I didn’t realize The New York Times Company had a stake in a major league baseball team. Wonders never cease. But, as Silicon Alley Insider reports, the Boston Red Sox stake may turn out to be one of the more rewarding assets on the newspaper company’s books right now.

It turns out that The New York Times Company is looking for buyers for its 17.5 percent stake in the entity that owns the Red Sox. A price of $150-$200 million or so seems likely.

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Silicon Alley Insider has provided a nice summary of Google’s moves to boost revenues and cut costs over the last few months. And no, if you noticed more ads on Google’s search pages, it’s no accident.

Here are eight ways in which Google is driving revenues, followed by two ways it is cutting costs…

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Doesn’t it feel like we’re back in 2000 and 2001? All the high-profile tech companies seem to be putting their ambitious growth plans on the back burner as they desperately seek ways to cut costs and become (more) profitable. And now you can add social news site Digg to the list.

Having failed to sell Digg to various potential buyers, Digg CEO Jay Adelson says the social news aggregator is no longer for sale and will now focus on building a profitable, independent business.

Apparently, Digg will aim to triple sales before the end of 2009 and turn a profit within 1-2 years. It will do so by:

• Cutting back on expansion plans
• Reducing costs
• Renewing its focus on increasing sales
• Inserting ads into RSS feeds
• Buying Digg ‘clones’ to expand overseas
• Adding new features to increase more clicks on the site

Source: Nicholas Carlson, “Jay Adelson’s Six Step Plan To Make Digg Profitable”, Silicon Alley Insider, December 2, 2008

Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry predicts Google’s revenues will decline over the next three years. He forecasts the company’s revenues will drop from $15.71 billion in 2008… to $15.23 billion in 2009… to $14.57 billion in 2010.

Chowdry’s pessimism derives from research indicating that the challenging economic conditions will impede Google’s online advertising business. Already, he says, the number of keywords sold by Google is down 2-5 percent, with bids on keywords down by as much as 20 percent.

What’s more, Google is focusing more and more on cutting costs and boosting revenues. Over the last few months, the search giant has not only canceled plans to build a data center in Oregon, but has also cut expenditure on food, travel, contractors and Friday afternoon parties.

At the same time the company is aggressively pursuing new revenue opportunities, having opened up new ad channels including Google News, Google Maps, Google Image Search and YouTube.

Presumably, however, Chowdhry regards these moves as insufficient to avoid his predicted three year decline in sales.

Source: Nicholas Carlson, “Google Revenues To Shrink Through 2010″, Silicon Alley Insider, December 2, 2008

American Airlines has brought an action against Yahoo accusing it of trade mark infringement. Why? Because, not too long ago, when someone searched on ‘American Airlines’, Yahoo allowed ads by other companies to appear in the paid search results.

Hmmm… does that ring in any bells for any pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers? Like… alarm bells?

American Airlines sued Google over the same thing last year. The parties settled, however, so it’s not clear who’s likely to win this one. The Silicon Alley Insider indicates that Yahoo may be fighting a losing battle because of the murkiness of the law regarding concepts of “nominative fair use”, “commercial referential trademark use,” and other such concepts.

But for now, Yahoo ain’t settling, and Internet marketers - specifically those who run pay-per-click campaigns will want to keep a close eye on this case.

Sure, Yahoo has a major incentive to win - the more freedom it has to run PPC ads, the more money it will make.

Internet marketers, however, also have a MAJOR vested interest in the outcome. Whether you tend to side with American Airlines i.e. that not just anyone should be able to run an ad in response to a search phrase incorporating a trade mark… or you side with Yahoo and believe that you should have the freedom to run ads in response to people’s searches, regardless of whether or not those searches include trade marked terms.

Want to know how close to home this is? Consider everyone who runs ads using the name of some Internet marketing guru. What if that guru has obtained a trade mark for his or her name? If the case is decided in American Airlines’ favor then search engines will no longer be allowed to display ads in response to a ‘trade marked’ search phrase other than those of the trade mark holder or its licensees…

Which means – for better or worse - you can say goodbye to all those ads.

And just to clarify - we’re not talking about running ads that necessarily INCLUDE the trade mark in the ad. We’re talking about ads that say ANYTHING, but that have a link to a site that is not owned or affiliated with the trade mark owner.

Trust me – bidding on trade marked terms is rife. In fact, a little test using both Yahoo and Google (localized to Australian results) generated two ads by non-Amazon affiliated Australian bookstores.

Oh, in case you’re wondering why Google didn’t fight American Airlines over the same issue… well, I don’t know… but it may well be that Google was worried that the court would decide in American Airlines’ favor… which would create a legal precedent that it would have to follow in respect of other advertisers…

If only one company has a problem, why rock the boat and potentially lose a hefty chunk of business?

Source: Eric Krangel, “Yahoo Fighting American Airlines Search Ads Lawsuit. What’s The Upside?” Silicon Alley Insider, December 1, 2008, Silicon Alley Insider

Silicon Alley Insider doesn’t put it too nicely. According to Henry Blodget, “eBay’s core business continues to fall apart.”

Blodget attributes eBay’s declining traffic and revenues to the worsening economy. The rest of, however, is due to: “competition, overpricing, and the deterioration of eBay’s value proposition.”

According to Nielsen, October 2008 saw eBay attract 10 percent fewer unique visitors, 33 percent fewer page impressions and 19 percent less time per user than in October 2007.

Here’s the breakdown:

October 2007

• Unique visitors: 54,498,000
• Page impressions: 13,562,920,000
• Average time per user (hr:min:sec): 2:12:51

October 2008:

• Unique visitors: 49,213,000
• Page impressions: 9,139,905,000
• Average time per user: 1:47:26

A similar story of ongoing decline is painted by Google Trends for Websites. (And I used to think eBay was unbeatable…)

Source: Henry Blodget, “eBay Traffic Plummeting (EBAY)”, Silicon Alley Insider, November 25, 2008

Some analysts and research firms - eMarketer being a notable inclusion - seem to think that online advertising will keep on rising, albeit at a slower rate, over the coming year.

But in light of the current economic downturn, Nick Denton, founder of leading blog network, Gawker Media, suggests that online advertising may actually decline - and decline sharply - in 2009.

When someone with a vested interest in talking UP online advertising is so bearish… it’s worth taking note. Nick indicates that those who claim that Internet advertising is largely immune to the recession because it’s more ‘measurable’ are just kidding themselves.

Says Nick:

“The sector’s maturity also means that its underlying growth is more sluggish than it was in the late 1990s. In 2001, internet advertising swung to a 13% decline from 78% growth the previous year; this time the sector starts from a growth rate of 27%; I would hate to see what a swing as violent as the dotcom burst would look like.

As for the measurability of internet media: sure, marketers and their agencies can track engagement and clicks in great detail online; but it’s still only television advertising that can demonstrate a correlation between spending and a boost to a marketer’s sales.”

Source: Nick Denton, “Nick Denton: Media Sleepwalking Into Extinction”, Silicon Alley Insider, November 12, 2008, Silicon Alley Insider

According to Silicon Alley Insider, Google has started firing slackers.

A Google employee has written to Silicon Alley Insider saying that the company used to be rather lax when it comes to underperformers. But that’s all changing now. Due to the tougher economic environment, and belt-tightening by Google, the company has told managers to get rid of any people who are under-performing.

Just how many under-performers will be let go remains to be seen. But it’s interesting that Google has not formally announced any layoffs, unlike most other large and high profile tech companies that are getting rid of people…

Source: Nicholas Carlson, “Google Finally Starts Firing Slackers?”, Silicon Alley Insider, November 13, 2008

United States President-elect Barack Obama spent $7.97 million on online advertising before November. The Obama campaign managers spent it on search engine marketing, ad networks, social networks, local TV sites, newspaper sites and even NBA.com.

Think that’s a lot of money? Well, let’s put it into perspective. Obama spent over half that budget, i.e. $4 million, on one 30 minute television commercial in October.

Google got nearly half of Obama’s online budget, with nearly $3.5 million going into Google search. Yahoo search got just $673,000 in October.

Source: Nicholas Carlson, “Obama’s Online Spend: Actually Tiny,” Silicon Alley Insider, November 6, 2008

Let this be a lesson to all of you who make millions online and then decide to start a hedge fund. Don’t take on too much debt!

Just ask PayPal founder Peter Thiel, whose hedge fund firm Clarium Capital Management LLC, has seen its Clarium LP fund incurring a 40 percent loss in the three months to October 2008.

Clarium’s approach has essentially been to borrow money in order to invest it. This can give investors huge returns when times are good… but when times aren’t so good, it can be disastrous. As at October 31, Clarium had $4.40 in borrowings for every $1 in equity capital. Apparently, the fund is still in good health, but investors are understandably becoming nervous…

Peter Thiel started Clarium after selling PayPal to EBay Inc. for $1.5 billion in 2002.

Source: Henry Blodget, “PayPal Founder Peter Thiel’s Hedge Fund Blows Up,” Silicon Alley Insider, November 6, 2008