Third Undersea Internet Cable Cut in Middle East

An undersea cable carrying Internet traffic was cut off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, officials said Friday, the third loss of a line carrying Internet and telephone traffic in three days. Ships have been dispatched to repair two undersea cables damaged on Wednesday off Egypt. Some politics said that this is not a coincidental. This must be a strategic plan of Israel to stop people and the blogsphere from telecommunicating  and writing about Israel crimes and what’s happening to the people in Gaza, Palastine. more at CNN.com

Microsoft to Acquire Yahoo! for $44.6 Billion

Microsoft will offer $44.6 billion to buy web pioneer Yahoo. Let’s just say we’d expect some pretty interesting changes to some popular web mail, web apps and instant messaging clients if it happens. Read more at: TechCrunch, DealBook, Google Blogoscoped.

Internet slowdowns in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, cables cut

Two undersea telecommunication cables were cut on Tuesday evening, knocking out Internet access to much of Egypt, disrupting the world’s back office in India and slowing down service for some Verizon customers. One cable was damaged near Alexandria, Egypt, and the other in the waters off Marseille, France, telecommunications operators said. The two cables, which are separately managed and operated, were damaged within hours of each other. Damage to undersea cables, while rare, can result from movement of geologic faults or possibly from the dragging anchor of a ship. Hundreds of undersea cables often owned and managed by international consortiums keep telecommunications running worldwide. A surge in phones and Internet connections in Asia and to new financial hubs like Dubai has increased traffic on many of these cables.Most disrupted communications were quickly rerouted through other cables. “Some of our customers were impacted” by the damaged cables on Wednesday morning until the company rerouted traffic, said Linda Laughlin, a spokeswoman for Verizon. The company is building a trans-Pacific cable from Oregon to China, South Korea and Taiwan because it needs more capacity in Asia, she said. A trade group in India estimated that roughly 60 percent of the country’s Internet users were affected, but many large companies switched quickly to backup plans, and business was not significantly disrupted. One of the affected cables stretches from France through the Mediterranean and Red Seas, then around India to Singapore. Known as Sea Me We 4, the cable is owned by 16 telecommunications companies along its route. The second cable, known as the Flag (for Fiber-optic Link Around the Globe) System, runs from Britain to Japan. Similar accident happened last year when an underwater earthquake damaged many internet cables in Asia.

Source: NY Times

Yahoo To Announce Large Video Acquisition—Maven Networks For $150 Million.

We’ve gotten word that Yahoo will make an acquisition announcement of a video startup today or tomorrow. At first we thought the target might be Metacafe, which was almost acquired by Yahoo just following the Google/YouTube deal in 2006. Shortly after, it made a small acquisition in Jumpcut, a Web-based video editor. But It’s not a video aggregator, we’ve heard, but a platform company. And the price is north of $100 million.The price point limits the number of candidates. Brightcove is our top guess. If it is Brightcove, the price would have to be well north of $100 million, given that investors have poured $86 million into the company so far. More as this develops.

For an excellent overview of the online video space and its participants, see this post written by Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire and SVP Marketing Adam Berrey.

Update: It is not Brightcove. It is Maven Networks, another Boston-based video startup, three independent sources confirm. And the price is believed to be $150 million. Maven is a video-hosting platform for media sites, including Fox News, CBS Sports, CNet, and Scripps Networks. But Yahoo would probably want it more for its video-ad network, targeting, and insertion technologies. Maven has raised $30 million to date from investors include Accel, General Catalyst, and Prism Ventures.

Source: TechCrunch

Yahoo profits drop, 1000 employees will be fired

After announcing a sharp drop in fourth-quarter profits Tuesday, Yahoo issued a disappointing outlook for this year, suggesting that investors would have to wait until 2009 for a turnaround. Yahoo also said that as part of its plan to revive its fortunes, it would cut 1,000 jobs by mid-February to reduce costs and narrow its focus to its most important businesses. The company, however, said it planned to invest aggressively in some areas, like advertising technology and selected portions of its Internet portal, as it tries to capture a larger share of online ad dollars. Since some laid-off employees could apply for new jobs at Yahoo, the net effect on the work force, which recently grew to 14,300, was not clear.

Jerry Yang, the chief executive, warned investors of “head winds” this year. Yahoo’s projections for revenue growth and profitability in 2008 were either at the low end of analysts’ expectations or below them. Yahoo said that its fourth-quarter net income fell to $206 million, or 15 cents a share, down 23 percent from $269 million, or 19 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue grew 8 percent to $1.8 billion. Excluding commissions paid to certain advertising partners, revenue was $1.4 billion, in line with analysts’ expectations. Mr. Yang, the Yahoo co-founder who was named chief executive last summer amid growing shareholder discontent, has promised to focus on three objectives: becoming a starting point for consumers on the Web; making the company a top choice for marketers seeking to place ads on sites across the Web; and opening Yahoo’s technology infrastructure to third-party programmers and publishers. It looks Google is really becoming a dominant search engine with no real competitors.

Source: Washington Post, NYTimes