Category Archives: technology

Microsoft-Yahoo: It’s On

OK, never mind payrolls. There’s only one story this morning: Microsoft buying Yahoo – a deal which seems set to send not only Yahoo shares but the entire stock market north. Why would shares in automakers rally on a technology … Continue reading

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How Memes Get Started

Friday morning, right here at Market Movers: If I had to guess, I’d say that when Kerviel’s position was discovered, he was maybe 1.5 billion or so euros underwater; the rest of SocGen’s losses are just as much the bank’s … Continue reading

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Value-per-Employee Datapoint of the Day

Sun has bought MySQL – a company which gives its main product away for free – for $1 billion, or about $2.5 million per employee. Which is pretty much exactly the same valuation per employee as the market puts on … Continue reading

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Why Paying for Web Usage Might Make Sense

Time Warner is dipping its toe, ever so gingerly, into charging for data downloaded rather than bandwidth. Kevin Maney explains why this makes sense for them: they’re competing, on the video-content front, with online providers. But that doesn’t necessarily mean … Continue reading

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A Bear Market: Where Good News is Punished

Stocks in general are down about 2% today, but the big losers are all the companies in the news. Merrill Lynch has found itself $6.6 billion of new equity? Down 3.9%! Citigroup has found even more, to offset an $18 … Continue reading

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Steve Jobs on “Pungent Odors”

This might be a little off-topic, but it’s too good not to share. It’s from the Fort Greene Kids listerv on Yahoo, where a member shared an email she sent to Steve Jobs: hi steve, i have enjoyed watching apple … Continue reading

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Merry Christmas, Apple Shareholders!

For those of you who like round numbers, Apple shares broke the $200-a-share barrier today. 18 months ago, in July 2006, they closed at $50.67. Which I think works out to an annualized growth rate of about 250%. Nice.

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Still Awaiting In-Flight WiFi

JetBlue launched a crippled WiFi service yesterday – well ahead of schedule, since it seemed in July that JetBlue wifi wasn’t going to arrive until 2010. So props to them for getting this thing off the ground before Row44 and … Continue reading

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Google Copies Everything. Is That Legal?

Noam Cohen brings up the last taboo subject in the search-engine world: The law has largely been silent on how much copying is fair use by search engines. How much copying? A search engine spiders (ie copies) everything. That’s the … Continue reading

Posted in law, technology | 1 Comment

Why Apple’s Right to Sit on its Cash

The Apple share price seems never to go down. It did have a nasty lurch last month, when the price dipped to $153.76 on November 12 from its high of $191.79 on November 6 – that’s a fall of almost … Continue reading

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Google Battles the France-Microsoft Alliance

Jonathan Last has an entertaining attack on Google Book Search in the latest Weekly Standard. Last starts off well, but he does rather disappears off the deep end by the time he finishes, alleging that "Google is trying mightily to … Continue reading

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At Google, Shareholders Have No Clout

Robert Cyran is unimpressed with Google’s push into clean energy: The company risks spreading itself too thin — chasing everything from personalized biotechnology to space flight. Its shareholders probably don’t want Mr. Page and other executives spending their time, or … Continue reading

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Cybershoppers Bring Down Yahoo

The WSJ tells us today that "Yahoo’s popular e-commerce system buckled under the strain of a surge in online shopping" starting at the ridiculously early hour of 5:30 a.m. EDT yesterday. Help me out here: isn’t the point of "cyber … Continue reading

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Microsoft: It’s Not Our Fault Our Operating System Sucks

Apple has a very good operating system, but minuscule market share. Windows, by contrast, has a much clunkier operating system, but also much larger market share. So far so boring. But how about this: Microsoft admits that Apple’s operating system … Continue reading

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Blogging Datapoint of the Day

Dan Frommer reports: WordPress is now the No. 2 most-visited blog host, passing rival SixApart’s TypePad last month, according to the latest tally from Nielsen Online. WordPress is the anti-MySpace. It’s clean, easy to use, easy to read, and generally … Continue reading

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PageRank: WaPo Up, Forbes Down, Portfolio beats WSJ

Remember the Great PageRank Massacre, when the Washington Post saw its Google PageRank drop from 7 to 5 overnight? Well, the good news is that WaPo is back, and stronger than ever – it now has a PageRank of 8! … Continue reading

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How Mark Zuckerberg is Like Howard Dean

Facebook saw its valuation skyrocket back in May, when it announced it was opening up its platform to third-party developers. Except… the Facebook platform isn’t really open, as Marc Andreessen explained shortly after its launch. Now, Andreessen’s Ning and Rupert … Continue reading

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Tech Money vs Real Money, Photo Edition

The difference between Facebook and The Entity: articles on Facebook (valuation: $15 billion) are illustrated with a pile of $20 bills, while articles on The Entity (valuation: $85 billion plus) are illustrated with a pile of $50 and $100 bills. … Continue reading

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The Google PageRank Massacre

Google is now a major – arguably the major – force driving news sites. As a result, sites’ PageRank is utterly crucial for any business model. Right now, Google seems to be slashing the PageRank of a lot of blogs, … Continue reading

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Microsoft: Still No Facebook Insider

What is Microsoft meant to do with its 1.6% stake in Facebook? While it’s easy to get excited about the implied $15 billion valuation for the the social-networking company and start talking about Mark Zuckerberg’s multi-billionaire status, the fact is … Continue reading

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Apple: Great, in the US

If the Mac brand is going to keep on growing at its present pace, it’s going to have to go global.
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Skype: Overvalued or Not?

The second-most-emailed Technology story on nytimes.com is "Co-Founder of Skype Defends Its Value" a story published on October 10 but which carries an October 9 dateline. Now back on October 9, the NYT didn’t have this story, but Reuters did. … Continue reading

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eBay Should Sell Skype to News Corp

Further proof, if proof be needed, that eBay should never have bought Skype: the fracas currently underway between eBay and Jajah. Jajah is an internet telephony company which has developed "buttons" that eBay sellers, and others, can embed on their … Continue reading

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Newspapers Should Allow Their Content to be Embedded

Mark Thoma has a provocative and very interesting idea: newspapers and other publishers should allow their content to be embedded on other websites just as easily as YouTube videos can be embedded today. That content would, naturally, include ad units, … Continue reading

Posted in blogonomics, Media, technology | 2 Comments

Blogonomics: The Valuation of TechCrunch

Sam Gustin slaps down Henry Blodget today after Blodget suggested that TechCrunch might be worth $100 million. That’s ridiculous, says Gustin: "I know CNET, and TechCrunch is no CNET." The whole conversation was sparked by Doug McIntyre at 24/7 Wall … Continue reading

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