Other winners range from Jerry Seinfeld to HBO Go to Nate Silver blog
By Jake Coyle, Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --Netflix’s groundbreaking “House of Cards” may be the first digital series nominated for a best drama Emmy. But it will start with a Webby.
The Webby Awards are honoring “House of Cards” producers Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti with a Webby special achievement award. The political thriller, for which Netflix released all 13 episodes at once, proved that digital media can produce cable-quality drama. Netflix also won for best streaming media site.
The 17th annual Webbys, which celebrate Internet achievement, are to be officially announced Tuesday. Winners range from Justin Bieber (for the social media campaign for his fragrance launch) to The Onion (now with a record 19 total Webbys) to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog for The New York Times.
The Webby person of the year is Frank Ocean, the R&B singer, whom the Webbys hailed “for proving the power of the Web as a medium for cultural change when he announced his bisexuality to his Tumblr community.”
Singled out for outstanding comedic performance is Jerry Seinfeld, whose 10-episode Web series “Comedian in Cars Getting Coffee” showcased the “Seinfeld” star hanging out with comedian friends.
Webby categories are split into a regular award, chosen by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, and a “people’s voice” award. The Australian rail safety public service campaign Dumb Ways to Die, which went viral, is an unlikely awards leader with seven Webbys.
GIF file inventor Steve Wilhite also will be honored with a lifetime achievement award. While working at CompuServe in the 1980s, Wilhite created the compressed 8-bit GIF (or Graphics Interchange Format) that remains a popular tool for lo-fi viral sharing.
Another special achievement award will go to President Barack Obama’s election campaign for its use of technology in last year’s presidential election. Claire Boucher, the Canadian synth-pop singer who performs under the name Grimes, is the Webby’s artist of the year.
Other winners include HBO Go (four awards, including best media streaming service), Lady Gaga (for best celebrity-fan social presence), Conan O’Brien (for best celebrity-fan website) and The New York Times (best news social presence). A complete list of the awards will be posted later Tuesday at: http://Winners.WebbyAwards.com.
The awards will be handed out in a ceremony hosted by Patton Oswalt on May 21 in New York, and available to stream the following day. Acceptance speeches are famously limited to five words.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More