Monday Grok: Facebook IPO — not everyone’s as greedy as a Wall Street underwriter
In the last 72 hours Mark Zuckerberg made a hero of his bank manager and an honest woman of his wife. That’s a hell of a weekend.
Stories by Andrew Birmingham
Friday Grok: Google gets its mojo back with Knowledge Graph
It seems like we are always dissing on Google. But not today. The search engine giant is about to roll out Knowledge Graph — a semantic Web solution — and the all the portents are good. Excellent in fact.
Tuesday Grok: Groupon surges on latest results, and savage cuts to marketing
Groupon released its latest financial results for its most recent quarter, and the headline numbers look great. They look stunning in fact. A cynic might suggest they are almost too good to be true. It went from a $146.5 million loss in the corresponding quarter last year to an $11.7 loss this quarter in this latest result.*
Thursday Grok: Oracle v Google — fat lady refuses to sing
Google, according to a jury, violated Oracle’s copyright but it hasn’t been able to decide whether Google overstepped the fair use provisions of the law. And we are still waiting for the fat lady to sing. Indeed, she’s just getting warmed up.
Yahoo CEO better Google "Exit", update his LinkedIn profile while he’s at it
Yahoo may well ditch its CEO, Scott Thomson, by the end of this week — assuming he lasts that long. Activist shareholder Daniel Loeb discovered that Thomson had padded (a polite term for ‘lied about’) his computer science qualifications when joining Yahoo. That padding (lying) had been going on for years, as it now transpires.
Wednesday Grok: Google chases paid inclusion, the very evil it once spurned
Google just can’t help itself. It’s like a drunk stumbling into a bar, or a junkie with his bony fingers clamped tightly around a fresh new 50 dollar note. The search engine giant seems determined to self-immolate. Forget about anti-trust for the time being, we’re talking instead about the debasement of its core product.
Monday Grok: Price inquiry — what can the government really do?
Australian software consumers have been getting royally corn holed by vendors like Microsoft and Adobe for years and still are. There’s one simple reason why the suppliers price gouge — because they can.
Friday Grok: Dotcom results — very good news, with more to come
The dotcom sector is blitzing it. Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Zinga have all reported this week, and while commentary has been a little mixed around some of the results, the reality is that the view from the cockpit of the helicopter is spectacular.
Tuesday Grok: It may not be a bubble, but it's a stretch
The universe is expanding. You wouldn’t know it though, as it’s hard to see a bubble expanding from the inside out. But it's an interesting phenomenon, at least right up until the moment when the membrane breaks.
Monday Grok: What do Facebook and Google know about you?
There’s an interesting and typically uncomfortable story published this morning in the Guardian by journalist James Bell where he investigated what information Facebook and Google hold on him.
Thursday Grok: Patently obvious—Apple and Samsung agree to mediation through gritted teeth
It is a little reported side effect of the Apple and Samsung patent stoush that it has engorged the bank balance of technology publishers the world over due to its appeal to those fat, hungry Google spiders.
Tuesday Grok: Top 25 CIO Tweeters, and Facebook buys Instagram for $1b
In between project meetings, arguments with angry stakeholders, irrational budget discussions and all those day-to-day spot fires that make up the working moment of a typical CIO, it’s reassuring to know that there’s still plenty of time to tweet.
Thursday Grok: Nobody tell the Muppets that Groupon is a crock
Groupon is a crock. Its business model is deeply flawed and the numbers spat out by its accounting department are so rubbery you could bounce cheques off them. For the third time in less than two years, and barely six months after its IPO, the company has been forced, again, to acknowledge some shabby accounting practices.
Monday Grok: Girls Around Me app pushed too far
Some days are diamonds. And some days those diamonds are the size of Jupiter. The story which unfolded around the Girls Around Me app in recent days highlights both the best and worst of the net sector.
Thursday Grok: iPad makes Apple’s cash stash the magic pudding
Apple is selling iPads faster than people are being born.* Three million in the first three days — proving once again that Samsung along with all the other tablet makers are still just pretending.