All Things Digital

For a tall man, Tim Armstrong has been on an awful lot of online companies’ short lists. For a big Web exec job, that is. Indeed, whenever one opens up in the Internet space, the 6′-3″ Google ad sales exec always pops up on it as a possible candidate to lead a variety of digital companies and startups. Finally today–after longtime speculation that Armstrong had long wanted and would eventually leave his post at Google, in order to try his hand at being top dog–he took over as chairman and CEO of the once-mighty, but now-not-so-much AOL. Armstrong, who will start at AOL on April 7, talked to BoomTown this afternoon about his new job. Read More »

Let’s just say the firing of AOL CEO Randy Falco and President Ron Grant was not exactly expected–even if everyone thought it should happen–within the high ranks of the troubled online unit, until Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes dropped the guillotine this afternoon in Manhattan. And drop it he did, lopping off the pair of executives Bewkes had installed himself. He replaced them with Tim Armstrong, Google’s head of ad sales, a man with a much brighter resume, for what is likely to be an attempt to spin out AOL, now that merger options are moribund. “It’s a shock to everyone how sudden it was,” said one exec, noting AOL’s top execs had no idea this is coming today. “Everyone talked about when Bewkes was going to run out of patience with Randy and Ron all the time, but no one knew it was coming now, since it had taken so long.” Read More »

It’s reorg day, although this one was less of a surprise: In the wake of News Corp. COO Peter Chernin’s departure, Rupert Murdoch is reshuffling the top names at his Fox businesses, which Chernin oversaw. Murdoch had hinted at this last month when he told the troops that it was “time to streamline” the company. Prominently not mentioned: Rupert’s son, James, who is supposed to be his eventual successor. Read More »

Everyone who wondered why Randy Falco and Ron Grant were still running AOL finally got an answer today: Time Warner was lining up their replacement. Google sales chief Tim Armstrong becomes chairman and CEO of the troubled Web property, effective immediately. Read More »

Poor adCenter Analytics. Never even made it out of beta. Microsoft today announced plans to scuttle the Web publishing metrics service, which was being developed as a rival to Google Analytics. Scheduled to shut down on Dec. 31, it will never go head to head with the search behemoth’s offering now. Read More »

Eli Broad is reportedly worth $5.2 billion, down from $6.7 billion last fall. Why does he want to burn more money on a regional newspaper? Read More »

The fundamental debate over eBay boils down to this: The stock certainly looks cheap–trading at around eight times Street estimates for 2009 earnings. But the core business still appears to many to be fundamentally broken. Read More »

Its hopes of rebuilding under bankruptcy protection effectively dashed by the ongoing financial crisis, Nortel is considering selling off its two biggest business units to rivals. Reportedly on the block: the company’s wireless-gear and office telecom equipment units. Read More »

Intel’s antitrust troubles haven’t gotten as much attention as Microsoft’s, in large part because most evidence concerning the chip maker’s tactics remains locked up in confidential documents. But some new, unflattering details about one investigation are coming to light. Read More »

Looks like Apple will hold a special event in March, after all–but its focus won’t be on desktops. This morning the company distributed invitations for a March 17 gathering at its Cupertino Town Hall to discuss the iPhone OS 3.0 and an updated software development kit. Read More »

A few weeks ago, BoomTown had lunch at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View with Dan’l Lewin, the software giant’s corporate VP for strategic and emerging business development. In other words, Microsoft’s friendly face in the Valley, in charge of its operations there, which has about 2,000 employees. Most of them work for other Microsoft divisions, leaving Lewin primarily responsible for the company’s relationships with start-ups, venture capitalists and industry partners. In other words, hoping that Google now seems scarier than Microsoft used to be. Here’s a video interview with him about all that and more. Read More »

It’s taken far too long, but Sirius XM is coming to the iPhone. During a conference call to discuss the fourth-quarter results it posted last night, the satellite radio operator said we can expect an application that will stream its service to the iPhone and iPod touch to debut sometime in Q2. Read More »

Lots of news emanating from Hulu today–but nothing ground-moving. That could still come in the near future: I keep hearing that the joint venture between NBC and Fox is getting close to a deal to bring ABC into the fold. But no confirmation yet. In the meantime, Hulu wants you to know that it’s the biggest video site that isn’t YouTube, and that it now boasts some social-network-like features. Read More »

Google’s finally gone and done something with GrandCentral, the voice communications start-up the company acquired some 21 months ago. After migrating it over to its infrastructure and enhancing it with some new features, Google relaunched it this morning as Google Voice. And at first glance, the service is impressive. Read More »

BoomTown’s visit to Italy has been eye-opening in a lot of ways, not the least of which is to be reminded that not everyone in the world is jacked into the matrix 24/7. In other words, Julius Caesar conquered Rome, but Twitter definitely has not. In fact, the conference being held here is aptly called “Tutto Cambio, Cambiano Tutto?” That roughly translates into “Everything changes, let’s change everything?” This is not a question that is much asked in Silicon Valley. But here, whether or not to change is much more of a debate–one in which change does not always come out on top. Read More »