Company Answers to House Questions on Internet Privacy Unconvincing

On August 1, The House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters out to 31 major Internet players to ask about whether they track consumer web use to better target advertising. As of Monday, 25 had answered and the House posted the responses. The exercise had been enough to get Yahoo and Google to announce new opt out procedures, understandably The questions were tough and the answers ... interesting. Despite the strongest reassurances, chances are that the House will continue down a path to regulation.

• Aug 12, 2008

Yahoo's Advisory Fees: Maybe Yahoo Should Have Been the Buyer

The New York Times DealBook pointed out that Yahoo spent $36 million on handling Microsoft's takeover offer and the resulting proxy fight. Consider the distraction of the board and management, and the cash is a likely shareholder value pittance in comparison. Ironically, for all the Yahoo trash talk you hear, the company's revenue, profits, and shareholder equity are all on a six month rise compared to last year. So why are people so down on it?

• Aug 12, 2008

Google Growth Needs Organic Diet: Ad Growth May Be Slowing Deceptively Fast

Erick Schonfeld on TechCrunch an interesting analysis of Google's growth. Center of the analysis is examination of organic growth, or the increase in revenue from Google's own pre-existing activities and not acquisitions. What I found interesting was taking his analysis and looking at where Google's revenue originates, because the combination says even more about what might be happening with the company.

• Aug 11, 2008

US Software Companies Behind on IFRS

IFRS -- the international financial reporting standards that have become the accepted approach to accounting in much of the world -- had turned North America into a business island. What separated Canada and the United States from everyone else was GAAP: their versions of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles that companies used in their bookkeeping and financial reporting. But that's changing, which means trouble for many accounting-related software companies.

• Aug 11, 2008

Cliff Harris Q&A: Why Do You Pirate My Games?

Many in the software and entertainment industries hire lawyers and involve the courts in an attempt to stop product piracy. But few ever ask the people who use their products without paying why they do so. Cliff Harris, owner of Positech Games, has actively fought piracy, but started wondering what motivated participants and decided to ask people who had pirated games to email him and honestly explain their reasons. A few days into his experiment, he's received hundreds of emails and comments on his blog and I asked him about his experiment.

• Aug 11, 2008

California State Supreme Court Nixes Employment Non-Competes

California's Supreme Court ruled yesterday that employers in the state cannot keep employees from working for competitors in their next job. This likely eliminates Federal courts from an interpretation of California law that favored some employers.

• Aug 8, 2008

Google, Yahoo Bow to Congressional Online Privacy Pressure

Congress has been turning a critical eye on consumer privacy concerns in online advertising. Last week, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce started to put pressure on leading companies in the industry, and this week Google and Yahoo have both strengthened opt-out provisions for consumers who don't want their activities track to better serve advertising. The question is if this will be too little, too late, and whether Congress might move toward privacy regulation.

• Aug 8, 2008

Pew Search Stats Don't Tell Companies What They Need to Know

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has come out with yet more Internet search statistics -- in this case that only half of all people online use search during n average day. That's useful information, but I've also been noticing that much of what we think we know about search is about what people do, but not necessarily why they do it. When companies focus too much on the what, without answering the why, they run a great risk of making enormous mistakes when planning for the future.

• Aug 8, 2008

Google Isn't Infallible, So Why Are Competitors So Scared?

There always seems to be a tech company that others consider unbeatable. Everyone in the industry draws back and talks in hushed tones. And every time this happens, people spook themselves unnecessarily. Today Google is the deus ex machina, the deified competitor rising from some computer's innards. Look at what is actually happening with the company and realize that it is far from infallibility. Outside a narrow range of activity, Google screws up regularly, and running away from markets because Google has taken an interest is self-defeating. So why are so many companies scared of them?

• Aug 8, 2008

Apple Firm Grip Causes Business Slip

I'm no fan of Apple's control freak persona because it is always a disappointment. Just when the company looks poised on the verge of commercial greatness, it stumbles and settles for merely good. And recently developments suggest that Apple might not even make that level, if it continues on its current path.

• Aug 7, 2008

Here Comes the Contract-Manufacturing Crunch

Any time contract manufacturing (CM) in electronics feels pressure, it's only a matter of time before the effect hits the rest of the industry. According to an iSuppli study, there's been a sharp contraction in CM growth that will result in major consolidation -- and it is only time before the impact transmits through to everyone from a Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, or HP to electronic start-ups.

• Aug 7, 2008

The Power of Legacy

When California state controller John Chiang said that he couldn't lower the pay of 170,000 state employees as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered, his statement was less about intransigence than the power of legacy systems -- a power that the glamour-addicted high tech industry might profit from recognizing more often.

• Aug 6, 2008

Private Company Stock Smarts

A couple of privately-held social networking companies are taking the unusual but interesting and, I'd argue, smart step of letting their employees sell some stock now, rather than later. The move should go a long way to avoid the problem of key worker attrition while boosting loyalty.

• Aug 6, 2008

New Intel Chip Not GPU

Many reports describe Intel's new multi-core chip design, code-named Larrabee, as a GPU. But that may be missing the big picture. The company seems to be working on a new approach to chip design that maximizes processing flexibility. I'm wondering if Intel is trying to produce a chip that could effectively morph itself into whatever computationally-intensive thing it needs to be, giving the company the biggest competitive hammer it has had in a long time.

• Aug 5, 2008

Questions About Yahoo Shareholder Vote (UPDATED)

I thought we all had finally hit Yahoo saturation, at least so far as the shareholder meeting and proxy vote went. But no, there is apparently more squabbling on the horizon, with questions raised about the accuracy of the vote counting.

• Aug 5, 2008

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