Archive for the ‘Search’ Category.

You Better Sell Your Google Stock

Christine Varney was appointend by President Barack Obama to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust team.  That might present a huge problem for Google, as Varney last year stated that Google “has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising.” Varney further said that Google’s domination of Web-based software is similar to the antitrust issues Microsoft faced in the 1990s. Vanrey did praise Google for obtaining its monopoly lawfully and organically, but still warned of the dangers of consolidating the cloud computing, which refers to software based on the Internet rather than on a personal home computer, in one company but the fact remains that she has a very close eye on the search giants every move.

More scary to me is that for the majority of people in the US Google is de facto the (entire) Internet: they only see what they can find in a Google search, given the fact that Google indexes maybe 15% of published pages that’s a really small number.

Google Streetview Car Sighting

I passed one of Google’s street view cars on El Camino Real in Del Mar about an hour ago (see picture from my Blackberry). That reminds me: if you have not seen the clip by the Vacationeers – check it out below.Google Streetview

Check It Out!

On Friday San Diego Magazine honored the members of the ’50 People to Wach List’. Amongst the people featured was my friend Carlos Algarin, CEO of RentAToy. RentAToy is the ‘NetFlix for Toys’. If you have kids you should check it out today. Oh – and Carlos – I forgive you for not coming to the Sandios Kick-Off Party.

The end of a Google experiment

Today Google will discontinue its Catalog Search Solution. It seems no-one wanted it.

http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/01/farewell-google-catalog-search.html

Throw away your iPhone!

Today Palm presented its new smart phone Palm Pre at CES in Las Vegas. And it just made the top of my shopping list (does anybody want to buy my Wii with Tiger 09?). I still love my G1. But it really does not work well as a phone. Yesterday I tried to call into a conference call and had to scramble to find one of my other (12) phones, as the G1 did not (no longer?) produce DTMF tones! That selaed the deal for me: I am getting a phone-phone , keep the G1 with T-Mobile data plan and wait for my Palm Pre.

Finally (justifying the title): all you iPHONE owners: it is not a phone; it is a liftstyle-Apple-sales-infusion device. Buy Apple stock instead – it’s cheap right now.