E-Commerce News: Opinions

Why Microhoo Couldn't Work and How Google Helped It Fail

Monday - May 12, 2008

I'm often fascinated by mergers, or I should say I'm fascinated by how often they are attempted and how rarely they succeed. While it may appear that smaller mergers are more successful than larger ones, the reality is smaller merger failures are vastly easier to cover up. Very few mergers actually deliver the benefits that were promised by their advocates. There are, however, some companies that stand out as merger experts, and they include Cisco, Oracle, EMC, Logitech and with one big exception, Symantec. You'll notice neither Microsoft nor Yahoo is on that list. [More...]

A Tale of Two Steves

Monday - May 5, 2008

I'm writing this from the Microsoft Management Summit at Interop with 5,000 of my closest friends in Las Vegas, and I'm still thinking about the book I brought up recently, titled Inside Steve's Brain. The result is, I think I've had an epiphany -- and no, I didn't call a doctor. [More...]

Executive Compensation: Is It Too High?

Friday - May 2, 2008

The average compensation for an S&P 500 company's CEO was US$14.2 million in 2007, according to the AFL-CIO's 2007 Trends in CEO Pay survey. Some CEOs are even compensated multiple times that amount. This raises the question: When is executive compensation too high? One might also ask, are directors doing a disservice to a company and putting themselves at risk by approving unreasonable compensation? [More...]

Longevity as a Commodity

Friday - May 2, 2008

Last week, GlaxoSmithKline announced it will buy Sirtris Pharmaceuticals for $720 million, giving weight to the claim that antiaging biotech firms can be a good bet. This is good news for Americans, given that a recent Harvard-affiliated study showed that some parts of the country have seen declines in expected longevity. [More...]

How Live Mesh Will Reinvent Microsoft

Monday - April 28, 2008

Microsoft has just brought out the physical representation of its fifth major evolutionary change, and this one may turn out to be the most dramatic. The technology, Live Mesh, may actually both help Microsoft's customer satisfaction issues and help move Apple and Linux onto desktops everyplace. [More...]

The Secret Global War to Beat Apple

Monday - April 21, 2008

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been meeting with vendors all over the country that range from those that build PCs to those that build tools and parts, to those that build back-end solutions. One common message has come through. They all are targeting Apple as the company whose performance they most want to beat. [More...]

An Oil Change for the Global Economy

Friday - April 18, 2008

Renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydropower are increasingly becoming more popular. In fact, wind power is the fastest-growing energy source in the world. Presently, there are about 30,000 wind turbines operating worldwide, and that number is ever increasing. While this is very encouraging news for our environment, the fact remains that the world will be heavily relying on oil for some time to come. [More...]

Tax Day Is Over, but Internet Tax Threats Loom

Friday - April 18, 2008

As Americans stretched to pay the tax man this week, California Assemblyman Charles Calderon was working on the sly to institute a new digital tax. Such a move is not only short-sighted, but also could seriously harm the state's competitiveness. It is shocking that some political leaders seek to increase the regulatory and tax burden on the tech sector. [More...]

China's Economic Revolution in a Box

Wednesday - April 9, 2008

Come Aug. 24, when the Olympic Games start with music and hymns and the torch lighting the flame, the global spotlight will land on Beijing, and when the athletes march in unison to their beautifully orchestrated national anthems, in the ultra-modern stadium, the whole world will witness a sleeping giant awaken to create a global shock wave. [More...]

A Linux Device That Could Beat the iPhone

Monday - April 7, 2008

Last week I was in Shanghai, China -- which is truly an amazing place -- attending the Intel Developer Forum, where the company is officially launching its new Netbook and iPhone-like mobile Internet device platforms. This is actually the first time I've seen products that are based on Linux that may exceed Apple's vaunted user experience. [More...]

Making the Case for Uploading Personal Medical Data

Friday - April 4, 2008

As technologically advanced as we are in the U.S., we are still in the horse-and-buggy age when it comes to our medical records. A person's records are usually dispersed among a number of healthcare providers, including primary care physicians, specialists, hospitals, emergency rooms, labs, pharmacies and therapists. This system is inefficiently fragmented and also dangerous for the patient. [More...]

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