The San Francisco Gate has an op-ed which claims that President Obama’s ideas for helping small businesses don’t go far enough. The author of the piece, entrepreneur J.R. Johnson, writes that Obama’s proposed decrease in the capital gains tax for 75 percent of the investment if it is held for five years or more is a step in the right direction “but falls short and […] doesn't excite or encourage entrepreneurs to get off the sidelines.” Instead, he writes, the Obama administration should create a tax holiday for small businesses created from 2008 to 2010, exempting them from paying capital gains tax “if they have a successful exit, through an IPO or sale to another company, at any time in the future.” This, Johnson thinks, will help build some of the small innovative companies that we need to get out of these difficult economic times.
Yahoo!Tech reveals that “[a]n online privacy group is calling on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Google is making deceptive claims over the security of data stored in cloud-computing services such as Gmail and Google Docs. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a 15-page complaint on Tuesday, asking the FTC to force Google to stop offering online services that collect data until the presence of adequate privacy safeguards is verified. EPIC also wants Google to disclose all data loss or breach incidents.”
The Washington Post reports that “Discovery Communications sued Amazon.com yesterday, accusing the e-commerce giant of infringing its patent for electronic book technology with the Kindle reader. Discovery, based in Silver Spring, said Amazon's two versions of the Kindle, as well as its online services related to the e-reader, violate a patent that the media company and founder John Hendricks received in November 2007, the same month Amazon released the first version of Kindle. The patent deals with encryption technology for distributing digital publications.”
According to the Seattle Times, “Sun Microsystems Inc. shares soared in premarket trading Wednesday after a published report said International Business Machines Corp. is in preliminary talks to buy Sun for at least $6.5 billion in cash. The Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed people familiar with the matter, said the deal could occur as early as this week. It also said the talks could fall apart. Sun Microsystems shares climbed $3.23, or 65 percent, to $8.20 in premarket trading, while IBM lost $2.91, or 3.1 percent, to $90.”
CNetNews.com has an interesting discussion on what big media can learn from all the new media start-ups that attended the SXSWi conference.