The effort was launched in late 2009 as an initiative of the San Mateo Area Chamber of Commerce and also is funded by companies with offices in the area, such as mutual-fund company Franklin Templeton and online software company Salesforce.com Inc. The goal of the Edge, which is structured as a nonprofit, is to help the mid-Peninsula region from South San Francisco to Redwood City to be more business-friendly and to attract new companies into the neighborhood.

So far, the San Mateo City Council has approved $75,000 in funding for the Edge and has agreed to put in an additional $50,000, contingent on whether the group raises a matching $50,000 from corporate sponsors. The Edge has held a forum for businesses and entrepreneurs to discuss local issues and is now working on projects such as getting downtown San Mateo wired with better high-speed broadband, among other things.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In an interesting move in the search space, Conduit–a fast-growing start-up that helps publishers make and distribute apps using Web browser toolbars–has entered a strategic partnership with Microsoft’s Bing search service.

In doing so, it is leaving its existing search deal with Google and will instead offer Bing to its network of 260,000 publishers and 200 million users.

It’s a solid win for Bing, which has more incentive to draw customers of its search products and services away from Google.

And every little bit helps as Microsoft strives to put even a chink in the overwhelming dominance of the search giant.

In a blog post today, Conduit said, in part (the rest is below):

“As of January 1st, 2011, our publishers will provide the full Bing experience to their users. Users in the Conduit Network will get all the features unique to Bing, decision tools that go beyond search, and an excellent browsing experience that is constantly evolving.”

More significantly, under the terms of the deal, Web publishers will be able to distribute apps directly in the organic search results on Bing.

Conduit President Adam Boyden said in an interview yesterday that the deal was struck to offer a better user experience for its customers with search, as well as the “long-term potential for app innovation with Microsoft.”

Conduit, which was founded in 2005 and has 190 employees, is profitable, Boyden said, from customers such as Groupon, eBay, Travelocity and Major League Baseball.

The San Mateo, Calif., company has raised close to $10 million, mostly from Benchmark Capital.

Of the shift to Bing, Boyden added, “There is more strategic potential for us with Bing,” he said. “And the same is true for them.”

Here is a blog post from Conduit today on the changeover, from founder and CEO Ronen Shilo and titled “Bing–It has a nice ring to it”:

Six years ago a small group of us founded Conduit with our own money and a vision of empowering the smaller Web publishers out there by giving them the tools to change the way they interact with their users. Many people were skeptical but we believed that we could truly make a difference.

Conduit redefined the toolbar, not as a search vehicle, but as a powerful engagement tool–the Community Toolbar. With so many publishers understanding this potential, Conduit inadvertently established a footprint for itself within the search market, comparable only to major classic search players.

Six years, 260,000 publishers, and 200 million users later, Conduit has proven to be one of the companies making a difference on the Web. Our product offering has greatly evolved and now includes apps, notifications, analytics and a marketplace. In the near future we will be creating new app distribution opportunities for our network of publishers, hastening the fulfillment of Conduit’s ambition to become an industry standard, to be used by all content publishers and available across all platforms.

Today I’d like to announce the next step in our journey–we have entered into a partnership with Microsoft which we believe will significantly improve our offering to publishers, accelerating the growth of Conduit’s massive network. Both companies are highly driven by improving the user experience, and as such, see a strong alignment in our long-term strategies and are looking forward to a mutually successful partnership.

As of January 1st, 2011, our publishers will provide the full Bing experience to their users. Users in the Conduit Network will get all the features unique to Bing, decision tools that go beyond search, and an excellent browsing experience that is constantly evolving.

I would like to thank Google for four years of partnership, which greatly contributed to the growth of the company. I would also like to express my appreciation to Bing and the Conduit team, both of whom worked hard to bring this partnership about.

If you have questions, ideas, suggestions, we want to hear from you. Write to us at: contact_us@conduit.com.

In April, Gizmodo published details and video of the new iPhone 4 model. The website said it paid to obtain the phone, which was allegedly left behind in a bar by an Apple employee. The San Mateo County, Calif., district attorney’s office opened an investigation into whether crimes were committed in how the iPhone 4 details got out.

Gizmodo and its parent company, Gawker Media LLC, had been resisting efforts by the district attorney’s office to search computers and other equipment seized from the home of Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor who wrote about the iPhone prototype. Gawker had said that it was inappropriate for law-enforcement officials to seize materials from a news organization just with a search warrant, which news organizations can’t challenge in court.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In the regulatory equivalent of a surprise switcheroo, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it had officially closed its investigation of the $750 million AdMob deal with Google (GOOG), which had been at risk over the past months, citing adequate competition in the mobile advertising market, especially from Apple (AAPL).

It was a 5-0 unanimous vote.

In a press release, the FTC said:

“The Commission said that although the combination of the two leading mobile advertising networks raised serious antitrust issues, the agency’s concerns ultimately were overshadowed by recent developments in the market, most notably a move by Apple Computer Inc.–the maker of the iPhone–to launch its own, competing mobile ad network.”

This comes after two days of arrogant and petty Apple-bashing by Google at its I/O conference in San Francisco this week by the search giant’s execs–including CEO Eric Schmidt.

Guess it’s time to send some love to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Eric, given that his company’s entry into the market tipped the balance against what could have been a thorny investigation of Google by regulators!

Not that Google is out of the regulatory woods in Washington, D.C., by any means. Both the FTC and the Justice Department have been carefully scrutinizing the search giant as its power in the digital arena has grown, especially over antitrust and privacy concerns.

That federal attention is sure to continue.

Google was only saved from a preliminary injunction to stop the transaction this time because of recent moves by Apple in the mobile ad market.

Apple bought AdMob competitor Quattro Wireless in January and later announced its iAd mobile offering.

In addition, first pointed out by MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka, since Apple lost out to Google in its attempt to buy AdMob, the pair were facing a less-than-cooperative company whose iPhone has been one of AdMob’s key devices to place ads on.

Apple recently issued some new rules–thus far, unenforced–that could hurt AdMob’s ability to take advantage of the powerful iPhone smartphone platform.

Such growing rivalry is the main argument that Google and AdMob have been pushing, noting that the mobile ad business is still small and pointing to a recent survey that showed the combined entity had only 21 percent of the market.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt also took a much more aggressive stance recently on fighting the FTC if the deal was stopped, and sources said the agency was not keen to lose a legal battle over the issue.

Still, until recently, Google’s effort had not seemed to move the FTC, which has been asking for reaction to the deal from a range of sources, such as advertisers, even as Google has been soliciting official support from a number of tech sources.

In addition, lawmakers have been agitating for the FTC to act, and there has been intense lobbying by Microsoft (MSFT) and public interest groups.

The FTC is likely to catch some fire for not moving on Google.

AdMob was also caught in the crossfire, unable to move forward after Google forked over $750 million to buy it last fall.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based AdMob released a statement on the outcome: “We are extremely pleased with today’s decision from the Federal Trade Commission to clear Google’s acquisition of AdMob. Over the past six months we’ve received a great deal of support from across the mobile industry–and we deeply appreciate it. Our focus is now on working with the team at Google team to quickly close the deal.”

Here’s the official press release from the FTC, as well as blog posts from Google’s Susan Wojcicki and AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui on the development:

FTC Closes its Investigation of Google AdMob Deal After Thorough Review, Agency Finds Transaction Not Likely to Harm Competition

The Federal Trade Commission has closed its investigation of Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising network company AdMob after thoroughly reviewing the deal and concluding that it is unlikely to harm competition in the emerging market for mobile advertising networks.

In a statement issued today, the Commission said that although the combination of the two leading mobile advertising networks raised serious antitrust issues, the agency’s concerns ultimately were overshadowed by recent developments in the market, most notably a move by Apple Computer Inc.–the maker of the iPhone–to launch its own, competing mobile ad network. In addition, a number of firms appear to be developing or acquiring smartphone platforms to better compete against Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android, and these firms would have a strong incentive to facilitate competition among mobile advertising networks.

“As a result of Apple’s entry (into the market), AdMob’s success to date on the iPhone platform is unlikely to be an accurate predictor of AdMob’s competitive significance going forward, whether AdMob is owned by Google or not,” the Commission’s statement explains.

The Commission stressed that mergers in fast-growing new markets like mobile advertising should get the same level of antitrust scrutiny as those in other markets. The statement goes on to note that, “Though we have determined not to take action today, the Commission will continue to monitor the mobile marketplace to ensure a competitive environment and to protect the interests of consumers.”

Mobile ad networks, such as those provided by Google and AdMob, sell advertising space for mobile publishers, who create applications and content for websites configured for mobile devices, primarily Apple’s iPhone and devices that run Google’s Android operating system. By “monetizing” mobile publishers’ content through the sale of advertising space, mobile ad networks play a vital role in fueling the rapid expansion of mobile applications and Internet content.

According to the FTC’s statement, evidence gathered by the agency raised important questions about the transaction. Google and AdMob have competed head-to-head for the past few years, with a notable increase in intensity during the past year. This competition has spurred innovation and allowed mobile publishers to keep a large share of the revenue generated from the sale of their ad space. The companies also have economies of scale that give them a major advantage over smaller rivals in the business, the statement says.

These concerns, however, were outweighed by recent evidence that Apple is poised to become a strong competitor in the mobile advertising market, the FTC’s statement says. Apple recently acquired Quattro Wireless and used it to launch its own iAd service. In addition, Apple can leverage its close relationships with application developers and users, its access to a large amount of proprietary user data, and its ownership of iPhone software development tools and control over the iPhone developers’ license agreement.

The Commission vote to close the investigation was 5-0.

Working with AdMob to move mobile advertising forward

5/21/2010 09:25:00 AM

Today, the Federal Trade Commission cleared our acquisition of AdMob, a mobile advertising start up. We’re excited to work with Omar Hamoui and his talented team at AdMob to develop new mobile advertising solutions for marketers, mobile app developers and mobile publishers.

The decision is great news for the mobile advertising ecosystem as a whole. This was reflected in the widespread industry support for our acquisition.

Throughout the FTC’s review process, it’s been clear that mobile advertising is growing rapidly.

As mobile phone usage increases, growth in mobile advertising is only going to accelerate. This benefits mobile developers and publishers who will get better advertising solutions, marketers who will find new ways to reach consumers, and users who will get better ads and more free content.

We’re very excited about the possibilities in this field. As an immediate matter, we’re now moving to close this acquisition in coming weeks. We’ll then start work right away on bringing AdMob’s and Google’s teams and products together. This industry is moving fast, and we’re excited to be part of the race!

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management

AdMob Blog: Working with Google to move mobile advertising forward

May 21st, 2010

We are extremely pleased with the FTC’s decision today to clear Google’s acquisition of AdMob. Over the past six months we’ve received a great deal of support from across the mobile industry – and we deeply appreciate it.

We are excited to get to what’s next and to start working with Google to develop new products and services for our advertisers, developers, and publishers. We share a commitment to helping our customers navigate and take advantage of the mobile opportunity. Together, Google and AdMob will be able to bring a whole host of new products and capabilities to mobile advertising.

I have to pause to acknowledge the AdMob team. It takes a tremendous group to stay focused and remain productive during a process like this review. The Google deal was announced in November of last year. Rather than sit idle for six months, we’ve launched 15 new products, updated 11 more, and continued building a phenomenal business that is serving an ever growing base of customers. I couldn’t be more grateful for all this group has done.

We will now work with Google to close the deal. Once that happens, we will finally get to the fun part–connecting our teams and products to find ways to better serve our customers. Stay tuned.

Omar

While executives at both AdMob and Google are pulling out all the stops to convince federal government regulators otherwise, multiple sources close to the situation said that the pair now expect the Federal Trade Commission to try to block the acquisition of the small mobile advertising start-up by the search giant.

While the situation could change, of course, sources said that the lack of any kind of indication of clear direction of the inquiry this late in the game by FTC staff–which recommends action to its five commissioners–is a bad sign.

“The federal government is looking for a way to discipline Google in some way, because of larger concerns about its search power on the Web,” said one source. “And this is where it looks like it will try to show that concern.”

Action could come as early as this week, but is more likely next week, in the form of a request for a preliminary injunction to stop the transaction due to antitrust concerns.

As luck would have it, late last week on a Virgin America redeye to Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., BoomTown ran smack into AdMob Founder and CEO Omar Hamoui, who was on the same flight.

Unfortunately for Silicon Valley’s luckiest entrepreneur of 2009–he sold the San Mateo, Calif. start-up to Google (GOOG) for $750 million last November–it was yet another of a half-dozen trips back east so far that have taken on a less than pleasant tone.

Hamoui, who usually has a fresh-faced demeanor, was clearly looking a lot more haggard than usual.

He declined to comment in detail about the situation, only noting that, “I have been trying to explain our business, which is still nascent, to the FTC.”

That’s a big problem, of course, since Hamoui’s real job is to keep his start-up cooking with gas until it is officially bought by Google.

Along with keeping up with competitors–such as Quattro Wireless, which was bought by Apple in January–Hamoui is now hampered in hiring new staff for AdMob, as it waits in limbo.

That’s because AdMob has no currency now to offer engineers,

In addition, first pointed out by MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka, since Apple (AAPL) lost out on its attempt to buy AdMob to Google, he’s also facing a less-than-cooperative company whose iPhone has been one of AdMob’s key devices to place ads on.

And Apple recently issued some new rules–thus far, unenforced–that could hurt AdMob’s ability to take advantage of the powerful iPhone smartphone platform.

Such growing rivalry is the main argument that Google and AdMob have been pushing, noting that the mobile ad business is still small and also pointing to a recent survey that shows the combined entity has only 21 percent of the market.

But that point does not seem to have moved the FTC, which has been asking for reaction of the deal from a range of sources, such as advertisers, even as Google has been soliciting official support from a number of tech sources.

In addition, lawmakers have also been agitating the FTC to act, along with intense lobbying by Microsoft (MSFT) and also public interest groups.

“The FTC really wants to do this and is in search of a legal theory that it can win with,” said a close observer of the situation.

Bloomberg also reported Friday that the FTC was urging the filing of an antitrust suit to challenge the deal.

In other words, big regulatory trouble for Google, and–more to the point–questions over the fate of AdMob.

“It feels like AdMob is going to suffer collateral damage for a bigger fight going on about reining in Google,” said one source.

And, until the verdict is in, here’s a video of an interview I did with Hamoui in late 2008, when life was a lot simpler and bureaucrat-free for him:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100503/close-encounters-of-the-regulatory-kind-admob-google-braces-for-the-worst/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20091123/google-buys-ad-optimizer-teracent/ http://allthingsd.com/20091123/google-buys-ad-optimizer-teracent/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:52:03 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13207 Google’s acquisition spree continues: The company has bought Teracent, a start-up that customizes online ads on the fly. BoomTown reported in September that Google (GOOG) was interested in the San Mateo, Calif.,-based company, which is filled with veterans of…Yahoo (YHOO).

No purchase price disclosed, but I’m fairly confident this was in the sub-$50 million category. Teracent had been looking to raise something like $5 million earlier this year and had previously raised around $6 million, much of it from New Enterprise Associates.

I’m told the company was doing something under $2 million a year in revenue, and when I talked to CEO Vikas Jha in September, he told me that the three-and-a-half-year-old company is profitable.

One immediate beneficiary of the deal: Rival ad optimizer Tumri, which does very similar work.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091123/google-buys-ad-optimizer-teracent/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091109/google-acquires-admob-for-750-million-in-stock-the-press-release/ http://allthingsd.com/20091109/google-acquires-admob-for-750-million-in-stock-the-press-release/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:33:49 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=20388

Google has acquired AdMob for $750 million, a huge price for an innovative start-up that has pioneered online ads on mobile and now smart phones.

BoomTown visited AdMob last fall and posted about how it was likely to eventually be acquired by…Google (GOOG)!

(Google has provided a primer on the sale, which you can read about here.)

The move is a major one for Google, which has been pushing hard into the mobile advertising space as it seeks to grow its already considerable Web search business. AdMob is arguably the most innovative and fastest out of the gate in the nascent arena.

As I wrote previously about the company’s prospects:

While there are very few bright spots to look at in the start-up space in Silicon Valley these days, especially those relying on online advertising, the San Mateo, Calif.-based AdMob is at least slightly shiny.

The mobile advertising marketplace, backed by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, just got a big slug of funding–almost $16 million–to keep pushing to get ads on mobile phones, which has gotten a huge boost from the popularity of the iPhone.

The massive data usage by users of the popular mobile device by Apple (AAPL) has clearly turbocharged AdMob’s prospects, which were already on the rise. Compared to a year ago, the company said, the number of ads it served more than tripled the number of ads served on a monthly basis to 4.5 billion.

Obviously, the better quality and more actionable nature of ads on improved screens is the reason for the shift, which should accelerate as more smartphones like Google’s G1 and the newest Blackberry Storm from RIM (RIMM) become more popular too.

Most importantly, even now, AdMob is cash flow-positive, which is not a bad thing to be in the current econalypse. It also has a cushion of cash–AdMob had previously garnered $15 million in funding from Sequoia and Accel.

It’s not all sunshine and daisies, of course, since the ad market in general is headed for a deep slump, and new markets are not going to grow as quickly, as marketers pull back from spending.

But, when the economy turns, the mobile advertising market is clearly going to be a fast-growing arena, with big players like Google, Yahoo (YHOO), Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) as AdMob competitors (or potential acquirers, especially Google).

With the money it just raised, AdMob said it would be getting ready for that race, and also use it to expand internationally.

Here’s a video interview with Omar Hamoui, founder and CEO of AdMob, on all this and more, as well as a tour of company’s offices:

And, here’s the press release:

Google to Acquire AdMob

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AdMob, a mobile display ad technology provider, for $750 million in stock. This acquisition will enhance Google’s existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice in this growing new area.

“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” said Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management at Google. “AdMob is the quintessential Silicon Valley startup–generating impressive year on year revenue growth–and we’re excited to welcome this talented team to Google.”

“I think people underestimate how important ads have been to funding the development of innovative content on the Internet. Our goal all along at AdMob has been to make it possible for developers and publishers to bring their products and ideas to mobile with the same business model,” said Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO of AdMob. “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made towards accomplishing this goal, and joining Google will only accelerate this process, ultimately leading to very real benefits for end users around the world. As publishers and developers generate more revenue from their mobile products, they will invest more, and their mobile offerings will become richer, more creative and more robust.”

The deal will help Google in its efforts to develop more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats. As this ecosystem continues to grow, the company expects these new marketing media to offer significant benefits:

Advertisers will be better able to engage mobile users with AdMob’s ad formats

Publishers and developers will be able to monetize their content more effectively, which has benefits for the wider mobile ecosystem

Users will see more relevant ads and ultimately get access to more ad-supported content and applications – improving their mobile experience

“Attracting the world’s top engineering talent and people with entrepreneurial vision to Google has always been crucial to our success. AdMob’s proven track record in innovating at speed will help maintain that culture–which is why we are so excited to be working with them,” added Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering at Google.

Both companies have approved the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091109/google-acquires-admob-for-750-million-in-stock-the-press-release/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20090810/vmware-forks-over-420-million-for-springsource/ http://allthingsd.com/20090810/vmware-forks-over-420-million-for-springsource/#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:22:54 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=17271

It’s certainly acquisition fever in Silicon Valley today.

After it was announced that that social networking giant Facebook had bought online content sharing start-up FriendFeed, now comes the news that VMware has purchased SpringSource, a privately held enterprise and Web application development and management cloud computing start-up.

The price? That would be $420 million in cash and stock.

While the blogosphere–including BoomTown–will inevitably find the FaceFeed deal more riveting, this one is obviously more important.

With the purchase of San Mateo, Ca.-based SpringSource, Palo Alto, Calif.-based, VMware (VMW)–which is a top player in the virtualization space–is adding to its cloud-computing application-management strength and its ties to the open-source community.

Said VMware in a press release about the five-year-old SpringSource buy:

“VMware will acquire SpringSource for approximately $362 million in cash and equity plus the assumption of approximately $58 million of unvested stock and options. The acquisition has been approved by SpringSource’s stockholders and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.”

Here’s the full press release from VMware (plus, here is a link to a blog post by SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson:

VMware to Acquire SpringSource

Company Adds Modern Application Platform to Cloud Infrastructure Strategy

PALO ALTO, Calif., August 10, 2009–VMware, Inc., (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced a major step forward in its journey to help simplify IT by entering into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held SpringSource, a leader in enterprise and web application development and management. VMware and SpringSource plan to deliver compelling new solutions that enable companies to more efficiently build, run and manage applications within both internal and external cloud architectures.

“Today’s modern computing environments are moving to an application and data-centric world powered by state of the art virtualized and cloud computing platforms,” said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware. “The combination of SpringSource and VMware capitalizes on this shift and places us right at the intersection of the most important forces in the software market today–virtualization, modern application frameworks and cloud computing.”

VMware will acquire SpringSource for approximately $362 million in cash and equity plus the assumption of approximately $58 million of unvested stock and options. The acquisition has been approved by SpringSource’s stockholders and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.

SpringSource is the innovator and driving force behind some of the most popular and fastest growing open source developer communities, application frameworks, runtimes, and management tools. In just five years, SpringSource has established a presence in a majority of the Global 2000 companies, and is rapidly delivering a new generation of commercial products and services. VMware plans to continue to support the principles that have made SpringSource solutions popular: the interoperability of SpringSource software with a wide variety of middleware software, and the open source model that is important to the developer community.

Together, VMware and SpringSource plan to further innovate and develop integrated Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions that can be hosted at customer datacenters or at cloud service providers. These solutions will allow customers to rapidly build new enterprise and web applications and run and manage these applications in the same dynamic, scalable and cost-efficient vSphere-based internal or external clouds that can also host and manage their existing applications, providing an evolutionary path to the future. Forrester Research expects the emerging and rapidly growing PaaS market to expand to $15B by 2016. (Platform-As-A-Service Market Sizing, July 13, 2009)

“VMware has led the modernization of datacenter infrastructures through innovative virtualization and cloud architectures, providing customers with cost savings, agility and choice,” said Rod Johnson, chief executive officer, SpringSource. “The SpringSource team and community are committed to revolutionizing the way companies build, run and manage applications. By combining forces, I’m confident that we’ll be able to deliver a set of truly remarkable solutions that dramatically simplify enterprise IT.”

Background on SpringSource

SpringSource is at the forefront of “lean software,” a concept that is being rapidly adopted by enterprises focused on dramatically cutting cost and complexity, increasing productivity, and accelerating the delivery of high-quality, business-critical applications. SpringSource’s offerings and their underlying open-source technologies are uniquely able to address a wide range of corporate, web and commercial applications through a dynamic, yet consistent architecture. SpringSource counts a majority of the Global 2000 as current customers, and has a rapidly growing business delivering support, training and commercial software based on the well-known open source technologies and communities led by SpringSource:

The Spring Framework is the leading enterprise Java programming model; currently supporting half of all enterprise Java projects and used by approximately two million developers worldwide. The Spring Framework provides a high productivity, lightweight programming environment that makes applications portable across open source and commercial application server environments from IBM, Oracle and others.

Apache Tomcat is the world’s most widely used Java application server, deployed at more than 60% of all organizations running Java server applications. SpringSource is the key contributor to and maintainer of Tomcat and is responsible for more than 95% of the bug fixes over the past two years.

SpringSource leads Groovy and Grails, a rapidly growing dynamic language and Web application framework, each with more than 70,000 downloads per month. Together, Groovy and Grails deliver the rapid application productivity of Ruby on Rails for web applications, while maintaining skill-set and infrastructure compatibility with Java Virtual Machine (JVM) environments.

With more than 3,500 deployments worldwide, SpringSource’s Hyperic application monitoring and management tools are recognized as among the leading open source offerings in the space. In March, SpringSource/Hyperic was named one of Gartner’s “Cool Vendors in Cloud Computing Management and Professional Services.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090810/vmware-forks-over-420-million-for-springsource/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090512/facebooks-privacy-chief-and-california-attorney-general-candidate-chris-kelly-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20090512/facebooks-privacy-chief-and-california-attorney-general-candidate-chris-kelly-speaks/#comments Tue, 12 May 2009 09:52:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=13492

BoomTown tried to get Chris Kelly (pictured here) to give up more during an onstage interview I did with the Facebook chief privacy officer last night at the third “Tech Policy Summit” and was only moderately successful in the endeavor.

He talked about the recent Terms of Service debacle as a snafu that got sensationalized by the media, the Beacon advertising controversy as a snafu that got sensationalized by the media and the Free-the-Scoble-5,000 data-sharing debate as a snafu that got sensationalized by the media.

But Kelly also managed to say that the media were sensational for keeping Facebook–the dominant social-networking site in the whole wide world–honest as it grows into a behemoth grasping a scary amount of personal information on its 200 million users in its claws.

Oh, he is a smoothie all right, as a lawyer and now as a wannabe politician.

Kelly–who is still working at the start-up, where his job it is to make sure consumer data, privacy, the children and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reputation are all safe and sound–is also running for the job of California’s attorney general.

(Here is his Facebook page about the effort.)

Born in Silicon Valley, with a troika of diplomas from fancy schools (undergraduate from Georgetown in 1991, a master’s from Yale in 1992 and a law degree from Harvard in 1997), Kelly worked as a lawyer and also as a policy adviser for President Bill Clinton’s White House Domestic Policy Council and Department of Education before coming to Facebook four years ago.

For a closer look-see at the candidate for the Golden State’s top cop position, here’s a video interview I did with him after the onstage chat in San Mateo, Calif.:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090512/facebooks-privacy-chief-and-california-attorney-general-candidate-chris-kelly-speaks/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090511/a-techtastically-busy-week-a-grab-bag-of-digital-stuff-to-consider/ http://allthingsd.com/20090511/a-techtastically-busy-week-a-grab-bag-of-digital-stuff-to-consider/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 13:31:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=13444

It’s another packed week for tech, especially in Silicon Valley, where the kibitzing never ends and the econalypse is almost completely ignored.

First up this week is an event today at which BoomTown will appear called “The Free! Summit: Inside the Digital Economy” in San Mateo.

Given all the recent debate about free versus paid, as traditional media companies take aim at the issue, it should be interesting.

I will be on an afternoon panel called “Business Models That Work,” which is about the the future of news and what’s next for journalism in the digital economy.

The other panelists are: Dan Gillmor, Director, Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, Arizona State University; Alan Mutter, Adjunct Faculty Member, Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and founder, “Reflections of a Newsosaur”; and Marshall Van Alstyne, Associate Professor of Information Economics, Boston University and Visiting Professor, MIT.

Later in the day, the event will morph into the third “Tech Policy Summit,” where I get to do a one-on-one interview with Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer, Chris Kelly, who is still at the social-networking site but is also now running for the job of California’s Attorney General.

(My All Things Digital partner Walt Mossberg will appear on Tuesday, along with a solid slate of speakers.)

On Thursday, ContentNext Media is holding its third EconSm conference, this time focusing on mobile, in an all-day event in San Francisco.

Speakers include: Zander Lurie, CFO, CBS (CBS) Interactive; angel investor Ron Conway (see my recent video interview with him here); Eric Johnson, president and COO, Wolfgang’s Vault; Joe Kennedy, CEO and president, Pandora; and Kevin Thau, director of mobile business development at Twitter.

Wrote paidContent’s Staci Kramer: “Much has changed as we get ready for our third EconSM–including the name. The acronym is still the same but this year it’s about the intersection of social and mobile. Social media has passed the gimmick stage–although not everyone has figured that out–and is part of the daily fabric for an increasing number of people.”

And, if you have even more time, the Aspen Institute has just published J.D. Lasica’s 110-page e-book, “Identity in the Age of Cloud Computing: The Next-Generation Internet’s Impact on Business, Governance and Social Interaction.”

Lasica told me that he wrote the report after a roundtable of 30 experts in identity and technology (people like John Seely Brown and Esther Dyson) was convened in Aspen to discuss the ramifications of the cloud on a societal level.

He talked the Aspen Institute into releasing the e-book under a Creative Commons license, the first time it has ever done that.

And lest you think this is too focused on just Silicon Valley, I missed attending the Seattle 2.0 Awards last week, but here are the winners:

Best Start-up: Picnik
Best Boot-strapped Start-up: Picnik
Best Start-up CEO: Jonathan Sposato (Picnik)
Best Start-up Technologist: Nat Brown (iLike)
Best Venture Capitalist: Matt McIlwain (Madrona Venture Group)
Best Angel Investor: Geoff Entress
Best Start-up Product Designer: Peter Roman (Picnik)
Best Service Provider to Start-ups: Shannon Swift (Swift HR Solutions)
Best Blog from/about Start-ups: TechFlash/John Cook
Best Social Event for Start-ups: Lunch 2.0 by Josh Maher

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090511/a-techtastically-busy-week-a-grab-bag-of-digital-stuff-to-consider/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081114/kara-visits-admob-and-talks-about-how-iphone-turbocharged-the-mobile-advertising-business/ http://allthingsd.com/20081114/kara-visits-admob-and-talks-about-how-iphone-turbocharged-the-mobile-advertising-business/#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:48:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=6480

While there are very few bright spots to look at in the start-up space in Silicon Valley these days, especially those relying on online advertising, the San Mateo, Calif.-based AdMob is at least slightly shiny.

The mobile advertising marketplace, backed by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, just got a big slug of funding–almost $16 million–to keep pushing to get ads on mobile phones, which has gotten a huge boost from the popularity of the iPhone.

The number of ads AdMob is serving on the iPhone jumped to more than 100 million in September, compared to 35 million the month before, for example.

The massive data usage by users of the popular mobile device by Apple (AAPL) has clearly turbocharged AdMob’s prospects, which were already on the rise. Compared to a year ago, the company said, the number of ads it served more than tripled the number of ads served on a monthly basis to 4.5 billion.

Obviously, the better quality and more actionable nature of ads on improved screens is the reason for the shift, which should accelerate as more smartphones like Google’s G1 and newest Blackberry Storm from RIM (RIMM) become more popular too.

Most importantly, even now, AdMob is cash flow-positive, which is not a bad thing to be in the current econalypse. It also has a cushion of cash–AdMob had previously garnered $15 million in funding from Sequoia and Accel.

It’s not all sunshine and daisies, of course, since the ad market in general is headed for a deep slump, and new markets are not going to grow as quickly, as marketers pull back from spending.

But, when the economy turns, the mobile advertising market is clearly going to be a fast-growing arena, with big players like Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) as AdMob competitors (or potential acquirers, especially Google).

With the money it just raised, AdMob said it would be getting ready for that race, and also use it to expand internationally.

Here’s my video interview with Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO of AdMob, on all that and more, as well as a tour of its offices:

[ See post to watch video ]

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