Evidently, Netflix is as recession-proof as Hollywood. Reporting third-quarter earnings after market close Thursday, the DVD-by-mail pioneer posted net income of $30.1 million, up 48 percent from a year earlier, on revenue of $423.1 million. That’s 52 cents a share. Analysts had been expecting 46 cents a share on $419.9 million in sales. Why, then, are investors punishing the company in after-hours trading?
The econalypse has done great things for Netflix, sending recession-addled customers running to embrace its way-cheaper-than-cable DVD-by-mail and streaming-movie service. The online DVD-rental pioneer posted earnings that beat Wall Street estimates and announced that its subscriber base has grown to 10.6 million.
So Google has finally copped to developing an operating system–Chrome OS, a software platform “created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and…designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.” It is an extraordinary market play. And an unsettling one. For it seeks to place Google, which already collects vast amounts of data about our Internet use, at the very center of our information experience. The privacy implications of that are, of course, horrendous.
10 am PDT, 1 pm EDT.
That’s when Apple is expected to roll out iPhone 3.0, an update that will bring a number of long-anticipated features to the iconic device. Among them a phone-wide Spotlight Search, push notifications and the long-overdue cut, copy and paste.
Blockbuster in a Monday filing told the Securities and Exchange Commission what anyone who’s observed its fast-declining fortunes has known for some time now: The company isn’t sure it can stay in business much longer. In a PricewaterhouseCoopers assessment included as part of its latest 10-K, Blockbuster acknowledged that its financial situation raises “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
Repudiating claims that Blockbuster intended to file for bankruptcy earlier this month, spokesperson Karen Raskopf said the troubled video rental chain has “lots of plans to grow our business.” If inking a video-on-demand deal with a declining DVR pioneer is one of them… well, that’s not much of a plan, is it?
After five days without comment, Apple today acknowledged that the rollout of its MobileMe suite of Internet services was, in the company’s own words, “a lot rockier than we had hoped.” In a message to MobileMe subscribers, Apple apologized for the service’s troubled debut and its lack of “true push” capabilities and offered them a subscription extension to allay any hard feelings.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is on a roll.
Last week he dismissed Facebook as another GeoCities. Now he’s gone and branded Google as Big Brother.
“Our Windows Live Hotmail, in and of itself, doesn’t generate much ad revenue,” Ballmer told an audience at the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program in the United Kingdom. “So we’ve had to put, [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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