Tech news
Late in the week -- namely today -- rumors heated up about the future of YouTube, that it was in talks to be acquired. Could we have a GoogleTube, or maybe a YouGoogle, in our future?

Microsoft
The annual proxy statement came out this week. For those keeping score, Bill and Steve's salaries got a little bump, a bit more than ("a bit" being a relative term here) $600K, but they each took a $50K cut in bonuses. One interesting thing to emerge is the recurrence of a vote on human rights issues, which Ben Romano nicely detailed.

Amazon.com
With some fanfare, Amazon introduced some pretty cool features on its fledgling A9.com search engine, including one that returned street-level photos related to search results. With much less fanfare, it has pulled the plug on that feature and others.

RealNetworks
With all the attention showered on the giants, RealNetworks edged its way into the digital music player business with a SanDisk Sansa that works with Real's Rhapsody service. What's more, megaretailer Best Buy is opening a Rhapsody-powered music store.

T-Mobile USA
Nearly a year and half ago Tricia Duryee wrote an insightful piece on how T-Mobile USA had fallen behind its quickly consolidating rivals not only in subscriber counts, but in leading edge technology. Just today, it broadly outlined its plan to catch up.

Quote of the week
"It's damn cheap for a company that already has a global presence, YouTube's brand identity is no less than Google's and is no less than Coke's,"
-- Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with the San Francisco-based Global Equities Research, speaking (a tad hyperbolically, no?) of YouTube and a reported asking price of $1.6 billion.

If you missed it ...
Every once in a while, some tech thing comes out of nowhere and soon can be found just about everywhere. Such is the phenomenon of user-generated video, popularized by YouTube (see above). These videos ...quot; and some of their commercial counterparts ...quot; actually have been on the Web awhile, but attention gloms on to them these days, as the giants start getting serious about them. Kim Peterson's piece from early this week surveys the landscape quite nicely.