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Eye of the Needle by David Needle (bio)

Insights from Silicon Valley and beyond

March 11, 2010, 3:00 PM

Time for Google's Eric Schmidt to go?

Like any good pundit, Rob Enderle knows how to stir things up. You may have read some of Rob’s commentary at our sister site, Datamation.

For example, he’s regularly bombarded with hate mail by iPhone fans for criticizing Apple’s strategy or predicting the company faces stiff competition. Those folks don’t seem to have as much to say when he gives Apple credit, but that’s not surprising.

Enderle’s latest target in an e-mail newsletter commentary, Google, is sure to raise a few eyebrows. Specifically, he thinks CEO Eric Schmidt is steering the company in the wrong direction and will be gone in three years.

Wow. Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for ericschmidt.jpg

If there is one company that personifies Silicon Valley’s success through thick and thin in recent years, it’s Google. It reported over $2 billion in profit for its last quarter and continues to hire and acquire.

What set Enderle off were reports that Schmidt predicted the PC will be dead in three years. I couldn’t get confirmation that Schmidt actually predicted, as Enderle claimed, that the PC will be dead in three years. What he did say was that Google was focused on developing for mobile first.

“That is, in fact, a change,” said Schmidt in reports of his speech. “Every product announcement we’ve done recently — of course we’ll have a desktop version — but we’ll also have one on a high-performance mobile phone.”

Enderle said predictions of the PC’s demise remind him of predictions as far back as the 1980s that the mainframe was dead or soon would be. “… it not only survives today, it is one of IBM’s biggest-grossing sellers,” said Enderle.

He also noted it can often take decades for a technology to die, even years after someone’s built a better mousetrap.

“Fax machines were effectively dead when e-mail took over but most of us still deal with them on at least a weekly basis. Granted, they’ll be much less important, but it is likely we’ll still have fax machines in three years as well,” he said.

Does Google have the right CEO?

Getting to the meat of the matter and, regardless of what Schmidt actually said, Enderle thinks it’s actually Google’s CEO who should be most worried about where he’ll be in three years. Enderle points out that business didn’t exactly flourish at Sun and Novell when Schmidt was there as CTO and CEO respectively. And now Schmidt is pushing Google to an enterprise focus because that’s the area he’s most familiar with.

“It isn’t hard to argue that Eric would be Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s choice to run Google …. and that isn’t a good thing for Google.”

Ouch.

I called Enderle to elaborate and he got even more heated on the topic.

“With Eric you get a CEO suited to run the company the way he’s been trained, which is mainly enterprise hardware. Do you really want to turn Google into Sun?”

I argued that Google’s enterprise efforts are a fraction of the company’s business and it can afford to experiment. But he said he thinks Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are holding Schmidt back and that if Schmidt had his way, he would put more of Google’s resources on the enterprise side. And that would be bad for Google because making a huge shift to the enterprise helped kill Netscape and had severe economic repercussions on Microsoft throughout the1990s.

“There was no growth at Microsoft, they were pounded in the ’90s,” he said. “The enterprise is just a tough business with thin margins and a very long sales cycle. The reason IBM and HP are so successful is that they’ve been at it for so long; IBM pretty much invented IT in the enterprise.”

So the enterprise business has thin margins? That was news to me.

“The pricing for Office and other business software is set high so they can discount the crap out of it for the enterprise,” said Enderle. “Ideally what you want to do to get in that market is partner with an established player because it takes so long to build up the relationships and get those companies comfortable with you as a supplier.

“There are quicker ways to waste to a lot of money,” Enderle continued. “The last decade the enterprise hasn’t been buying, while Apple’s making money largely because it’s thumbed it’s nose and said it’s not going to seriously invest in that market.”

And what does Enderle think Schmidt would say about his comments?

“I’m probably not going to get a Christmas card from him.”

I saved the Internet

Completely off-topic, but I had one of those ‘good to be a Dad’ moments yesterday. When I got home from work my son rather anxiously greeted me at the door with, “Dad, the Internet’s down. Can you fix it?”

I had to chuckle over that one, but a few cable modem reboots later, the Internet was restored. Geez, I’m good. If only fixing cars was that easy.

Posted by David Needle at 3:00 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | Share

February 5, 2010, 2:09 PM

Intern fired in TechCrunch brouhaha

Remember that Seinfeld episode where George sleeps with the cleaning lady at his new job and then pleads ignorance: “Was that wrong? Because no one told me it was when I was hired,” he complains, before being fired.

Well, it’s not clear ignorance was the issue at technology blog TechCrunch, but a serious infraction of journalistic ethics led to “You’re fired!” Donald Trumpish moment.

In a post yesterday entitled “An Apology To Our Readers,” TechCrunch publisher Michael Arrington said he terminated an unnamed intern for asking for and receiving a MacBook Air notebook in exchange for writing a blog post about the company.

Because the intern is under 18, Arrington, a lawyer himself, said in the post that he’d been advised by council not to name him. The site also deleted every post written by him, adding “We are fairly certain that most of the posts weren’t tainted in any way, but to be sure we’ve removed every word written by this person on the TechCrunch network.”

Today, the intern, Daniel Brusilovsky, came clean in his own blog headed “The Line Was Crossed.”

Lawyers may have got to Brusilovsky as well who didn’t actually say what he did in the post: “In some way or another, a line was crossed that should have never been. At this time, I do not want to go into details, but I will publicly say that I am truly sorry ….”

The timing is truly awful for Brusilovsky, a prime mover of the Teens in Tech conference slated for this weekend at Google’s offices in San Francisco.

“At this point, I’d like to take some time to myself after the Teens in Tech Conference, to focus on school, and enjoy being a teenager,” Brusilovsky said in his blog.

Former Businessweek technology reporter Richard Brandt told me this issue highlights the problem of hiring inexperienced writers to be journalists.

“That’s the problem with bloggers who tend not to know very much about journalistic standards,” he said. “At least TechCrunch took the right approach once they figured out what was going on.”

Posted by David Needle at 2:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

December 21, 2009, 8:29 PM

YouTube hops on new link shortener bandwagon

YouTube is the latest to give a big thumbs up to shorter links. Today, the video megasite said it’s launched youtu.be as a shortener for, and only for, YouTube video links.

“…so you can rest assured that when you see a link with this URL, you are indeed about to click on a YouTube video,” Vijay Karunamurthy, an engineering manager at YouTube, said in a blog post. Thumbnail image for YouTubelogo_solstice-vfl138400.png

Link shorteners took off with the growth of Twitter as a handy, and short, way to add to links within the140-character character of tweets that the micro-blogging service imposes. But those shorter URLs have also been the source of security issues because, however they may be represented (“click on this link to win free money), there is no way to tell if the link is legitimate or a malware threat.

YouTube said that because the youtu.be links contains the ID of the video you’re going to see, developers can do interesting things like show you thumbnails and embed the video directly. For content providers, the link can also track how a video is spreading in real-time. There are more details on how to use Youtu.be at YouTube’s blog site.

Posted by David Needle at 8:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

November 24, 2009, 2:22 AM

Ask.com heading back to the future

What do you do when you’re the number four or five player in search with a single-digit share? Hopefully something different — and compelling.

That’s what the folks at Ask.com have in mind. Actually their strategy is both different and a return to the company’s roots when it started out as AskJeeves.

“Search and keywords are the low-hanging fruit. When you think about what people want it’s something more natural,” Ask.com’s president Doug Leeds told me in a recent briefing on the company’s direction.

That more natural approach is to ask a question, the very foundation the company (then AskJeeves complete with butler logo) was founded on.

ask_registered_mark_logo.gif “We are Ask.com and we were popularized as a question/answer service. It’s silly to run away from that brand, we should be embracing it,” said Leeds who adds technology advances have made it a lot easier to provide a broad range of consistent, relevant answers to English language queries than when the company started.

Leeds claims there’s a “psychographic need” to get an answer to a question. “I don’t want to search the Web, I want you (the search engine) to do that,” he said.

(more) |

Posted by David Needle at 2:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

November 20, 2009, 5:56 PM

Google laughs off the 'Osborne Effect'

I’m guessing not many folks at Google are old enough to remember Adam Osborne (though CEO Eric Schmidt is one). Back in the ’80s Osborne’s namesake Osborne Computer Corp. introduced the first popular portable computer.

In those days, a 25-pound luggable qualified as portable and the Osborne sold like hotcakes.

But It was also one of the great early flameouts of the PC era. Osborne made the mistake of pre-announcing a successor machine months before it could be delivered and sales of its existing line dried up sending the company into a tailspin it never recovered from. The preannouncement, while according to some accounts wasn’t the main cause of Osborne’s demise, became known as the “Osborne Effect,” a cautionary tale for any company considering pre-announcing products before they’re available.

But there have been many significance pre-announcements of new tech products. The famously secretive Apple previewed the iPhone six months ahead of delivery. The company said the details would have come out in its FCC filing so it figured better to spill the beans on its own terms. More importantly, Apple didn’t have to worry about dampening sales since the iPhone was its first foray in the phone market.

(more) |

Posted by David Needle at 5:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Share

November 5, 2009, 7:03 PM

Zoho takes pride in Microsoft's 'Fake Office' zing

When the big boy kicks sand in your face, you can either go home and sulk or make jokes about what big feet the bully has. You’ve gotta love upstart Zoho for taking the second course of action.

An early provider of online productivity applications, Zoho has moved quickly to build out a substantial suite of integrated applications that compete with Google and others in the cloud computing space.

Zoho’s CEO Sridhar Vembu had an entertaining blog post yesterday responding to a Microsoft executive’s reference to “fake Office” products. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced price cuts to its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) by a third, bringing the price down from $15 per user to $10 per month. Google’s App Suite, by comparison, costs $50 per user, per year.

Vembu quotes Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Microsoft Online, as noting the company offers a scaled-down version of BPOS for $36 a year. And furthermore “…we’re not seeing any inclination that Zoho or Google or Zimbra or any other of those offering fake Office capabilities can replace [Microsoft Office].”

zoho-logo.gif

That was all too much of a red flag for Vembu not to charge after:

(more) |

Posted by David Needle at 7:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Share

October 30, 2009, 6:51 PM

This tech news is not embargoed

Embargoes — can’t live with them, can’t live without them. That was one of several themes running through a spirited discussion among tech journalists and PR people last night.

For the uninitiated, embargoes are the controversial process where a tech company, usually its PR firm, offers to give advance details on a news story in exchange for the reporter agreeing not to publish the story until the exact release date and time dictated by the vendor.

The event, titled: “Embargo 2010: An Industry Discussion on Future Rules of Media Engagement,” was held in downtown San Francisco at the Varnish gallery and wine bar and hosted by Waggener Edstrom, one of the longtime biggies in tech PR that counts Microsoft among its key clients.

techjournalistsEmbargoed.jpg

(Photo: from left to right: Mark Glaser, Damon Darlin, Tom Foremski and Dylan Tweney. Photo by Marie Domingo).

The kickoff was a panel smoothly moderated by former tech reporter Sam Whitmore that included editors from the New York Times (Damon Darlin), Wired.com (Dylan Tweney), Mark Glaser, MediaShift (PBS) and the tech blog Silicon Valley Watcher (Tom Foremski).

The reason embargoes are controversial is they require reporters give up a level of control in how and when a story is reported. Publications and Web sites also often break embargo agreements, deliberately or by accident, leaving the competition fuming as they scramble to catch up in this increasingly real-time news cycle.

“Embargo is Latin for ‘(expletive) you’!” cracked Tweney. “For the reader embargoes let us do more timely, thorough coverage, but we’ve also been screwed by them.”

(more) |

Posted by David Needle at 6:51 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | Share

October 14, 2009, 9:01 PM

Last chance to see world's ugliest Web site

Oddly enough, there’s a company eager to stake the claim of World’s Ugliest Web site.

“Over the past few months, our team has visited thousands of Web sites, and none is as ugly as Guidezilla,” said Ryan Duques of WD Enterprises, citing Guidezilla’s lackluster graphics, tricky navigability, and ho-hum fonts as examples of its unsightliness.

WD Enterprises owns Guidezilla, an event calendar site. The company had no qualms proclaiming its own site as the world’s ugliest in a release, part of a clever campaign (hey, it caught my eye) to tout a site redesign set to be unveiled November 2.

uuuuugly.gif

“We engaged our users as a focus group and then began to scour the Internet for best-in-class examples. While visiting these sites we realized something else — ours is really ugly,” said Duques.

The new look will enhance the user’s experience with improved navigation, clean graphics, and faster loading pages.

Currently focused on the northeast, Guidezilla.com accepts and hosts events from around the United States. The site also acts as an aggregator, which republishes events on Web sites like www.madisonct.com, brooklynheightsblog.com, and www.lncurrents.com.

(more) |

Posted by David Needle at 9:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

October 12, 2009, 6:30 PM

Data intelligence firm Atigeo lands IBM

Atigeo will have its formal coming out party next week at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. CEO and co-founder Michael Sandoval is a former director of partner strategy and general manager at Microsoft where he worked for ten years overseeing three consulting groups at the software giant that catered to the needs of large companies.

That experience led to the creation of Atigeo, an “intelligence platform” company based in Bellevue, WA. Atigeo, the result of a four year R&D effort, is, the company said, built on the principle of consumer empowerment. More details about the company and IBM’s involvement will be announced next week, but it already has customers and a fair bit of information at its Web site. ATIGEO_logo_top_left.jpg

Atigeo’s xPatterns platform, Lifepass, is designed to let consumers manage their digital identity, have more personalized online experiences, and increase their privacy. The company said enterprise partners can use the intelligent algorithms and adaptive learning woven into xPatterns, to discover, understand, and act on data patterns that may be overlooked by traditional analytics tools.

In contrast to conventional thinking, Atigeo said it believes consumers and companies can find greater success when individuals control their personal information, and allow businesses to market to them on their terms. The idea is to let consumers receive more relevant messaging, and, in theory, businesses gain more satisfied customers.

xPatterns is described as a high definition data relevance platform that uses advanced artificial intelligence to learn and derive true knowledge from data to facilitate personalized human experiences of “unprecedented relevance.”

SportsBuy, “the world’s largest dedicated marketplace for sports collectibles,” had offered customers recommendations based on a static keyword search system, but said it moved to Atigeo for greater personalization and relevance. Also, Atigeo’s Lifepass protects the individual user’s data in a private profile resident with the user, instead of cookies, which puts Atigeo in compliance with the most stringent US and EU privacy regulations.

Posted by David Needle at 6:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

October 12, 2009, 3:10 PM

Why Steve Ballmer now digs high-priced phones

Remember Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s famous jab at the iPhone when it first came out at a $500 price?

“…that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard,” said Ballmer.

Well it wasn’t really the most expensive phone in the world. In fact, Ballmer just endorsed another one costing $500 more — but hey, it has a keyboard. Steve Ballmer wtih Armani.jpg Ballmer was on hand with famed Italian designer Giorgio Armani October 9 to help launch a new Armani-Samsung smartphone that will sell for 700-euro ($1,032) and will, of course, run Microsoft’s new Windows Mobile 6.5 software. It actually sports both a touch screen and keypad.

Samsung said the new Giorgio Armani-Samsung smartphone is “the most elegant and functional mobile on the market.”

The phone features what the Samsung said is a unique two step tilt hinge form factor with both full touch screen and QWERTY keyboard hybrid, and “a stunning 3.5 inch Ultra Brilliant AMOLED display.”

(more) |

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October 9, 2009, 6:23 PM

Is GPS that 'talks' to cars a safety breakthrough?

The next great car safety breakthrough could come from outer space.

Ford Motor Company and Auburn University said a joint research project shows global positioning system (GPS) satellites that “talks” to cars could help prevent accidents in the future.

The idea is that a GPS satellite could work as a kind of early warning system that detects when a vehicle is about to lose control, and communicate with the vehicle’s stability control systems and other safety features to prevent a rollover or, in theory, other types of accidents. Fordhero_taursat.jpg

Ford said virtual reality tests show that GPS satellites can precisely monitor a vehicle’s motion, which could improve the speed and effectiveness of electronic stability control systems. The car company sounds eager to move ahead with the project.

“A satellite orbiting the earth could someday prevent an auto accident,” said Dr. Gerhard Schmidt, Ford’s CTO and vice president of research and advanced engineering. “We applaud the Auburn team for these advancements and look forward to working together on the next phase of this research, including developing prototype vehicles.”

The research findings will be presented next week at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics in San Antonio, Texas, Oct. 11-14.

The project is part of Ford Motor Company’s $4 million investment in university research programs in 2009 that includes 16 safety projects.

Volvo goes under cover

Separately, Volvo sneaked a preview of its sporty new Volvo S60 not set for release until next year. The company said a disguised prototype S60 sedan was driven through the streets of Copenhagen to test a new safety technology that can detect a pedestrian in front of the car and brake automatically if the driver doesn’t react in time.

Presumably the test was a success based on Volvo’s upbeat release on the project, though I haven’t checked accident reports in Copenhagen.

The new technology, Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake and Pedestrian Detection, will be introduced with the new Volvo S60 in 2010. Volvo said its safety experts have been working with Pedestrian Detection technology for ten years and have already tested it in other cars in other parts of the world.

Posted by David Needle at 6:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Share

October 2, 2009, 12:52 AM

What's the future of advertising?

Google and the Wharton School think it can help provide some of the answers.

The two are teaming up on “Fast. Forward” a new YouTube channel that features short, 30 sec - 3 minute videos from industry and academic thought leaders. The project is an outgrowth of research being done at the Wharton School’s Future of Advertising Project.

Wharton Marketing Professor Jerry Wind told me the aim of the project is to reexamine advertising and figure out what works and what doesn’t.

“And then we thought, ‘Why limit it to our 40 or so advisory members? Why not open it up to a broader audience and the wisdom of the crowds’.”

Google loved the idea and the Fast.Forward marketing channel was born as a partnership between the college and the search giant. Wind said the short videos are just the start. Thumbnail image for Thumbnail image for FastForwardLogo.jpg

“The idea is to become the place for credible, objective information on marketing and advertising that’s current and most compelling. We’ll also have links to other publications and research being done at Wharton on many of the topics being covered.”

Also in the works is a recommendation feature that will offer viewers suggestions on similar videos or ones that viewers of the same video also viewed.

How about the viability of YouTube itself as a marketing vehicle as a topic for discussion?

(more) |

Posted by David Needle at 12:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

September 23, 2009, 3:20 PM

HP says goodbye to EDS name

The name EDS, long synonymous with high end, IT outsourcing and consulting services, is going away. Today HP brought the consulting giant further into its fold with the announcement that EDS has been renamed HP Enterprise Services.

Hewlett-Packard bought EDS in May, 2008 in a blockbuster $13.9 billion deal.

Before the HP purchase, EDS itself had changed its name from the Electronic Data Systems.

The name change marks the next major step in a year-long integration of EDS into HP and emphasizes the growing global role of enterprise technology services in HP’s portfolio, the company said in a release.

hp_eds_merger_handshake.JPG

HP also announced its Technology Solutions Group will be renamed the HP Enterprise Business. HP said Enterprise Business will focus on business and government organizations of all sizes. In addition to enterprise services, its portfolio includes servers, storage, software, networking and technology services.

The news comes in the wake of Dell’s mega-purchase (not EDS-size, but $3.9 billion is still a lot of money) of Perot Systems. While HP’s renaming doesn’t appear to change anything operationally, it may serve to underscore that HP has completed the long, painful process of integrating EDS following its acquisition, while Dell’s work with Perot has just begun. HP cut 24,000 jobs at EDS post-acquistion.

“Customers are facing tough challenges in their technology environments,” said Ann Livermore, HP’s executive vice president.

“Challenges such as a rigid infrastructure, increasing applications and information complexity are restricting the speed in which IT can add value to the business. HP is the best at helping customers manage and transform their technology environments to deliver better business outcomes.”

All of HP’s Enterprise Business units will continue to report to Livermore, the company said. Joe Eazor, senior vice president and general manager of HP Enterprise Services, credited the strength of EDS’s services brand, but indicated it will do better under the HP banner.

“Today we are combining the strong services brand equity that EDS has built over the last 47 years with HP’s technology leadership to become the leading IT services provider,” Eazor said in a statement. “We will continue to deliver the same service excellence that our clients have come to expect.”

Posted by David Needle at 3:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Share

September 22, 2009, 7:01 PM

Oracle's Larry Ellison unplugged, part deux

Too much good stuff for even a lengthy blog post about last night’s Larry Ellison’s event.

In my earlier blog I focused on his comments regarding Oracle’s purchase of Sun. “We’re keeping everything,” Ellison said in rousing affirmation of his plan to leverage Sun’s technology to transform Oracle into a systems company beyond just software.

He later called Sun “a national treasure” for its many technology advances. Gush Larry, gush.

In response to some witty, if occasionally snide comments and direct questions on stage by former Sun president Ed Zander, Ellison got a few things off his chest. Want to get him agitated? Just mention cloud computing.

“The cloud is water vapor. My objection to cloud computing is that it’s not only the future of computing, but the present and the entire past, fumed Ellison. “Salesforce.com has been around for a decade and Netsuite longer and people say that’s cloud computing, now Google is too. Everyone looks around and says ‘Oh like yeah, I’ve always been doing cloud computing’ even though the term is only about four years old.”

The reason Ellison is touchy on the subject is because Oracle’s been criticized in some circles for not having a cloud strategy.

Thumbnail image for 100_1622.JPG “Yeah, we’re dead if there’s no software in the cloud. All the cloud is, is a computer attached to a network. What are you talking about?” he exclaimed, shouting the question every time he made a point to show Oracle already is in the cloud.

He recalled how last decade he was one of the prime movers, along with Sun, of a concept called the network computer that treated computing more like a utility any number of devices and systems could plug in to. The NC never got anywhere because we didn’t have anything close to the broadband infrastructure we have today.

Oracle doesn’t know the cloud? “What are you talking about?”

Ellison said Oracle has offered ERP systems as a service for a monthly fee for the past decade. “You want to call it cloud computing? Fine.”

(more) |

Posted by David Needle at 7:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

September 22, 2009, 2:49 AM

Ellison: 'Sun losing $100 million a month'

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Larry Ellison was on fire Monday night. Steve Jobs is the unquestioned master of the pre-rehearsed, carefully choreographed event speech complete with new technology props, but for off-the-cuff, tell ‘em like I see ‘em, entertaining bluster, Oracle’s CEO gets my vote.

Ellison spoke before a packed hall at the Fairmont Hotel here Monday night “in conversation” with Silicon Valley veteran Ed Zander at a Churchill Club event. Zander, now an investor and advisor to various tech companies, has worn many high level hats over his career including president of Sun Microsystems and CEO of Motorola.

100_1645.JPG (Photos by David Needle)

And since Oracle and Sun had a fairly chummy relationship during Zander’s tenure, I expected mostly softball Q&A banter.

Wrong. Zander was great. He preceded the key question of the night, Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, by asking:

“What could you possibly be thinking, why didn’t you call me first?” Zander went on to detail reasons why the acquisition didn’t seem to make sense. For one, Oracle’s success over the past thirty years has been about a steady drumbeat of software, software and more software available on multiple platforms.

With Sun, said Zander, Oracle’s getting a struggling hardware company that’s losing market share.

Ellison gave Zander an “are you finished?” look and defended the deal.

“We have no interest in being in the hardware business,” said Ellison.

That brought a hush to the room. Here it comes, the conspiracy theorists were right, Oracle is going to jettison Sun’s hardware business.

(more) |

Posted by David Needle at 2:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Share

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