Bartz Out As CEO Of Yahoo & Shares Rise Over 5% - Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO – News), the premier digital media company, today announced a leadership reorganization under which the Board of Directors has appointed Timothy Morse interim Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately, replacing Carol Bartz, who has been removed by the Board from her role as Chief Executive Officer. The Board has also named key senior Yahoo! executives to a newly formed Executive Leadership Council tasked with supporting Morse in managing the Company’s day-to-day ... read more ...

Google To Pay U.S. $500 Million To Settle “illegal” Pharmacy Ads - According to the Wall Streeet Journal, Google has agreed  to pay $500 Million dollars to the US government to avoid prosecution over allegations that it knowingly accepted hundreds of millions of dollars in ads from rogue online pharmacies. “The pharmacies appearing in Google ads were operating outside the law, leading to a Department of Justice investigation into Google’s advertising practices – an investigation which decreased Google’s profits by 22%, reports the The New York Times.” “The ... read more ...

Bnet.com: Demand Media’s Dodgy Accounting Decoded: It May Never Make a Profit - A blog post published on BNet.com, entitled “Demand Media’s Dodgy Accounting Decoded: It May Never Make a Profit”, caught my attention especially on a day that Demand Shares hit an all time low of $7.12. Basically the author says that “Demand amortizes its editorial budget rather than expensing it on a quarterly basis as the cash is spent , is not helping the company achieve profitability”. It’s a pretty long post full of graphs that the author uses to support his argument so you should ... read more ...

VC Fund Buys 5.3% Of Verisign or More Than $250 Million Worth - According to Theflyonthewall.com, a Venture Capital firm has taken a 5.3% equity interest in Verisign. The company is ValueAct and at the closing price of VeriSign of around $30 a share Verisign has a $5 Billion dollar market cap the investment is worth more than $250 Million. According to the company’s website, Value Act:   ValueAct Capital was initially formed in June 2000 to manage the capital of its three founders, along with the capital of a limited number of outside investors, in an investment ... read more ...

FriendFinder Networks Loses Another $12 Million - FriendFinder Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: FFN), announced financial results for the second quarter and six months ended June 30, 2011. Net Loss for the second quarter of 2011 was ($11.9 million), or ($0.55) per share, compared to ($4.9 million), or ($0.36) per share, for the second quarter of 2010. Net Loss for the six months ended June 30, 2011 was ($15.5 million), or ($0.88) per share, compared to ($13.2 million), or ($0.96) per share for the same period in 2010, representing a $2.3 million increase. Second ... read more ...

Breaking: Smartphone Wars Heat Up: Google To Acquire Motorola Mobility For $12.5 Billion - Google announced early on Monday morning that it will acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings, for around $40 per share or $12.5 Billion Dollars  “a premium of 63% to the closing price of  shares on Friday, August 12, 2011,” According to CNN.com “it would be Google’s largest-ever acquisition. It’s previous largest deal was for online ad company DoubleClick ($3.1 billion), followed by the 2006 purchase of YouTube ($1.65 billion). Google also was part of an investor group that purchased a 22% ... read more ...

Tucows Reports: Revenue Up 11%; Sells $1.3 Million In Domains & Swings To A Profit - Tucows.com (AMEX:TCX) reported earnings after the market closed today. Here are some of the highlights from the earnings report and the Earnings Call from this afternoon: “Revenue grew by almost 11% year-over-year to a record $23 million.” “Net revenue for the second quarter of 2011 increased 10.6% to $23.0 million from $20.8 million for the second quarter of 2010.” “Net income for the second quarter of 2011 was $0.6 million, or $0.01 per share, compared with a loss of $0.8 million, or ... read more ...

Demand Beat Expectations & Is Up Over 17% To $10.51 In After Hours Trading - Share of Demand Media rockets up over 17% in after hours trading to $10.51 after reporting earnings that beat street expectations. Revenue rose 32 percent to $79.5 million in the quarter ending June 30th. Less advertising commissions, Demand Media’s revenue for the second quarter totaled $76.6 million; analysts were expecting $73.9 million. The company reported a net loss of $2.4 million, or 3 cents per share, compares with a loss of $1.9 million in the year-ago quarter, or 75 cents per share. Excluding ... read more ...

Hey Surprise Demand Shares Led The Way Up Almost 10% Through Another Bad Day In The Markets - While the Dow Jones Average squeaked out a gain today the NASDAQ had another down day. However most of the domain company’s stocks did well. Demand Media which has been beaten to death by blogs actually rose almost 10% today to finish at $9.26 Web.com which agreed to buy Network Solutions for $540 Million the other day, rose for the 2nd consecutive day up 15% to almost $12  a share. Shares of Web.com hit a low of $8 a share before the deal was announced. So that’s an increase of 50% in 2 days ... read more ...

Marchex Reports Earnings: Revenue Up Over 40%; Sells $2.7 Million In Domains & Shares Are Up 19% - Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ:MCHX)  reported its results for the quarter ended June 30, 2011 yesterday and had a nice quarter. Shares of Marchex are up over 19% today in an otherwise down market on the news (trading at $9.34 as of time of publication. Here are some of the highlights of the earnings report: Second Quarter 2011 Consolidated Financial Results: Revenue was $38.8 million for the second quarter of 2011, compared to $21.4 million for the same period of 2010. GAAP net income applicable to common ... read more ...

Trefis: Total Domain Registrations To Go From 120 Million To 360 Million By 2018 But .Com & .Net Share Down To 40% - Stock analysis firm Trefis is saying they expect domain name registrations to triple from approximately 120 Million current registrations to 350 Million by 2018. However they also call for the percentage of .com and .net registration to shrink over that time to 40% due to the new gTLD’s. “Upside to our forecast could arise from market share gains as new rules will allow businesses to register any domain name. This could lift our forecast for total user base of .com and .net domain names that ... read more ...

VeriSign Report Earnings: Revenue Up 13%; Net Income Up 50%: Q Ends With 110 Million Domains Registered adult 8% - After the market closed today  VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2011. VeriSign, Inc.  reported revenue of $190 million for the second quarter of 2011, up 5% from the prior quarter and up 13% from the same quarter in 2010. Of course in January 2011 Verisign is raising the fees on .net and .com registrations by 7% which should add to their bottom line for 2011, but 2010 is off to a great start for them. Verisign reported net loss of $(11) ... read more ...

On a Date Restricted Shares of Demand Media Unlock & The Market Sinks, Demand Is Actually Up - Demand Media went public on January 26th, 2011. Shares that insiders receive typically have a 6 month lock up meaning none can be traded until the 6 month period is up. Meaning that today would be the 1st day that the insider shares can be sold. Well the stock market is having a horrible day down as of time of publication around 175 points on the Dow and a whopping 68 points on the NASDAQ and shares of Demand Media are actually up .01. Lets face it a lot of very smart people are insiders at Demand. Insiders ... read more ...

IAC reports Earnings: Income adult 65% - IAC reported earnings this morning.  IAC is one of the stocks we track in the Domain Stock Index since it owns some major Internet properties including Match.com, Dictionary.com Chemistry.com and Ask.com to name a few. IAC said that: Q2 revenue reflects strong performance with double-digit growth across all segments.  Operating Income Before Amortization saw very strong double-digit growth, up 65% for the quarter and more than 70% year-to-date. Free Cash Flow for the first six months was $137.8 ... read more ...

FastCompany: “Does Paying Top Dollar For Domains Still Make Sense In The Age Of Apps?” - An interesting article just popped up in FastCompany.com entitled “Does Paying Top Dollar For Domains Still Make Sense In The Age Of Apps?” “Given the increasing popularity of apps, there’s a question of whether owning the right domain name is as important as it was when the world was driven by dot-coms and browsers rather than iPhones and Android devices. In other words, if you launch an app today–say, Foursquare, for example–is it necessary to purchase Foursquare.com if the primary ... read more ...

Yahoo Reports Earnings & Misses Again - After the market closed today Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO – News)  reported results for the quarter ended June 30, 2011 and the news wasn’t particular good. The company reported GAAP revenue (excluding traffic acquisition costs) was $1.08 billion for the second quarter of 2011, a 5% decrease from the second quarter of 2010. However earnings per diluted share increased 18%to $0.18 in the second quarter of 2011, compared to $0.15 in the second quarter of 2010. Net Income came in at $237 million, ... read more ...

Google Reports Earnings: Profits Up 36%, Revenue adult 32; Clicks Up 18%; Cost Per Click adult 12% - Googlereported earnings after the market closed today for the quarter ending June 30, 2011. Second quarter net income rose to $2.51 billion, or $7.68 a share, from $1.84 billion, or $5.71 a share an increase of 36%. Net revenue for the period ended June 30 was up 32% $6.92 billion. Excluding one-time items, Google said that earnings for the quarter were $8.74 a share. Google said that its paid clicks,  rose roughly 18% compared to the same period last year. Google’s  “cost per click,” rose ... read more ...

How Can Google.com & MarkMonitor.com Let Googleplus.com Sit Not Resolving? - Google Plus is the huge new product from Google launched just a couple of weeks ago to compete with Facebook.com and as TechCrunch pointed out has already added billions in market cap to Google. So I was pretty surprised to see that the domain name GooglePlus.com, which is in fact owned by Google, Inc. and under management at MarkMonitor.com the brand protection company, is simply not resolving Not resolving to a page for Google Plus. Not even just re-directed to Google.com. Just Not resolving. Of ... read more ...

Tucows & Demand Shares Benefit From Godaddy.com Reported Buyout - Shares of both Demand Media (NYSE: DMD) and Tucows (TCX) had nice gains in the stock market on Friday following on the heals of the pending sale of Godaddy.com for up to $2.5 Billion which is expected to be announced officially on Tuesday. As we reported in our story about the possible sale of Godaddy.com earlier today, Demand which had previously been seen as some as overvalued at a market cap of just over $1 Billion may now seem cheap as they own the world’s 2nd largest registrar, Enom in addition ... read more ...

Minds + Machines Game Changer For New gTLD Back End Providers: Unlimited Registrations For $100K - In what appears to be a bold move,  Minds + Machines, (London AIM: TLDH), today announced a flat pricing model for back end registry services for top-level domains. According to a press release (translated from German) Minds + Machines will offer unlimited registrations for new TLDs on the registration platform “espresso” for a flat fee of $100,000 per year. “For most new TLDs, no extra fee is charged for each domain name.” “We have simplified the model,” said Antony Van Couvering, ... read more ...

Google Hits a Record 1 Billion Visitors In One Month - According to cnet.com, Google hit a record with 1 BILLION visitors in one month. Cnet.com, citing stats from Comscore, says that Google got over 1 billion visitors in May 2011, “the first time ever that a site has drawn that many visitors in one month” “The number of unique visitors to Google’s sites rose by 8.4 percent from 931 million a year ago to just over a billion 1,009,699,000 to be more exact.” “According to comscore,  Google saw its greatest numbers in India and South Africa, ... read more ...

Tucows Goes Mobile On Ting.com - According to a post on Facebook, Tucows.com is launching a new mobile service called Ting “”Tucows goes mobile! super excited about http://ting.com/. let me know if you want to get into the beta or have any questions. I love the early feedback. if suggests this could be a game changer!” said CEO Elliot Noss. The page on Ting.com says: “We think there are a lot of things about mobile service that don’t make sense. Ting is a new mobile service planning to change that.” Ting.com already ... read more ...

QuinStreet Takes a Huge Tumble Down Over 20% Today - Shares of Quinstreet the company that bought insurance.com and Carinsurance.com and Insure.com have tumbled over the last few days and is down over 20% today. Shares of Quinstreet are at 1pm EST sitting at around $11.50 down over $3 on the day. Quinstreet is now off over 50% off its high of $24 this year. The cause of the selling? Revised guidance from the company which now forecasts a weaker-than-expected fiscal 2012 revenue and said growth in its current 4th quarter and 1st Q of next fiscal year ... read more ...

PbNation.com Sold For “Up To $3.2 Million” - According to a press release today, a publicly traded company, CrowdGather.com, (OTCBB:CRWG) “acquired the domain name, website, and assets related to PbNation.com one of the world’s largest online paintball communities according to Forbes and the Chicago Tribune.” “The total purchase consideration for the PbNation.com site and assets is up to $3.2 million, consisting of $1.4 million in cash, 1,149,425 shares of the Company’s restricted common shares, and certain ... read more ...