Friday afternoon noteworthy tidbits
Ralf Haller
July 8th, 2006
In case you have read this part recently you might have noticed that lots of the comments are from US blog sites. This is not surprising for two reasons. First blogging is still in its infancy outside of the US - mostly - and secondly - apart from wireless and telecommunications - there ’s simply more news and action in the US. Lastly it is also the number one place for starting tech hype - which often turns into something real, as we know, but also has to be reviewed critically.
- BusinessWeek had a contribution (So Much Fanfare, So Few Hits) on the hype around Google and showed some - not so impressive - rankings of some of its new products. The company makes still 99% of its revenue with ad sales, and otherwise has only two number 2 (by market share) products with GoogleEarth and GoogleNews. Most folks don’t know that! I think also acquisitions will be sooner than later inevitable for them.
- Good Morning Silicon Valley quotes someone wanting to “kill” accused spyware distributor Direct Revenue. What I found more noteworthy/alarming though is one other comment to which I would like to add the question: Who sponsors those guys actually? Here the comment:
- “Well spyware creates lots of jobs for individuals designing software to detect, remove, and block its effects. Think of the unemployment in the software security field if there was/were no spam, phishing, viruses, and other impediments to a secure, comfortable on-line experience. I want more Nigerian scam letters! adios, charlie”
- Engadget’s review of the new Sharp W-ZERO3[es]/WS007SH looks exactly like the missing parts of Nokia’s 770 but then - unfortunately - misses WLAN and BT itself. Now let’s assume that the company’s market intelligence departments have spotted this too and we will soon see a true killer device.
- Clearwire raised 900 million USD from Intel and Motorola to build WiMAX services. As Katie Fehrenbacher comments, this is actually another sign that large tech IPOs (due to Vonage e.g.) are currently out in the US.
- Easy Mobile is shutting down its Dutch operations in August after only 9 months in operation. This shows that the MVNO business is becoming pretty tough even for celebrity entrepreneurs such as Stelios Haji-Ioannou (EasyJet). In the Netherlands alone there are 40 such services as Reuters reports, which makes the MVNO dilemma pretty clear. On the other hand there will be in a few years a 25% market share in Europe for MVNOs as one analyst reports. Question is who will be first to start collecting (buying) all those MVNOs?
- How busy VCs can be demonstrates Jurvetson. I had seen beautiful pictures from his bicyle trip in France just recently. Now just a few days after landing in SFO again you find pictures from British Columbia (Vancouver), Colorado (Aspen), Nevada. Not sure in which order really but I assume he must have at least one double to be able to do all that travelling…
- “Sex sells” must have been Guy Kawasaki’s thought when he warned on his blog that an interview with sex toy maker Mypleasure.com is coming up so that everyone was able to tune in. Not sure if it worked though. I still have to read it but OK might actually have no time since there are too many - better - topics out there to read. His own statistics also showed different topics in the top ten (by # of links) such as (419) The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint, (250) The Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs, (155) The Top Ten Lies of Venture Capitalists, (135) The Art of Bootstrapping. I assume the sex trick works better if you show it in multimedia Guy!
