Category: Technology

As reported this week on TechCrunch, The Funded has been sued by EDF Ventures.  EDF is upset because someone anonymously wrote something bad (heaven forbid!) about them.

Fortunately, The Funded shares my views that websites should log nothing, and hasn’t been logging for quite some time.  As such, EDF’s subpoena is worthless.  This will save a lot of people a whole lot of time, grief,  and money in avoiding the courts.  I hope the major online sites follow suit before this gets really out of hand – because that is where it is going.

As for EDF – I hope they learn something from this.  If nothing else, they should get thicker skin!

As you know, I’ve been a Vista fan for a while.  I run it at home, and really like it.  It’s much better than XP, despite the awkwardness of UAC.

Despite my praise, I’ve been surprised to hear my colleagues and also the press in general describe Vista as a catastrophic failure.  At first I thought it was Microsoft bashing, but the bashing was so consistent and so prolonged that I believed it.  Although I liked Vista – most people apparently did not.

Microsoft was naturally frustrated by this.  I know they do a lot of usability studies there, and it had done well in studies.  Why did it “fail” in the market and press?

Hence, Microsoft Mojave was born.  This was a user experiment where Microsoft recruited volunteers who had never tried Vista to check out Microsoft’s new OS, “Mojave”.   Only after demoing Mojave and getting rave results from those same users did Microsoft reveal that Mojave was actually just Vista.

Anyway, if Microsoft is to believed on this (and don’t forget Microsoft has been caught lying under oath in the past with forged videos), it confirms my thoughts on Vista.  Vista is actually pretty well liked; just hated by the press.

Icahn has been talking with Microsoft.  Both sides have agreed to issue statements (here and here) that if the Yahoo board is fired, Microsoft might offer another bid to purchase Yahoo.

This is easily translated, of course.  It is estimated that Icahn paid ~$25 for his shares and he doesn’t want to lose the money he’s already lost.  Icahn tried to get a Microsoft transaction going in May.  Icahn disastrously failed.  Now he’s looking for Yahoo shareholders to bail him out.

Yahoo is in a tough spot already.  Electing the Icahn board means that you’ve got Yahoo in the same tough spot it’s already in, plus a board that has publicly said it has no intention to do anything with the company other than sell to Microsoft.  This is a horrible negotiating position.

Microsoft could walk in and buy what is left for far less than $20/share.  Fortunately for Yahoo shareholders, I don’t think Microsoft would do this.  Out of “good will” and the interest of avoiding competing bids, they’d offer more.  But if you were an employee at Yahoo, and this all happens, what are you going to do?  You’re either going to quit (because the management team has publicly stated doesn’t care if you succeed or fail – they just want to use you to sell to Microsoft), or you’re going to stick around to see if you don’t get that bonus along with your pink slip.

Either way this is a bad deal for Microsoft (they pick up a bunch of assets with a completely uninspired and burned out team) and its a relatively bad deal for Yahoo shareholders.  They sell out for far less than they were worth just 6 months ago, and if Microsoft really wanted to be brutal, they could end up selling for a small fraction of what they are worth right now.

The only winner:  Carl Icahn – the businessman that builds nothing, takes everything, and doesn’t care about people -who makes a few extra short-term dollars per share for himself.

In the Viacom vs Google lawsuit, a judge has ordered that Google turn over a set of information which borders on personally identifiable information.  Although Viacom and the lawyers are supposed to keep all this data private, there is obviously new opportunity for this information to be leaked, abused, or used for other purposes.  It is unclear yet  whether Viacom will get IP addresses in the log data.  If they do, some users will be personally identifiable.  Although Viacom isn’t supposed to use this data to identify end users, they will now know whether or not other lawsuits could bear fruit (a.k.a. make money) for them.  If you think they won’t be coming after individuals, you’re wrong.  It’s just a matter of the right lawyer with enough data to know what to subpoena.  And even if the US Courts don’t allow Viacom access to this data, what happens when French Courts (or any other country) order that Google hand over the records? 

It doesn’t matter if you trust Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo.  The fact is that you cannot trust every government and every lawyer across the planet.  At the same time you have to expect that any international company will obey the law in the countries in which they operate.  This means the companies are going to hand over the data – it’s the law.  Even if this means handing over personally identifiable information to China so that they can execute dissenters, you have to expect the companies to do this.  Do you really expect *them* to break the law?

There is only one way to play this game, which is to NOT retain records of any kind.  If records are not kept, they obviously cannot be subpoenaed.

Personally, I do trust Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.  I just don’t trust every lawyer on the planet.  And it only takes one lawyer to make my life a mess.  For this reason, I urge Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and all other internet companies to not keep logs.  I know it helps their businesses, but retaining these records makes it downright scary for me to use their services.  Get rid of the data, get rid of the problem.

Of course, these views do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

See also:  Internet Trust – Present and Future

If you rewind the clock to April, Silicon Alley Insider praised Yang’s handling of the Microsoft negotiations, saying that “Yahoo Playing This Brilliantly“.   Now, Silicon Valley Insider claims that Yahoo Management “blew the deal“.

Alright – just because you did some things well doesn’t mean that you will succeed, and obviously Yahoo didn’t get the deal done (is that success?).  But what is clear is that no matter what Yang did, Silicon Alley Insider intended to roast him for it.

Scoble writes this week about how Microsoft’s plan to challenge Google is to use it’s 320 million “anti-Google weapons” – in other words, the 320 million users of MSN services.  When did users become weapons?

Due to anti-trust arrangements, of course, Microsoft can’t easily “leverage” it’s Windows users or its Office users.  However, MSN users are fair game because Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly there.

But all of this gets to a meta point – doesn’t it suck to be used as a pawn for Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, or anyone?

Unfortunately, this is an arms race which only gets worse as desperation mounts.  Users don’t want the installation of one product to reconfigure their preferences for another.  However, this is exactly what  Microsoft does today – install *any* MSN product,  and if you aren’t careful, it switches all your search settings to Microsoft’s search.  In the future, if they get more desperate, I’m certain they’ll stop bothering to ask, and instead claim it is a requirement as part of the “terms of service”.

This is wrong; and every company is guilty of it.  I do believe the more desperate companies are generally the aggressors.   Once started, however, it becomes an arms race where each company must respond before the other company uninstalls them!  This is wrong. 

I want a 3rd party utility that doesn’t pimp its wares on me but which knows about the arms race for media players, default browser, default search, etc etc and neutralizes these marketing tactics which think of me as a “weapon” against the competition.

I just discovered the Google Chart API.  If you’ve ever built an application that needed to generate charts, you may have spent a lot of developer resources on it.  The Chart API is pretty awesome – charts for free….

Working under the veil of “shareholder crusader”, Carl Icahn is currently on course to single-handedly destroy two tech giants and leave a third as an unwanted monopoly.

As you can tell, I’m not too happy with Icahn today.   This is a man who does not understand the search or advertising businesses at all.  As part of his smear campaign against Yang yesterday, Icahn was a babbling idiot as he discussed why Microsoft should buy Yahoo.  Basically he reiterated the same ignorant mantra – “the only way that Microsoft can compete with Google is to have Yahoo”.   There is no basis for this, and a whole lot of indicators that it is just untrue.  Most notable is that the only search market share shrinking more rapidly than Microsoft’s is Yahoo’s.

Icahn is a great businessman.  He can spot a company that could be sold for a short-term dollar.  But, he doesn’t know how to build products and never has.  Icahn’s history shows that he has NEVER built a product.  How is it that he knows anything about building a competing search engine to Google?   Where does he get these claims?   In fact, much more knowledgeable industry experts believe he is 100% wrong.

Icahn is not working in the interest of Yahoo shareholders.  Icahn just wants to make a buck.  Remember, he can sell yahoo for $26, make $1/share, and put $50 million back in his pocket.  He’d then blame Yang and Yahoo for having not sold for more.  Well, he knew that Yang had rejected the Microsoft deal before he invested!  At this point, his complaining about Yang or the Yahoo poison pill is pure posturing for him to make money.  (Has he talked to Yahoo employees?  Maybe he doesn’t know that they only reason they didn’t quit already was *because* of that retention plan?)

Unfortunately, Icahn may have already ruined Yahoo’s chances for short-term recovery.  If he is successful, he will also ruin Microsoft’s.  If the acquisition goes through, the most likely outcome is this:  Yahoo and Microsoft will both lose search marketshare during the 1yr transition.  Google will emerge as the unquestionable and unwanted monopoly.  Consumer choice in search will drop to dangerously few choices.  Advertisers will have no online choices.  Microsoft shareholders will be left having paid $40B to acquire an asset which was only worth $20B.  Nice.

I hope Microsoft comes out with a public statement, “we won’t purchase Yahoo at any price”.  This would clearly tell the industry, Microsoft employees and Yahoo employees to stop being distracted by Carl Icahn’s selfish antics.  Instead, we could all get back to work so that Microsoft/Yahoo could figure out how to gain market share against Google, and in the end, have 3 healthy, strong companies in the search/advertising markets.  Nobody wants a monopoly – not even Google.  Don’t let Icahn create one.

Don’t believe a word Icahn says.  He doesn’t know how to build companies or products.  He only knows how to make money while dismantling them.

Today Microsoft launched Live Search Cashback!  This service is really a merging of their Jellyfish service (Microsoft bought Jellyfish some time ago) with Live Search.  Microsoft says it’s going to help change the game against Google.

I first used Jellyfish back in October, 2007.  I thought the service was pretty nice.  They have a whole “community shopping” service, which I am not interested in, but from visiting their site, you can clearly see via the live “shopping smackdowns” that there are lots of people that do.  I guess their competition is probably the Home Shopping Channel and such.  Clearly shopping as entertainment is a very valid business.

The reason I signed up at Jellyfish was because we were buying some chairs online, and I found that the seller had an affiliate program through Jellyfish to give us 15% off.  15% off the $450 was over $50, so it was worth it.

Overall, affiliate rebates are just like mail-in rebates.  You never know when or if you’ll get paid.  So be careful.

Here is roughly what happens:

1.  You make a purchase.  You can’t go directly to the merchant’s site; you need to make sure you follow the links from the affiliate you are expecting the rebate from.

2. At that point, you’ll pay full price, and you’ll get the product delivered to you.

3. The seller has an agreement with the affiliate (Microsoft) that it will pay the affiliate every 90-120 days.  They do this to avoid paying rebates on items which could be returned, and also because nobody likes to pay bills promptly.

4. Finally, Microsoft can credit your account; since they’ve automated the process, I expect this is probably pretty quick – within 1-3 business days from Microsoft receiving the money.

5. Of course, Jellyfish/Microsoft know that it’s been 3-4 months since your purchase and there is a decent chance you’ll forget altogether.  So they won’t tell you the money is there.  You need to check your account, and if you’re lucky, you’ll have a balance to cash out.

If you haven’t used affiliate cash back programs before, you probably should now that Microsoft is fully in the game.  Most affiliate programs to date have not passed all the money back to you, the consumer.  However, Microsoft’s program does – they are passing 100% of the affiliate check back to you.  How does Microsoft get paid?  Well, technically they don’t – if you claim your money.  However, if you forget to pick up your check, well, they got paid anyway, didn’t they?

Overall, I think Jellyfish/Cashback is pretty cool and I will use it.  Over the long haul, however, I don’t expect affiliate programs will ever offer the best prices.  Management of affiliate programs is expensive, and as more companies make their own online efforts efficient, the cheapest prices will be direct from the manufacturer  (absent subsidies from Microsoft, that is :-).