The Seattle Times reveals that “French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday proposed creating a state-run investment fund aimed at defending French companies from unwanted predators and helping small companies in difficulty.  Sarkozy said the global financial crisis proved the need for governments to play a role in the economy.  ‘The moment has come to give the state the instruments it needs to intervene directly in the economy when it considers that strategic interests of the nation are threatened,’ he said during a visit to the eastern Alpine region of Haute Savoie.  ‘I want for France to have a large strategic investment fund which will be a powerful arm in industrial policy.’”

The Register has an interesting article on the revenue Google makes through typo-squatters.  The publication writes that “[a]ccording to a recent study from McAfee and Harvard prof/cyber watchdog Ben Edelman – which relies on web data from May 2008 – at least 80,000 domains are typo-squatting on America's 2,000 most popular web sites, just waiting for innocent web users to misspell or mistype their next url. And 80 per cent of those typo-squatting domains are funded through Google AdSense.  […]  In the US, typo-squatting is against the law. The 1999 Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) prohibits anyone from ‘registering or using’ domains misleadingly similar to a trademark or famous name. Yet Google is making money from typo-squatters – most likely a great deal of money. The trouble – as usual – is that there's no window into Google's black box of an ad platform. At least not yet.  Edelman is among the team of lawyers that filed a class action suit against Google in June 2007, accusing the ad broker of violating the ACPA, and he's confident that as part of the suit's discovery process, Google will have no choice but to reveal how much it's pulling in from typo-squatters.”

In more Google news, the Guardian reports that “Google increased its global dominance in the search advertising market over rivals such as Yahoo in the third quarter of 2008, according to a report.  The report, by search marketing agency Efficient Frontier, found that Google extended its lead in the search ad market in all the major global territories in the three months to the end of September.  […]  Across Europe, excluding the UK, Google gained 0.4 of a percentage point of the search ad market against Yahoo in the third quarter compared with the second quarter. Google now controls 92.5% of the European search advertising market.  […]  In the US, Google has taken 2.1 percentage points of market share from Yahoo between the third quarter last year and the same period in 2008 to control 71.4% of the US search ad market.”

Business Week writes that “[a]s though the market forces battering Sun Microsystems weren't enough, the troubled computer company is absorbing another punch. Andy Bechtolsheim, a co-founder who returned to the company four years ago as a technical savior, is leaving again for the startup world.  Bechtolsheim, who designed Sun's original workstation in the early 1980s after founding the company with Chairman Scott McNealy and others, returned in 2004 after a nine-year hiatus and has worked on lower-priced computers, featuring chips from Advanced Micro Devices, that Sun hopes will revive growth.  […]  The departure of Sun's star engineer, who had spearheaded development of a new line of more affordable products the company is pushing, comes as Sun's sales slump and investors grow impatient with the company's turnaround plans.”

According to the Mercury News, “Apple hired the dean of the Yale School of Management to lead a new project called ‘Apple University.’  Joel Podolny will serve as vice president and dean of Apple University, company spokesman Steve Dowling said Wednesday. He declined to provide details about Apple University, describing it only as an ‘exciting new project.’  Podolny, 43, will leave Nov. 1 to lead Apple's educational initiatives, Yale President Richard Levin said in a letter posted on the university's Web site. Podolny joined Yale in 2005. He was previously a professor at Harvard Business School and Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.”