Amazon under scrutiny with declining profits

A report in The Register (18 March) says that Wall Street's frustration with Amazon.com is growing, and recently, it's broken out into open insolence.

According to the publication, two years of declining profits at the internet retail behemoth have left analysts wondering just when Amazon.com's technology magic is going to pay off.

Each year Amazon's profits diminish - and they've been shrinking as the economy has picked up - it offers the excuse that it needs to invest more in technology, comments The Register.

But, which business is Amazon really in?, asks the publication..

The Register says that Amazon wants to make search technology horizontal - licensing its own search engine - and this week offered itself up as a storage retailer.

According to The Register, Amazon is offering excess capacity on its own servers to all comers as a web service, called S3, for 15 cents a gigabyte. "That's about as far from selling Harry Potter as you can imagine. So is it a technology platform, or an online shop?" questions The Register in its report.

{mospagebreaktitle=Google chief dampens Office hype}Google chief dampens Office hype

Google's Eric Schmidt has dampened the hype surrounding the company's acquisition of Writely last week - and says that fears over the loss of "network neutrality" are largely unfounded, according to a report in The Register.

The Register says that Google's Schmidt confirmed that the company has no plans to enter the Office market, and that it had bought the start-up Writely because Google could use a good, web-based rich text editor.

{mospagebreaktitle=Adobe grabs Sun's software chief}Adobe grabs Sun's software chief

Adobe Systems has raided Sun Microsystems' executive ranks to pick up John Loiacono as its new senior vice president in charge of creative solutions.

The Register reports that, at Sun, Loiacono served as the company's top software executive, managing products such as Java and Solaris.

According to The Register, he will now oversee Adobe's vast portfolio of products from Photoshop and Illustrator to the freshly acquired Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver lines.

{mospagebreaktitle=Web site sues Google over drop in rank}Web site sues Google over drop in rank

Google has mysteriously downgraded the search ranking of a web site geared to help parents care for young children, causing a ``cataclysmic fall'' in advertising revenue and the number of monthly page views, according to a class-action lawsuit filed last Friday in the US.

The Mercury News reports that the civil suit by KinderStart.com of seeks financial damages and more information about Google's secret method for ranking sites. The suit, filed in US District Court, seeks class-action status for other sites that have seen their rankings drop without warning or explanation from the search giant.

The newspaper says that a Google spokesman told The Associated Press that the company hadn't seen the suit and had no immediate comment.

According to the AP report, since it launched in May 2000, KinderStart.com had built up its traffic to more than 10 million page views a month, the suit says, with much of the traffic coming from Google search users. But in March 2005, page views plunged 70 percent and advertising revenue fell 80 percent and hasn't recovered.

The report says that KinderStart.com suspects that Google erected invisible barriers that divert consumers elsewhere when they type in a search but says Google will not explain what happened.

The drop-off was so sudden that the Web site suspects Google has a flawed method or blocks sites subjectively despite Google's pledge to provide objective search results.

{mospagebreaktitle=Amazon says technology, not ideology, skewed results}Amazon says technology, not ideology, skewed results

Amazon.com last week modified its search engine after an abortion rights organisation complained that search results appeared skewed toward anti-abortion books.

The New York Times reports (20 March) that, until a few days ago, a search of Amazon's catalog of books using the word "abortion" turned up pages with the question, "Did you mean adoption?" at the top, followed by a list of books related to abortion.

Amazon removed that question from the search results page after it received a complaint from a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a national organisation based in Washington.

The newspaper reports that an Amazon spokeswoman said there was no intent by the company to offer biased search results. She said the question "Did you mean adoption?" was an automated response based on past customer behavior combined with the site's spelling correction technology.

She said Amazon's software suggested adoption-related sources because "abortion" and "adoption" have similar spellings, and because many past customers who have searched for "abortion" have also searched for "adoption," reports the NYT.

The newspaper reports that the Amazon.com spokeswoman said the "Did you mean adoption?" prompt had been disabled.

{mospagbreaktitle=Sony unveils 20in LCD tv-monitor combo}Sony unveils 20in LCD tv-monitor combo

Sony will next month extend its line of dual-role displays - they operate as a TV and as a computer monitor - with a 20in widescreen HD model capable of being wall-mounted and has a 3D sound capability, according to a report in The Register.

The Register says that the MFM-HT205 sports a 16:9 ratio 1680 x 1050 resolution LCD equipped with Sony's ErgoBright image processing system and the company's Xbrite coating.

According to The Register, the display has a 6ms response time, a contrast ratio of 1600:1 and a brightness rating of 470cdpm². Sony claimed it's got a 170° viewing angle horizontally and vertically. The screen has its own analogue TV tuner.

{mospagebreaktitle="Mission" movie going mobile first} "Mission" movie going mobile first

Only mobile gamers will have the ability to be a virtual Ethan Hunt when mobile game giant Gameloft unleashes ``Mission: Impossible 3'' across 150 carriers in the US in May, coinciding with the worldwide rollout of the Tom Cruise thriller.

Reuters reports in The New York Times that this marks the second consecutive summer that distributor Paramount Pictures' sister company Viacom Consumer Products has bypassed consoles and opted instead to work with the French firm.

Gameloft CEO Michel Guillemot said that the mobile initial game ``War of the Worlds,'' also starring Cruise, was one of the publisher's top-selling titles last year. The actor has not allowed his likeness or voice to be used in any video game to date.

According to Reuters, Gameloft has a multiyear license for ``M:I-3,'' which means future iterations are likely. The first game will employ 2-D graphics and follow the film's basic plot line.

The report says that while original games remain a focus, Gameloft continues to look to Hollywood for big licenses. The publisher had success in the fall with the ``Peter Jackson's King Kong'' mobile game and will release a mobile game this year based on Fox's ``The O.C.''

Reuters says that Atari was the last game publisher to bring Ethan Hunt to consoles in December 2003 in the original game ``Mission Impossible: Operation Surma.'' While the game was not based on any film, it did feature the voice and likeness of Ving Rhames as computer expert Luther Stickell. Atari also released ''Mission: Impossible'' for PlayStation in 1999, which loosely was based on the first film in the franchise.