Ashkan's World
Pontifications on Business, Politics, Sports & Entertainment... Updated roughly 3 times per day...
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Friday, July 30, 2004
Search Results Becoming a Commodity?
Comb through these results and tell me which one is better? Which one is more relevant?
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=men%27s+hairstyle&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&cop=mss&tab=
http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=men%27s+hairstyle
http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?FORM=MSNH&q=men's%20hairstyle
Fact of the matter is that for all intents and purposes, the three services all offer fairly relevant results.
The problem is that Google will not have all that much that is defensive;
- Yahoo! has millions of users, loyal ones like yours truly.
- MSN.com controls the operating system we use on our desktops and the browser we use to surf the Web... if bundling a browser into an operating system improves the user experience... then why can it not include a search?
Google has a cool brand, a great search tool... but that's it, that's all...
Netscape held 90% market share before Explorer... Google does not even have that in search share...
It is easier to assume that MSN search will have an easier time treading on Google's search dominance than Google will have on Microsoft's turf, no?
I read Dot Con in the past 24 hours and the funny thing it that everything that was being said Netscape when it went public is being eerily echoed by what is being said about Google.
History repeats itself... remember that.
Linsday Lohan
"There's nothing I can say about Lindsay Lohan that hasn't already been said before. Simply put, she was this cutesy lovable girl in The Parent Trap that grew up to become a whore."
Will Microsoft "Netscape" Google?
Microsoft Corp.'s chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates:
"We've generated significant profitability. We think there's more profitability where that came from. What we've got in the pipeline now is probably more exciting than we've ever had."
The day included the first public showing of a planned service from Microsoft's MSN division that will let computer users quickly search not only the Internet but also their personal hard drives. In one part of the demo, a keyword query zeroed in almost instantly on a phrase in the body of a spreadsheet attached to an e-mail message, demonstrating the depth of the search."
Sign of Apocalypse: Playboy Sues Fraternity
Considering all of the copies that can be found in the frat house, this is odd...
Wireless Set to Surge
The number of wireless subscribers worldwide is projected to jump from 1.5 billion at the end of 2004 to more than 2.5 billion in 2009, after years of sluggish growth, according to a new study.
Sex Toys banned in Alabama
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a 1998 Alabama law banning the sale of sex toys in the state, ruling the Constitution doesn't include a right to sexual privacy.
Words of Wisdom from The Donald
That other Donald.
"As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know."
Donald Rumsfeld
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Perspective on Market's Recent Weakness
Despite the improving economic data, there has been some wicked weakness in the equity market in recent weeks. Many stocks that had shown terrific strength throughout the first half of the year now seem all but bidless. Indeed, from large caps to small caps, U.S. blue chips to Chinese red chips, investors all over the Street are nursing billions of dollars of bruises.
How substantial have the losses been?
Consider the two weeks between July 10 and July 23, a period that saw Intel, still one of the most widely owned securities in the world, lose 13.6% of its value. That may not seem too significant until you measure the obliteration of market cap: Over $23 billion worth of Intel's value disappeared over those 10 days. More than $12 billion worth of Nokia, representing a 19.1% loss, was wiped out over the same period. And the list goes on and on: $1.6 billion worth of Hewlett-Packard, $2.6 billion of Texas Instruments, $960 million of AT&T.
Moore's Media Savvy
Once again proving that America is the land of opportunity: Moore bashes President, rakes in $100 Million for his efforts, comes to Bush's backyard of Crawford and invites him to screening...
Where do I get my green card?
Inside Google's Q2 figures
The reality is that Google is doing an IPO after the search industry explosive growth of the past few years; in other words, the exponential growth that IPO investors yearn for has already passed by.
This explains why Google's IPO will be nothing short of massive, but it also explains why in the quarter before it goes public, sequential quarterly revenue was so, well, flat.
More.
Monday, July 26, 2004
Net - Back to the Future?
'Companies that have figured out how to make money on the Net are going to get bigger than any of us imagined,' said Tim Draper, managing director at venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in Redwood City, Calif. "
Is Google the 21st Centruy's Answer To Coke?
Good question?
Note that Coke was recently named the top brand, again (ironically, Google's competitor Microsoft was ranked second in the same list).
How should Google's competitors feel?
Rarely do I post entire articles, but this one is worth debating.
How should the management of Ask Jeeves, Infospace, Findwhat and Mamma greet Google's IPO?
After all, one could argue that an investor who was thus far interested in buying shares of ASKJ, INSP, FWHT or my old company, MAMA, would now dump those shares and seek to instead 'play' the search industry with GOOG, right?
Well, wrong, sort of.
Reality is that:
1 - Google is pricing itself either fairly or rather expensively, so no one has a clear benfot to dump the others for Google.
2 - There is a considerable advantage to having some experience in a publicly traded company, which GOOG does not have.
3 - It is true that the search industry is tiny - at least the component of which is publicly traded. INSP is worth $1 Billion, ASKJ is worth $1.3 Billion, FWTH is worth roughly $300 Million while MAMA is worth less than $100 Million.
Google is coming along now and tacking on a price tag of $35 Billion or so... making it not so cheap after all, despite its huge top and bottom lines.
4 - Google now has a currency (its stock) to consolidate the industry to really defend itself against Microsoft impending onslaught (re: Navigator anyone?) or Yahoo! search offering improvements.
Read more:
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Other Search Engines Welcoming Google IPO
Monday July 26, 6:56 pm ET Joe Bel Bruno, AP Business Writer
Ask Jeeves CEO, Others Say Google IPO to Bring Attention to Search Engine Industry
NEW YORK (AP) -- Top executives from some of Google Inc.'s main rivals sounded like the search engine giant's biggest cheerleaders on Monday as details emerged of the initial public offering that could turn out to be one of the largest in Wall Street history.
The debut of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company on the Nasdaq in August -- trading under the ticker symbol "GOOG" -- is widely seen as a move that will bring more clout to a young industry still trying to capture investor attention. Google, they say, could represent search engine companies as a de-facto bellwether for the entire Internet sector.
Rather than feel threatened, some heads of Google competitors have taken on a "welcome-to-the-club" tone as Google prepares to unveil an IPO valued at up to $3.32 billion. This puts it on track to be not only the biggest Internet IPO of all time, but would also make it among the largest ever seen in any sector.
"This is just great having them go public. ... This is good for the entire industry," said Steve Berkowitz, chief executive of rival Ask Jeeves Inc. "Anything that brings attention to search companies is good. The more attention Google gets from the IPO, the more attention we all get."
Bill Lonergan, chief financial officer for Looksmart Ltd., said a splashy IPO for Google will bring "validity to the whole sector."
"Of course, we wish Google well," said Lonergan, whose company specializes in commercial search services. "It attracts more attention to the whole search-targeted marketing space. More attention is better for all of us in getting in front of investors, advertisers and users."
Investors on Monday shrugged off concerns Google's IPO might throw a shadow on some of the industry's smaller players -- most of which saw shares move higher during the day. Ask Jeeves closed up $1.13 at $29.45, and was recently changing hands at $29.20 in the after-hours session. Findwhat.com closed down 8 cents at $15.92 and was trading at $16 after the bell. Yahoo Inc., Google's biggest competitor within the sector, closed up 2 cents at $28.21 and was lately down 1 cent to $28.20. Looksmart closed up 5 cents at $1.58. All trade on the Nasdaq.
For investors -- both institutional and individual -- the field of players that trade publicly is still sparse. On a fundamental level, the entrance of 24.6 million Google shares into the marketplace won't have much of an impact on the other companies.
"The search engine market is not too crowded," said Barry Randall, a portfolio manager with U.S. Bancorp's First American Technology Fund. "In fact, Google's going public doesn't make it more crowded. Google has been around, and is not coming into existence in a few weeks, it's going public."
Leaders in the industry said the Google IPO will change the dynamics of their business by encouraging more consolidation to gain mass, and possible push smaller Internet technology companies to pursue public offerings. Many companies have already stated publicly that acquisitions are part of their growth strategy.
Earlier this month, Mama.com -- a Montreal-based search engine -- said it would raise $16.6 million in a stock sale to private equity investors. The amount raised would bolster an $11.3 million war chest of cash and other assets to be used for expansion through possible deals.
Meanwhile, Ask Jeeves is another company interested in expanding as larger rival Google makes its Nasdaq splash. Most recently, Ask Jeeves bought Interactive Search Holdings, a private Irvington, N.Y., company that operates Web sites such as Excite and MyWay, for $501 million. Berkowtiz said Ask Jeeves is currently digesting the deal, but will continue to look for other opportunities.
He also said companies within the sector will continue cooperating. Ask Jeeves announced it extended a partnership with Google through 2007 in which the two companies will share revenues from sponsored advertising links. The search companies signed a three-year deal in 2002 in which Google provided paid advertising services for use on Ask Jeeves' search sites. Both companies were said to have split nearly $100 million revenue generated from the partnership. Terms of the three-year extension were not disclosed.
"You're seeing an industry with a lot of potential, and size matters in this industry," Berkowitz said, referring to larger rivals such as Yahoo and Google. Ask Jeeves has a market capitalization of about $1.4 billion. "But it will be nice to have Google out there," he said. "This IPO will put us on an equal footing with other tech companies."
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Another Monday, Another Young Pro
Someone should really remove the keyboard before someone gets hurt...
Enjoy.
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Saturday, July 24, 2004
9/11 Report Recommendations
* To create a national counter-terrorism centre "unifying strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist terrorists across the foreign and the domestic divide"
* To appoint a new Senate-confirmed national intelligence director to unify the intelligence community of more than dozen agencies
* To create a "network-based information sharing system that transcends traditional governmental boundaries"
* To set up a specialised and integrated national security unit within the FBI (the report did not support creation of a new domestic intelligence agency)
* To strengthen congressional oversight
* To strengthen the FBI and Homeland defenders
* In aviation, to make vital improvements to "no fly" and "automatic selectee" lists, giving priority to improvement of the screening of passengers and bags for weapons and explosives at airport security checkpoints
* To develop a global strategy of diplomacy and public relations to dismantle Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida terror network and defeat its militant Islamic ideology
* To communicate and defend American ideals in the Islamic world, through much stronger public diplomacy comparable with efforts against closed societies during the Cold War
* To confront problems with Saudi Arabia in the open and build a relationship beyond oil, which both sides can defend to citizens and which includes a shared commitment to reform
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What's missing?
Friday, July 23, 2004
Words To Live By
"This website is my personal website. Here, I don't speak for eBay, Meetup, the Omidyar Foundation, or any other group I'm affiliated with; I speak only for myself as an individual. If that is confusing, please close your browser now."
Pierre Omidyar
Founder of eBay
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Monday, July 19, 2004
What the $#%@$#%@^
I sent an email from my yahoo! account to my gmail account, this is what I got:
===
Message from yahoo.com.
Unable to deliver message to the following address(es).Sorry, I couldn't find any host named gmail.com. (#5.1.2)
===
Take this as a sign that WWIII is about to erupt...
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Friday, July 16, 2004
Tech stocks - cheap or expensive
The author raises some great points, but one reasons why some tech companies have warned about reduced earnings is that the US dollar has fallen considerably over the past years.
While the direct impact on sales is offset by cheaper goods abroad vs. more revenues after conversion, it has indirectly made financial managers miss their forecasts.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Latest IPO
PlanetOut.com set for an IPO tomorrow, selling 4.65 M shares between $12 and $14, with the ticker being LGBT... not that there is anything wrong with that, of course.
Ominous if True
"History is directional and that its endpoint is capitalist liberal democracy. "
Francis Fukuyama
It's not the price, stupid.
Nokia gets burned, when they realize that quality of offerings - and not price cutting -is what drives sales of phones.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Monday, July 12, 2004
Priests 'In Orgy' at Seminary
The question is: does this help or hurt recruitment?
Roman Catholic leaders in Austria called an emergency meeting today after officials discovered a vast cache of photos and videos allegedly depicting young priests having sex at a seminary.
About 40,000 photographs and an undisclosed number of films, including child pornography, were downloaded on computers at the seminary in St Poelten, about 50 miles west of Vienna, the respected news magazine Profil reported.
Officials with the local diocese declined to comment but were meeting privately on the scandal, Austrian state television reported.
It said the seminary’s director, the Rev Ulrich Kuechl, and his deputy, Wolfgang Rothe, had resigned.
The Austrian Bishops Conference issued a statement today pledging a full and swift investigation.
“Anything that has to do with homosexuality or pornography has no place at a seminary for priests,” it said.
Church officials discovered the material on a computer at the seminary, Profil said. It published several images purportedly showing young priests and their instructors kissing and fondling each other and engaging in orgies and sex games.
The child porn came mostly from web sites based in Poland, the magazine said.
Bishop Kurt Krenn, a conservative churchman who oversees the St Poelten Diocese, told Austrian television he had seen photos of seminary leaders in sexual situations with students. Krenn, however, dismissed the photos as “silly pranks” that “had nothing to do with homosexuality”.
A group of St. Poelten Diocese officials planned to ask the Vatican to remove Krenn as bishop, Austrian radio reported.
Vatican spokesman Ciro Benedettini told the Austria Press Agency that the Holy See had no comment.
Krenn, 68, issued a statement calling the accusations groundless while conceding that he “may have made some wrong personnel decisions” at the seminary.
Erratic Ad Recovery
Who said it was erratic? some people are just better at selling than others I guess.
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Where's Reagen to Bring Down a Wall?
Yet another sign that the world is going backwards: Israel taking a cue from Germany...
Friday, July 09, 2004
Enron Timeline
Pretty cool...
So Ken Lay was close with then Governor Bush... so what? Shouldn't the governor be close to the Chairman of one of the state's biggest companies?
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Sex Tape could create an altogether different kind of mustache
"Got Milk" ads featuring Olsen Twins pulled.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Saddam Could Call CIA in His Defence
Yikes!
What is really odd, funny or disturbing about this article is that it is filed under "Africa," Africa?
Last time I checked, Iraq wasn't in Africa...
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Old vs New Europe
"For the first time in the 44-year history of the tournament, none of Europe's big five -- Germany, Spain, Italy, France or England -- made the semi-finals."
Euro 2004 finishes how it started, with Portugal losing to Greece.
Friday, July 02, 2004
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Previous Posts
- IGN acquires AskMen.com
- Ladies and Gents: the Fat Lady has sung
- Will third time really be the charm?
- Does your PC look like this
- Hockey Powers that be: too many concussions
- Conspiracy theories at it again
- She dreams of being a doctor...
- Back from Europe
- The Top 25 Censored News Stories
- What year are we in?
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