A Personal Blog
Archive for October, 2004
Google Tops Yahoo's Market Cap
Oct 27th
Okay, SearchEngineJournal looks at this from a typical search perspective:
The fact is – Yahoo search is no better than Google now that they have bought up all real competitors. Referred traffic from Yahoo search results to web sites is still only one fifth that of Google. [...] Yahoo is kind of like a WalMart “Portal” that has everything under one roof with over a hundred wildly diverse “properties” that don’t contribute to search relevance or company value.
To me this is more fundamental.
Which company is more vulnerable?
At it’s core, Google is more than just a search company, they are also an advertising company. If either search OR advertising collapses, Google is toast. They don’t provide any other real services that bring in any real dollars.
Yahoo! on the other hand is diversified. Many would say too diversified, or at least not focussed enough. The downside of this is that they have a hard time maximizing any of their properties. The upside, though, is that even if ad dollars fell through they would still survive on the basis of services users are buying. They’d need to cut the fat and all that, but they’d easily survive and adapt.
This’ll be an interesting race to watch, but I expect Google’s share price to stay quite high until they do something wrong, in which case I expect it to completely collapse. Right now their share price is based largely on goodwill with customers and advertisers. If that ever changes, it’s Google’s share price which will be hit fastest and hardest.
Microsoft Deveveloper Division Leaders' Blogs
Oct 26th
I know most folk won’t care, but this is mainly for myself so I can look into these tomorrow sometime.
A page listing the divisional leaders’ blogs.
If you ever wanted something straight from the horse’s ass mouth, there would certainly be worse places to get it.
Dot-Com Bubble, How We've Missed You
Oct 26th
Google pulled a dot-com’esque IPO. Many people felt it was because they had a solid business plan and were clearly profitable. Whatever, no bricks and mortar business would IPO that way (in today’s market). Still, congrats to all who made money. I’d been fearing this’d start a larger trend it seems others were quite excited by the prospect of more easy money.
edit: whoop, forget to mention who this was. It’s the IPO of Shopping.com. Sorry.
Just under 7,000,000 shares at 18$ were released today, only to soar by over 50% to roughly 27$.
Yes, that’s a market cap of (hold your breath) 189,000,000$ on earnings of …
For the twelve months ended June 30 2004, the company generated almost $16 million in operating cash flow (or EBITDA) on $84 million in total revenue.
The second tech IPO to go extremely well. Whether we’re in “bubble mode” is anyone’s best guess (and anyone who’s smarter than me’s Educated Opinion).
Congrats to the investors. Hang onto your hats because there’s another dozen tech IPO’s who’ve been holding off about to make a run for the gates before the end of the year.
The 1 Year Letter
Oct 26th
In every job I’ve ever held I’ve always written a letter. If I stay a year, it’s delivered on my anniversary date. If I don’t, it’s part of my letter of resignation.
The letter basically has 3 components: a huge thanks for the opportunity, some of the things I’m looking forward to for the future (kind of a “here’s what’s possible” section) and finally things that really need looked at.
It’s a really ballsy / foolish / egotistical thing to do, and I know that. Upon leaving my one and only dot-com position, Iwrote something to the effect of (boiled down) “this place is okay, but has no business strategy and in spite of serious funding will flounder until it finds just such a strategy”.
That was the only negative letter I’ve written though. Every other one (I’m at 5 so far) have all been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging because, ultimately, I believed in the place I was working.
Embarrassingly, and probably sadly, each one of my letters has been bang on. Maybe it’s because I never write them lightly or in a cocky manner. I often spend more than 10 hours agonizing over them. Sometimes they are self obvious. One time it served as a wakeup call. Every other time it’s effectively been ignored with a “sure young’un, whatever” shrug and a smile. But, again, each time they’ve been right.
I don’t say that pompously. It’s just my string of luck so far.
I’m approaching my 1-Year anniversary here at HSC. Sure it’s not until February, but with a baby, 3 weeks of holidays and Christmas coming up it might as well be right around the corner.
And I’m starting to think about this letter.
I’m seriously debating not doing it. Not because I’m afraid I’ll be wrong, but because I’m afraid I’ll be right.
Earlier today I mentioned that I was “walk the tightrope between honesty and losing my job“. That’s exactly how I feel. HSC’s been good to me. They hired me for a job that I wasn’t actually qualified for, gave me time to learn the ropes and have given me the freedom to practice my unique blend of skills fairly well.
But I am still left questionning the point of these letters. Is it to leave a big “I told you so” behind? Is it actually to encourage change? Is it to satisfy my own ego?
It’s always difficult to feel like you’re being heard. But when your director tells you “I see you as a mowing the lawn type of guy” (ie: doing the grunt work) it’s hard not to feel… Pigeonholed.
But HSC, healthcare and public sector work in general excites me. The politics, the lack of opportunity for advancement and hte lack of communication annoy me, but those are things I know I can live with (having been in several similar situations in the past).
What do you think? Is there a point to such a letter, even a well intentioned one? Or am I just spinning my wheels and ultimately wasting my breath?
Eminem Mosh Video
Oct 26th
While I really try and stay away from political statements here. And while if I were voting I’d be voting for Kerry, that’s not why I’m posting this.
I’m posting this because the content of this video is not only incredibly, incredibly strong but is also incredibly focussed: vote or lose out. Stand up for what you believe in. Don’t stand for being lied to. Don’t let your generation get trampled.
It’s in that vein, irrespective of my beliefs, that I’m mirroring this video, since the source site is getting hammered.
The video is now also available at Eminem’s site.
