The big news of the week is Verizon’s $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL. This move combines two business models that had been separate, but are now merging in the digital age. Read about the implications for business and consumers.

New York Times: Verizon’s Deal for AOL is a Push Into the Technology of Advertising

“Armed with data and technology created by actual rocket scientists, this new breed of advertising executives is introducing automated systems for the buying and selling of ads in real time. Fading away are the industry’s old-school wining and dining sales tactics as a new model emerges where algorithms rule.”

“Ad executives said that AOL’s merger with Verizon could shake up the broader competitive lineup in the ad tech market. Google long has dominated that arena, but other media and tech companies are trying to gain ground. Facebook has increased its investments. Media conglomerates like Comcast and 21st Century Fox, meanwhile, have jumped into the business, snapping up ad tech companies of their own.”

Consumerist: Verizon/AOL Merger: Good for Their Business, Bad for Your Privacy

“What you do on your phone, what you do on your laptop at work, and what you do on your tablet or computer at home can be tricky to aggregate into one complete, whole consumer profile. Cross-platform stalking measurement is in many ways basically the holy grail of advertising and therefore of nearly all web and app businesses.”

“Verizon executives have specifically said that purchasing AOL, and all its advertising and user targeting software, “supports our strategy to provide a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators and advertisers to deliver that premium customer experience. And that fancy synergy is also where the greatest risks lie for consumers and our already-waning privacy”

For better or worse, bots are an integral part of our internet ecosystem. Because they are not going away, it behooves us to learn to live with them.

CIO: Bots Now Outnumber Humans on the Web

“‘Good bots’ accounted for 36 percent of traffic this year, up from 21 percent last year. ‘Bad bots’ were responsible for 23 percent of traffic this year, down slightly from 24 percent last year — not because volumes were down, Essaid repeated, but because the number of “good bots” rose dramatically. Human traffic was just 41 percent, down from 55 percent last year.”

“Amazon led the charts this year. Its cloud computing platform was popular with bot creators — 78 percent of all traffic from the Amazon cloud was bots this year, accounting for 15 percent of all bots, up from 9 percent last year. In addition, Amazon itself was a bot creator, with 70 percent of traffic from Amazon.com being bots, accounting for 3 percent of all bots.”

SEO’Brien: What Google’s Content Farm News Means To You

“Annoyed by search results page dominated by the likes of Demand Media and other content farms, fed up with comment spam, and frustrated to the lengths everyone will go to own SERPs, the industry and consumers alike have cried from the hilltops that Google is becomming less and less effective. Finally, Google has announced an algorithmic improvement will help everyone find more quality sites.”

“Beyond duplication, for Google’s algorithm to effectively identify quality from spam, it has to take a close look at the relevance of content to the site involved.  Newspaper sites and other media companies that syndicate articles should be a little worried about the changes to the algorithm (though the quality of such sites should prevent them from suffering); while they don’t duplicate content, they provide little relevant context to a syndicated article.”

This exercise is an amazing proof-of-concept for 3D printing and demonstrates how this technology will be a game-changer in many industries.

Forbes Tech News: GE Engineers 3D Printed a Working, Mini Jet Engine

“‘As a tech demonstration, researchers at GE recently built a miniature, backpack-sized jet engine that they made entirely from 3D-printed parts. And not just for looks, either. They were able to fire it up and get it moving to 33,000 rpms.”

“‘This is much more that a stunt,’ said Terry Wohlers, a 3D-printing analyst for Wohlers Associates. ‘It shows what’s possible with additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing technology, especially for very demanding applications. GE Aviation will be producing tens of thousands of fuel nozzles by AM for its new-generation LEAP engine in the coming months and years… ‘”

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