Technology Industry Archive

Most observers have dismissed the Microsoft-Yahoo alliance as a non-starter for both companies. Yahoo looks like the 50-year-old schnook who took a second mortgage on his house to buy himself a Corvette, while Microsoft seems to be buying an illusory bump in the ComScore ratings game. My colleague Erik Sherman argues that the deal really hurts Microsoft by raising false hopes that it will ever...

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There’s plenty of speculation about Apple turning down Google Voice for its app store and whether the real instigator is AT&T wanting to protect its traffic. That might be, except that Google Voice still depends on either having existing phone service or paying the data charges to run a VoIP link, like Skype. In either case, AT&T makes money … well, for at least as long as...

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Over on ZDNet, David Morgenstern claimed that I was a Chicken LIttle because I pointed to the margin imbalance between the iPhone and Mac and dared wonder if, given Apple’s historic fondness for high-margin business, whether there might be a future for the company without making a computer. Ah, David, David, David, an Apple loyalist through and through. However, this isn’t about...

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Contrary to popular preconceptions, cloud computing isn’t the stuff of start-ups and fringe companies – it’s really big business run by very public companies (and I don’t just mean Salesforce.com and VMware). My colleague Erik Sherman has an interesting take on the cloud computing business model, but putting aside his thoughts regarding Salesforce.com, it’s clear that...

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As I’ve mentioned before, there’s been a steadily decreasing average net sale for Apple’s Mac units over at least the last seven quarters. But an analysis by Turley Muller at the Financial Alchemist blog (via AppleInsider) might explain why: iPhones margins are so high that Apple can afford to drop prices elsewhere and still keep their overall results looking good. Apple has...

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Back in January, LG Electronics essentially went into competition with broadcast, cable, and satellite video providers with its NetCast Entertainment Access. Certain of its HDTV offerings provided built-in streaming from both YouTube and Netflix, as well as news, weather, and photos from Yahoo. Now it’s expanding the service by integrating access to titles from Vudu, adding an extra 2,000...

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Yahoo’s search deal with Microsoft is the Internet’s version of Sunset Boulevard, with Yahoo as the downtrodden young writer and Microsoft as the aging actress with whom he hooks up, giving him access to her wealth and Bing (I mean bling), but confining him to a hopeless future. In case you haven’t seen the details, ReadWriteWeb has an excellent summary of the deal, concluding...

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Salesforce.com has been one of the leading SaaS “success” stories, and the company has been trying to ride that into a secure spot in future cloud computing. But it’s facing the twin demons of slowing bookings and a time to customer profitability that makes you wonder whether the company can survive without at least a mid-term acquisition. The first demon is slowing bookings,...

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My colleague Michael Hickins was right when he said that IBM’s acquisition of SPSS helped it get its hands on a rapidly growing market. But the real upside is not in depriving SAP of an area of business intelligence that it might have been smart in wanting. The big win is that IBM gets to integrate what SPSS can do into what Big Blue knows best: infrastructure. In fact, you might say that...

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So the two gladiators, Microsoft and Yahoo, have finally stopped slugging it out and announced a ten-year search deal. And while the structure is interesting, with Microsoft providing the search back-end and Yahoo becoming the sales agent for the combined effort, you have to wonder if this is too little, too late. According to a press releaseprepared statement, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer...

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