[Premium] Is Apple worth it?

There has been a lot of chatter about Apple recently because of the monster move it has sustained in the first four months of the year. Bloomberg reports that Apple gained more than $250 billion in market share in just four months to April 9. That’s more than IBM’s current value. Other impressive figures are being bandied about like: Apple is worth more than the entire retail sector combined, Apple is worth more than Microsoft, Google, Nokia, and RIMM combined, etc. But soon, growth will be all about the emerging economies

More News Links: Verizon’s Netflix Bid, Google’s Siri, and Mobile driving ban

More News Links for 13 December 2011 including a report of Verizon chasing Netflix, Google building a siri competitor and a potential mobile driving ban

Scoble: Problems at Twitter and Facebook give Google+ opening

Influential tech blogger Robert Scoble talked to Bloomberg earlier in the week about the social media scene. The main message I took away is that he believes Google+ is a successful product for Google which could spell trouble for Facebook and Twitter

The Internet’s Filter: Condemned to be Free?

Rick Bookstaber opines about a future world in which the flood of information being produced will be filtered by third parties like Facebook and Google with as yet unpredictable consequences for society. Perhaps these filters are just computationally more powerful versions of our own cognitive filters. But the filters are not under our control. We won’t understand how they are deciding what to allow through the filter for our consideration

Google Plus Growth

Remember when I said that Google would get to scale “much,much faster than Facebook? Well this chart shows you this quite vividly. Wow!

How to start an online social network from scratch

If you had to start an online social network from scratch, how would you do it

Mobile users with cheapie phones will switch to Android

Android’s adoption is all about upgrades and not about switching. I see this as a land grab right now. The operating systems that can grab as much share as possible while people are upgrading from cheapie phones to inexpensive Smartphones will win. Right now Android is leading the charge

Cashmore on Technology’s Paradigm Shift

Here’s an interesting conversation about social media and Internet and technology companies’ adjustment to it

Why is Google issuing bonds?

Google is loaded o the gills with cash, yet today they are pricing up a bond issue. he Financial Times is reporting that Google will raise as much as $3 billion of 3, 5 and 10-year money. Here’s my question: why do this? Acquisition: Maybe they are pulling a Microsoft and preparing a debt-financed acquisition.

More free money from Google for site scrapers

Back in December I wrote an article on how site scrapers were gaming Google’s search algorithm in order to make advertising money from articles that they scrape from RSS feeds. Just after I wrote this piece, Google got religion about spam sites and revamped their search engine results to penalize content farms. Yet, the problem with scrapers still remains

When will large cap tech stocks start paying dividends?

I would argue that this is evidence that these companies are wasting shareholder capital by plunking down for splashy acquisitions and large new capital investments that are not paying off. Cisco and Microsoft have huge cash balances waiting to be deployed. This money can go to buying back shares at inflated prices or making acquisitions of dubious value to shareholders. The right thing for these companies to do is not necessarily just restructure but change their mindset and accept that the glory days of top line growth are over. First and foremost this means increasing the dividend payout to match other sectors of the economy.

If Android is a mess, will it matter?

I say fragmentation doesn’t matter. Consumers are going to buy what is available and for offer. Distribution trumps ease of use. Ask Apple about Macintosh. And ask Microsoft about Windows. Market share trumps technological superiority too. Ask Sony about Betamax.

Yes, the pace of development of Android is faster than in the Windows days, creating a headache and causing fragmentation. But Google has decided to clamp down on this. Their decision certainly makes Android less ‘open’. But, fragmentation is a problem they need to solve. I think they will do.