Afraid that it will get caught up in a long legal battle with the government, Google today announced that it would widthdraw from the advertising partnership with Yahoo that would have allowed Google to serve text ads on Yahoo’s search engine.
This isn’t really a huge setback for Google as it is doing just fine with or without this deal. However, it does leave Yahoo in a difficult place as it was the main reason Yahoo was able to fend off Microsoft’s hostile takeover attempt.
As they would say… the saga continues… Let’s see what will happen next. I wonder who will blink first. Microsoft or Yahoo? One way or another, it is indeed possible and even very likely that they will now go back to negotiating table and try to work something out. We’ll see…
Read about this today that Microsoft will offer free software licenses and support/guidance to startups opting to use their technology platform. The catch is that the startup needs to be invited into the program so it’s not just any aspiring Internet company.
Frankly I don’t know how it will be received. Startups have so many open source alternatives to choose from. I wouldn’t bother with Microsoft technologies myself, either. But with that said, this is a good move by Microsoft, even if a little too late. I would’ve done this a long time ago… Well, better late than never…
Apple just released the latest quarterly results and the numbers looked good. They recorded a revenue of $7.9 billion and their profit jumped 26%. People in Cupertino are surely happy. They even sold more iPhones than BlackBerries in the quarter, 6.9 million units to 6.1 million.
I’m not a big iPhone fan and I admit that. But objectively speaking, I don’t know how Apple can really expect to grow its handset business if they don’t quickly expand their iPhone lineups. To start with, they should roll out something like a iPhone Nano, which people have talked about. It should be cheaper and smaller, even if less feature-rich. Then perhaps iPhones that include a keyboard or have the flip form-factor… Well, I’m not a product designer so I’ll leave it to Apple to figure how to expand the iPhone portfolio.
But seriously… It’s more than essential to Apple to do this. They need to keep people excited about iPhone and reach a wider range of customers than those tech enthusiasts and early adopters!
Yes, you heard me right. I think this is a good thing. It forces those who never have what it takes to make it anyway to close door sooner. The industry needs to weed out the ‘pretenders’ every once in a while and now is a good time for that.
Lately there’s been a lot made about how VC’s are advising their portfolio companies to conserve cash and find a viable revenue model fast. Duh… That needs to happen regardless. But of course, this is bad for entreprenuer wanna-be like myself. Maybe now is a good time to lay low and just wait…
News came out that Facebook.com’s search functionality had integrated Microsoft’s Live Search and can now be used to search the web. Not surprising when you consider that Microsoft is an investor in Facebook. But when you really think about it, this is just as silly as anything goes. Who in the world is on Facebook and wants to use it to search the web? I know I don’t. Even if you already prefered Live Search over Google, this still is very counter-intuitive. Further more, Facebook’s execution of the search results conforms to the design style of the rest of the site, which is to say that it’s not your typical search engine. I simply don’t like it… The last bit to consider is this; it’s not clear how Microsoft can really monetize from this integration, even as the result page does display related text ads.
Nice try, Microsoft… But if you really want to gain grounds on Google, you gotta try harder than this.
As planned, I attended today’s WordCamp Shanghai in Fudan University. Here are some of my thoughts:
The turn out wasn’t great… Maybe 40 people… That’s a lot less than I imagined… I thought WordPress was popular enough and that Matt Mullenweg being here himself would be appealing, too…
Matt is 24 and looks like it… But boy, makes me feel bad about myself…
It’s cool to see a preview of WordPress 2.7… It comes out in Nov.
I was reminded how long ago I started blogging… I wish I had always been blogging regularly…
I definitely don’t know enough about the Chinese blogger world… But I’m not sure I’d start reading more Chinese blogs now…
The event wasn’t very organized overall. For example, they let the Q&A with Matt run a long time which obviously pushed back the other speeches. But funny enough, the event still finished on time… Oh well…
If I’m still in Shanghai next year and if there’s another WordCamp, I guess I still plan to attend… Just hope they make it more interesting. Today’s event was only interesting because Matt was here…
(You can tell he’s not exactly right from how much weight he must’ve lost…)
Only Steve Jobs and people in his inner circle really know if there’s any truth to the rumor that he’s been really ill again. And I know some people wouldn’t attribute that much of Apple’s success today to Jobs. However, it is undeniable that in the public eyes, Jobs is Apple. It’s hard to imagine someone else other than Jobs on the stage to introduce a new Apple product.
That’s pretty amazing for a CEO when people deem you as that irreplacable!
