Marketing Pilgrim

Apple is hosting an iPhone developer event Thursday, where they’ll most likely talk about adapting to the iPad—and a new mobile advertising platform. While I’m sure the developers and Apple are pretty excited at the prospect of more money, it’s Google that might be cheering the loudest.

Once upon a time, the two companies were friendly, but especially since Google has entered the mobile phone market, the two have become rivals—and that’s exactly why Google will be excited to see a new ad platform from Apple. After Google announced its acquisition of in-app ad platform AdMob in November, they’ve faced scrutiny from consumer groups and the FTC, especially since there appear to be few rivals for

After the NCAA championship Monday, one of the sportscasters noted, “Duke won this game [OH YES THEY DID!]; Butler didn’t lose it.” [Also true—awesome game.]

After years of a case dragging through the courts (not unusual, but still), I think we can say something similar about the FCC’s challenge to Comcast on principles of Net Neutrality: the FCC lost this case; Comcast didn’t win it. That is to say, Comcast’s reasons for blocking BitTorrent downloads weren’t just so awesome that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously declared Comcast the winner—it was Comcast’s claim that the FCC doesn’t currently have the authority to enforce Net Neutrality.

Well, well. Apparently Kevin Rose is not messing around, now that he’s taken over the reigns of Digg.

No sooner had the door hit Jay Adelson on the way out, Rose has decided to reverse two very unpopular decisions.

The first–actually the second on his list, but I think you’ll find it more interesting–is the decision to lift the ban on the many sites that had previously faced the Digg blackball:

…with the launch of the new Digg will be unbanning all previously banned domains. While we will apply automated filters to prevent malware/virus/TOS violations, no other restrictions will be placed on content.

Poor Google. It takes two steps forward, one step back when trying to make progress with its book settlement.

FT.com reports a new group of content creators are not happy with the proposed deal: photographers.

They’ve filed a new class action lawsuit, because they were, apparently, left out of the one filed by the authors and publishers.

Photographers and illustrators were not allowed to join the existing class action suit, and have opted to file their own case…”Google is scanning in books and publications with visual images, which impedes the rights of the copyright holders of those images. We are seeking compensation for that,” said James McGuire, founding partner of the New York office of law firm Mishcon de Reya, who is leading the case.

We have heard this song sung by News Corps Rupert Murdoch on many occasions. If consistency counts for anything he certainly gets point for staying on message. Murdoch has again opened up his war of words around paywalls for online newspaper content and calling Google on copyright infringement. This time, though, Mr. Murdoch was able to show that at least he is hip to what is going on in the world of technology by talking about Apple’s iPad as well.

Murdoch was speaking at a National Press Club event at George Washington University and the Guardian reports

Rupert Murdoch has launched a spirited defence of putting up paywalls around his newspaper websites, while embracing the game-changing potential of Apple’s iPad. The News Corp chairman hailed the new device as a possible saviour of the newspaper industry.

When the news is slow it’s always a relief to find a good juicy rumor to pass along to the readers of Marketing Pilgrim. Heck, if it wasn’t for rumors about Internet companies and other Internet related things there would be precious little to talk about on any day.

So what’s the latest? We hear from the folks at The Business Insider that Yahoo is looking to acquire Foursquare for somewhere in the range of $100 million.

Deal-makers are deciding right now whether or not to buy super-hot location-based startup Foursquare for ~$100 million, says a source close to bankers involved in Foursquare’s current fundraising efforts.

A source close to Yahoo told us a Foursquare-owned Yahoo “would be nice.” This source told us “we’ve had discussions,” but cautioned: “We talk to everybody.”