Some words of reassurance for econalypse-addled entrepreneurs worried about an exit strategy: Google really is in a buying mood again. Discussing the company’s latest earnings on a conference call Thursday, CEO Eric Schmidt said Google is looking for businesses to buy, perhaps even big ones.
The passing of a year hasn’t much changed Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s opinion of cloud computing. Remarking on the industry’s sudden fascination with the concept at Oracle OpenWorld last September, Ellison reduced it to a thin sheen of windshield condensation. In conversation with former Sun CEO Ed Zander at a Churchill Club event a little over a year later, Ellison expanded on those remarks, suggesting that if the cloud is anything, it’s a cloud of BS.
To hear tell from the National Venture Capital Association, the VC landscape is as burned out and desolate as the ashen vistas of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” According to its latest data, not a single venture-backed company went public in the first quarter of 2009 or the one that preceded it. That’s the first time the association has ever recorded two consecutive quarters with no issues.
It was an eventful week–a new President-elect, Yahoo still playing the field with no takers, and the hovering recession beginning to hit a little harder, a little closer to home. It was hard to keep the storylines straight, so let’s approach it thematically.
Election 2008
Whether or not those voting machines malfunctioned or miscounted votes, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States, much to the chagrin of comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who–since the beginning of the McCain/Palin partnership–were handed once-in-a-lifetime material. Between the brilliant Saturday Night Live parody sketches of (and by) both Palin and McCain, and Obama’s victory speech, the other big winner (by a mile) was YouTube.
Jerry Yang and Co. say Microsoft was never committed to a whole-company acquisition of Yahoo. But if that’s the case, why is it that Microsoft seems entirely committed to a whole-company acquisition of another search company–Powerset?
The Damoclean sword of workforce reductions suspended above Yahoo will fall within the next few weeks. This according to Silicon Alley Insider, which claims Yahoo will indeed move ahead with the “emphasis reduction” it hinted at last week and sack between 1,500 and 2,500 employees.
A source close to the company tells SAI that Yahoo [...]
Ribbit is as much “Silicon Valley’s first telephone company” as the region’s first to boast a silly name and grandiose claims.
Still, the Silicon Valley start-up, which officially opened its Web-based telephony platform to third party developers this morning, is generating a lot of buzz for its Flash/Flex-based telephones (see video below), and rightly so. The [...]
Zingku, Jaiku. Jaiku, Zingku. Sounds like the makings for a reprise of David Letterman’s infamous Academy Awards “Oprah, Uma” gag. But really, they’re the names of Google’s latest acquisitions in the wireless communications space.
In late September Google purchased mobile social-networking start-up Zingku. Now it’s gone and bought Jaiku, a Finnish company that offers an [...]
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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