The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Is Google Anti-Competitive?
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| Image via CrunchBase |
FTC moving closer to Google antitrust case
The majority of top decision-makers at the Federal Trade Commission believe that an antitrust case should be brought against Google Inc, meaning the search giant could soon be headed into tough negotiations ..... Google illegally used its dominance of the search market to hurt its rivals ..... Google rivals specializing in travel, shopping and entertainment have accused Google, the world's No. 1 search engine, of unfairly giving their web sites low quality rankings in search results to steer Internet users away from their websites and toward Google products that provide similar services. ..... Google refuses to share data that would allow advertisers and developers to create software to compare the value they get on Google to advertising spending on Microsoft's Bing or Yahoo. ..... the FTC is looking at Google's handling of valuable patents, which are determined to be essential to smartphones. The agency is trying to determine if they are licensed fairly and whether patent infringement lawsuits are used to hamper innovation.
Mobile: Stating The Obvious
To say right now we are in the mobile era is to state the obvious. It is like in the 1980s AIDS became big news. But people are still figuring out AIDS. I have a feeling mobile is something like that. Tech giants might spend the rest of this decade trying to figure out mobile.
Mobile first companies have a leg up in that sense. But then they are going to have to figure out the web in due time.
Mobile is not the Internet as we knew it, just like the Internet was not computers as we knew them. Mobile is a new beast with its own particulars.
A child is not a small adult. Mobile is not a smaller version of the web, it is not MiniMe. Mobile is no child.
Fred Wilson, Mark Zuckerberg And Mobile
Mark Suster's Web Second Applies To Instagram
2011-2015: A Mobile Stretch
Netizen Has Arrived: A Link From AVC
Twitter, FourSquare: Mobile Web Thingies
Mobile revolution, economy trip up tech giants
Mobile first companies have a leg up in that sense. But then they are going to have to figure out the web in due time.
Mobile is not the Internet as we knew it, just like the Internet was not computers as we knew them. Mobile is a new beast with its own particulars.
A child is not a small adult. Mobile is not a smaller version of the web, it is not MiniMe. Mobile is no child.
Fred Wilson, Mark Zuckerberg And Mobile
Mark Suster's Web Second Applies To Instagram
2011-2015: A Mobile Stretch
Netizen Has Arrived: A Link From AVC
Twitter, FourSquare: Mobile Web Thingies
Mobile revolution, economy trip up tech giants
consumers' waning love affair with the stalwart PC and infatuation with mobile -- the most significant tectonic shift in the industry since the advent of the Internet ...... raging mobile hardware demand .... About 800,000 shoppers made their first-ever eBay purchase through a mobile device. ..... "Mobile is not proving to be as straightforward as people thought." ...... a worsening macroeconomic environment. ..... The biggest stunner was perhaps Google, which shed more than $20 billion of market value after it reported that its core advertising business had slowed. ....... Click prices declined for the fourth consecutive quarter .... Zynga, the poster child for mobile transition woes ..... the evolution of mobile Internet, social networking is usually the first to spread around the world, followed by games and then advertising ...... Perhaps hardest-hit are Intel and others closely tied to the PC chain .. While Intel dominated that space in its prime, in smartphones its market share is less than 1 percent
But Of Course
Analysis: Yahoo CEO's comeback plan homes in on technology, not media
Her hires, acquisition musings, and other early moves hint at an ambitious, technology-driven comeback plan designed to revitalize aging but well-trafficked properties such as Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports..... Mayer, 37, wants to make Yahoo's properties much more interactive, on PCs and on mobile devices, using social media tools to personalize the user experience and new technology to boost advertising sales. Her well-known focus on user design is expected to result in a simpler, less-cluttered email and home page .... positions Yahoo squarely against Facebook Inc and Google .... Two types of deals are under consideration: companies that will increase user engagement, including on mobile, and those that will boost advertising returns ..... She's spending almost all her time with the product folks ..... Yahoo's advertising technology products, headed for the auction block before Mayer's arrival, are back in favor. De Castro, her highest-profile hire, is known for a deep-understanding of the complex advertising landscape, where dozens of businesses and technology providers are interlinked. ..... Right Media, an automated exchange that allows marketers to blast ads across a network of websites. ..... Roughly 700 million users visit a Yahoo website every month - putting it in the top ranks globally. But the amount of activity people engage in on many sites is steadily declining, and its smartphone offerings are deemed lackluster. .... "The largest change is to be deadly serious about mobile" ..... Facebook and Google, two companies that have taken consumers' time, engineering talent and market value from Yahoo. They are also trying to make the transition to mobile, but it has been difficultHer mere appointment told me Yahoo now means to do technology, it will no longer aspire to be some kind of a media property. This writer has taken a few months to come to the same conclusion.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
The Next Big Thing In Software: Never Me
I was never trying to do the next big thing in software.
In 1999 when I was a founding member of a dot com that did pretty good - $25 million raised round two - it was trying to create a community online.
A little after when I was pitching VCs on my own, what I had in mind is what the Chromebook is today, only the price point is not right yet. But then I was not thinking touch as a possibility at all.
The nuclear winter happened. A few years later when I moved to NYC it was with the Chromebook concept in mind.
I got pulled into doing full time political work on a volunteer basis, in Nepal and in America. They were both historic opportunities. I did raise 100K as was the first goal, but my political enemies in the city made sure the idea got scuttled. They killed it. And the Great Recession happened.
After that I started thinking in terms of microfinance, for profit high tech microfinance. Advising or rooting for or even joining the teams of others don't count. A few dot coms fall in that category.
Today I am squarely in Clean Energy, one of the next big things like nanotech and biotech. I will also do sales, and I hope to pick up microfinance down the line. When it comes to software, I am a great user, I'd like to believe. But I never was a guy trying to do the next big thing in software.
I came to New York wanting to do hardware. I am glad Google picked up the slack. I want Google to also do globally wireless gigabit broadband. That is the only way it can become a trillion dollar company.
As for me, let me worry about hydroelectric dams in Nepal.
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