Google Sites ranked as the top U.S. video property with nearly 2.5 billion videos viewed (27.0 percent share of videos), 2.4 billion of which occurred at YouTube.com. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 390 million (4.3 percent), followed by Fox Interactive Media with 298 million (3.3 percent) and Viacom Digital with 281 million (3.1 percent).

In total, nearly 134 million Americans viewed online video in July, or approximately three in four U.S. Internet users. Google Sites also captured the largest online video audience with 67.8 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 35.8 million and Yahoo! Sites with 35.3 million.

Other notable findings from July 2007 include:

• Online viewers watched an average of more than three hours of online video during the month (181 minutes).
• The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes.
• Nearly three out of four (74.2 percent) U.S. Internet users viewed video online.
• More than one out of three (36.7 percent) U.S. Internet users viewed video on YouTube.com.
• The average online video

The largest profits went to YouTube’s three founders and Sequoia Capital, the principal financier of the internet’s number one video-sharing site.

The NY Times reported that founder and YouTube’s chief executive Chad Hurley received 694,087 shares of Google and an additional 41,232 in a trust. Based on Google’s closing price yesterday of $470.01, the shares are worth more than $345 million.

Another founder, Steven Chen, received 625,366 shares and an additional 68,721 in a trust, for more than $326 million.

The third founder of YouTube, Jawed Karim, who left the company early on to pursue a graduate degree in computer science, received 137,443 shares worth more than $64 million.

Sequoia Capital XI, the Sequoia fund that invested close to $11.5 million in YouTube from November 2005 to April 2006, was listed as having 941,027 shares, which are valued at more than $442 million.

Source:  SECinfo.com

Apple announced a revolutionary multi-media (iPod and widescreen video) mobile phone which featured a unique touchscreen interface. The phone features GSM + EDGE, Quad Band, WIFI, Bluetooth, an acceleromoter (which allows for automatic portrait to widescreen rendering by rotating the device), an ambient light sensor, and seemless integration with iTunes, iPhoto, iCal and a host of other Apple applications. The company terms the new phone as a three in one device: iPod/Video + mobile phone + internet communicator.

The phone uses the Safari browser for mobile browsing and features POP/IMAP for email with a built in client which resembles Apple Mail on Mac OS X. Push email (similar to the Blackberry) is also supported. Apple also announced that Yahoo will offer free Yahoo! IMAP email to all Apple phone (iphone) customers.

Utilizing EDGE or WIFI for internet connectivity the phone can switch automatically between the two as necessary. The device is location aware and works seemlessly with Google Maps, indicating the users location in proximity to local landmarks, stores, restaurants, etc.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined Steve Job’s on stage during the MacWorld Keynote address and discussed a Google, Apple collaboration, which was termed a “merger without merging” with Google pushing hard for a partnership with Apple. Google Maps and Google Search are built into the device.

Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, joined Steve Job’s as well as discussed Yahoo’s attempt to reinvent email with it feels is a killer application on a mobile phone. Yahoo Go, Yahoo oneSearch and Yahoo IMAP email are built into the device.

Over 200 patents have been granted to Apple over the development of the device, which features precision enclosures, sensors, true desktop-class apps, visual voicemail, widescreen, and a world first “multitouch” screen.

The phone is expected to sell for $499 (4GB model) and $599 (8GB model) with availability expected in June 2007 in the USA, 4th quarter 2007 in Europe, and 2008 in Asia. The prices quoted assume a two year contract.

Cingular Mobile was announced as the exclusive partner in the USA, with CEO Stan Sigman joining Steve Job’s in announcing the phone’s available through both Cingular and Apple stores. The deal was termed as a multi-year exclusive partnership.

With appromixately 957 million mobile phones sold worldwide, Apple indicated that it was after 1 % of the market (or 10 million phones).

The company also announced that to better reflect its new direction, it was changing its name from Apple Computer Inc. to simply Apple Inc.

More details to follow.

Google’s $6 billion-a-year advertising business is at risk because it can’t be sure that anyone is looking at its ads. The problem is called click fraud, and it comes in two basic flavors.

With network click fraud, you host Google AdSense advertisements on your own website. Google pays you every time someone clicks on its ad on your site. It’s fraud if you sit at the computer and repeatedly click on the ad or — better yet — write a computer program that repeatedly clicks on the ad. That kind of fraud is easy for Google to spot, so the clever network click fraudsters simulate different IP addresses, or install Trojan horses on other people’s computers to generate the fake clicks.

Source:  Wired.com

Source:  BetaNews

While the deal gives AOL a renewed focus and valuation few would have deemed probable, the New York Times reports that Google’s intention is to leverage the deal into an expansion of its advertising products. 

Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said, “We have not offered a complete advertising solution until this point.  This is about expanding the network of our revenue and partners and advertisers, and we couldn’t do that by ourselves.”

AOL will be able to sell both Google’s traditional search advertising and new graphical display advertising.  The advertising may be placed both on Google’s own web site and the many sites on which Google places ads.

From Gmail Mobile’s news release:

Now you can access your Gmail account from your mobile phone or device. Just point your phone’s web browser to http://m.gmail.com. Your Gmail account stays synched, whether you access it from the web or the mobile interface. It’s easy to use and it’s free (but yes, your wireless plan could still charge you).

It also has these cool features:

• Automatically optimizes the interface for the phone you’re using

• Opens the attachments you receive in messages, including photos, Microsoft Word documents and .pdf files

• Lets you reply by call to people whose phone numbers are in your Gmail Contacts list

Optimization is interesting since the service automatically formats your mail according to the parameters of your mobile phone screen. Given the prevalence of pop3 and imap clients in modern mobile phones it remains to be seen how much impact a browser based service will have in the market. However, many mobile clients do not support SSL (which Gmail requires) which may explain Gmail Mobiles browser based emphasis.

Gmail also released two additional new features, a vacation auto-reponsder, and contact groups.

Google has partnered with Apple Computer’s iTunes service, RealNetworks Rhapsody, eMusic and Amazon.com at launch.  Mayer indicated that Google was not interested in develop a service which would compete with online music services:

“We aren’t building out a music store, we are getting people to the iTunes store.  This has been one of the longstanding unfilled user needs, we saw a search need where we weren’t providing users with the highest-quality results that we could.”

While iTunes affiliates earn up to 5% commission on Google has currently has no financial relationship with Apple according to Search Engine Watch:

Google has no financial relationship with the sellers of music. Placement in search results is determined by a combination of the retailer’s page rank and other relevance factors, as well as an element of “randomness” to ensure “fairness,” according to Mayer.

An interesting development which points to the increasing focus on localized and vertical search.  Taken together with Amazon.com’s announcement yesterday, it points to the likelihood that much more highly focused search engines or services will be developed and marketed in the future.