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Stories of small companies suing larger companies right and left -- sometimes with a firm belief that they've been wronged, other times with a firm belief that being just annoying enough but not too so gets you a settlement -- are nothing new. But when you have one that has a key patent which the US...
Verizon Wireless has announced that it plans to back Google's Android phones in a big way. It sees Android as being an answer to AT&T's continued U.S. lock on Apple's iPhone, and Google must be over the moon about the deal. However, that's opportunity. Making something of it will be a lot toughe...
Last week I mentioned how risible the idea of IBM trying to match Google Apps could be. Acknowledging all of IBM's strengths in the enterprise market, it's ludicrous because they're trying to offer a lot less in function for not that much less per user. And when was the last time you heard anyone wh...
Sometimes I run across an analysis that leaves me scratching my head because someone has leaped off a data precipice without checking to see if there was a net below, or a bottomless pit. And that's what happened today when I looked at a Silicon Valley Insider take on Hulu's share of the video ad market.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer didn't make a lot of friends last week when he wrote that, with corporate budgets shrinking, customers will turn to Microsoft to get more technology bang for their beleaguered bucks. Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is the most recent to express his displeasure while de...
Salesforce.com and Cisco struck up a partnership giving Salesforce access to Cisco telephony applications while giving Cisco a leg up into the smaller end of the market and a look into the working of the software-as-a-service business model.
The Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems was supposed to be the salvation of the latter. But instead, the delays because of regulatory compliance and, perhaps, Oracle's own inexperience in the server business may have actually accelerated the company's decline. Now IBM and HP are circling like sharks with the scent of blood in the water, and they're effectively picking off one deal after another.
Salesforce.com is integrating Google Wave to its on-demand service center application, but more individual users will need to be using Wave for this to matter to Salesforce.com's customers.
Business method patents have been a contentious issue, with some saying that they're necessary for software innovation and others claiming that they prevent innovation. The Bilski case, which will be hear by the Supreme Court, is bring up the issues, and chances are that there could be some significant shake-ups.
Apple's acquisition of Placebase isn't about replacing Google, but about adding the next killer app, augmented reality functionality, to its iPhone.
After falling behind both Nintendo and Microsoft in the console gaming market, after losing copious amount of money on over-designed products whose features weren't in demand, after displaying a suicidal degree of hubris, after the humiliation of having your decade-old product continue to beat the relatively new one, you'd think that Sony would have learned some lessons in the gaming market. But reviews of the PSP Go would suggest that maybe, just maybe, Sony management has failed to have benefited from its painful experiences. Instead, the company seems determined to stay the course, even if it leads into a category four hurricane.
There are a lot of people both inside the industry and out that don't like Microsoft. As in hate Microsoft. I've seen users who can't stand things going wrong and developers who felt that the company had done them wrong. The recent patent battles the company has found itself in are examples of how the anger, often valid and understandable, explodes. And that happens, but there are a lot of people who like to predict the momentary end of the behemoth. It's a harmless outlet, unless your business involves technology, in which case it's a potential strategy death wish.
So IBM decided to drop the bomb on Google -- Big Blue will offer a basic email service for $36 per seat, undercutting the latter's $50 a head Apps pricing. A Gartner analyst called it "trouble for Google," but I'm not so sure. I think that Google has still got some enormous advantages, and that IBM's target may actually be another company.
There is a lot of evidence that Apple acquired mapping company Placebase this summer and that the action might have undermined its relationship with Google, for which mapping technology is a core business. But forget the sturm und drang of outrageous corporate soap opera for a moment, because there's a bigger issue. How does a registered public company in the U.S. acquire another company without giving any sort of public notice at all? And how long is Apple going to consider itself above the rules before a heavy-handed regulatory agency slaps it down so hard that the collective set of eyes in Cupertino, and among all investors, will be bouncing for months after?
Cisco is off again on another acquisition, this time of Tandberg, a big name in video communications, for about $3 billion. And the fit should work with other commercial video acquisitions the company has undertaken. Cisco is certainly the acquisitive sort, but the smartness of this fit only brings up the question of why it has also tried to compete in the server market.
