Rakuten in the company in August 2007 and, in 2010, it announced a joint venture with Baidu in China (Lekutian). In June 2011, Rakuten acquired Brazilian e-commerce firm Ikeda — since renamed Rakuten Brazil. In July, it bought German e-commerce start-up Tradoria and rebranded it Rakuten Deutschland, and in September UK online retailer and e-commerce marketplace Play.com for £25 million (almost $41 million), which was converted into the points-based loyalty program Rakuten.co.uk. In September 2011, Rakuten took a minority equity stake in Russian online retailer Ozon.ru, dubbed "Russia's Amazon", which had reported 2010 sales worth US$137 million. A four-company-strong consortium, led
The Shallows (book) The Shallows (book) The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, published in the United Kingdom as The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember, is a 2010 book by the American journalist Nicholas G. Carr. The book expands on the themes first raised in "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", Carr's 2008 essay in "The Atlantic", and explores the effects of the Internet on the brain. The book claims research shows "online reading" yields lower comprehension than reading a printed page. "The Shallows" was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in