommendation on-site. Those things account for 25 percent of our sales right now.

Amazon and eBay now have huge advertising businesses. Do you sell advertising on your site?

We recently started testing it. In the coming quarter or two, we’ll be launching our own ad exchange, giving sellers the opportunity to get prominent placement, but not in search results. We’re going to have a display ad network on the site for sellers.

eBay just led a $50 million round in Snapdeal. How did that happen?

India is really the last large ecommerce frontier left in the world. The Snapdeal team has been successful in building a scaled business in 18 or so months. Needless to say, that attracted interest of many large players, given the importance of the Indian market to their future growth, to which they set very, very aggressive targets. One way to achieve that is through the BRIC markets. And out of the BRIC markets, India has a tremendous amount of headroom for growth. And, hence, are some of the big, global players very interested in Snapdeal? The answer is, “yes.”

How do you make money?

We take commission on everything we sell. No insertion fee, no listing fee; we will never charge a listing fee, even though most marketplaces charge a listing fee. We realize the market in India is young, and we need to reduce hurdle for sellers to come to list.

What cut does Snapdeal keep?

It can range by category from 5 percent to 15 percent.

What’s your revenue?

We’ll do $400 million in topline this year — gross merchandise value. And, in India, building a $400 million business is like building a $1.5 billion business in U.S.

But your cut of that is only 5 percent to 15 percent?

It averages out to somewhere in the low teens.

Is it safe to assume you’re not profitable?

No, we’re not. And that’s okay. There’s a time for everything, and right now getting to great scale is very important to us.

What’s your biggest challenge right now?

Making sure enough new transactors are coming onboard in India. There are 100 million Internet users and a little over a billion people. But only seven to eight million have done a non-travel e-commerce transaction online.

The latest example involves cable ties, AC-DC adapters, radiation detectors and the like. In April of last year, Amazon rolled out AmazonSupply, an e-commerce site featuring such industrial goods. Google followed suit this January, testing Google Shopping for Suppliers, which also helps shoppers find items tailored for businesses.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Yahoo, which had dropped off the important BrandZ Top 100 list several years ago, scratched its way on again this year at No. 92.

The Silicon Valley Internet giant had last been on the key list of brands in 2009, when it had a brand value of $7.9 billion. It now has a brand value of $9.8 billion, which is still down from its $11.4 billion in 2008.

And that’s tiny in comparison to Apple, which remains No. 1 on the list with a brand value of $185.1 billion. Google ranked as No. 2 with a brand value of $113.7 billion.

Apple rival Samsung’s brand value rose by by 51 percent to $21.4 billion, clocking in to the No. 30 spot.

In tech, Amazon’s brand value was $45.7 billion, rising 34 percent to No. 14. IBM is No. 3 with a brand value of $112 billion.

And more: Microsoft (No. 7, $69.8 billion, down nine percent); Facebook (No. 31, $21.3 billion, down 36 percent); and eBay (No. 47, $17.7 billion, up 40 percent).

The eight-year-old BrandZ list, which is much watched by marketers, is commissioned by WPP and conducted by Millward Brown Optimor.

Here’s the full chart of the list and report:

Top100BrandZ2013

BrandZ Top 100 Media Deck 2013 U S

And here is a super-cool infographic too:

2013_BrandZ_Top100_Infographic

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. As AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher and Peter Kafka were first to report this week, Yahoo is seriously thinking about buying hipster blogging service Tumblr. In fact, Yahoo’s board is scheduled to consider a $1.1 billion all-cash deal on Sunday.
2. Google wanted to dominate the headlines this week during the company’s annual I/O conference … just maybe not like this. By sending Microsoft a cease-and-desist, they helped promote that rival’s anti-Google campaign.
3. That little drama didn’t come up during the official proceedings of I/O, but a lot else did. Here’s a rundown of all the news Google announced in its three-and-a-half-hour opening keynote.
4. Watch this: An interview with Bill Gates, in which the Microsoft founder talks about his longtime relationship with Steve Jobs, on “60 Minutes.”
5. Can productivity apps for the iPad make it as useful as a traditional work PC? Walt Mossberg puts them to the test.
6. Speaking of the iPad, the Justice Department is closing in on Apple with an e-book price fixing case … but one of the seemingly most damning pieces of evidence, a line from a letter from Steve Jobs to James Murdoch, is a little less damning in context.
7. Web video services like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. But is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead? A new report says: Nope!
8. BlackBerry is bringing its messenger application, BBM, to iPhones and Android phones this summer. But is it too late?
9. Cisco’s earnings only barely beat analysts’ expectations this week, but that beat sent the company’s stock up 9 percent in after-hours trading. Arik Hesseldahl got CEO John Chambers on the phone to talk about where Cisco is and where it’s going.
10. And lastly, if you want more battery life out of your iPhone on the go, you may have considered a special re-juicing case. Product reviewer Lauren Goode tries the battery boosters before you buy.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

Unlike a TV network, Amazon has asked the Internet to watch and rate its test shows, and has said the input will help the company make its decisions.

And now we’re getting to see some of those decisions play out.

We only have definitive word on one of the 14 pilots Amazon has ordered. That’s because Rhett Reese, the writer/producer behind “Zombieland,” has announced, via Twitter, that it’s not getting picked up:

Our Zombieland series will not be moving forward on Amazon.Sad for everyone involved.

— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) May 17, 2013

Reese wasn’t done, though. He also complained about people who didn’t like the show — presumably fans of the original movie his series was riffing on:

I’ll never understand the vehement hate the pilot received from die-hard Zombieland fans.You guys successfully hated it out of existence.

— Rhett Reese (@RhettReese) May 17, 2013

Meanwhile, over at Deadline, Nellie Andreeva reports that Amazon has picked up “Alpha House,” its Washington satire starring John Goodman, and “Betas,” a Silicon Valley sitcom.

Neither of those moves are that surprising, since Amazon has seemed bullish on “Alpha House” from the start, and “Betas” sure seems like it would hit an online viewing sweet spot.

That said, a pedigree or concept isn’t enough to keep you on screen, whether it’s on TV or online. Deadline also reports that Amazon is not picking up “Browsers,” a musical comedy about interns at a Huffington Post-style site.

That one featured “Cheers” star Bebe Neuwirth as an Arianna-like boss, and was written by David Javerbaum, one of the main brains behind the “The Daily Show” for many years. No dice.

Also, about the voting: Your vote counts, but it’s not the only thing that counts. Amazon Studios head Roy Price said his team would look at a variety of data as they made their decisions.

For instance: I never voted on “Browsers,” even though Amazon sent me an email after I first watched it, asking me for my thoughts. But I’m sure that Amazon did take note of the fact that I only watched the first 5 minutes of the show, then never returned.

Thanks to app tweaks and software updates, it’s easier than ever for you to hand your photographic history over to the company of your choice.

Consider this: Take a photo using your iPhone, and Apple can instantly upload your snapshot to your iCloud account, where it’s accessible via any of your connected Apple devices. Google can do that, too, with Android phones and your Google+ account. There’s Microsoft and SkyDrive integration, Facebook and album image uploading. Not to mention others like Amazon Cloud Drive and Dropbox.

Google doesn’t want to be left behind, as evidenced by the company’s latest robust photo offering. The Google+ team dropped a massive update to its photo-editing capabilities at its I/O developer conference on Wednesday, bringing a series of professional-grade photo-editing tools to anyone who uses Google+.

The advantage here, Google would say, is that while everyone may offer free online photo storage in some capacity, Google is the one with the consumer editing suite. But you don’t have to be an expert-level Photoshop user to work with Google’s new tools. Auto-enhance, auto-highlight and even “auto-awesome” leverage the power of Google’s algorithms to choose the best pictures out of the many you’ve uploaded, and automatically make them look better than they did before.

The point is simple: The more you’ve invested yourself in a service — be it by filling out and continuously updating your profile, or through uploading photo after photo to its cloud-based storage — the less likely you are to fall away from using it. If all of your memories are stuck inside of, say, Facebook, you’ve got an online repository, an album to point others to in the future or to re-download as you see necessary. And, perhaps because of the emotional nature of the material, you’re less likely to even want to move it in the first place.

It’s also the type of media where platforms see some of their highest engagement from users. Facebook, I’ve been told, sees far and away more activity and engagement from users focused on photos in the stream than they do from text-based status updates. Google+, too, sees high engagement from in-stream pictures.

Users aside, big data companies like Google and Facebook gain reams of information from the photos you’ve sent in. Each file is another piece of location metadata to be registered, another image to identify and tag using facial-recognition tech, another way of recognizing the people and places you interact with most in your daily life.

So now, when all companies are offering similar uploading options and essentially unlimited free online storage, it’s up to competitors to differentiate to try and stand out.

That’s easier said than done. Facebook obviously has its billion-strong network (not to mention the rapidly growing Instagram), where many of your friends already likely have a presence. Apple touts accessibility and safety via only a certain set of devices. And Google+, while its usage and engagement stats are constantly a point of contention, will at least offer a simple, powerful photo tool set that gives any amateur photographer the ability to make their vacation pictures look a whole lot better.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what winds up luring you to one service over another. What matters is how they keep you coming back to upload more of your photos, more of your memories. Perhaps Google’s new editing-feature suite will give it the edge it needs to stay in the game.

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That’s an excerpt from an email sent by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to James Murdoch of News Corporation (which owns this site) that figures prominently in the Department of Justice’s looming e-book price fixing case against Apple. The DOJ claims it’s clear evidence that Apple conspired with Murdoch’s HarperCollins imprint and other publishing companies to raise e-book prices and undermine Amazon’s $9.99 e-book pricing model. And, taken out of context, it might be.

But put in context, with the other dozen or so sentences in the message that contained it, that line seems a little less damaging. Certainly, it doesn’t quite imply that the two execs are about to embark on a “caper.” Read as a whole, Jobs’s email doesn’t have quite the conspiratorial tone the DOJ suggests. The late Apple co-founder doesn’t seem to be presenting $12.99 and $14.99 as hard and fast prices, but as price caps in broader pricing tiers. And he openly concedes that the agency model he’s proposing may well fail and that publishers who opt against it may succeed.

“We simply don’t think the e-book market can be successful with pricing higher than $12.99 or $14.99,” Jobs wrote. “Heck, Amazon is selling these books at $9.99, and who knows maybe they are right and we will fail even at $12.99. But we’re willing to try at the prices we proposed. We are not willing to try at higher prices, because we are pretty sure we’ll all fail.”

Now, this is but one piece of evidence in a much larger case. And the DOJ does claim to have other evidence that reflects poorly on Apple, specifically testimony that suggests it used its prowess in the apps market to push reticent partners into signing its e-books deal. But in this particular case, it does seem to have cherry-picked a quote for maximum effect.

In the end, it will be up to the court to decide which interpretation to embrace. Below, Jobs’s email, and below that, the full exhibit from which it’s taken.

Jobs-Murdoch-exchange –

Evidently, Apple feels much the same way about the DOJ’s charges.

In an 81-page April 26 filing that was made public today, Apple pointedly denied federal prosecutors’ accusations, saying the discussions they’ve painted as collusion were simply tough business negotiations and that their end result — an “agency” e-book pricing model where publishers, not retailers, set prices — made the e-book market more competitive, not less.

“Apple did not conspire to fix e-book prices,” the company said in its filing. “The evidence proves that Apple acted independently, to further its own legitimate business goals, in negotiating agency agreements with the publishers to enter the e-book market.”

Apple disputes the DOJ’s view that it was the “ringmaster” of a publisher conspiracy to eliminate price competition and raise e-book prices. Instead, it claims it was simply a new entrant in a market that was “roiled by a public conflict between publishers and Amazon” — a market that was already considering the agency pricing model currently at issue.

“Amazon at the time sold 9 out of every 10 e-books, and many publishers publicly disagreed with Amazon’s uniform, below-cost pricing strategy for New York Times bestsellers,” Apple said in its filing. “This tumult in the industry inspired the second largest e-retailer, Barnes & Noble, to push for agency agreements with the publishers. And Amazon used an agency-like model for small publishers and self-published authors. In other words, Apple did not introduce agency to the e-book industry; it was simply the first to reach an agency agreement with the industry’s largest publishers.”

And for a new entrant to the e-book market, as Apple was at the time, the agency model was a logical one. The company was looking for a 30 percent commission on every sale; it was hardly going to get that from publishers at the $9.99 price point Amazon had established.

Which is not to say that it was opposed to $9.99. According to its filing, it wasn’t. As long as it was able to collect that 30 percent commission, Apple said it didn’t particularly care what price publishers sold their books at. Yes, it required a “Most Favored Nation” agreement from publishers that gave it the right to lower prices to match low prices offered by competing retailers, but it argues it did this to remain competitive with Amazon, not to influence its business model.

“The evidence shows that Apple told the publishers that they were free to remain on a wholesale model with other retailers, even as the publishers sold e-books on Apple’s bookstore under an agency arrangement,” Apple argues.

And that’s Apple’s broader point in this filing: By negotiating for an agency pricing model with publishers, it was simply seeking to enter a new market and offer competitive prices. It wasn’t colluding to push e-book prices higher. It wasn’t attempting to change Amazon’s business model. It was just conducting business — legitimately. To Apple, the DOJ’s allegations that it was doing anything else, let alone engaging in an “illegal conspiracy” that “increase[ed] the retail prices of trade e-books” is “demonstrably false.” And the company insists the facts are on its side:

Average prices for trade e-books have fallen, and output, whether measured in the number of sales, the number of titles, or the types and quality of e-books offered, has increased substantially. These facts are undisputed.

Apple also fundamentally transformed the e-reading experience, leaving rudimentary, black-and-white, and expensive single-purpose e-readers (e.g., the Kindle) in the dust. The e-book world changed dramatically when Apple launched its iBookstore on the iPad in April 2010. At the time, 400,000 e-book titles were available to the consuming public; today, readers can download more than 1.7 million e-books. Apple has also created or spurred a number of the most important e-reading hardware and software innovations, such as full-color, interactive, and vivid digital e-books.

The bottom line, said attorney Orin Snyder of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, is that “Apple should be commended, not sued. Apple injected much-needed competition and innovation into the eBook business. … The DOJ’s case is based on fictions and incomplete quotations. The actual evidence proves that Apple did not conspire to fix prices in the eBook business. We look forward to trial.”

The DOJ’s case against Apple is currently scheduled to go to trial on June 3 in a New York District Court. Apple’s filing in full is below, and there’s more on the DOJ’s view of the case here.

Apple’s Pre-Trial Memorandum of Law _as Redacted_ –

That’s the gist of a new U.S. Department of Justice filing against Apple in the agency’s upcoming lawsuit against the company. According to the DOJ, Apple was the “ringmaster” of a plan that raised mainstream e-book pricing well above the $9.99 price point Amazon had established by shifting the industry from a wholesale model, where retailers set prices, to an agency model where publishers set prices. Among the agency’s evidence supporting that allegation:

• An e-mail from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to James Murdoch of News Corp. — parent company of HarperCollins — that reads in part, “Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.”
• A comment Jobs made to biographer Walter Isaacson, explaining that Apple “told the publishers, ‘We’ll go to the agency model, where you set the price, and we get our 30 percent, and yes, the customer pays a little more, but that’s what you want anyway.’”

According to the DOJ, those statements are clear evidence of collusion. “Apple knew that the plan it was proposing involved a ‘dramatic business change’ for publisher defendants,” the agency argued in its filing. “Accordingly, Apple kept each publisher defendant aware that it was orchestrating and coordinating a common approach for all of them.”

Apple is now the lone holdout in the DOJ’s lawsuit, originally brought against the company and five major publishing houses last April. HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster have all since settled. But Apple, the alleged “ringmaster,” continues to dig its heels in.

“Apple did not conspire to fix eBook pricing,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said in a statement. “We helped transform the eBook market with the introduction of the iBookstore in 2010 bringing consumers an expanded selection of eBooks and delivering innovative new features. The market has been thriving and innovating since Apple’s entry and we look forward to going to trial to defend ourselves.”

Below, the DOJ’s latest filing:

apple7 –

And, yes, Google still plans to launch a separate subscription music service later this year, via its YouTube site.

Make sense? Of course not.

It makes lots of sense for both YouTube and Play, which was built for Google’s Android devices, to sell music subscriptions.

YouTube is the world’s biggest free music service, which could make it a fantastic funnel for a Spotify-like paid offering, which can also help solve some problems with the music labels.

And if you’re going to have the world’s dominant mobile platform, then you ought to be the one selling music subscriptions that work on it, because that could help your customers stick to that platform. No sense in handing that feature over to Spotify, which works fine on iPhones and Kindles, too.

And something that knitted Android and YouTube together — combining a mix of free, paid, mobile, audio and video — could be great.

But that’s not what we’re going to see this week.

Music folks I talked to today expect the Google Play version to be paid-only — no free teaser tier, like Spotify has — and without any features that will set it apart from rivals.

And when YouTube launches its service — as best as I can tell, talks with the Big Three labels are all but completed — that service will likely run parallel to, but not connected with, the Play version. Which means none of the free music that people can get on YouTube will help sell Play subscriptions.

This set-up supposedly stems from former Android boss Andy Rubin’s insistence on controlling his own fiefdom (“Andy and [YouTube head] Salar Kamangar couldn’t be in the same room together,” said a music executive who has worked with both of them). But now we’re in the Sundar Pichai era, and he said he’s all about peace and love.

I’ve heard people in and outside of Google suggest that at some point down the line the two services could be knitted together. After all, just because something gets announced at Google I/O doesn’t mean it will show up. And getting something out there before it’s fully baked is standard operating procedure for Google.

But music subscriptions are an old idea that still really haven’t caught on in a big way. Spotify has six million paying customers worldwide, but its backers concede that it’s still a long way from mainstream. And none of its competitors are even close to those numbers.

If Google really wanted to make subscriptions work, instead of simply offering them as a feature most people won’t use — like the music store it opened up in 2011 — it ought to take the time to get this one right the first time.

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We already have money, it’s called money.

– Developer and filmmaker Garrett Murray on Amazon’s Coins virtual currency

But Web video competitors like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. So is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead?

Not really, said Sandvine, the broadband service company that tracks Internet usage.

A Sandvine report out this morning pegs Netflix’s share of prime-time “downstream” traffic delivered over “fixed networks” — that is, wires and pipes — at 32.3 percent. That’s just a hair down from the 33 percent estimate it provided last November.

Meanwhile, Sandvine said Amazon and HBO have seen their share of traffic hold steady, as well. Sandvine said Amazon dropped from 1.75 percent to 1.31 percent, and that HBO dropped from 0.5 percent to 0.34 percent. But that’s not a lot of movement either way.

The one service that did leap a bit is Hulu, which is up from 1.1 percent to 2.41 percent.*

Bear in mind that these numbers do include data transmitted from a home network, via Wi-Fi, to iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, etc. And that Sandvine said this kind of “home roaming” accounts for a whopping 20 percent of traffic now, up from 9 percent a year ago.

But Sandvine also tracks streaming traffic to mobile devices over wireless networks. And here it said that Netflix has made a move from 2.2 percent of downstream traffic to 4 percent in the last 12 months. YouTube, though, is still dominant: If you’re on the go, and you’re watching a moving image, there’s a very good chance you’re seeing something hosted by the world’s biggest video site.

So what does any of that mean? Short answer: Netflix is streaming more video than ever — it added at least two million American users between measurements, and likely many more — but so are its competitors. So its lead is staying more or less the same. Sandvine said the average Internet household uses about 18 gigabytes of broadband a month — up from 10GB a year ago.

Still here? If so, you’ve probably read Ashlee Vance’s excellent Bloomberg Businessweek piece on the engineering that lets Netflix move all those bits into your house. If not, you should definitely read it now.

* Sandvine researcher Dan Deeth notes that the numbers his company provided last fall were collected in the first two weeks of September, which means that Hulu wouldn’t have had access to a batch of new TV shows from its broadcaster partner/owners. The numbers in today’s report were collected in the first two weeks of March, which means Hulu would benefit from new programming that ran during February sweeps; Netflix would have also benefited from any surge in “House of Cards” viewers.

But expect to hear more talk about what the company has been doing to improve its suite of Android services than about big changes to the operating system itself.

“It’s not a time when we have much in the way of launches of new products or a new operating system,” Google’s Sundar Pichai said in an interview with Wired. “Both on Android and Chrome, we’re going to focus this I/O on all of the kinds of things we’re doing for developers, so that they can write better things. We will show how Google services are doing amazing things on top of these two platforms.”

It makes sense that Google is investing a lot in its services that ride on top of Android — and for three main reasons.

First of all, it is these services, rather than Android itself, where Google makes its money.

Second, when Google invests in Android, those are investments that benefit anyone using Android, from loyal partners such as Samsung and HTC to those that heavily modify the operating system such as Amazon and many Chinese phone makers.

Pichai was charitable toward all of the Android efforts, even those such as Amazon that take Google’s work and go in a different direction.

“Under the rules of the license, Amazon can do that,” said Pichai, who now runs Android in addition to his previous duties overseeing Chrome OS. “In general, we at Google would love everyone to work on one version of Android, because I think it benefits everyone better. But this is not the kind of stuff we’re trying to prevent. Our focus is not on Facebook Home or Kindle Fire.”

The third reason why Google can benefit more from updating its services is that such improvements don’t need the same kind of blessing from hardware makers and carriers. With operating system updates needing support from both the device maker and operator, it can take months for devices to get the latest Android OS update, if they are updated at all. Services, by contrast can be updated much more quickly.

Pichai noted that updates remains an area that needs improvement.

“We are thinking about how to make Android handle updates better,” Pichai said in the Wired interview. “We see ways we can do this. It’s early days. We’re talking with our partners and working our way through it. We need time to figure out the mechanics, but it’s definitely an area of focus for me and for the team.”

And just because Google isn’t treating developers to a big new version of Android at I/O doesn’t mean that 2013 won’t see the tasty follow-up to Jelly Bean.

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• Google Gives Search a Deeper Voice and Adds Reminders and More to Google Now
• With Revamped Hangouts, Google Aims to Unify Messaging
• Google+ Gets a Bit More Pinteresting
• Google Chrome: 750 Million Active Users, Synchronized Web and Mobile Browsing
• Coming Soon From Google: A $649 Samsung Galaxy S4 Running Stock Android
• With Sights Set on Spotify (And Pandora), Google Launches a Music Subscription Service
• Google on Android: 900 Million Activations, New Tools for Developers Coming
• Google Doubles Down on Music Subscriptions, Which Means Google Isn’t Serious About Music Subscriptions
• Where Are They Now? Google I/O 2012 Edition.
• At I/O, Google Tilts Toward Android Services Over Android OS
• Google Downplays Expectations Ahead of I/O Developer Conference
• Will Google Deliver on Its Nexus Q Promise? Not at This Year’s I/O.
• Ahead of I/O, Google Wallet Drops Plans to Introduce a Physical Card
• Google Goes With Unified I/O Keynote (But Will It Unify Its Products?)

That’s $5 worth of Coins each, a promotion Amazon says will cost it “tens of millions of dollars.” That’s a lot of real money to spend to generate buzz for yet another virtual currency, but Amazon has good reason to do so.

Like other virtual currencies — Facebook credits, for example — Coins is notional, which makes it easier to spend. As in gambling, the abstraction of converting real money into virtual money makes it harder to keep track of how much of the former you’re actually doling out. And, of course, once you purchase Coins from Amazon, it becomes the only place to redeem them. (Note: When you buy an item with Coins on which Amazon is required to charge sales tax, Coins are used to pay sales tax.)

The implications of that are interesting. Right now, Amazon accepts Coins for apps, games and in-app purchases, but the company has plans to extend beyond that. Said Amazon VP of apps and games Mike George, “We will continue to add more ways to earn and spend Coins on a wider range of content and activities.”

Is the master plan here to extend Coins beyond digital goods to all purchases on Amazon.com? If the company is able to use the currency for virtual and digital goods, surely it’s capable of using it for real-world ones as well. Will it? We’ll see in the months ahead.

* Amazon will continue to accept traditional forms of payment for apps and games.

The Seattle e-commerce giant has recently been developing a wide-ranging lineup of gadgets — including two smartphones and an audio-only streaming device — to expand its reach beyond its Kindle Fire line of tablet computers, said people familiar with the company’s plans.

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According to numerous sources close to the situation, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently met with top execs at Hulu, the premium video service whose big media company owners have been considering selling it for some months.

Sources said Yahoo is “in the process,” although the Silicon Valley Internet giant has not made any kind of formal bid. Other players whom sources said are considering purchasing all or parts of Hulu include: Former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, who now has a successful and well-funded multimedia and investment company called the Chernin Group; Guggenheim Partners digital arm, which is led by former Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn; and Amazon.

Sources said Mayer also had an extensive getting-to-know-you meeting, which was apparently not held at Hulu’s offices in Santa Monica, Calif., along with COO Henrique De Castro. The discussion is taking place in the wake of Yahoo’s failed bid — largely engineered by De Castro — to purchase a majority stake in France Télécom’s Dailymotion video service, after a top French government official said Yahoo could not own 75 percent of the company.

Had the deal — which was reportedly valued at $300 million — gone through, it would have been the most significant by Mayer since she took over at the company last July. Thus far, she has limited her purchases to small mobile startup.

While the meetings with Hulu are only preliminary, Yahoo has been to this video rodeo before, having seriously considering buying Hulu when it was previously being shopped by its owners, News Corp., Disney and Comcast. (News Corp. also owns this site.)

Of course, if Yahoo’s interest becomes more serious, Mayer will have to make important visits to top execs at those media giants, since they control the rights to critical content, and thus Hulu’s value.

As Peter Kafka noted in a previous post about Hulu’s possible sale, “much hinges on the licensing rights News Corp., Disney and Comcast would provide for the money-losing site, as well as what happens to the $300 million debt its owners have taken on in the last year.”

Without those rights, Hulu by itself is a very pretty Web site and video platform, but not worth the billions it would be with very long-term television rights, content that attracts users. Currently, sources said its media owners are offering two to three years of rights, with a lot of flexibility over removing content from the site, which is not quite as attractive a deal (to say the least).

But video is a key component of Yahoo’s strategy going forward. Along with mobile efforts, Mayer has explicitly told investors that video was a key to company under her tenure.

Coincidentally, today in an onstage interview at a Wired conference in New York, Mayer broadly addressed the video issue when asked a question about the topic, noting it was important across all of Yahoo’s properties.

“I think video is really important … video is something that we’re all innately designed and born to experience, everyone is born being able to watch and to hear,” she said. “Video is just this amazing format.”

Mayer would know that well, having been at Google when the search giant bought YouTube, ironically snatching it at the last minute from a competing bid by Yahoo, which was then led by Terry Semel. Since then, YouTube has become the most important and powerful player in the space by far.

Yahoo, despite being one of the largest video players on the Web, has mostly been a lackluster competitor in the arena, pinging over the years from creating original content to doing branded deals with media companies, but never establishing a major beachhead with consumers as Hulu did from scratch.

Short of a full acquisition, there may be a way for Yahoo to partner and invest in Hulu, instead of buying it outright that works for all sides — owners get a new owner to foot part of the bill and also increase distribution, and Yahoo can claim that it’s providing users with exponentially more content that would help Yahoo’s long-declining engagement problem.

Sources said News Corp. and Disney have mulled scenarios where one or both companies hang on to the site, while Comcast has no control over Hulu’s fate, having given up its management rights to the site as a concession to federal regulators.

But the strength of the Hulu brand is clear and it has had some success in building a more significant business. While a lot of its video offerings are free, about four million people are paying for a Hulu Plus subscription.

Still, Hulu’s strength might be lagging, especially given after talented founding leader Jason Kilar recently left. Last year, Hulu was a top 10 video site, according to comScore. No longer — in a report in March, it had dropped out of the top 10.

While this likely has more to do with methodology than real decline in Hulu ratings, it does show that while it’s the biggest thing Yahoo could buy or invest in, Yahoo itself has plenty of video views, many more than Hulu.

The question for Mayer then is how much of Yahoo’s multi-billon-dollar cash kitty she wants to bet on a big video play. She might also be considering buying several smaller ones, said sources, with Yahoo having also looked at some smaller video sites, including Blip and Grab Media.

A spokeswoman for Hulu declined to comment and Yahoo PR has not responded to a query for comment (if ever).

Now that 21st century digital behemoths such as Facebook and Google have discovered how to make personal information the most valuable resource in the history of humanity, they are strip-mining mountains of it into completely unrecognizable states.

Conversely, we tend to ignore this process because the most magnificent, technologically advanced and socially connected digital city is being built from it.

You are living in this growing digital city, and I’m guessing that you really like it here. Unfortunately, you can’t live in this city for free. Your rent is due in the form of your personal information, and you have to accept a certain loss of your privacy.

There’s no credit check to move in. You just need to share your name, birth date, where you’re from, your alma mater and a few more personal details. It’s effortless to hand over your information, and will only take you about 60 seconds to sign a lease.

But if you don’t read the fine print of your lease, you’ll gloss over the fact that surveillance cameras and microphones have been installed to cover every square inch of the city and that you have consented to being watched at all hours.

Meanwhile, marketers and advertisers will eavesdrop on your conversations and abruptly interrupt when you bring up any topics related to their products. (Bizarrely, you are also required to eat a complimentary cookie every time you enter a building.)

Real estate metaphors notwithstanding, losing your privacy is not such a bad thing. You pay into the new digital economy with your demographic and behavioral information.

Some people raise legitimate concerns, but claims of an Orwellian dystopia are alarmist hyperbole. There is a level of discomfort that comes with voluntarily divulging private information, and, understandably, greater anxiety results from being watched at all times.

As a society, we need to define the rules under which our personal information can be mined. Our collective unease is largely the result of not having clear parameters to create an equilibrium between privacy and personalization.

These parameters will help shift our focus from the negatives to the positives, because in return for your personal information, you realize a net benefit with tremendous value.

Access to Your Data From Anywhere, at Any Time, Using Any Device

I don’t want access to my data being constrained by the time of day, where I am or what digital device I have access to. I shouldn’t have to go to work to grab an Excel file off my computer and I shouldn’t need my personal device to show a photo of my dog to coworkers.

The solution is adopting a cloud service like Dropbox, Google or Facebook. They become the stewards of your data, responsible for keeping it secure and accessible at all times. In exchange, you grant them full visibility of your data and permit them to monetize it.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like carrying a USB stick around and I definitely loathe the pain of a hard drive failure corrupting three years of photos and memories. I’m sticking with the cloud.

Personalized Experience

A personalized experience is why companies like American Express, Brooks Brothers and USAA consistently rank at the top of consumer surveys. These are giant corporations, but they make you feel special by focusing on you. They also happen to know a lot about you and your spending habits.

The sheer volume of information online is overwhelming and often leads to decision paralysis. You need help cutting through the noise; the best companies personalize your digital experience, only presenting information that is relevant to you.

I don’t want to dig through the iTunes or Netflix libraries. I want to choose from recommendations based upon what I’ve watched in the past and what my friends are watching. If I’m buying something on Amazon, or planning a vacation on TripAdvisor, I’d like to see reviews and recommendations from my friends. I’m far more likely to make a better and more informed choice with the trusted validation of my social circle.

Proactive Digital Assistant

Google knows where I live, where I work and the typical route I take to commute between them. I find it extremely valuable when I am alerted about an accident before I’m already stuck in the horrific traffic jam for over an hour.

Facebook pings me with a push notification about my friend’s birthday so I don’t forget yet again. I can see from Instagram photos that my friend went to the Nationals game and I can ask him how it was. Foursquare will let me know if one of my friends has checked in near me and we can now meet for a serendipitous drink.

Our 21st century digital economy makes my life better. I have access to what I need, when I need it. My online experience is largely customized to suit my needs. And, I have better ambient awareness of what’s happening in my social circles.

The cost to improve my life is sharing my personal information. A barter economy is based on the exchange of goods and services of perceived equal value. In my mind, I’m receiving far more than I’m giving up.

There is a zero-sum relationship between personalization and privacy. To get the personalized digital experience you want and have grown accustomed to, you have to accept the loss of your privacy.

Tom Cochran is CTO at Atlantic Media, publisher of the Atlantic, Quartz, National Journal and Government Executive. Prior to that, he was at the White House as the Director of New Media Technologies. Follow him on Twitter at @tommer.

According to sources close to the situation, well-known tech exec Jon Rubinstein will be joining the board of Qualcomm, the San Diego-based chipmaker that has gotten a big boost of late for its role in the explosion of mobile devices.

Rubinstein is an interesting and logical choice for Qualcomm, having been a high-profile player for a long time in the mobile space, beginning with his work on the iPod while at Apple. After he left his last job at Hewlett-Packard last year, though, he has been very low-key.

(Update: Qualcomm confirmed the appointment in a press release.)

For Qualcomm, the selection of Rubinstein to join the board is something to watch, as he is the second exec from Silicon Valley to be tapped by the company recently. In March, Qualcomm hired tech investor Laurie Yoler as SVP of business development, making her “responsible for augmenting existing business relationships in Silicon Valley, as well as developing new strategic business opportunities for Qualcomm in the region.”

Rubinstein has even more experience here and is also familiar with a range of mobile efforts over the years, some of which were successful and others not so much, from his work at Apple, Palm and then HP. He is also a board member of Amazon.

Aside from CEO and Chairman Paul Jacobs, Rubinstein — who has degrees in electrical engineering and computer science — will be the most technically experienced director on the 11-person board.

Qualcomm declined to comment.

Here’s a nice primer on Rubinstein by Arik Hesseldahl, in a report on his leaving HP early last year:

Best known for his work on Apple’s iconic iPod music player, Rubinstein left Apple in 2006 and joined Roger McNamee as a partner in the private equity firm Elevation Partners, following its 2007 investments in Palm.

In 2009 he replaced longtime Palm executive Ed Colligan as its CEO, and oversaw a dramatic restructuring of the company’s products, including a significant rebuild of its smartphone operating system. Gone was the legacy PalmOS that had been used in so many popular devices like the Treo that for a time competed seriously against Research In Motion’s BlackBerry.

PalmOS was replaced by WebOS, which first appeared on the Pre smartphone, then later on the Pixi and Veer devices. After HP acquired Palm, WebOS was also used on the abandoned TouchPad tablet, and is now an open-source operating system overseen by HP.

Rubinstein’s departure is no big surprise. Sources said he hadn’t been seen at HP’s offices following the decision by former CEO Léo Apotheker to get out of the business of making WebOS-based hardware. His future plans have been the subject of speculation for some time.

After HP decided to exit the WebOS hardware business, Rubinstein was assigned to a vaguely described “product innovation role” within HP’s Personal Systems Group during a management shakeup last July. It was an unusual move and one made with little explanation at the time. But sources say it was a preface to Rubinstein’s departure, one intended to lessen its PR impact when he finally left. “That ‘innovation’ gig he was given in July was his first step toward the exit,” said one source, a former Palm exec with close ties to Rubinstein.

That didn’t happen, and they ended December with something like 900,000 subscribers. But now it has: Carey said Hearst hit the one million mark at the end of March.

“I’m glad we got there,” Carey said. “We were just 90 days late.”

In February, at our D: Dive Into Media conference, Carey said he thinks that in 2016, Hearst will have three million digital subscribers, or about 10 percent of his entire base.

As we’ve noted before, tablets aren’t going to save the magazine business, but they are a nice new revenue stream for it. And a million is very respectable, given that the iPad only showed up three years ago, and publishers really didn’t have a way of offering digital subscriptions through Apple’s iTunes until midway through 2011. (That number also includes Nook and Kindle subscribers, and, theoretically, some Android owners, too.)

To refresh your memory on Carey’s take on digital and print publishing, here’s the highlight reel of my chat with him a couple months ago: