Posts Tagged ‘google’

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Google Diversifies Its Empire…

Wednesday, May 11th, 2011

robot-army.jpg
(credit: Sougent Harrop)

…with robot cars!

We’re always prattling on about the importance of diversification around here. You know, the “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” philosophy, applied to your investment portfolio. (If you don’t believe us that a diverse portfolio is the way to go, take the Timing the Markets Challenge!)

Well the same principle can apply to all areas of life – baskets of eggs, for example, or Internet empires like Google’s. They’ve been branching out from their humble search engine roots for years (email, document sharing, voicemail), but now they’re taking it to the streets. With robot cars.

Robot cars, as you might imagine, are currently illegal on U.S. roads. But if Google does a good job lobbying the Nevada legislature, then Sin City may become the first market for automated overlords vehicles.

Hey, if the Internet implodes some day, at least they’ll have something to fall back on.

The Dutch Sandwich & The Double Irish: How Google Saved $3 Billion in Taxes

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

We’d never heard of a Dutch Sandwich (mmm… sandwich) or a Double Irish before reading this article about how multinational corporations avoid paying U.S. taxes.

But then, we don’t have hundreds of highly-paid tax experts and lawyers working day in and day out to help us find and exploit loopholes in the tax code.

But guess who does? That’s right. The Googles, the Facebooks, the Pfizers, and the Microsofts of the world. General Electric alone currently has 975 people on staff to ensure it pays the least amount of tax possible while still not technically breaking the law.

They must be doing a pretty good job, because last year, G.E.’s U.S. tax bill was $0.00.

It pays to have smart people helping you make decisions.


(photo courtesy of Google)

How are you when it comes to saving money? Time to revisit that budget?

Click here to learn more about the wild and wonderful world of taxes!

What to Do When Your Business Model Depends Entirely on Google’s Search Results

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

“In a recent e-mail to employees, company founder and CEO Jason Calacanis and Mahalo President Jason Rapp said the start-up trimmed a tenth of its workforce due to a reduction in traffic caused by Google’s change to its search algorithm, according to the blog CenterNetworks.

The Google changes were meant to push down low-quality sites in search results, but some unexpected websites such as Mahalo lost their ranking as well, the report said. With less traffic visiting Mahalo, revenue took a hit, the e-mail said, according to CenterNetworks.”

What do you think?

How can online businesses protect themselves against rapid changes in the technology industry? Does this news make you think twice about investing in web-based companies?

The New Philanthropy: Google Goes After Education In India

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

“NEW DELHI – Internet giant Google Inc. said Monday it will give $5 million to upgrade and support 50 elementary schools run by India’s Bharti Foundation, the philanthropic unit of Bharti Enterprises Ltd.”

What do you think?

Can an enormous business-based philanthropic venture like Google fulfill its mission to save the world?

Out With The Old, In With The… Wait, Is Anything At Google Old?

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

schmidt-and-page.jpg
credit: loiclemeur

Businesses need experienced leaders to succeed. Businesses need young talent to succeed. So what happens when there’s only room for one CEO?

  • Internet companies like Google have traditionally been small, nimble, and young. But Google has grown up. A lot. So much so that the size of its bureaucracy (read: paper-pushers) has started to limit how fresh and creative it can be.
  • So Eric Schmidt, the guy who has been CEO and providing “adult supervision” is being replaced by Larry Page, a Google co-founder.
  • Many Google employees, frustrated by business issues getting in the way of innovation, are hoping the executive switcharoo will be just what the company needs to ramp up its new product development. But can the founder run a company with more than 20,000 employees?

Facts & Figures

  • Larry Page is responsible for the algorithm that made Google the most powerful search engine on the net
  • He also oversaw the development of Gmail and Google’s Chrome browser
  • He was CEO for the 5 years after Google was founded in 1998

Best Quote

“Larry’s style is going to be different [than Mr. Schmidt's], but he has amazing instincts around developing products and is a tireless champion for improving users’ experience.” – David Scacco, Chief Revenue Officer, MyLikes, former Google employee

What do you think?

Do you think you could do a better job than your boss or parents? Is a new CEO enough to make an established company compete with new successes like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr?


Own A Piece Of Facebook! TILE Two-Liners 1.3.11 >> 1.7.11

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

MONDAY

  • The National Weather Service and the stock market go together like frigid weather forecasts and rising oil prices. That’s cold. (Reuters)
  • Big news: “It’s hard to anticipate the direction of financial markets.” (thanks for the heads-up, Wall Street Journal)

TUESDAY

  • Middle-aged white guys at Goldman Sachs value Facebook at $50 billion, scramble to get a piece of it before the company’s stock becomes publicly available. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 6,000 new jobs at dollar stores are still new jobs, aren’t they? (CNN)

WEDNESDAY

  • Microsoft-Google deathmatch: Who gets to provide email services to the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife? (Wall Street Journal)

THURSDAY

  • Reason 1,174 to be glad you’re a person and not a state: States lost an average of 30% of their revenue in 2009. (The Washington Post)

FRIDAY

Is Google a monopoly? Do you care?

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

A monopoly is a company that has control over all sales and distribution of a product – to the extent that no other company can compete with it. For example, if your cable or utility companies are the only sellers of their service and you can’t really choose another company to buy from, they hold a monopoly on that particular service. Remember the game Monopoly? The goal was to own EVERYTHING.

is-google-a-monopoly.png

Click to see the whole story.

What Happens When You Tell Google To Take A Hike?

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

Apparently they fund one of your competitors and DESTROY YOU.

(Back story: Google offered to buy wildly successful Internet coupon company Groupon for $6 billion. Groupon said, “meh.”)

Read the original:
BBC News, 12/21/20: Google eyes smaller players after Groupon: report

Groupon Will Not Be Googled

Monday, December 6th, 2010

They can probably find a better deal anyway.

  • Google allegedly offered $6 billion for the popular online coupon company – the most expensive acquisition in Google history. The initial offer was between $3.5 – 4 billion.
  • Online coupons have never been more popular, and Google was eager to get a piece of the action. They think that advertising locally is about to become really, really big.
  • Groupon is currently owned by a private group of investors, but it may go for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2011.

Facts & Figures

  • Over 33 million people subscribe to Groupon’s daily emails
  • Google is currently sitting on $33 billion in cash and other assets
  • Groupon made $500 million in sales this year – it’s growing at a faster rate than Google or Amazon did

Competition Between Two Power Search Engines Intensifies

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

As the search engine Bing accumulates more users, Google attempts to adopt some of their new features.

  • Google has long held the majority of users in the search engine market, but its percentage is now dropping, while Bing’s and Yahoo’s ia rising.
  • Google has favored a simple, no-frills approach to searching, but now, faced with Bing’s breadth of new features, it is rethinking that strategy, going so far as to imitate Bing in some areas.
  • Although Bing still has only a fraction of Google’s audience, we’re likely to see the competition between the two search engines ramp up even more in the future.

Facts & Figures

  • Google handles 62.6% of all internet searches; Bing only handles 12.7%. However, Bing’s percentage has increased from only 8% when the search engine was first introduced.
  • Over the last 12 months, Microsoft’s online services division suffered losses of $2.36 billion on revenue of $2.2. billion.
  • Google made 500 adjustments to its search algorithm in the past year alone.

Best Quote

“There is a cold war going on. Clearly, you can see how Bing’s competition is forcing Google to try and catch up in some places.” –Sandeep Aggarwal, Senior Internet and Software Analyst, Caris & Company

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