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AOL drops Limbaugh over 'slut' comments

Rush Limbaugh may own the talk radio airwaves, but he's clearly losing the PR battle against critics who mobilized over the Internet after the host repeatedly described a Georgetown law student as a "slut" and a "prostitute."

On Monday, AOL became the eighth advertiser to suspend sponsor support for Limbaugh's daily talk show program. The others include Sleep Number, Sleep Train, Quicken Loans, Legal Zoom, Citrix, Carbonite, and ProFlowers.

"At AOL one of our core values is that we act with integrity," the company said in a statement on its Facebook page. &… Read more

AOL says bye-bye to Brizzly

Thing Labs is killing its social media client Brizzly.

When Brizzly launched in 2009, the Web-based client used Google Translate to offer inline translations of tweets. It also distinguished itself by providing definitions for topics trending on Twitter.

Trends would be its defining feature. Brizzly went so far as to launch the "Let's Be Trends" API, giving applications access to its trend information.

In 2010 AOL, acquired Thing Labs. Co-founder Grant Shellen said then on the startup's blog:

First things first: Brizzly is sticking around. Of course anything can happen in the future, but nowhere on … Read more

AOL: It's not dead yet!

AOL just can't seem to catch a break this week, but a few pieces of bad news doesn't presage the demise of the Internet media giant.

First it lost CTO Alex Gounares, who wanted to move back to Seattle. Then it lost tech head Tim Dierks and sales exec Tim Castelli. And to top it all off, news leaked out that the struggling media giant is about to hand out pink slips in its West Coast office.

About the only piece of good news was the departure of TechCrunch editor Erick Schonfeld. The loss of the leader of … Read more

Here we go again: AOL investor might start proxy war

If you ever run a declining Web company, be sure to keep one thing in mind: activist investors are waiting to pounce.

Just days after Yahoo activist shareholder Daniel Loeb proposed plans to take over four seats on that company's board, a new report from All Things Digital claims that a fund called Starboard Value is planning to launch its own proxy war with AOL.

According to All Things Digital's sources, Starboard Value, which owns about 5 percent of AOL, could propose an entirely new group of directors as early as today. And tomorrow is the last day … Read more

AOL's fourth quarter lofts over profit forecast

AOL handily beat analyst profitability estimates for the fourth quarter, a bright spot for a company that's been gradually declining for years.

The company reported net income of 23 cents per share, compared with expectations that averaged 17 cents per share, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. Net income itself dropped 66 percent from $66.2 million a year ago to $22.8 million, but that was well above the $14.7 million analysts had expected.

The net income was lower than a year earlier in part because of an $8.5 million patent lawsuit settlement with Bascom … Read more

AOL to announce company reorg, report says

AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong will reportedly unveil a reorganization for the beleaguered Internet pioneer later this week that will combine the dial-up Internet service business with its Web services.

In addition to the AOL services group, three other business units will be created under the new structure, Armstrong told Bloomberg in an interview. Those units will consist of advertising, local services, and the Huffington Post media group, he said.

"We had AOL services split up between multiple groups," Armstrong told Bloomberg. "We have decided that putting them into the same structure, with the same cohesion, will … Read more

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL join Agari anti-phishing service

The major Web-based e-mail providers are joining forces with an anti-fraud startup, which is launching tomorrow, to help keep phishing messages out of peoples' inboxes.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL are providing metadata from messages that get delivered to their customers to Palo Alto, Calif.-based Agari so it can be used to look for patterns that indicate phishing attacks. Agari collects data from about 1.5 billion messages a day and analyzes them in a cloud-based infrastructure, according to Agari CEO Patrick Peterson.

The company aggregates and analyzes the data and provides it to about 50 e-commerce, financial services … Read more

Police procedures leaked for getting into Facebook, other accounts

Confidential guidelines telling police how to access Facebook, Microsoft, Blizzard, and AOL user accounts have appeared online this week.

The files, known colloquially as law enforcement guidelines, typically tell police what types of user data are stored, how long they're retained, and what procedures to use to gain access to them.

A few types of requests--for e-mail less than 180 days old, for instance--tend to require search warrants. In general, basic subscriber information can be disclosed with a subpoena, and a court order is required for more extensive information (whether that's sufficient is the subject of ongoing litigation … Read more

Google gets in the music groove

week in review Google is getting into the music business.

The Web giant launched Google Music, a service that takes advantage of Google search technology as well as its ability to tap the tastes of a user's friends to recommend songs. With three of the four major record labels now participating in the service, users will also be able to buy music.

The beta version of Google Music, which debuted in May, didn't include the ability to buy songs from labels. But users could upload their entire music libraries to Google's servers, making those tunes available to … Read more