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The always outspoken Mark Cuban has contributed his thoughts on the whole news aggregation/Google News/publisher debate, one that is most often credited to Rupert Murdoch. It appears that Cuban has a similar opinion on the matter.

Cuban spoke at a keynote address this week at the AlwaysOn OnMedia NYC 2010 Conference, and is quoted by numerous sources as calling Google in particular a "vampire."

"When you think about vampires, they just suck on your blood," he is quoted as saying, reportedly telling newspapers and other publishers to "show some balls" and block Google News and, "There’s absolutely no reason for you guys to be indexed on Google News … if they don’t pay you."

Michael Arrington points out that at the TechCrunch50 conference in 2008, Cuban said he’d like to be an investor in TechMeme, which provides a similar service to Google News and other aggregators. In addition, Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land notes (in great detail) that Cuban is an investor in Mahalo, which actually "touts to advertisers how it taps into Google to generate page views."

While on the topic of the news industry debates, the topic of charging for news is always a conversation starter. The Wall Street Journal has taken down its pay wall for the day, giving users access to articles that would otherwise require a subscription to access. The effort comes as the result of a sponsorship from Acura (Via SIA).
 

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> News Corp. Blocks Content from News Aggregation Site

> Do You Have the "Right" to Link?

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Murdoch’s War with the Aggregators

> Is it Really Crazy to Block Google?

So much for the idea of December being a quiet month.  First we witnessed the acquisition of AppJet, and now, a new report’s indicated that Google’s more or less sure to buy a company called DocVerse.

The two deals are taking place in the same space, since, like AppJet, DocVerse is focused on allowing people to collaborate on documents in real-time.  The trick is that, while AppJet has its own software (EtherPad), DocVerse would provide Google more of a link to existing Microsoft products.

DocVerse was founded by two Microsoft veterans, and as explained in an "About Us" section, "combines the benefits of web-based collaboration tools like Google Docs and Zoho with the power and familiarity of the world’s most popular productivity application, Microsoft Office.  DocVerse offers the first ever product to truly enable real-time sharing and editing of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files."

So Google’s acquisition of DocVerse could greatly increase the appeal of Google Docs and/or Google Wave (depending on what the search giant decides to do with the technology), bringing it into equal footing with a competitor.

Anyway, Michael Arrington puts DocVerse’s price at "around $25 million," and there’s no word on when the deal might officially close.

Related Articles:

> Google Adds Relevance Option To Docs Search

> Google Acquires AppJet

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When Google’s current director of product management arrived at his desk this morning, he did so for the last time, according to a new report.  Keval Desai is supposed to be leaving Google in order to start a position at Digg.

Desai – who’s been with Google for about six and a half years – didn’t exactly do unimportant work.  In fact, he led the development of AdWords, which is one of the search giant’s most recognizable products, and was also a force behind TV Ads, which has outlived Audio Ads and Print Ads.

Previously in his career, Desai cofounded a company with Michael Arrington and put in some time at Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, too.

As for what Desai’s supposed to do for Digg, Arrington wrote this afternoon, "He’ll be Digg’s first head of product, a responsibility that has been shared at various times by founder Kevin Rose, CEO Jay Adelson and Chief Strategy Officer Mike Maser."

It seems Desai’s headed almost to the top of the organization, then, and will probably exert a big influence over whatever "ballsy" changes are on the way.

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> More Stories Get A Shot At The Digg Homepage

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Michael Arrington from TechCrunch claims to have heard from "a reliable source" that Google will be launching the much-anticipated Chrome OS within a week. The tech industry media has been punked on Chrome OS in the past, but as Arrington notes, Google has said to expect it in the fall, and fall is running out.

Chrome OS is Google’s attempt to "rethink what operating systems should be." It’s an open source, "lightweight" operating system to be initially targeted at netbooks.

"Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS," Google said upon the Chrome OS announcement. "We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

"The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform," the company continued. "All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform."

Arrington says he thinks driver support will be an issue with Chrome OS. "…Having a robust set of functioning drivers is extremely important to Chrome OS’s success. People will want to download this to whatever computer they use and have it just work," he says. "We expect Google will be careful with messaging around the launch, and endorse a small set of devices for installation. EEE PC netbooks, for example, may be one set of devices that Google will say are ready to use Chrome OS. There will likely be others as well, but don’t expect to be able to install it on whatever laptop or desktop machine you have from day one."

If Arrington’s source truly is reliable, then we should see how the launch of Chrome OS pans out very soon. It’s going to be very interesting to see how Google competes with Microsoft in the operating system space, as it is doing in both search and web browsers.

Related Articles:

> Will Google Chrome OS Challenge Windows?

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Bing and Google may have gotten a head start, but Yahoo isn’t ignoring the whole real-time search arena, according to a new report.  In fact (or at least in rumor, if you will), Yahoo may be working on a product with OneRiot right now.

Yes, Michael Arrington reported that Yahoo isn’t pursuing anything with either Facebook or Twitter.  OneRiot, a real-time search engine that’s already up and running, is supposed to be its new pal, instead.  And Arrington wrote, "If our source is correct . . . the product will launch very soon."

So here’s a little more info about OneRiot.  On the corporate side of things: it launched about a year ago, and is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado.  It’s received funding from Spark Capital, which has put money into Twitter, too.

As for the tech, the OneRiot search engine is in beta, yet it deals with both text and video, and more specifically, "crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services," according to an "About Us" page.

It should be interesting to see what (if anything) Yahoo and OneRiot come up with.  Although playing catch-up isn’t easy, they have the opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes and refine their best ideas.

Related Articles:

> How Does Bing Rank Tweets?

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It looks like Twitter’s filled another hole in its lineup of key executives.  The title of Chief Operating Officer should go to Dick Costolo, who was the cofounder and CEO of FeedBurner and also did a stint at Google post-acquisition.

Costolo left Google about two months ago.  His LinkedIn profile claims that, since then, he’s been working for Monkey Beach Crime, Inc.  (Chalk this odd tale up to Costolo’s former career as a comedian).

Michael Arrington provided a more likely story by writing this afternoon, "Dick Costolo is Twitter’s new chief operating officer, we’ve heard from multiple sources. . . .  We’d heard he was looking to start a new company, but obviously Twitter swooped in and grabbed him."

Since he’s worked for both a startup and a corporate giant with a $144 billion market cap, Costolo may be in a good position to help Twitter mature as a business.  Experience on both ends of that scale is hard to come by and often quite valuable.

If – and this is an if that at least a few people are thinking about – Google tries to buy Twitter, Costolo could probably help there, too.

MySpace has been doing rather well on the music front in recent days; this month, it’s debuted a Heath Ledger-directed music video and some Pearl Jam songs.  The site may soon chalk up another win, too, as one report indicates it’s about to make a significant acquisition.

Michael Arrington writes, "MySpace is close to acquiring popular social music service iLike, we’ve confirmed with multiple sources.  The deal, which should close this week, will be MySpace’s first acquisition since new CEO Owen Van Natta took control of the company in April 2009.  The price is ‘around $20 million.’"

Since iLike has raised $16.5 million in funding since getting started in 2006, that sounds like quite a bargain.  What’s more, iLike has ties to Facebook, Bebo, and Orkut, and claims to have over 50 million registered users, so MySpace might be getting a lot of "ins."

As for what sort of people are involved, the founder of MTV, a Clear Channel SVP, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla are members of iLike’s advisory board, so MySpace seems to be receiving an implicit nod from some pretty important folks.

We’ll be sure to provide additional details as they become available.

So here we are a day after Twittergate broke and what is the result? Not much really. Everyone is talking about it in some way or another. Was it lax security at Twitter? Was it a security issue with Google Apps? Did TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington go too far? What are the ethical implications of obtaining documents illegally then using them to advance your own cause? Will the new show that Twitter develops for TV be called “Twitter Legal”? Why do hackers find it cool to mess with other people’s stuff and so much more.

Let’s sum it up:

The Big Winner – The award for getting the most mileage out of what is most likely a non-story goes to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. I would really like to see the traffic numbers that were generated by his manipulation of this situation. From a viral Internet perspective he couldn’t have played this any better. He put out the ‘feelers’ and baited everyone by whetting the appetites of all of the mouth breathing tech types with promises of never before seen Twitter information. Most people took the bait and the exposure for the blog was tremendous. What has been published thus far (old financial documents and a treatment for the Twitter show) has been ho-hum. He is still stoking the flames with talk of lawyers meeting with lawyers etc. Well played. Lots of pub, no real harm. The downside is that if TechCrunch capitulates or doesn’t publish everything readers will wonder if they are being played in the future.

Another winner – Twitter actually comes out of this one OK in my opinion. This looks, at least at this point, to be a no harm, no foul deal that has just generated more buzz. Biz Stone got a chance to put another apologetic “Look we’re human too” post and probably gain more sympathy for Twitter as a target rather than ire for Twitter as being less than buttoned down security wise. Stone wraps his blog post with

Nevertheless, as they were never meant for public communication, publishing these documents publicly could jeopardize relationships with Twitter’s ongoing and potential partners. We’re doing our best to reach out to these folks and talk over any questions and concerns. However, our goal remains focusing on the most important business at hand—creating value for users and building the best possible Twitter service.

The “Hey, we may have had a hiccup but we’re working hard toward the goal of making the world a 140 character experience” ethos gets more mileage than if there were any actual problems with this whole deal.

Taking a hit whether it is real or not – Google actually stands to come out of this with more damage whether it is real or not. With Google Apps being used by Twitter there can not be enough “It had nothing to do with Google and the cloud computing services” to offset the naysayers about security and these apps for the enterprise. Once again, it may not be deserved but it can have an impact regardless.

Big losers – As usual, the readers and followers of this kind of stuff. All in all it looks like we are all being played a bit and happily going right along with it. I guess there isn’t much else to talk about and this makes for some interesting cocktail talk but in the end has it affected your view of Twitter? If you are using Twitter are you really concerned about the security of your information? Probably not.

Be sure that there will be more on this and we’ll be talking about it. It would be irresponsible not to. While in retrospect it may not be real news it is of interest to some degree. Hey, at least we get to see how good the new law team over at Twitter is, right?

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This past Wednesday it was made public that 300+ confidential documents from Twitter had been stolen. While most industry related sites chose not to post these documents, a few did, most notably being TechCrunch.

Was TechCrunch wrong or right in publishing the stolen documents? Tell us.

To say Twitter is unhappy with TechCrunch would be an understatement. But, why is Twitter so angry? According to TechCrunch, Twitter had given them a green light to post the information:

"It’s important to note that we have been given the green light by Twitter to post this information – They aren’t happy about it, but they are able to live with it, they say (more on why they did that in our later post)"

Twitter CEO, Evan Williams (@ev) sees it entirely different, as you can see by his following tweet:

Taking the matter even further, Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone (@biz) updated the company blog where he reiterated Evan’s statement:

"…the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared."

On Wednesday, this author wrote an article giving Biz’s response to various security concerns after the hack. He briefly touched on the legality of posting such documents:

"We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents. We’re not sure yet exactly what the implications are for folks who choose to get involved at this point but when we learn more and are able to share more, we will."

TechCrunch has been receiving some serious flak for posting the stolen documents. Some loyal Twitter users have even began spreading the word that they’re boycotting TechCrunch from now on:

InformationWeek has taken the TechCrunch vs. Twitter debate to a much higher level, asking Michael Arrington, founder TechCrunch, to step down.

"By publishing documents stolen by a hacker, Michael Arrington has proven he doesn’t have the judgment necessary to run a news organization. He should have the decency to step down."

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington defends his publication of the docs:

"There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us. But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them."

So, what are your thoughts on TechCrunch vs. Twitter? Let us know what you think.

While this may fall into the “too early to tell” category it certainly is of interest, especially considering the pace of Internet ‘news’ these days. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington has had a ‘gift’ fall into his lap and a lot of folks are interested to see if he is going to share with the rest of the world. Apparently TechCrunch and others have been handed some confidential Twitter docs and now there is question of what to do with it. The opening paragraph of his post is enough to make anyone curious, at the very least.

Here’s a dilemma: The guy (”Hacker Croll”) who claims to have accessed hundreds of confidential corporate and personal documents of Twitter and Twitter employees, is releasing those documents publicly and sent them to us earlier today. The zip file contained 310 documents, ranging from executive meeting notes, partner agreements and financial projections to the meal preferences, calendars and phone logs of various Twitter employees.

So what to do? Arrington assures his readers that the majority of the documents won’t be published. He even goes so far as to call most of them uninteresting but there are some individuals who might be embarrassed by some of the material.

Imagine what it must be like over at Twitter HQ. If you are among the 50 plus chosen who work for the most talked start up in a very long time there has to be a few uncomfortable moments in the offing today. A company that small likely has a pretty active rumor mill and this kind of potentially uncomfortable situation can be extremely disruptive to work and to the culture in general.

While Arrington is saying what he wouldn’t publish he is also talking about what he will. If he actually does remains to be seen but he did say

But we are going to release some of the documents showing financial projections, product plans and notes from executive strategy meetings. We’re also going to post the original pitch document for the Twitter TV show that hit the news in May, mostly because it’s awesome.

I have a few pretty strong feelings about using this kind of material considering how it was acquired. Not being a pure ‘journalist’, getting a scoop is not my first thought and it seems like there needs to be some compromises made in order to get ‘stories’. This is certainly one of those instances. Gladit’s not me making this call! Many in the comment thread of the post complained about Arrington’s plans but he=is reply was as follows

lol. if we only posted things that companies gave us permission to post this would be a press release site and none of you would be here. News is stuff someone doesn’t want you to write. The rest is advertising.

Chime in Pilgrims. What line is good to cross and what lines are better left alone? Is this just a way to get people to TechCrunch since nothing has really been revealed yet? Since it appears that TC is not the only outlet to get these docs should it just be a gold rush to get it out first and claim the notoriety? Lastly, how would it look now if he didn’t publish the goods?

UPDATE: TechCrunch Responds to the Response

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