WebProNews

Two More Publishers Talk About Blocking Google

A couple of major publishers are siding with (or at least edging towards) Rupert Murdoch in the News Corp./Google content dispute.  MediaNews Group and A.H. Belo execs have said that they're interested in keeping Google away from parts of their sites. Let's talk about MediaNews Group first.  It operates 54 daily newspapers with a combined daily circulation of 2.4 million.  Corresponding websites are part of the mix, as are a TV station and some radio stations.

Hulu is Seeing Record Numbers

comScore Video Metrix has released its monthly look at the performance of online video content properties. As usual, Google sites dominate the picture, largely because of YouTube, which gets 99% of Google's video views. The real story, however, is that Hulu is achieving record numbers. The site ranked number 2 (though significantly behind Google with 3.1% market share compared to Google's 37.7) during the month of October, with an all time high of 856 million videos viewed.

Australia, Canada Approve Microsoft-Yahoo Deal

We'll admit it: so far, most conversations concerning the Microsoft-Yahoo deal and antitrust issues have related to the U.S. and Europe.  Still, two potential roadblocks were eliminated yesterday when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Canadian Competition Bureau signaled their intent not to oppose the partnership.

Online Ad Revenues On the Rise

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers released their latest Internet advertising numbers for the third quarter. According to the organizations, Internet advertising revenues reached nearly $5.5 billion for the quarter. That is an increase of 1.7% from the second quarter. The numbers are still significantly down from the same period last year, but any increase is a good sign of things to come. There has been a 5.4% decline from last year.

Report: Microsoft, News Corp. Plotting Against Google

The companies behind search engines sometimes try to attract more traffic by advertising.  Establishing a partnership is another strategy, as is improving the actual search results.  Microsoft might be ready to try something a little different, however, as a new report's indicated that the company is interested in making Google's results worse.

Traffic and Time Spent on Black Friday Sites Increase Rapidly

New research from Nielsen finds that during the last weeks of October and the early weeks of November, the number of unique visitors to the top websites offering previews of Black Friday deals (like bfads.net for example), has been increasing rapidly. No surprise there. Week-over-week, however, traffic to these sites has increased by as much as 87%, from 3.8 million unique visitors during the week ending November 8, to 7 million during the week ending November 15.

40 Million Reasons You Need a Mobile Web Presence

Opera is reporting that usage of its Opera Mini mobile browser has jumped 11% in just a month, around the world. In addition, they say data transfers have gained 16%.

LinkedIn Celebrates 3 Million Members In The UK

If you didn't read or somehow couldn't guess from the title, LinkedIn's hit a significant milestone, attracting its 3 millionth member in the UK.  This is a very good sign for the networking site that's focused on connecting people aside from those who see each other at school or parties every week.

Iraq Comes to YouTube

Google has announced that the Iraqi government has launched a dedicated YouTube channel. It can be found at youtube.com/iraqigov. The Iraqi government joins the Pope, the Royal Family, Queen Rania, and the presidents of the United States, France, South Korea, and Estonia in having YouTube channels to communicate with the public. Here's a YouTube message from Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki:

Google Makes Google Reader More Personal

Update: Google has also now added favicons to feeds in Google Reader.