Weekend Update, 10/10/08
by John Paczkowski
Posted on October 11, 2008 at 12:00 AM PT
The best thing that can be said of the week ending Oct. 10, 2008, is this: It’s over.
Marked by panic selling and wet-your-pants fear, it was one of the worst weeks in the financial world’s history–a week that cut the legs out from under Google (GOOG), beat Yahoo until its market cap bled purple and caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to swing more than one thousand points on an intra-day basis.
It was a week that saw Sequoia Capital warn its portfolio companies to prepare for a protracted downturn or, in the words of partner Michael Moritz, be “spattered on windshields and radiator grills and be forgotten.” Turns out Bubble 2.0 sounds a lot like Bubble 1.0 when it pops.
Beneath the screams of agony echoing across Wall Street, there was other news worth noting:
- Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced plans to spin off its manufacturing operations.
- “Legal” turned out to be a poor choice of adjectives for RealNetworks’ RealDVD (RNWK), the company’s new “legal” DVD ripper. A judge extended the temporary restraining order barring the company from distributing it.
- This just in: Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL and Yahoo (YHOO) are still talking about a merger and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
Where is Microsoft (MSFT) in all this? Sitting on the sidelines hoping the deal will go through. - Finally, activist investor Eric Jackson, the creator of the Yahoo! Plan B investor community, revealed Yahoo! Plan C: his hedge fund’s divestiture of its Yahoo stake.
