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Make It Social: VEVO Sees 600% Increase In Facebook Traffic After Redesign

bestcbstore — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:01:19 +0000

In March, VEVO launched a bold new redesign that provided TV-like viewing, with instantaneous and continuous playback. But the biggest addition to the platform, other than a beautiful new full-screen player, was a new social sharing feature that takes advantage of Facebook Open Graph. Not surprisingly, VEVO seen a dramatic increase in the number of videos that are watched and shared on the social network since then. VEVO has seen a 600 percent increase in Facebook-published or -watched videos when compared to February, to 4.5 million. It’s also signed up half a million new users via Facebook, which represents a 142 percent increase over the previous month. And the total number of impressions on Facebook grew to 171 million, which is a 181 percent change from February. A caveat: VEVO isn’t the only video provider to see a jump in sharing and usage immediately after integrating with Facebook Open Graph. Video applications like Viddy and Socialcam had seen huge increases in the amount of viewership and registrations after adding seamless sharing. But Facebook giveth and Facebook taketh away — and VEVO can’t count on that tremendous growth to continue indefinitely. That said, it’s not just viewership from Facebook that is increasing. VEVO is also showing an uptick in engagement from users, who are watching more videos longer. Viewers watched an average of 4.3 videos in March, compared to 3.8 videos viewed in February. And they spent 15.2 minutes on the site, compared to 13.1 minutes during the prior month. Facebook also isn’t the only place where viewers are tuning in to watch music videos on VEVO. The video service is also seeing huge amounts of viewership on mobile devices. In the first three months of the year, VEVO saw 254 million worldwide streams on mobile devices and connected TV apps, which is up 32 percent from the previous quarter. It also saw active users for iPhone grow 28 percent and iPad grow 22 percent during the time period.

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Make It Social: VEVO Sees 600% Increase In Facebook Traffic After Redesign

How to Get Involved With The White House Digital Road Map

kram412 — Thu, 24 May 2012 03:00:26 +0000

President Obama’s technology advisors are looking for some “kick ass” fellows to work on the White House’s new digital road map for open government . Announced on stage at Disrupt 2012, CTO Todd Park and CIO Steven VanRoekel detailed five new projects, each which will need a team of open government geeks to help move forward. You can view the first part of the application process here . So, what are they looking for? Park told the audience that he’s looking for the first 5 people one would want to begin a startup with: a mix of people with technical expertise, an accomplished history, and a passion for disruption. Technical skills for some team members are definitely important (UI/UX experience, coding, etc). But, a history of causing some type of disruption is definitely key. If you’ve managed to make your industry more transparent, participatory, or collaborative, definitely indicate that on the second round application (which will be later emailed to applicants). Last, a passion for using technology for social change, especially open data, should probably make its way into the application. Park and VanRoekel are also interested in working with entrepreneurs outside of the fellows program. For instance, in June, Park will help with a health care “ datapalooza “, which will feature companies that leverage the new government data. Entrepreneurs can also follow Park and VanRoekel on Twitter for upcoming news, and @reply them with great ideas. Good luck to all of the applicants and entrepreneurs, and keep TechCrunch updated if you develop any great products related to open data.

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How to Get Involved With The White House Digital Road Map

KPCB’s Chi-Hua Chien: The Next Wave Of Tech Disruption Will Hit Commerce

admin — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:51:01 +0000

Technology has helped to level the playing field across a wide range of industries, letting more individuals come to the table in fields such as publishing, entertainment and, of course, building web startups. And according to Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers partner Chi-Hua Chien , the next space ripe for a big tech-powered wave of democratization is commerce. In an on-stage conversation with David Kirkpatrick at the TechCrunch NYC Disrupt conference Wednesday afternoon, Chien explained how tech has helped flatten a number of previously stratified spaces. The mid- to late-90′s saw the democratization of information — companies such as Google made data available to everyone, no matter where or who they were. After that came the democratization of distribution, with services such as Twitter and Facebook allowing anyone to broadcast their content and potentially attract an audience. The democratization of computing has occurred as well, with billions of people in the world now having access to computers because of the availability of low-cost mobile devices. Up next? The world of shopping and selling. “We’re now entering an era around the democratization of commerce,” Chien said. The past, he said, has been about “mass aggregation,” with companies such as Safeway and Wal-Mart rising to the top of the commerce space by simply being the best at aggregating a suite of products into one space. These big companies also built up their own brand names to make shoppers feel secure in buying things from them. Today, though, we are starting to “see an unwinding of aggregation of commerce as technology starts to disrupt” the industry, Chien said. “If you think about what a Wal-Mart does, it aggregates credibility and inventory,” Chien said. Credibility is the Wal-Mart brand name, and the inventory is simply products and storage. Today, credibility can be established by smaller players via social media, and real estate and inventory can be outsourced much easier. Chien pointed to two Kleiner Perkins portfolio companies to illustrate this movement: Square , which he said is democratizing becoming a merchant, and Zaarly for democratizing the ability to do a particular job. In a short conversation off-stage, he told me that Gumroad is also one of the Kleiner-backed startups that is leading the way toward big commerce disruption. Looking at Kleiner Perkins itself, Chien not surprisingly declined from discussing the lawsuit filed by investment partner Ellen Pao (the news of which TechCrunch was the first to break yesterday) during his fireside chat. But, he did shed some light on the firm’s larger strategy, in particular its increasing focus on making digital investments, after a few years of being more well-known for making moves in the green tech space. “In the last five years, [Kleiner has] added four investing partners focusing on consumer digital,” Chien said.

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KPCB’s Chi-Hua Chien: The Next Wave Of Tech Disruption Will Hit Commerce

Memes Of TechCrunch Disrupt New York

jos — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:34:41 +0000

When you’re stuck for three days in a big warehouse with the same group of smart people talking about the future of tech innovation over and over and over again ( +beer ), you start getting really silly. And some of the unique circumstances of year’s TechCrunch Disrupt New York have given us plenty to be silly about. For instance, there are birds, live birds (!) in the conference hall, and in fact I can hear them right now chirping LOUDLY while one of the demo companies presents onstage. The birds are so prevalent that they’ve spawned jokes from some of the speakers, like, “It’s so hip of you guys to hold a conference in a bird sanctuary” in addition to a fake Twitter account, @TechCrunchBird , which tweets stuff like, “*Frightened fluttering from music,* “”Disappointed chirp.,” “*quiet listening*,” and my personal favorite, 啁啾 ‪ (‘Chirp’ in Chinese). Along with the CrunchBird, we’ve got the “Josh Constine Asking The Hard Hitting Questions” meme, inspired by the fact that Constine , one of our newest writers, GRILLED CEO Tim Armstrong hard on his fumbled moves with TechCrunch and Aol’s other content properties. Because the image of floppy-haired Josh taking down the high-powered Aol exec was so hilarious, we thought about some other situations in history where Josh’s mad interviewing skills and unerring, bloodthirsty quest for the truth could have come in handy. The sight of TechCrunch editor John Biggs riding around Startup Alley on a motorized beer cooler was so ridiculous that we turned into an equally ridiculous gif. And yes, you could pretty much watch this forever and never be sick of it. You know what else we will probably never be sick of? Putting MC Hammer on stage, and this year we got him up there twice as a Startup Battlefield judge (because of confusion he showed up late), resulting in a slew of “Judge Hammer Presides” jokes. The Hammer caption contest winner? Well “You have to ask yourself — how legit am I, in regard to my not quitting?” definitely has my vote. And speaking of hammered, here’s a random picture of our head developer Vineet Thanedar getting drunk on Churchkey beer at 10am. See you at Disrupt SF!

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Memes Of TechCrunch Disrupt New York

HP: 27,000 Job Cuts To Save Up To $3.5B By 2014, Q2 Sales Down 3% To $30.7B

user — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:14:18 +0000

A mixed bag of news for HP today: it has posted Q2 sales that have just edged out analyst expectations, but it has also confirmed 27,000 job cuts that should save the company between $3 billion and $3.5 billion by 2014. The company is a tech behemoth: it employs 350,000 people worldwide, before these cuts were announced. This means the cuts are equivalent to about 8 percent of its workforce. The cuts fall squarely in the middle of the estimates that were reported in past weeks, with CEO Meg Whitman reportedly planning to cut between 25,000 and 30,000 jobs — news that investors seemed to actually find encouraging with the stock price rising on the news. That seems to be the case here, too: the combination of okay results plus a concerted plan for cutting costs has sent the stock up in after-hours trading . HP says that it will be offering voluntary retirement to employees, so the exact number of actual layoffs has yet to be determined. The money that it saves will be re-invested across the whole of the company. It also plans to take a pre-tax charge of $1.7 billion in FY 2012 as a result, with additional pre-tax charges As a result of this restructuring, HP expects to record a pre-tax charge of approximately $1.7 billion in fiscal 2012 that will be included in its GAAP financial results for that period. Through fiscal 2014, HP expects to record additional pre-tax charges approximating $1.8 billion that will be included in its GAAP financial results for the relevant periods. As for earnings, these were down by thee percent to $30.7 billion — but still beat average analyst expectations of $29.92 billion. Earnings per share were also down 21 percent to $0.98, with analysts expecting EPA of $0.91. As a point of comparison in demonstrating the drop in HP’s fortunes, EPS for the same quarter last year was $5.24. In an internal memo , Whitman outlined the strategic direction that HP wants each division to take going forward. Read the full details here . Before today, the company had been slowly changing the course of its ship. In March, the company announced an “ organizational realignment ” in which it started to consolidate some of its hardware assets. Its Imaging and Printing Group were merged with its Personal Systems Group to create a new Printing and Personal Systems Group that is now led by Todd Bradley , who had been heading up the PSG since 2005. Last week HP said that it would be giving shareholders a dividend of 13.2 cents per share. This will be the third divided that HP has paid out in FY2012. The company has 2 billion shares of common stock outstanding. As AllThingsD pointed out earlier today, one big focus for the company is in its regional operations — specifically Europe. Some 37 percent of its revenues come from that part of the world — around $11 billion for this last quarter — and given the economic problems in Europe at the moment this means HP is the most exposed of the tech companies in the region. (We have more detail on one of HP’s European-focused operations, Autonomy, here .) Shares in the company were down nearly 5 percent before the release was announced. Full layoffs release below. PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwire – May 23, 2012) – HP (NYSE: HPQ ) today outlined plans for a multi-year productivity initiative designed to simplify business processes, advance innovation and deliver better results for customers, employees and shareholders. The restructuring is expected to generate annualized savings in the range of $3.0 to $3.5 billion exiting fiscal year 2014, of which the majority will be reinvested back into the company. Enabling investments in people, processes and technology will allow HP to accomplish the restructuring effort and to generate the savings. These moves are expected to yield significant improvements in efficiency and customer service during the next several years. HP expects to use the savings to boost investment in innovation around its three areas of strategic focus: cloud, big data and security, as well as in other segments that offer attractive growth potential. As part of the restructuring, HP expects approximately 27,000 employees to exit the company, or 8.0% of its workforce as of Oct. 31, 2011, by the end of fiscal year 2014. The company is offering an early retirement program, so the total number of employees affected will be impacted by the number of employees that participate in the early retirement plan. Workforce reduction plans will vary by country, based on local legal requirements and consultation with works councils and employee representatives, as appropriate. In addition to these restructuring actions, HP expects to achieve additional savings from non-headcount cost reductions, including supply chain optimization, SKU and platform rationalization, go-to-market strategy simplification and business process improvement. “These initiatives build upon our recent organizational realignment, and will further streamline our operations, improve our processes, and remove complexity from our business,” said Meg Whitman , HP president and chief executive officer. “While some of these actions are difficult because they involve the loss of jobs, they are necessary to improve execution and to fund the long term health of the company. We are setting HP on a path to extend our global leadership and deliver the greatest value to customers and shareholders.” HP expects to reinvest savings in each of its business segments to strengthen their ability to stay ahead of customer expectations and capitalize on growing market trends. HP will invest in research and development to drive innovation and differentiation across its core printing and personal systems businesses, as well as emerging areas. It will also invest in marketing, sales productivity and tools that simplify the customer experience and make it easier to do business with HP. Services will invest in accelerating service capabilities in the high client value areas of cloud, security and information analytics by enhancing HP intellectual property. Services will also strengthen its industry orientation and continue to differentiate its service offerings through quality and innovation delivered to clients. Combined, these activities are expected to shift the portfolio to a more profitable mix of higher-growth services. Additional work in lean process methodologies is expected to better serve clients and increase overall efficiencies. Software will invest to speed development in the areas of security, big data and the management of application lifecycle and infrastructure solutions, both on premise and in the cloud. It will also further leverage the capabilities of Autonomy and Vertica across the entire HP portfolio. Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking will invest to accelerate its research and development activities to extend its leading portfolio of servers, storage and networking. Together these assets create a Converged Infrastructure which is the foundation for top client initiatives such as cloud , virtualization , big data analytics , legacy modernization and social media. As a result of this restructuring, HP expects to record a pre-tax charge of approximately $1.7 billion in fiscal 2012 that will be included in its GAAP financial results for that period. Through fiscal 2014, HP expects to record additional pre-tax charges approximating $1.8 billion that will be included in its GAAP financial results for the appropriate periods.

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HP: 27,000 Job Cuts To Save Up To $3.5B By 2014, Q2 Sales Down 3% To $30.7B

The Facebook Effect Author David Kirkpatrick Talks Facebook’s Ad Network Potential, Future Acquisition Targets

vertical8 — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:02:35 +0000

This afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012, our own Josh Constine sat down with David Kirkpatrick , author of “The Facebook Effect,” to discuss what they thought about the future of the newly IPO’ed social network. Specifically, the two focused on the potential for Facebook’s advertising platform, its competitive advantages over incumbents and competitors, and its potential acquisition targets which could help its platform expand. What’s Facebook’s Post-IPO Strategy? Josh started off by asking Kirkpatrick what he thought was the most important thing Facebook should do going forward. David responded that Facebook shouldn’t do anything differently, even going so far as to say that doing so would be the “most perilous mistake they could make.” However, in terms of how the IPO could potentially affect the company’s focus, and specifically CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s focus on product, was the fact that Zuckerberg now has to “sell a lot of ads.” As a public company, analysts will be making quarterly earnings projections, and Zuckerberg will have to waste a lot of time thinking about that, said Kirkpatrick. Whether Zuckerberg likes it or not, he will have to think about money now, Kirkpatrick lamented, a role that the CEO had historically dedicated to COO Sheryl Sandberg . However, Josh pointed out that shift may not be a bad thing — Zuckerberg hasn’t “applied his big brain to monetization yet,” he noted. Facebook’s Uber-Precise Ad Targeting The two then moved onto sharing their thoughts about the Facebook advertising platform, which had Josh asking what Kirkpatrick thought Facebook had done that was really special in ads. Responded the author, “to create an environment which can be so accurately targeted for advertising is an innovation in itself.” He added that it’s also effectively an unmonetized innovation at this time, and he’s confident that there’s a lot of revenue opportunity there in the future, too. Kirkpatrick said that he felt that even something as simple as putting an ad in your News Feed was an innovation. How Facebook Will Get To Be Worth More Than $100B In discussing new monetization streams for the network, the potential for an offsite ad network that could one day rival Google’s AdSense was huge. There are already 9 million businesses and advertisers on the Facebook ad platform today, said Kirkpatrick. But highly targeted ads – the kind you would see on Facebook itself – could potentially freak people out when they showed up on the wider Internet, Josh pointed out. Kirkpatrick agreed to a point, but said that most people, including the average Facebook user, don’t seem to really care. There’s a tidal wave of “anti-targeting mindset,” especially in Europe, said Kirkpatrick, but it seemed to be mostly among the press, the government, and the “influentials” (which he dubbed the “punditocracy”). “A lot don’t understand Facebook or advertising that well,” he said of this group, painting them with a rather large brush. Kirkpatrick also said that not only does the average Facebook user not care about ads, in some of Facebook’s largest markets, it’s not a concern at all. Indonesia, for example – Facebook’s fourth largest country – has no issue with Facebook’s advertising. Who Should Facebook Buy Finally, in terms of what companies Facebook should acquire next, both agreed that moving into physical payments would make sense for the company. As for the recent Instagram and Karma acquisitions, Kirkpatrick called them “unexpected and surprising,” saying that they’re really app related, which he thought was odd. “What’s really important for Facebook is being a platform,” he said. He thought the biggest investments would be to “augment their platform capabilities, not their app capabilities.” But he concluded that some things, like photos, may be so important to the platform that they felt they needed to spend a billion dollars on it. “Tumblr is an interesting company for Facebook to think about,” Kirkpatrick stated. He also thought that Facebook couldn’t help but be obsessing over Pinterest right now, but Josh vehemently disagreed. Instead, Josh’s picks were some sort of peer-to-peer payments company like Venmo, and an offsite ad network technology that would give Facebook the ability to scrape data from websites outside its walled garden to let Facebook serve relevant ads to visitors who aren’t logged in.

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The Facebook Effect Author David Kirkpatrick Talks Facebook’s Ad Network Potential, Future Acquisition Targets

Backstage At Disrupt NYC 2012 With MakerBot’s Bre Pettis

jos — Thu, 24 May 2012 00:11:23 +0000

Bre Pettis of MakerBot stopped by our little show today and spent some time on the stage with John Biggs and other notables in the manufacturing space. But afterwards Pettis, co-founder and CEO of MakerBot, joined me on the TCTV couch to geek out a bit over the fantastic MakerBot Replicator. The company also has two MakerBot Replicators printing out random doodads and toys in our first ever Hardware Alley . As Bre explained, the original MakerBot buyers were geeks and hackers but now it’s moms and dads (like me). With the MakerBot, kids and parents can create and manufacture toys together. The Replicator can make nearly anything. It is essentially a desktop toy factory — or, for anyone else, a prototype printer allowing for rapid manufacturing. In short MakerBot is changing the world.

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Backstage At Disrupt NYC 2012 With MakerBot’s Bre Pettis

Shaker’s 3D Meetup Spot To Rock North America At June 8th Launch With Live Nation, BandPage

jos — Wed, 23 May 2012 23:33:28 +0000

Shaker won TechCrunch Disrupt SF last year with its 3-D virtual nightclub built on top of Facebook, and June 8th it will finally launch in North America with the help of the music industry’s Live Nation and BandPage. Until then you can sign up for Shaker , and when you do, you’ll get a classic album cover of Bob Marley, The Clash, or another legend remixed with your Facebook photos and data. The partnerships, promotion, and landing page all point to a big focus on music as a social lubricant for hanging out with people on Shaker. It’s been a wild eight months since Shaker won Disrupt . It raised a $15 million Series A led by Menlo Ventures, and joined by CrunchFund, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter, Justin Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun, and Israel’s Pitango Venture Capital. It also scored some more money from Motorola Mobility (now owned by Google), threw some online parties for New Year’s Eve and the NBA All-Star Game , and hosted a peace conference featuring Hillary Clinton. Shaker’s racked up tens of thousands of requests from people wanting to set up their own place to gather online with friends, fellow activists, and sexy strangers. Many of them will get their first chance to party or mingle on June 8th at 7:53pm PST when Shaker launches its first public meeting place. A concert may be in store for Shaker’s launch since it’s work working with Live Nation , which owns Ticketmaster and one of the world’s biggest musician management firms, and BandPage , who became the de facto musician profile app on Facebook. But Shaker isn’t trying to be Turntable.fm. Instead of everyone just staring at the DJ, music is what will break the ice so Shaker users can meet each other or have something to talk about. That’s good news for the Internet, where those things can get awkward fast. It’s actually kind of absurd that when we think of “social” online, we think of feeds of text and photos. If you’ve ever jumped on Facebook or Twitter on a Friday night, it can be a little depressing — just a bunch of updates of people doing fun things without you. Video chat services like Google Hangouts are good for small groups, but they devolve into chaos and lag once you get too many people on at once. Shaker could seem like a gimmick to some, and it’s too silly or filled with gamification, that’s all it might end up being. But if its team can make Shaker feel like a real, natural virtualization of ourselves, it could make it cool to sit home alone on your computer. Because you won’t really be alone.

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Shaker’s 3D Meetup Spot To Rock North America At June 8th Launch With Live Nation, BandPage

Sonar Rolls Out “Here-Now” Mobile Social Network, Adds Status, Messaging, Notifications

blogger — Wed, 23 May 2012 23:25:08 +0000

This time last year, Brett Martin took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York to launch Sonar , a mobile app that connects you to friends and other people nearby, based on your existing social networks. Fast forward to today and the Battlefield runner-up is rolling out a major update to its mobile app that will allow Sonar to finally become the “Here-Now” social network. The app previously focused on providing relevant information to users about others around them based on connections via Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Twitter. Extremely useful for conferences like Disrupt, when you’re at a party or maybe even starting a new job. So what’s new? Aside from the usual under the hood tweaks, Sonar has crammed in Status, Sonar Presence, Notifications and Messaging. The status update serves as a hyperlocal broadcast tool for those within close proximity and even pushes out a notification to your friends when they’re close by. Sonar Presence runs in the background to let others know what you’re up to or when friends are nearby, pushing a notification to alert you to folks you are already connected to. Sonar says one way they’re set apart from other apps in the space is that they’re most interested in showing you real connections and people you actually care about. Like others in the space, battery issues remain because current devices aren’t optimized to use GPS properly. You can pause Sonar in the background, BTW. Notifications will only ping you when friends you actually know and are connected to are nearby. Messaging is pretty straight forward and lets you lob chats back and forth with other Sonar users. So if you’re heading into the office and Sonar notifies you that a co-worker is close by, you can send a message asking them to hold the elevator or ask if they need a coffee. Sonar also offers a replacement to the irritating “Where are you guys” texts that are a staple of meeting up at a concert or park. Brilliant, no? Oh, you think you’ve heard this before, have you? How useful is Highlight outside of the San Francisco tech circle? Because it’s pretty worthless in New York. There are folks working in every industry imaginable, not just tech. The connections that I’ve personally made with folks in fashion, entertainment and countless other industries are innumerable thanks to Sonar. And what about getting results anywhere outside of a tech hub? Sonar says they had users in 35 countries just within a week of their launch last year, and have seen usage in more than 65 countries total. If you don’t see the value in a service like Sonar, then you’re totally missing the point and drinking the kool-aid. Oddly enough, I’d heard this pitch before but it came at a time before the App Store was even a thing. Back in 2008, Mike declared that he’d seen the “ Future Of Social Networking .” He described it as such: A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar. Given the intimate connection we have with our mobile devices, who wouldn’t want this type of service at our fingertips? It’s not like we don’t immediately Google someone we’ve just met anyway. Mike never disclosed the name of the company and we never heard from them again. But it doesn’t matter. Sonar does just that and more. Sonar [App Store]

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Sonar Rolls Out “Here-Now” Mobile Social Network, Adds Status, Messaging, Notifications

The Verdict Is In: Google Did NOT Infringe On Oracle’s Patents

user — Wed, 23 May 2012 23:15:11 +0000

Just over a week ago, the jury began deliberations on the ongoing patent infringement case between Google and Oracle. After waiting in the wings, with bated breath, the verdict is finally in, as Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court of Northern California dismissed the jury this afternoon after a unanimous decision that ruled in favor of Google’s mobile OS — declaring that Android did not in fact infringe on the Oracle patents in question. The decision follows an opposing verdict earlier this month , in which the jury in the long-running infringement case found that certain components of Android APIs had too close of a resemblance to code used in Oracle’s Java programming tools. However, the jury ended up splitting on the notion of whether or not Google could in fact claim fair use in its defense (which could have then led to a mistrial.) The jury’s decision was obviously a laborious one, following two years of a legal back-and-forth between the two tech giants. Oracle had initially filed the lawsuit back in August 2010, in which the company asserted that Android infringed on Java patents that Oracle acquired as a result of its purchase of Sun Microsystems. Google responded by saying that, at the time of development, it was not aware of Sun’s patents and that Android was in fact free to use. Of course, that decision was only the first act in the three-part deliberations, in which the copyright infringement issues were to be followed by consideration of Oracle’s patent infringement claims (the focus of today’s hearing) and, finally, the damages Google might be liable for were it found guilty. However, much of that speculation was rendered moot today, as a week of deliberation came to a close today at the U.S. District Court of Northern California, with the jury unanimously declaring that Google did not in fact infringe on the six claims set forth by Oracle in regard to U.S. Patent RE 38,104 as well as the two claims regarding U.S. Patent 6,061,520. Of course, this does not mean that the whole case has been decided; instead, the decision marks the end of the trial’s second phase, which, again, focused solely on Oracle’s claims of patent infringement. While the jury had previously found that Google was in violation of Oracle’s copyrights, as stated above, it could not come to a unanimous decision on the issue of fair use. Meaning that, although Oracle ostensibly “won” its copyright case, it effectively has a hold on its ability to collect on any of the $1 billion in copyright damages it is seeking from Google — a conclusion that was supported by the tweets of legal reporter Ginny LaRoe, who attended today’s hearing. And #Googacle The Trial is over. Judge Alsup dismissing jury. Since Oracle won virtually nothing, no damages phase at this point. — Ginny LaRoe (@GinnyLaRoe) May 23, 2012 On top of that, there are a number of other legal questions surrounding the copyright case on which Judge Aslup has yet to issue a final ruling, although he is expected to come to a decision next week. Updating

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The Verdict Is In: Google Did NOT Infringe On Oracle’s Patents