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So much for the continued good news on the job cut front. According to the figures we just got from Challenger, Gray & Christmas for July, planned layoffs and cutbacks were up 31 percent from June, which isn't what you want to hear when looking forward to the eventual end of a recession. So how ...
Boy, try to take a day off and you find that major companies like Apple and AT&T have become so unhinged at their own actions and regulatory attention that they put on a public display almost guaranteed to turn into a long-running Corporate Keystone Cops. It was only last week when Apple turned...
Apple, and, especially, AT&T have tipped over the apple cart (pardon the pun) for the sake of something as insignificant as a wart on their fannies. The result will be very draconian net neutrality provisions affecting not only exclusive carrier deals with handset makers -- something we alre...
AT&T was behind Apple's decision to pull the Google Voice app from the iTune store after all. This isn't conjecture -- there is a smoking gun, which is the following response by an Apple customer service rep, posted by Google Voice developer Sean Kovacs: What a stupid move by AT&T; no...
Forrester has an interesting new report on its expected view of the e-book market. There's a growing number of owners (though I wonder if the figures take into account all the devices like smartphones and PDAs that could act as an e-book reader) and broader interest in the category. But the really i...
Dealing with customer problems is always difficult to one degree or other. But when you're in the land of pure consumer products, you need to learn to fix them without creating broader ill will in the process. An alleged recent attempt by Apple to silence one family about a serious product issue shows just how far the company will have to go if it wants to continue the successful move out of its own fan base into a far wider group of customers who may not be so forgiving when things go wrong.
I have a feeling that somewhere in Calfiornia, both Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs are wondering where they went wrong. Together and separately to varying degrees, Google and Apple each has been flirting with the edges of business practice and what regulators would stand. Since May, they'd been under t...
Was that a note of bitterness I detected in Google's statement when Apple bounced its Google Voice from the iPhone app store? We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ...
Given the waves of silence that emanated from Apple after all the reasonable criticism of Google's Eric Schmidt serving on its board, you would have been forgiven for thinking that, as is all too frequent with both of these companies, that they decided to follow the Frank Sinatra playbook and do it their way. But suddenly Apple issues a release announcing Schmidt's resignation. Unfortunately, given the timing, it only makes both companies look worse, not better.
The second shoe â€" or in this case, Apple â€" has fallen. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has resigned from Apple's board, barely three days after the FCC sent letters requesting information from both companies (as well as from AT&T). But while this may seem like a reaction to the Obama Administration'...
Oracle sues Qtrax over alleged bounced check; Facebook in hot water over user faces being paired with ads; Spansion expects to exit bankruptcy this year; Apple gets to tell Google "We're better than you are" in the U.K.; student sues Amazon over withdrawal of 1984 from Kindles, and the student's notes with it; and eBay may have trouble spinning off Skype, which is based on technology still owned by the latter's co-founders.
On Friday, I started to wonder whether Apple not allowing Google Voice into the iPhone app store was a clever plan to avoid regulatory pressure by either the SEC, FTC, or FCC, particularly when there has been growing criticism over the two companies sharing two board directors, one of whom is Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Well, scratch at least one third of that plan, now.
Those little "gotcha" quotes are so alluring. It's like being able to snap off a fast remark at an opponent or to come up with a trenchant and pithy remark, with a little research subbed out to some intern replacing the need for native wit. Unfortunately, the gotcha is often taken out of context and puffed up into something that it wasn't. And that's what we're seeing in the ongoing reaction to the Microsoft-Yahoo search deal.
It wasn't too long ago that I asked the question, Is AP Run By Idiots? But a new post by my BNET Media colleague David Weir about AP's scheduled usage rate has got me rethinking how I phrased the question. I'm torn between whether it's no longer necessary to ask, as an affirmative answer is so aggressively promoted by AP itself, or if I should have instead asked the color the organization is using for its corporate clown suit uniform.
Most observers have dismissed the Microsoft-Yahoo alliance as a non-starter for both companies. Yahoo looks like the 50-year-old schnook who took a second mortgage on his house to buy himself a Corvette, while Microsoft seems to be buying an illusory bump in the ComScore ratings game. My colleagu...
