Some startups really are worth billions of dollars

[w]ith less than three weeks remaining before a moratorium on Internet access taxes expires, a bill extending that ban is inching its way forward, following its approval this week by a U.S. Congressional committee.  The Tax Freedom Act of 2007, which would extend the moratorium until to 2011, unanimously passed a House Judiciary Committee vote on Wednesday. Now, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives must reconcile different versions of the bill.  They’re working against time, however — the current Net tax ban is set to expire Nov. 1.”

According to eWeek.com, “Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of Internet telecoms group Skype, said on Tuesday that the business, bought by EBay, had not performed as well as anticipated in the short term.  ‘We had to chart the trajectory of growth and how fast that would run, (but) we found out that was a bit front-loaded,’ Zennstrom told the annual ETRE technology conference in Hungary.  He added that he thought the company was growing at a satisfactory pace, but that more time was needed if the original valuation was ever to be realized.”

In a different article, eWeek.com writes that “[c]ompanies will spend a record $31 billion this year to advertise everything from toothpaste to home loans on the Internet, supporting countless news sites, social networks, video exchanges and blogs.  But some media veterans worry that expectations for online advertising may be getting out-sized.  ‘I’m getting to the point where I feel like every answer to every business development pitch is ‘We’re going to be advertiser supported’,’ said Beth Comstock, president of Integrated Media at NBC Universal, which this year set up a fund to invest in media and digital companies.  ‘It’s just not going to be possible,’ she said at a recent advertising conference.  ‘There are not going to be enough advertising dollars in the marketplace. No matter how clever we are, no matter what the format is.’”

eWeek.com also reports that “Ticketmaster is suing ISV RMG Technologies because its products help dealers resell tickets at a higher price.  U.S. District Court Judge Audrey B. Collins will likely chart new e-commerce ground on Oct. 15 from her Los Angeles courtroom, when she rules on a preliminary injunction request from Ticketmaster against a 10-person software vendor called RMG Technologies.  The Ticketmaster suit is interesting because it involves untraditional legal issues—Ticketmaster’s core argument is that it’s being damaged by a potential loss of consumer goodwill—along with factual claims that couldn’t happen outside of current-day e-commerce.”