Since Commissioner Neelie Kroes assumed the role of standard bearer for the European Union's Digital Agenda from her equally outspoken predecessor, Viviane Reding, she has become as personally associated with the Agenda as the US' Broadband Plan with its architect, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. In keeping with her reputation earned as the Competition Commissioner who many believe was responsible for finally humbling Microsoft, yesterday Comm. Kroes outlined some extremely ambitious goals not only for the Internet as a communications medium, but also as a marketplace -- several of which would leap-frog over US benchmarks, if they can be achieved.

Today, that is a huge "if." Ten days ago, as the continent faced a financial crisis as least as significant, if not more so, than what the US faced down in 2008, the EU's leaders opted to invest the equivalent of nearly a trillion dollars in the bonds of member countries' governments in the deepest crisis, including Greece, Portugal, and Spain.

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About a month ago I asked: "Will iPad cannibalize Mac sales?" Today's report that iPad is outselling the Mac is another reason to ask. The answer may not come until Apple releases second calendar quarter results, to see whether there's cannibalization or new revenue. Oh, but I can speculate, meantime.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky released a report indicating that Apple is now selling about 200,000 iPads a week, compared to 246,000 iPhone 3GSes and 110,000 Macs. Data is for United States. That puts iPad's sales rate nearly double the Mac, and that's with constrained tablet supplies. How much greater could they be if Apple met demand.

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At Google I/O this morning, the topic of discussion was mobile; specifically, the Android mobile platform. As of this morning, there are more than 60 consumer devices running on Android, more than 100,000 new activations per day, 50,000 apps in the Android marketplace, and 180,000 registered developers working on apps. Not too shabby.

As the platform continues its rapid growth, Google has announced a number of very significant improvements will be coming to the next version, numbered 2.2 but nicknamed "FroYo," which address key issues Android has dealt with in the past.

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Yesterday, Google announced that, later this year, it will release the Chrome Web Store. The idea isn't complex and philosophically compliments the app store for Google Docs and even Android Marketplace: Provide a marketplace for third-party apps. The strategy is sensible for Google, given its heavy orientation around the browser and cloud services.

Early last month I explained how Apple and Google are battling for the future of the mobile Web. Both companies are looking to capitalize on the shift from the PC client-server applications stack to the mobile device and cloud service stack. Apple's approach makes the mobile app primary, pushing up to the cloud, while Google pushes services down from cloud to device, mainly the browser. Already, Apple has built a huge application and developer ecosystem around App Store. Google needs to counter, but leveraging its cloud services strengths.

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On the surface, it might sound like one of those amateurish conclusions a blogger might reach after having just read the press release: Symantec, a software company now mainly known for security products, acquires some assets from a non-competitor in order to get that company's logo. But in the deal between Symantec and VeriSign announced yesterday, there is no mistaking the fact that the antivirus products maker acquired, among other things, the single asset that just last week VeriSign argued was the ticket to its own future stability: quite literally, its own logo.

Up until yesterday, its name was the VeriSign Trust Seal. A big part of VeriSign's business had been the licensing of that logo to "trusted" Web sites whose security services pass VeriSign's test. So when online shoppers see that pixelated checkmark inside the circle, they conclude the site they're shopping on is safe...and they'll buy more.

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Prior to Google's announcement earlier today of its open sourcing the VP8 video codec, a spokesperson for MPEG LA -- the licensing agent that manages the patent portfolio for multimedia technologies relating to the H.264 codec, among others -- agreed to answer ten questions submitted to the agency in advance. Those questions regard how it licenses the codec that Microsoft and Apple consider the best solution for HTML 5, the next markup language for the Web.

Here, Betanews presents the questions and MPEG LA's responses without editorial comment.

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In a pair of blog posts released simultaneously this afternoon, Microsoft's Internet Explorer General Manager, Dean Hachamovitch, walked on eggshells in explaining why his group is staying the course with respect to its decision on the H.264 codec in IE9. This in the wake of Google's historic move today to release the VP8 video codec it acquired under a full open source license under the umbrella title WebM, even though it could mean legal action against Google down the road.

"The issue of potential patent liability is 'ultimately for the courts to decide,'" wrote Hachamovitch in one post, citing an Engadget article from earlier this month. Reaffirming his company's commitment to the ideals of HTML 5 -- whatever those may be today -- he stated at two points, "IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows."

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Google has announced the upcoming availability of the Chrome Web Store, an open marketplace similar to the Android Market or iTunes App Store that deals exclusively in Web Apps.

This store doesn't exist yet, but will open both to developers and to users "later this year."

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Google today began pushing its Wave collaboration tool again, hoping to attract both users and developers with new features.

Firstly, for users, Google is dropping the "invitation-only" velvet rope from the collaboration tool, and now anybody can sign up just by going to wave.google.com and logging in with their gmail or Google account.

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Today, Gartner released first quarter 2010 worldwide mobile phone sales data, and it's the set that matters. Unlike IDC or manufacturers like Apple, Gartner tracks actual sales to users rather than shipments to carriers or retailers. Shipment data is less accurate, because of unsold inventory in the channel. Based on sales, Apple ranked No. 7 in worldwide mobile handset sales, just behind sagging Motorola. That's for all phones, not just smartphones.

For smartphones, Android and iPhone OS made huge gains, with Gartner describing them as the "winners" for the quarter. Android rose from 575,300 unit sales to 5.2 million year over year, pushing Windows Mobile down into the fifth position. Because there already is a fair amount of misreporting, such as Apple pushing ahead of Motorola, I will continue the main portion of this post with some quick -- and in some instances -- corrective facts:

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Wednesday afternoon, Google opted for the most daring option available to it: It is making available both the technology and the source code for the VP8 codec it acquired, in its buyout of On2 Technologies, to a separate entity. That entity, the newly formed WebM Project, will then serve as a licensing agent on Google's behalf for the VP8 video codec, the Vorbis audio codec, and the Matroska multimedia container, for royalty-free use, apparently in both free and commercial video.

At least as extraordinary, if not more so, is the new WebM group's list of charter supporters, which could be unofficially dubbed the "Everyone Except H.264 Coalition." Browser makers Mozilla and Opera both appear on this list, along with Adobe, the maker of Flash -- the Web's most prevalent distribution system for streaming video. And on the hardware side, both AMD (parent of ATI) and Nvidia have signed on, along with all the principal players in handheld components: ARM, Freescale, Marvell, TI, and Qualcomm.

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Just over a week ago, NPD Group released its Wireless Market Research report for the United States, which showed BlackBerry devices leading the smartphone market with 36% penetration, then Android-based devices followed with 28%, and then Apple's iPhone came in third with 21%.

Today, IT research firm Gartner released its first quarter 2010 sales figures for the worldwide mobile device market, and we got a view of how the Smartphone OS market is changing.

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Customer relationship management (CRM) software has typically fallen outside the realm that Betanews has covered, at least in recent years. It falls outside the realm a lot of publications cover, not because it's the least bit obscure or unimportant or even a segment of the information industry around which billions of dollars in invested capital revolve, but because it isn't usually the stuff around which soap operas are based. If someone left a spare, unauthorized beta copy of Dynamics CRM at a bar, it's not something Gizmodo would be snapping photos of and TMZ would be scooping interviews about.

Nevertheless, CRM is a huge industry; and while Microsoft has been a big player in that market since its acquisition of Great Plains Software in 2001 and Navision the following year, it has never been the #1 player. PeopleSoft had a very competitive CRM offering for small businesses in the early part of the last decade, then Oracle acquired that company in 2004. Later, Siebel had the lead, and Oracle acquired that company in 2006. (You can see a pattern here.)

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Betanews has 500 of them. One could be yours.

The mSpot private beta opened today. The concept is simple: Your music available, anytime, anywhere on anything. The streaming service initially offers clients for Mac, PC and Android 2.1 phones, so mSpot is still working on the anywhere. Perhaps that's good reason for the private beta.

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Yesterday, Yahoo! Inc. announced it would be acquiring Associated Content Inc., and the transaction would cost the search company an estimated $100 million.

Associated Content calls itself the "People's Media Company," and is a media outlet consisting of more than 380,000 freelancers publishing news, photos, video, and other content on subjects chosen by the site.

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