Alexa stats up to August 17 show a massive rise in traffic to Skype competitor Gizmo Project and a more modest rise for Grand Central at the peak of this weeks 36 hour Skype outage.
The SIPphone owned Gizmo Project offers a nearly identical package to Skype, but with added features including built in recording, and cross platform compatibility. Gizmo’s traffic tripled in the space of three days and rose to a rank of 8,561 in Alexa from a 3 month average of 19,102.
The Google owned Grand Central offers a one number everywhere telephone service. Whilst the service doesn’t compete with Skype in the softphone market, the service does provide functionality that competes with Skype services such as Skype In. According to Alexa, Grand Central hit a 4 week high on Friday with a 33% increase in rank over its 3 month average.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Some People Benefited From the Skype Outage
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Russian Court Finds AllofMP3 Legal
A Russian court has found the former head of AllofMP3
not guilty of breaching copyright, a decision that finds the now shut AllofMP3 legal under Russian Law.
EMI, NBC Universal and Time Warner took Denis Kvasov to court claiming that AllofMP3’s cheap prices breached copyright laws. AllofMP3 went offline July 2 following continued pressure from the US Government on Russia to shut the site, including an escalation of the dispute to the World Trade Organization. AllofMP3 was also the subject of a lawsuit filed in New York last December that attempted to claim damages of $1.65 trillion.
The judge found that the service was legal as it paid royalties to rights holders via ROMS, a Russian organization which collects and distributes fees for copyright holders.
AllofMP3’s holding company MediaServices continues to operate mp3sparks.com, a nearly identical service to AllofMP3 that offers downloads at significantly cheaper prices to mainstream Western online music retailers.
