Back in 2008 I declared that the information economy was giving way to what I called the search economy. The Internet was making it more important to know how to find information than to actually possess that information, because data — and therefore the fully-explored truth of any matter — might be constantly in flux. Even more to the point today, we need the same knowledge on many devices so it is usually better to find the link than to maintain multiple copies of aging data. This might explain in an ass-backwards way why Google just changed the name of its largest tech division from search to knowledge. A more accurate […]
Google decides knowledge is power
Why Microsoft bought Skype
There is so much to write about but I’ll begin with Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5 billion. The pundits are debating whether this move by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer makes good business sense, but that’s the wrong way to look at it. The better approach is to wonder what would have happened had Microsoft not bought Skype? Based on the high price alone I’m fairly confident that Ballmer felt he had no choice but to buy. In fact I’m fairly certain he felt that not buying could have doomed Microsoft.
Remember eBay bought Skype a few years ago for $2.6 billion, failed to make a go of it, then took a big write-off and sold much […]
What the heck is a Clickochet?
Whether at the casino or the race track, the house always wins. That’s the way it has always been, too, with Internet advertising. Nearly all Internet ad dollars are spent in two ways: 1) buying ads from advertising networks whether that network is Google or Yahoo or even IDGTechNet, which sells space on this rag, or; 2) buying search terms — the right to have your ad shown every time someone searches on the word hermaphrodite, for example. Network profit in those transactions comes from arbitrage — buying low and selling high. But what if there was a more efficient way to buy and sell Internet ads? As of this morning it looks like there […]
Larry Page's running start: but is he running in the right direction?
A few months ago I wrote a column giving advice to Larry Page when it was announced that he would be taking-over once again as CEO of Google. Not that Google is especially in trouble, but it is a big job getting 50,000 feet marching in the same direction. In order to make that happen I urged Larry to create startups within Google. And sure enough, as he took over the top job last week and started announcing changes, one of the most radical was something very similar to the “five guys in a rented apartment” scheme I had proposed. Who knows, maybe Larry reads this rag, but probably not.
While I say Google […]
Getting my GroupOn
My last column was about Eric Schmidt losing his CEO job at Google and how that company’s failed bid for GroupOn may have been a factor in Schmidt’s demise. Weep not for Eric, who lasted in the CEO position for 10 years and earned $5.6 billion, which puts every other U.S. CEO to shame, even Steve Jobs. It’s interesting to consider Schmidt’s career arc and how he got where he is (isn’t?) today.
Eric Schmidt started his post-academic work life at Sun Microsystems where he loved all the smart people but was ultimately frustrated by management that he felt was simply not as smart as he. Remember Scott McNealy was in charge of Sun […]
