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To traditional corporate views, say on pay -- or the ability for shareholders to have a direct say on executive compensation -- is anathema. But shareholder initiatives are coming up in an increasing number of annual meetings at tech companies, and chances are that more than one will ultimately end ...
I noted in an earlier post that software vendors like SAP and Oracle have been abusing customers through various means just short of legal extortion. Customers have complained about vendors forcing them to purchase applications they don't need just to meet artificial and internal quotas, and to pay ...
No one likes to be a target of government investigation. But given the Obama administration's stated interests, and the modus operandi of the high tech industry, there could be a clash that will have corporations and executives hiring lawyers for antitrust defense. The Department of Justice yesterd...
By releasing a new service pack for Office that includes support for the open document format (ODF), Microsoft appears to be complying with European demands that it play well with others, while putting to rest accusations by IBM that it is still trying to maintain a monopoly over document formats. B...
One of the big levers, both in profit and power, which Apple has had with the iPhone has been the ability to control the sale of apps. Companies that didn't toe the line could always be cut-off, and Apple would get a cut of app sales. But this morning, Amazon announced something that has effectively illustrates a way to walk around Apple and begin encourage more direct sales relationships with customers.
Search is the main way people navigate the Web these days, but video remains an exception. Video sites like market leader YouTube and its fast-charging rival, NBC Universal-owned Hulu, get the lion's share of their video traffic by getting customers to go directly to their sites, in contrast to most...
Sun may have broken bribery laws, and shareholders sue over Oracle acquisition; FTC eyes Google, Apple board relationship; Calif. judge may have weakened state email law; Genius and Numark get control of Scratch from Activision and 7 Studios; Craigslist to talk to attorneys general about prostitution ads; former EMC exec prevented for now from joining HP; another would-be class action targets Apple, this time for cables; and the UK allows a software patent and plans on IP criminal breach fine increases.
Back in April, there were plenty of headlines announcing a big drop in Yahoo's revenue and profit when the company released its Q1 numbers. Unfortunately, the 10-Q is never out when the earnings release hits the wires, and it's only about a month or so later that you can start to see what actually happened. In this case, although there have been significant changes since 2008, the numbers show that the real story is how Yahoo has regressed to a financial picture of three years ago.
Google, Microsoft and Apple have all been rumored to be poking around at Twitter, the hot new social media sensation, with good reason. Meanwhile, Google, Facebook and Twitter have been playing follow-the-leader with each other. Google recently introduced Profiles in an attempt to create its own ...
Facebook, one of the fastest-growing cloud companies around, keeps personal information on millions of users in the cloud, but isn't very keen on the cloud when it comes to its own IT management data. While in San Diego at the Service-now.com user conference, I ran into a couple of IT admins from...
Steve Jobs is supposed to reclaim his perch as CEO of Apple next month, but no one knows for sure. Except, of course, for Apple's board of directors, which probably does. This brings us to the propriety of Eric Schmidt's place at the table, as a director of both Apple and Google, which competes w...
With a new administration and new Secretary of Commerce comes a new head of the US Patent and Trademark Office -- an administrative body of particularly keen import to the high tech industry. After years of the USPTO and the patent bar often sniping at each other, new leadership could mean a chance to improve the way things work at the office. And now the choice is down to two candidates -- and potentially different philosophies and approaches. However, signs suggest that the next director of the USPTO might come with a Big Blue t-shirt.
HP, BMC, and other legacy software vendors are in danger of losing a strategic foothold in enterprise IT departments to insurgent Service-now.com, which could eventually lead to overall account losses. Service-now.com sells software used by IT departments to support corporate networks. Its applic...
For the last couple of years, BDO Seidman has gone through the 10-K filing of the hundred largest (based on revenues) publicly-held U.S. high tech firms and compiled the most-commonly cited risk factors. Although many of the factors will be obvious, and clearly of interest beyond the sector, what is interesting is looking how the list from this year compares to that of last year and how the concerns of companies are changing.
Amazon's emphasis on the Kindle has been obvious. But rather than being a simple extension of the company's focus, you could say that the device is a natural outgrowth of a longer term trend at Amazon -- the process of becoming an electronics company, not a media company. And results over the last few years clearly show this.
