berniescb.com

“We’re looking at the proposed transaction. We’re conducting a civil investigation,” spokeswoman Gina Talamona said, declining to offer details about the process or how long it would take.

The Washington Post first reported news of the CIDs on its Web site Tuesday evening, citing sources close to the inquiry.

In this particular case, which is not a merger of two companies, the Justice Department can’t force Yahoo and Google to comply with its wishes in order to receive clearance on the deal. Instead, the regulators can either file a lawsuit before, during, or after Yahoo and Google begin their search advertising partnership.

If the Yahoo-Google investigation moves at a pace similar to that of other antitrust cases, the Justice Department may get down to specific issues it wants to address within four to five weeks after Labor Day.

Kohl had previously expressed concerns that the deal between two technology search rivals could affect competition and have ramifications for advertisers and consumers. He said at the time that the antitrust subcommittee would investigate the competitive and privacy implications of the deal.

CNET News.com’s Dawn Kawamoto and Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.

In April, a limited two-week search ad deal was declared a success by Google and Yahoo, but even the limited partnership raised antitrust hackles at Microsoft. Microsoft brought up antitrust concerns when the search ad test began, saying the move would reinforce Google’s dominance in the search ad business.

Only general document requests made so far
The Justice Department has made very general document requests of Yahoo, noted the source. Such requests range from the paperwork and correspondence of executives and board members that address how a transaction or agreement would affect competition to documents on the search market and competitors. And while the document requests are currently general in nature, Yahoo will likely see more specific type of requests in the next 30 to 40 days, added the source.

One former Justice Department antitrust attorney said the regulators will likely focus on one of two issues, or both–whether Yahoo will have an incentive not to compete as hard as it previously did against Google and whether there is a coordination of competition.

The U.S. Department of Justice plans to gather information from third parties in a probe of the advertising deal struck last month between Google and Yahoo, according to sources familiar with these types of investigations.

“This has been a formal investigation since day one, given its high-profile. There was never the option to have an informal investigation done,” said the source, noting a formal investigation entails the Justice Department staff receiving the blessing from a superior like the assistant attorney general in the antitrust division. “And it would be negligent not to issue CIDs to third parties, when conducting a formal investigation.”

Google countered that search ads are only a narrow part of the online ad market and that Yahoo is the strongest company when it comes to the graphical “display” ads.

In an effort to dispel antitrust concerns surrounding the deal, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang went to Capitol Hill in June and met with Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), who chairs the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee.

A congressional investigation, however, is separate from a Justice Department investigation.

“When the DOJ says, ‘We have concerns about…,’ it usually means the field has been narrowed,” said the source.

Third parties that are expected to receive the CIDs include competitors, customers such as major advertisers, and potential partners, the source added.

Faced with that financial challenge and a desire to push the Google ad deal through, Yahoo proposed to regulators that it subject the search advertising deal to a review process similar to one used for major mergers under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, said a source familiar with Yahoo.

Google’s share of the U.S. search market reached 68.29 percent in May, according to Hitwise’s most recent numbers. Yahoo’s share of the market declined to 19.95 percent from 20.28 percent at the same time.

To date, the Justice Department has not yet interviewed Yahoo executives or board members, but such requests are expected to be made between now and the first week in August, the source noted.

Yahoo announced the nonexclusive partnership in June under which rival Google would supply it with some search ads, a move that could increase Yahoo search revenue but that also gives Google even more power in the market. Yahoo expects the 10-year deal to raise revenue by $800 million in its first year and to provide an extra $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow.

The partnership idea came to light during Microsoft’s attempt to acquire Yahoo, which put more pressure on the Internet company to improve its financial results.

Within the next week, the Justice Department is expected to issue civil investigative demands (CIDs) that seek documents from the third parties, said one source, noting the information requested could range from a general request on the competitive landscape to very specific requests involving Yahoo and Google.

After Microsoft’s offer to acquire all of Yahoo was withdrawn, Yahoo could not tell the Justice Department it would not honor its earlier proposal, said the source familiar with the Internet company. The Justice Department and Yahoo later signed a memorandum of understanding that would give regulators time to review documents and interview executives and board members.

Updated at 7:40 a.m. PDT Wednesday with comments from a former Department of Justice antitrust attorney, and a Department of Justice spokeswoman.

Under the proposal, which was made to regulators when Microsoft still had a buyout offer on the table for Yahoo, the Internet search pioneer said it would give the Justice Department three and half months to review the deal before it implements the search advertising partnership.

Representatives for Yahoo and Google did not immediately return requests for comment. But the Justice Department made a brief statement.

• about:memory shows how much memory the browser–and any other Web browser–is using. Conveniently for Web developers, it also shows how much each Web site in a browser tab is using.

Happy Easter
For you non-programmers, there’s an Easter egg, too: type “about:internets” into the Omnibox. I’m not going to be a spoilsport by revealing what happens, but here’s a hint: Ted Stevens.

Because I’m interested in browser user interface limits, though, I’m very curious what rendering technology is used to produce the Easter egg output. Feel free to offer your theories in the comments field below.

With a little noodling around, I also found out that some of these services, but not all, can be retrieved with a different syntax. Try typing “chrome-resource://about/stats” for example.

That’s because Chrome users can type several commands into the browser’s address box to uncovers a wealth of nitty-gritty detail and an amusing Easter egg.

This is the error page that results from invoking the about:crash command in Chrome.

(Credit:
CNET News) • about:network tracks the detailed network activity of using a Web site.

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

One Firefox tool popular with Web developers is the Firebug extension, which permits detailed analysis of a Web site. Although Chrome lacks an extensions ability for now, right-clicking on Web page elements offers an “inspect element” option that reproduces some of Firebug’s abilities.

• about:stats shows a wide range of internal measurements such as the time taken to initialize Chrome, load Gears, or perform various operations while running JavaScript programs with Chrome’s V8 engine. The page also carries the amusing note, “Shhh! This page is secret!”

(Credit:
CNET News)

Google’s Chrome browser has as Spartan a user interface as possible, but the browser’s Omnibox also turns out to be a window into a much more elaborate view of the browser.

Among the “about” features:

One more tidbit for folks closely following Chrome: TG Daily uncovered a so-far hidden “themes” folder that’s empty for now but that presumably could be used later to give Chrome different, well, chrome. Depending on how Google proceeds, this could be useful for adapting the browser to the native looks of Linux and
Mac OS X, operating systems that Chrome will support later.

• about:crash crashes the active browser tab.

• about:histograms graphs various performance measurements such as the time taken to autocomplete text users type into the browser.

Typing about:histogram into Chrome's address bar shows many performance details. (Click to enlarge.)

• about:version shows details of what version of Chrome is running, along with the user-agent text that the browser reports when identifying itself to Web sites. Why “Mozilla” is in this string is a mystery to me, though perhaps it has to do with the way Chrome can use Firefox plug-ins; why “Mozilla” is apparently in the iPhone’s user-agent text is even more a mystery.

Google Chrome can display lots of detailed information, such as which plug-ins are running. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit:
CNET News)

(Via Google Operating System and Tech-Pro.net.)

Most folks won’t care a whit, but the feature is notable for programmers–both those creating Web pages and those who might want to toy with Chromium itself, the open-source project behind Chrome. Programmers are a key audience for Chrome, which Google hopes will advance the state of the art in particular for Web applications.

Firefox can be fine-tuned by typing “about:config” into its address bar, and other about: commands shed light on many details. Google followed suit.

Tuesday’s Apple event can’t come soon enough for the gazillions of people eager to find out what the company has in store.

The supposedly imminent new iPod Nano, MacNN says and shows, sports the previously reported long, lean, tapered look, along with an aluminum skin. The photo on the site shows a copper-hued music player encased in a protective plastic display housing.

(Credit:
MacNN)

Hence, the latest rumor/hint/supposition: The Web site MacNN says it has confirmed that there is indeed such a thing as the fourth-generation
iPod Nano, which has long been suspected as one of the highlights of Tuesday’s “Let’s Rock” event. It also has what is says is a “verified authentic photo” of the device.

Update 11:57 a.m. PDT:
Added a paragraph on iTunes 8 and
iPhone 2.1.

Could this be the iPod Nano that everyone's been expecting?

And a bit later on Saturday, we spotted an item on Ars Technica’s Infinite Loop, wherein it is reported, according to a source close to the situation, that iTunes 8 has been confirmed for the Tuesday event, and, according to another source, that iPhone 2.1 will be released that day.

Engadget, meanwhile, is offering up a picture of an unboxed alleged iPod Nano, in lime.

CNET News will be live-blogging from Tuesday’s shindig, so check back starting at 10 a.m. PDT that day for up-to-the-minute reporting on Apple’s actual unveilings.

Since then, Borland hadn’t been able to find a buyer.

Borland Software CEO Tod Nielsen

CodeGear products are aimed at individual programmers, while the lifecycle management suite is designed for teams of developers, testers, and architects.

Borland Software has sold its CodeGear development tools division to Embarcadero Technologies for about $23 million, the companies said Wednesday.

Two years ago, Borland CEO Tod Nielsen announced a plan to sell off the tools division separate from its application lifecycle management product line. The tools division has been hurt from competition from free, open-source products, notably the Eclipse IDE.

CodeGear sells the products that Borland used to be best known for–its JBuilder Java development tool, Delphi, and C++Builder. More recently, CodeGear has created development tools for PHP and Ruby.

Embarcadero brings in more than $60 million in annual revenue selling database management and design tools. The acquisition gives it access to the millions of developers that use CodeGear software, it said.

Update 7:50 AM Pacific: corrected figure for Embarcadero’s annual revenue before its planned acquisition of CodeGear.

The Child Safe Viewing Act, introduced last year by Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., requires the Federal Communications Commission to issue a notice of inquiry to examine what advanced content-blocking technologies are available for various communication devices and platforms. It also calls for the FCC to consider how to develop and deploy such technologies without affecting content providers’ pricing or packaging.

The legislation still must go through the House of Representatives before being sent to the president.

The bill defines “advanced blocking technologies” as technology that enables parents to protect their children from “indecent or objectionable video or audio programming, as determined by the parent, that is transmitted through the use of wire, wireless, or radio communication.”

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously voted in favor of providing parents with more control over the content their children receive through various technologies.

While the bill does not empower the FCC to do anything other than to produce a report on its findings for Congress, it is one of a handful of steps Congress has taken in recent weeks to address threats new technologies can expose children to.

While security compromises from mobile phones have been small in scale, and mostly isolated incidents, Komisnky believes that cell phones dangle attractive lures for hackers along three vectors–As mobile messaging becomes ubiquitous and malware authors propagate poisonous code in links; as mobile phone commerce takes off, and as the mobile Web becomes easier to surf from devices like the
iPhone.

Bluefire’s bid joins them to the ranks of other security vendors who have created mobile versions of their desktop apps. I got a chance to preview Mobile Defender at CTIA 2008 in Las Vegas. The app, currently available in private beta for Windows Mobile phones, has a simple four-button interface, with each button corresponding to an element of protection–firewall, SMS and MMS spam-blocking, an application protection shield that guards against auto-installing malware, and a feature to remotely wipe the contents of the handheld should it get stolen or irreversably corrupted.

Traditionally focused on securing mobile devices for corporations and even the U.S. Government, Bluefire Security plans to enter the consumer market with Mobile Defender.

Mobile Defender is of the “set and forget” variety, which means that after you install it, it pretty much runs on its own. Bluefire intentionally withheld tweaking options, which Mark Kominsky, Bluefire’s CEO, explained as a big usability win to keep users from worrying if a lack of configuration knowledge is somehow crippling their coverage. Pro users who enjoy customizing their settings would disagree.

What if you realized that you didn’t want to host your application on Google App Engine anymore? Good luck; almost everything you are given access to is proprietary–that means all your data is locked into BigTable in a format that isn’t like a traditional relational database. It’s also very tempting to use the APIs Google provides to interface with things like Google accounts.

(Credit:
Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDNet) Garett Rogers looks at some of the pros and cons of entrusting our applications to Google’s cloud. The major issue he cites is getting deeply tied into Google’s infrastructure:

On the other hand, Google is just trickling out its platform-as-a-service with support for Python. Support for other languages will follow. Whether Google would support other databases in its cloud remains to be seen.

On top of that, you will be using the “Webapp framework” that Google built that makes writing Python applications really nice–but good luck porting that to another language or putting it on a machine of your own.

With the platform-as-a-service revolution getting into full swing, developers (especially in start-ups) have more options for creating and deploying applications without the hassle and more extreme cost of setting up and maintaining infrastructure.

Dion Hinchcliffe at ZDNet compares Amazon’s approach to providing infrastructure services to Google’s. He found that Amazon’s set of services is more flexible but not as integrated as Google’s App Engine.

(Credit:
CNET)

You can check out the official page for Nvidia’s Optimized PC campaign here. You’ll find a Flash presentation informing you that “Your PC is more visual than ever,” as well as a generic configurator demonstrating the supposed benefits of a “balanced PC.” There’s also a page of links to various online retailers that lead you to lists of Nvidia graphics cards for purchase, as well as links to configurators from Gateway, Velocity Micro, Cyberpower, and Puget Systems, which lead to presumably “optimized” systems.

What’s frustrating is that Nvidia offers little in the way of specific processor and graphics card pairings that might help you make an actual purchase. As for the vendor links, if you click through and start to build a system, Velocity Micro is the only one with a visual indicator that shows you the balance between graphics and CPU processing capability as you select different components. The allegedly balanced Cyberpower systems still allow you to match Intel’s highest-end quad core processor with an integrated graphics chip.

Arguing for the necessity of 3D hardware in day-to-day computing has traditionally been a tough position, largely due to a lack of compelling software. If Nvidia is going to continue with this marketing push, we need to see more than just a handful of applications that truly benefit from accelerated graphics. The question is, will that happen before Intel makes its next move? With graphics card plans of its own on the near-horizon, it’s possible that Intel may be able to offer a balanced computing experience of its own.

If the Optimized PC site isn’t all that useful, the point Nvidia is trying to make is clear. Rather than throw all of your money at a quad-core Intel chip, Nvidia wants you to spend less on the CPU and more on a graphics card. In turn, Nvidia promises that its 3D hardware will not only allow you to play games, but it will also enable you to watch and edit HD movies, edit and organize photos in flashy new interface designs, as well as turn on all of those visual effects in
Windows Vista. You can do some of those things with quad-core CPU and an integrated graphics chip, of course, but you need a dedicated 3D card for the most robust visual experience. Therein, the battle for your processing dollar.

So says Nvidia.

(Credit:
Nvidia)

Nvidia’s “Optimized PC” campaign, announced today, is the market-oriented manifestation of its larger ambitions. The idea is that Nvidia wants to show you how to build or buy a PC that’s “balanced.” In Nvidia’s opinion, that means that rather than spend all of your PC budget on a quad-core processor (and relying on a built-in graphics chip), for a truly modern PC experience you’re better off spending less on the CPU and more on a dedicated graphics card. What this campaign really signifies is that a new fight over who gets to do your processing dollar has officially begun.

Whether Nvidia has a compelling argument depends on just how visual you like your computing. Do you turn the 3D cities on in Google Maps? Do you like Vista’s translucent windows? Have you even heard of PicLens (which we actually like, but that’s not the point)? PC Gamers already tend to favor Nvidia, but in order to appeal to mainstream PC buyers, Nvidia has to convince you that there’s a nongaming need for the specialized visual processing capabilities of its hardware.

PicLens benefits from a 3D card, but have you heard of it?

Brin was loath to call Chrome an operating system, but it was clear at Tuesday’s event that he defines Chrome’s success in terms of the applications that can be run.

CNET News Poll Browser wars, redux
What browser is in your future?

And Google didn’t have much to convince me that average users would be moving to Chrome anytime soon. Faster browsing and various features for user interface, security, privacy, and search are handy, but not enough to get most people to take the trouble of downloading and installing a new browser.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–On the Web, a site that responds a few milliseconds faster can make a big difference in people’s engagement. It’s for this reason that Google believes its new Web browser, Chrome, is a project worth investing in rather than a footnote in the history of the Internet.

JavaScript has grown from modest beginnings into the language of many fancy, interactive Web sites and the foundational technology for rich Web applications using a technology called Ajax. However, for many applications, it’s not powerful enough, which is why Picnik’s online photo editing tools use Adobe’s Flash and why Microsoft is pushing its own technology called Silverlight.

View results

In short, Chrome is more of a long-term competitive threat to
Microsoft Office and Windows than it is to Internet Explorer.

Why speed means money
Google benefits materially from fast performance. First, when it comes to search, Google discovered when its search page loads fractionally faster, users search more often, which of course leads to more opportunities for Google to place its highly lucrative text ads. Second, a faster Web application foundation means that Google’s online applications for e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, and calendars can become faster and fuller-featured.

Note that Google likes to talk about its three main efforts: search, ads, and apps, and with Chrome or a faster browser in general, all three benefit.

“Our business does well if people are using the Web a lot and are able to use it easily and quickly,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said.

That may sound a little grand, but the evidence is on display in Google’s own lobby, where the search company’s computer kiosks present a browser only–no start menu, no desktop shortcuts, no operating system.

With a JavaScript speed test Google showed during the event, Chrome trounced IE 7, Microsoft’s current browser, but I was leery of generalizing too much from a press conference demonstration. Lars Bak, though, the Google engineer who was the technical leader for V8, is confident in the technology.

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

“Most developers don’t use JavaScript a lot because it doesn’t run very fast,” he said. V8 “will enable a whole new class of applications for tomorrow.”

Chrome’s V8 engine
Google’s has a two-part claim to faster performance. One is its use of the open-source WebKit project, also used in Apple’s
Safari, to render Web pages on the browser screen engine for showing Web pages. More important for Web applications, though, is the brand-new V8 project for running programs written in JavaScript.

And Sundar Pichai, a Google vice president of product management, was salivating over the possibilities.

Lars Bak is proud of Chrome's JavaScript performance.

Chrome, Google said during its Tuesday launch event, is much faster at showing Web pages than the most widely used browser, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Google’s hope is that performance will open up the bottleneck that chokes the speed and abilities of today’s Web-based applications.

And, Brin added, Google benefits even if Chrome has no other influence than to get the competitive juices flowing faster among developers of competing browsers: “Even if IE 9 was much, much faster as a result of Chrome, we would consider that a success,” Brin said.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Of course, Bak was basing his claims on Google’s own suite of JavaScript benchmarks, available on the V8 Web site. But at first blush, the tests, with 11,000 lines of code, aren’t a wildly skewed set.

Google, Yahoo, and others, though, are JavaScript fans, and speeding it up will boost countless Web sites, not just bleeding-edge applications such as Google Docs. Faster JavaScript performance is why Mozilla is so eager to talk about a project called TraceMonkey coming with Firefox 3.1, why WebKit programmers are working hard on a project called SquirrelFish, and one reason why Microsoft is eager to move people to its forthcoming Internet Explorer 8.

The biggest buzzkill for Google’s vision, though, is that the Internet is just as much a boat anchor as an engine of innovation. Firefox has achieved notable market penetration and has inflamed the passions of many Net aficionados, but it still lags the market share of Internet Explorer 6, which was introduced in 2001, when the first Internet bubble was still in the process of bursting.

Google faces many challenges with Chrome–convincing anyone other than a few early adopters and Web developers to adopt it, matching the pace of development of rival browsers, and assuring the Google-phobic that it’s OK for the company to be in charge of yet another essential element of computing. But Google’s influence is strong enough that just talking about performance and rattling its chrome-plated saber is probably enough to advance its Web-application agenda.

“The word ‘operating system’ comes with a lot of baggage. We have a lightweight, fast engine for executing Web applications,” Brin said. But, he added, “I think we’ll see more and more Web applications of greater sophistication. All the things (you see) today are pretty challenging to do.”

Google Chrome
Internet Explorer
Firefox
Safari
Opera
Other

But even if Chrome never gets far beyond the stage of publicity, don’t discount the power of Google promotion. The company has a lot of power in setting the technology agenda. And as long as the company is willing to count a faster IE as a successful outcome, its Chrome project looks like it’ll be a win.

New horizons for Web developers?
Faster JavaScript means that applications can be faster, but also that programmers can push the Web application limits farther. “You can include more code in the browser. It really opens up the creativity of the Web app developer,” Bak said.

Bak wouldn’t share any specific numbers, but he said Chrome is “many times faster” than IE 7. How about
Firefox, now and later with TraceMonkey? “Many times faster. I guarantee you.”

The real question going forward is whether Linux, with Nokia involved, can compete with Apple’s
iPhone and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry platforms as they move “down-market” to not-so-smart phones.

commentary

Nokia suggests that it’s not embracing Linux for mobile phones, but instead for mobile Internet tablets. Well, that’s clear–for the minute–but as more phones end up looking like “Internet tablets,” what will it do?

It’s a battle that will have one major beneficiary: consumers.

No longer.

Indeed, with competitors and partners such as Motorola, Verizon Wireless, Orange, Vodafone, and others joining the LiMo Foundation, a rising mobile Linux organization, it was just a matter of time before Nokia shelved its pride and joined the Linux ranks.

With a 47.9 percent stake in Symbian, the leading mobile platform that it co-founded in 1998 and which today powers some 206 million mobile phones, Nokia has long championed it at the expense of rival platforms such as Linux.

The mobile-phone maker is increasingly selecting Linux for Internet-enabled mobile devices, with its CFO declaring of Linux, “It’s going to be terribly important.”