The FIEG, an association of Italian editors, recently tried to sue Google’s News service. They claim: “Google is preventing editors from choosing freely which articles should be posted on the website”.
The editors are also claiming that websites which don’t want to be published on Google News would also be automatically excluded from Google’s standard search results.
Italian antitrust authorities have started investigating Google Italy on the basis of “predominant position abuse” and will publish the results of their research and findings on October 15th 2010.
Google Italy didn’t take that long to reply. Here is their official response from Josh Cohen, business product manager for Google News, which makes perfect sense to me: Read More
Fluidinfo is a small startup based in Barcelona, with a tight international team working on what appears to be a unique idea. The idea came out of its shell just over a week ago, with their free to use launch. Fluidinfo is the child of Terry Jones, who has been working on the concept for years. It’s currently funded by its employees, friends and family, and via a seed investment from Esther Dyson. Currently, Fluidinfo is free of charge.
Fluidinfo’s core product is FluidDB (or Fluid Database). They like to refer to FluidDB as the ultimate social database – it “simply provides an information architecture that is more flexible than the ones we’re used to. It provides a fairly simple answer to the question of how we might work with information more naturally when using a computer” (Fluidinfo’s blog).
The goal is to revolutionize how information is used, crossed and mashed, making it easy to share and integrate data built on FluidDB. Unlike other databases, that appear similar—for example Amazon’s SimpleDB, also an hosted online cloud database, wherein each application stores data in its own database, Fluidinfo turns the concept upside down; all data is centrally stored, enabling information flow.
UPDATE: Due to the overwhelming response to this post we are unable to collect all your e-mail adresses. Please send an e-mail to hello@platogo.com with “TechCrunch EU” and your commenting username in the Subject and we will send you the invite code. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Platogo, an Austrian startup which we recently covered as being a Mini Seedcamp finalist, opens up in private beta tomorrow. Platogo, (as in Play Together Online) aims to be the one-stop-shop for simple online multiplayer gaming. You’ve heard of MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, but Platogo focuses on simple, easy-to-learn, online flash games with nifty graphics which are easy to play, thus tapping into the far larger market of casual gamers. We have 50 exclusive Beta Invites for Techcrunch Europe Readers. The first 50 commenters on this post will get an invite code. And we’ll see if we can strong-arm the startup into handing out more. [Update: We just got them to add150, so keep commenting].
Recently NetVibes, the startup that lets you create a widget-filled customizable homepage, rolled out a free feature allowing users to create widget-based web pages, dubbed Theme Publishing. Ostensibly aimed at users, it also has one eye on potentially charging brands and agencies to create customised home pages.
In other words, Netvibes is trying to monetize itself as fast as possible. To that end it’s also now re-selling its architecture to portals and ISPs which want to let users create customisable home pages.
Germany’s largest portal and ISP, T-Online, has thus now launched launched Meine Seite, a user-personalized, widget-based version of their site powered by Netvibes.
We’ve been covering Rummble, a mobile-oriented social network “about finding and sharing stuff you’ll like” for several years now. CEO Andrew Scott is enthusiastic, smart and persistent. I’d be hard pressed to think of a more ‘full on’ entrepreneur to be honest. And I know he may punch me for asking this (Andrew, please don’t, I’m way out of shape) but, the question is: what direction is Rummble heading in?
Rummble needs some kind of break-out moment right now. I don’t know what their traffic is like and I daresay mobile traffic and non-US traffic doesn’t register at all on the graph below, which at least hints at an uplift:
This is a guest post by Nigel Eccles, co-founder and CEO of Hubdub Ltd, the company behind Hubdub, the news prediction game, and Fanduel, the daily draft fantasy sports game. Over his last three start-ups he admits he has made every mistake outlined below. Throughout the summer TechCrunch Europe is running guest posts written by people on the tech scene in Europe. If you’d like to contribute get in touch.
You know the story. A group of friends come up with an amazing product idea, lock themselves away, code like demons, eat pizza, drink coffee and several months later come out with a prototype. The prototype is good enough to convince some investors, they raise money, build the full product, launch it, users love it, product gets traction, acquirers circle and then founders exit to a large pay-off. They then give media interviews which gets summarised into something that sounds like the above story.
What is wrong with this picture? Well, for a start it is not an accurate summary of any of the start-ups I’ve either been part of or observed over the past 10 years. The main problem is that it puts success down to the quality of the original idea and completely glosses over the most important factor: achieving a product that customers want enough to pay for. And even though most entrepreneurs know from bitter experience that the above story happens only very rarely (if at all), it retains a grip on how we think about growing our businesses.
Feeling a bit under the weather yesterday – presumably my body’s reaction to the fact that San Francisco has suddenly become sunny – I decided to take a jaunt around the Internet for column ideas. My deadline was a whole 24 hours away, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, right?
My first find was this story about a bear who had got trapped in a Colorado skate park, presumably after breaking in to practice his Ollies, or whatever it is bears do on skateboards. The bear was finally rescued when townsfolk dropped a ladder into the park, allowing him to climb to freedom.
To any normal person, a bear trapped in a skate park would be little more than a heartwarming newsbite; a quirky story to distract from another week of war and terrorism and kidnapped children living in back yards in Antioch. But not for the lazy tech columnist looking for inspiration…
We may be doing the founders of ErnestMarples.com a disservice, rather than a favor, in drawing attention to their site. Why? Because in the quaint world of Ye Olde Englande, Her Majesty’s Royal Mail still owns all the zipcode/postcode data. Unlike the US, where web apps and Google Maps have thrived on free to access zipcodes, the UK remains far behind. To license it requires hard cash, something innovative, early-stage startups rarely have. But ErnestMarples is basically a postcode database with an API sitting on top. It allows developers to build cool projects without having to pay Royal Mail (or Her Majesty) an arm and a leg for the privilege of the data. Boston Tea Party anyone?
I met Harry Metcalf, one of the guys behind ErnestMarples, at Young Rewired State (a project whose goals were very similar to ErnestMarples.com’s). “We’ll undoubtedly get shouted at severely by the Royal Mail eventually,” he said. “But before we do, it would be great to have lots more people write useful apps that use the ErnestMarples API. If we get shut down, we’ll make lots of noise, and lots of useful apps would make for a much more powerful argument for more open data.” Fighting talk. Read More
Unanimis, the UK-based digital advertising network specialising in branded and performance-based display ads, is to be bought by Orange France Telecom. Orange confirmed today that it has acquired 100% of the company, which claims to reach 69% of the online UK population and enjoyed revenues of over £21m in 2008.
The acquisition means that SPARK Ventures will realise its investment in Unanimis and receive proceeds of up to £4.7m, subject to a 50% earn-out arrangement. If the full earn-out targets are reached, SPARK will make a 2.4x return in 2012 on their original £2.1m investment.
Struq, an exciting start-up about which I’ve written before elsewhere, just launched its online advertising platform, promising hyper-targeted ads based on prior behavior but without, or so it claims, the privacy violations ascribed to the ill-fated Phorm. “Unlike Phorm,” CEO Sam Barnett told me back in June, “We don’t partner with ISPs and we don’t use ‘deep packet inspection’. We use standard cookies and work with websites that allow users to opt out of our service, enabling us to both protect user privacy and deliver relevant content that adds value to users.” Read More
• We’re running a special event consisting of an afternoon series of talks, pitches and discussions on September 24th in London, followed by a networking party in the evening. To find out more and promote your company on TechCrunch via sponsorship of this event please contact Petra Johansson on petra@twistedtree.co.uk. More details will be announced very soon. As always if you want to be the first to hear about upcoming TechCrunch Europe events, sign up to our events announcement list.
• Also, on 2nd September TechCrunch Europe will be supporting the UKTI pitching training session in London. We need some more startups who’d like to learn how to pitch their company in 3 minutes. This event is free, because we just want you to get better at pitching your company. Shucks. Again, contact Petra Johansson on petra@twistedtree.co.uk for details.
A 15-year old Belgian by the name of Salvatore is the latest victim in a series of mysterious iPhone explosions that have captured the attention of France’s and the European Commissions’ consumer affair watchdogs. Details are scarce for the moment, but according to local news reports the teenager was holding his iPhone in his hand, about to make a call, when the device suddenly ‘imploded’. The incident didn’t cause any serious injuries but reportedly gave Salvatore a headache for a couple of days. He has been promised a free replacement unit by Apple but hasn’t yet received a new phone.
There have earlier been numerous reports of exploding iPhone devices in the United States, United Kingdom and France, with most recently about ten cases having emerged in France where the official competition, consumer affairs and fraud watchdog DGCCRF has now launched an investigation to find out whether the popular Apple smartphone could pose a threat to consumers. Apple, which has sold 26 million iPhones and 200 million iPods to date, said it had been informed of the French cases, but would not comment until it had closely examined the damaged phones.
Update: Apple has now said iPhones turned in by customers in France and elsewhere in Europe with shattered screens showed external pressure that would have caused the cracking. More on Bloomberg and Techmeme.
Spotify, the legal streaming music startup that has wowed even Mark Zuckerburg, has now had its iPhone app approved by Apple, and now awaits an appearance on the App Store. How did they get an app approved which streams thousands of music tracks on demand and which potentially competes with iTunes? The short answer is no-one is saying quite how, but it’s pretty easy to surmise that iTunes won’t be affected since the app will only work for paying Spotify subscribers, who currently pay a premium subscription which currently stands at €10 a month in Europe. In which case Apple’s policy of blocking apps that duplicate native apps (like iTunes) would not apply. The green light from Apple now leaves the way open for Spotify to launch in the US, as it’s been planning, and attempt a massive change in the music industry for the record labels that have invested in it. No mean feat.
An Apple spokesperson has now confirmed the app is poised for launch in the App store and Apple “has been in constant communication” with Spotify prior to the launch. So TechCrunch would just like to say: we told you so.
As we pointed out when we reviewed the developer version of the iPhone application, Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek has said all along that they “have a great relationship with Apple” and Apple has already approved several other music services such as Lastfm, Deezer and Pandora. In addition, he said “we’ve spent significant time and resources to ensure we’ve stuck to Apple’s developer guidelines point by point.”
In other words Spotify had pretty much bet the farm on this app being approved and they would not have done so had they not got got the nod from Apple that the app was highly likely to be approved.
Here’s a official video of the app in action:
Spotify is now valued at €170 million, or about $242 million, with a post money valuation of around €200 million. That means the company has roughly doubled in valuation from a year ago, when investors bought stock at a €100 million post money valuation.
That’s not to say Spotify doesn’t have its sceptics. As our own Sarah Lacy, recently wrote, there are at least six “leaps of Faith” VCs have had to get over to invest in the startup, which has yet to leave Beta.
We’re not inclined to refute reports from a professional journalist on Twitter, so when Daily Telegraph reporter Jon Swaine says Google’s UK headquarters in London are currently on fire, we believe it’s true.
Especially since the man has managed to provide some evidence by uploading a picture to photo-sharing service TwitPic.
Here’s a clear picture of fire on the roof of some building, supposedly housing Google UK’s offices on Buckingham Palace Road. Let’s hope no one gets hurt.
Okay, so I know events are not news, but this is one worth talking about. On 19-20 September, PayPal is hosting a Charity Hack Weekend, where the goal is for developers to build new ways to take donations across social media, mobile and web platforms.
The idea is to help charities that don’t have the resources or know-how to make better use of technology to promote their cause, with the intention that any apps born over the weekend can be used by any charity under an “open source style” licence. Read More
Vodafone has just announced that it’s rolling out a higher-capacity 14.4Mbps mobile broadband network in areas of the Uk which have the highest usage. Infrastructure has already been upgraded in busy areas of London, Birmingham and Liverpool. Well, fine, I guess. But that doesn’t solve the real problem with mobile networking in the UK: coverage. Even the home counties, a stone’s throw from London and home to millions of commuters, still suffer from appallingly patchy reception. All four of the major networks are to blame here.
Take a look at Vodafone’s own coverage map for west Kent. See those blue areas? That’s where you’ll get “standard voice and text services” (so no data coverage at all). In the light blue areas, you’ll be lucky to get a signal at all. I’m not speculating; I live there. Even where the map indicates 3G coverage, it isn’t reliable and often isn’t noticeably quicker than 2G. Vodafone claims it has made “significant improvements” to this coverage viewer, including a bells-and-whistles feature that offers an “indoor” and “outdoor” signal estimator. But if these improvements mean the map is now more accurate, that’s a pretty damning indictment of Vodafone’s network, isn’t it? Read More
Bambuser, the European mobile video streaming startup attempting to de-throne Silicon Valley’s Qik, has today launched its Android application on the Android market. That brings their mobile live video service to Symbian s60, Windows Mobile and the iPhone (jailbroken only), as well as through regular webcams.
Bambuser’s main claim is that it has the lowest latency out of all the mobile video streaming services. In order to keep the video stream as close to real-time as possible, the Bambuser app drops a few frames here and there, while at the same time storing locally on the handset any dropped frames or audio that can’t get through during the live broadcast. What data doesn’t make it through during the live stream is then sent immediately afterwards when the handset doesn’t have the pressure of having to live stream and display video at the same time.
This is a guest post by Nicolas Holzapfel of stealth mode startup Yoomoot. Throughout the summer we’re running guest posts we like – exclusive to TechCrunch Europe – written by people on the tech scene in Europe. If you’d like to contribute get in touch.
Widget developer JS-Kit recently proclaimed the “death of comments”. How so? By way of its innovative comment management system Echo, that’s how. This would-be executioner pulls together disparate comments across the Web about a particular article and places them amid the conventional comments below the article. If it takes off, popular sites like TechCrunch could end up with hundreds if not thousands of additional comments. And therein lies the problem. How many of us can be bothered to read through more than the first few dozen or so comments on an article?
Here’s a short item: Spotify has announced a new feature allowing users to share the music they are listening to on Twitter. This sounds like it could threaten the likes of Blip.fm among others, which have plenty of Twitter integration, but let us know your thoughts in the comments.
It looks like even Russia isn’t immune to the downturn. Rambler Media, the Russian company that runs the massive Rambler portal has reported a large drop in display and contextual advertising revenues in six months ended June 30 which it puts down to a decline in ad spending and the depreciation of the Russian Ruble against the US Dollar. This, despite number of visitors rising to over 50 million per month. However, Rambler’s search market share has falling to less that 10% while Yandex, Mail.ru and Google all gained market share.
Curiously they have a new startegy though. Olga Turischeva, who started as Rambler CEO in April 2009, has plans for “reallocating more effort to such services as communications and navigation” but also her “long term vision is to transform Rambler into an incubator of ideas and start ups.” Sounds interesting.
The FIEG, an association of Italian editors, recently tried to sue Google’s News service. They claim: “Google is preventing editors from choosing freely which articles should be posted on the website”.
Recently 
This is a guest post by 
Feeling a bit under the weather yesterday – presumably my body’s reaction to the fact that San Francisco has suddenly become sunny – I decided to take a jaunt around the Internet for column ideas. My deadline was a whole 24 hours away, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, right?
We may be doing the founders of 
Okay, so I know 
Vodafone has just announced that it’s rolling out a higher-capacity 14.4Mbps mobile broadband network in areas of the Uk which have the highest usage. Infrastructure has already been upgraded in busy areas of London, Birmingham and Liverpool. Well, fine, I guess. But that doesn’t solve the real problem with mobile networking in the UK: coverage. Even the home counties, a stone’s throw from London and home to millions of commuters, still suffer from appallingly patchy reception. All four of the major networks are to blame here.
Take a look at Vodafone’s own coverage map for west Kent. See those blue areas? That’s where you’ll get “standard voice and text services” (so no data coverage at all). In the light blue areas, you’ll be lucky to get a signal at all. I’m not speculating; I live there. Even where the map indicates 3G coverage, it isn’t reliable and often isn’t noticeably quicker than 2G. Vodafone claims it has made “significant improvements” to this coverage viewer, including a bells-and-whistles feature that offers an “indoor” and “outdoor” signal estimator. But if these improvements mean the map is now more accurate, that’s a pretty damning indictment of Vodafone’s network, isn’t it? 
This is a guest post by 
It looks like even Russia isn’t immune to the downturn. Rambler Media, the Russian company that runs the massive 