Sunday, October 21, 2007

iGoogle

Was planning a post on how well Google's many features/apps are integrated (and was planning to say, not particularly well)... so I just typed www.google.com into my browser and instead of the familiar simple interface iGoogle popped up -

and what do we have but a 2007 version of a 1997 portal.


Yes there's (much) more personalisation, yes it's not an html page with frames but a collections of feeds, yes i'm sure it's great in many ways, but it is not the no-frills homepage from you can conduct excellent search that Google is famous for (or perhaps i should say, became famous for)

Seriously - half-close your eyes and you could be looking at a 90s version of Yahoo, Excite, MSN or a million other portals. Actually I just typed in www.msn.com and (without having personalised either), it and iGoogle are almost indistinguishable

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Interesting GOOG judgment

See this link to an appeal judgment in a Reid v Google - a case brought by a former employee of Google who alleges he was sacked because of his age.

Reid was formerly a Director of Engineering and Director of Operations at Google - a reasonably senior position. The reason he was given when he was sacked was that he was not a 'cultural fit'. Reid claims that the 'youthful atmosphere' at Google demonstrates a bias against older workers.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Sad news - Matt Price

Duncan Riley reports at duncanriley.com that Matt Price, the columnist for the Australian, has some serious health issues.

Price is interesting and idiosyncratic on both football and politics; I enjoy reading his columns and wish him and his family well.

Who has scored from Web 2.0?

Interesting article in BusinessWeek about the present (tough) conditions in the VC market, including this extract:

Take Web 2.0, where exactly one company, YouTube, had a $1 billion-plus outcome when it was purchased by Google (GOOG). Only a handful has sold in the hundreds of millions. And because the costs of starting these businesses are so low, venture investors own smaller stakes than they did in the last Web bubble.


I'm sure the statement is right - as far as it goes - but I'd make the following comments:

- like much in this world, it all depends on how the key terms are defined.

- many of the 2.0 companies have been founded, effectively, as single-product or niche-focused businesses suitable for early, cheap acquisition rather than building into stand-along megaliths. And much of the early development of these focused businesses took place out of the pockets of angel funding and/or bootstrapping and/or very small VC rounds. Meaning that the peersons involved probably did fine out of relatively small exits (although I'm sure some - such as the founders of flickr - wonder what might have been).

- GOOG's suite of 'web 2.0' assets would be valued at far more than $1 billion; as would Yahoo!'s; as would News Corp's etc etc. Much of the Web 2.0 upside has been captured (at least in monetary terms) by the media and Internet giants. They either developed in-house or, more commonly, bought earlier. The media and 1.0 survivors have done an excellent job in the latest wave of making smart, early, cheap acquisitions: MySpace, flickr, photobucket, FeedBurner, etc etc.

- the BusinessWeek analysis ignores the gorilla currently sitting and waving in the corner: Facebook. To suggest it has a less than $1 billion valuation at this point would be ludicrous.