Going way out on the limb here...I wonder if at some point Google will consider breaking itself apart proactively.
Mainly to avoid the age-old cycle of: 1) Start up with big name VC backing 2) Work towards establishing (effective) monopoly in your segment 3) If big/important enough, users start to grumble and press increasingly covers the ramifications of too much influence in segment 4) Congress gets involved at the behest of competitor's lobbyists 5) Judicial branch gets involved 6) Spend lots of money on legal defending your market position, lose focus and become fat and lazy 7) Grow into a lumbering behemoth which loses their market position to more nimble/creative startups
Few have tried jumping from step 3 directly to creating separate companies that would most likely all still be in the growth phase (obviously a big plus for shareholders). Mainly because companies in that position are few and far between. But it's certainly possible for GOOG to become the first trillion dollar mkt cap company if investors think it's worth much more as separate entities than a single unit facing the specter of steps 4-7.
Or this is all meaningless drivel because the business units are too intertwined (core databases, no way to establish Chinese walls, etc.). Just a thought anyway.
My local McClatchy-owned news site recently went to strictly Facebook login posting. Which whittled out the obvious trolls but as a byproduct, resulted in the same set of commenters on every article.
But what's interesting is that even with their full names, pictures and even employer names showing alongside the posts, they still submit inflamatory and trollish stuff. Especially politics and religion. Like one adjuster for Allstate recently went on a rampage about an unmarried female congressional candidate. Lots of religious invective and called her son illegitimate, etc. Not a joejob either, I actually know this person tangentially and it jives with her meatspace persona.
So I suspect you're right that comments will eventually have to die to maintain revenue generating subscribers. Because no matter how they try to reign in the trolls, there's always a constant flow of average joes who really haven't figured out the implications of exposing yourself through social media. And most likely never will until it hits home (i.e. getting fired).
Unfortunately a lot of their competition is pulling a Gnome3 and messing up their sites. Moniker is imploding as we speak, and Namecheap added enough Javascript-for-Javascript's-sake to give Godaddy a wet dream. Incremental development was supposed to generate highly-usable sites because common sense was supposed to be injected by the consumer of the site along the way. But it seems like the exact opposite has happened. "Hot messes" are everywhere.
I honestly think the employment pool for web developers has been deluged by hipsters over the last few years. Where have all the down-to-earth pros gone?
Nope. At the end I specifically said EV. Which for MSFT was cut in half over the period, unlike ORCL which is back to almost the same as the bubble peak. Its direct competitor Apple ate Microsoft's lunch during that period and AAPL's EV shows that fact clearly.
And needless to say, comparing MSFT to pets.com makes no sense, nor does lumping "tech" in one big basket.
Bottom line is they had a monopoly and a golden opportunity to leverage it into the same thing that Apple did. They sat around and tried to protect the empire instead of innovating. That's what the valuation shows in black and white.
Given the dotcom bubble I thought it would be unfair too. But if you look at just large cap tech, it's nowhere near as bad as what happened to the pure-play dotcoms and networkers:
Over the same time frame: Oracle: $86B -> $185B Apple: $18B -> $547B HP: $45B -> $64B And of course IPOs that happened a couple years later like Google and Salesforce were multi-baggers.
So comparing the peak mkt cap of the bubble is actually not that unfair. Considering Microsoft had a monopoly in 2000 and couldn't even maintain a constant enterprise value over 14 years, again, I wouldn't call that a "wildly successful" performance by the CEO.
Like it or not, CEOs are measured by their share price. When Ballmer took over in first quarter of 2000, Microsoft's market cap was $534.42B. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock...
Their current market cap is $399B.
$135B in market cap was lost over 14 years while he was CEO. You may be right that he's a great marketing guy, etc., but "wildly successful" as a CEO may be a touch unrealistic.
Whether a drug actually works is immune to politics and bureaucracy because it's a scientific and statistical issue (which assumes professional trial design and execution).
Whether a drug is approved certainly considers politics. See the travesty surrounding commissioner Margaret Hamburg and Eteplirsen for the treatment of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. It's gut-wrenching. So you're right in a sense, just a little harsh imho.
But I think you may be misunderstanding how drug development works and why it drags out so long (i.e. when you said "get her some stem cells"). It's because it's really tough to make something that works. The FDA is responsible for approving trial design, considering input from advisory committees and give final marketing approval to drugs. They do not do the R&D, design trials or conduct any phases of the trial, that's up to the individual biotech and pharmaceutical companies to perform and pay for. It takes a lot of time and money for both sides to come to an agreement that something is safe and effective enough to be injected into a human being.
So the "pioneering medical research" you're referring to is basically 1) consult a specialist to see what drugs/therapies have been accepted as beneficial, 2) there may be some drugs in phase 2 or 3 that have been given accelerated approval or compassionate use status by the FDA or 3) see what's available on clinicaltrials.gov and hope there's one she qualifies for. Very broad but this is the general idea of how it works; going outside of these paths is a recipe for disappointment.
Lastly, your point about finding support groups is really good, it's a way to short-circuit the process and see what others have done.
I'm not either and don't know the answer, maybe the actual neuroscientist that responded earlier can. My main point was that only controlled trials will answer that question. The charlatans specifically target folks like the submitter that are in a dire situation looking for hope. Warnings like I posted above from the FDA help separate the pseudo from real science and results. Thought it was worth mentioning for those who only know the term at a cursory level.
Worth modding up. For years the term "stem cell therapy" has attracted a bunch of charlatans promising cures way beyond what's currently feasible (or realistically possible). The FDA weighed in again recently: http://www.fda.gov/forconsumer...
Having said that, companies like Neuralstem are conducting actual research into regenerative medicine with clinical trials but it remains to be seen how this will work out. And there is serious medical research into cancer stem cells (CD47, etc.) that is an extension of immunotherapy using monoclonal antibodies.
So it's important to be specific. Traveling to Mexico so you can have some "stem cells" implanted in your spine and expect a magical cure...not a great idea.
Given how many folks have gently pointed out the numerous factual, logical and common sense errors in your previous slashdot posts...I wouldn't be too hasty in casting stones.
In that case, now would be a fine time for them to go under. But not when LIBOR is sitting at 7% and a lot of local munis would have defaulted due to the damaged tax base. My point was that it was mandatory from an economic perspective, not considering the politics.
There are hundreds of thousands of jobs in the parts sector, mainly in poor red states. When the shit was hitting the fan, folks out here in the real world were experiencing a frozen banking system, and the prospect of 30%+ unemployment in states with a concentration of those parts suppliers. It would have taken many, many years to clean up the mess.
Balanced against a bunch of rich blowhards on AM radio/cable news screaming about the pure ideologies of capitalism just so they can increase viewership and charge higher ad rates...the choice was pretty clear back then.
For supermarkets at least, you don't always need to have a rewards card to take advantage of the (manufactured) savings. Tell the cashier you forgot/lost yours and they'll use the card on top of the register. There's a reason it's there; when the customer knows they're paying more than they have to...that's a pissed customer and the manager doesn't want that. Doesn't matter if it's the customer's "fault" or not.
You've already given them a (database) key anyway by using a credit card so the principle of not using them is kind of moot. Why throw away the savings?
The market cap of the company is $189B. That's the stock price times number of outstanding shares (not considering fully diluted share count). It is not related to income or cash+assets on hand. The stock price is a reflection of those items by the market, but is not directly related.
The $200B figure was treated on the balance sheet over time as income or some other accounting item which you'll need to analyze the 10-K to find out for each year. Those dollars were then saved or paid out as dividends to shareholders, corporate expenses, etc. Whatever was most advantageous taxwise and needed for capex, etc.
So the point is that the $200B figure is not directly related to the market cap as you proposed, although funds may have viewed that free money as a positive when analyzing whether to buy the stock.
Dice Dice Baby, Dice Dice Baby All right stop, collaborate and listen Dice is back with my brand new invention Something grabs a hold of me tightly Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly Will it ever stop? Yo – I don't know...
Well, personally my first thought after reading the summary was "but how do you trust the BIOS?" A few years ago I'd have immediately said that's conspiracy theory and dismissed it (along with the other items you listed). But after a year of exposure to the Snowden and RSA revelations and everything else, it pains me to say these NSA questions aren't so far fetched any more.
Sure they may not be probable but they could be possible. No matter how rational you think you are, it really messes with one's mind. Subtle paranoia, if you will.
Great article. Including the openssl bug(s) he pointed out...was expecting something esoteric but turned out to be really straightforward i.e. the type of error you make at 2am, taking the size of the pointer instead of the actual size of the buffer.
Corporate profits and GDP growth have a pretty strong dependency on productivity numbers. Over the last 20 years a majority of the rise in productivity was due to the massive network buildout for telecom and internet.
So nowadays the internet is inextricably linked to the economy as a whole. Akin to other vital components such as electricity...things that qualify as "utilities" because of their economic importance to our society. Try removing the internet and see what the effect is on your 401-k.
The real question is whether that projected liability cost would offset the bad PR cost (intangible but notable).
Really surprised Costco let it get to this point and didn't find a middle ground to spin it. They had to know social media would be all over this in a really bad way (facts be damned as usual).
It is a little difficult to parse at first glance. He's saying that Costco is completely focused on the "jars they won't sell" aspect (first two sentences).
By concentrating on that, they're blinded to the issue that the homeless wouldn't be buying peanut butter at Costco anyway. So the third sentence is really the key point, that Costco should do a facepalm when they realize the problem with their logic.
Slashdot Mirror
Going way out on the limb here...I wonder if at some point Google will consider breaking itself apart proactively.
Mainly to avoid the age-old cycle of:
1) Start up with big name VC backing
2) Work towards establishing (effective) monopoly in your segment
3) If big/important enough, users start to grumble and press increasingly covers the ramifications of too much influence in segment
4) Congress gets involved at the behest of competitor's lobbyists
5) Judicial branch gets involved
6) Spend lots of money on legal defending your market position, lose focus and become fat and lazy
7) Grow into a lumbering behemoth which loses their market position to more nimble/creative startups
Few have tried jumping from step 3 directly to creating separate companies that would most likely all still be in the growth phase (obviously a big plus for shareholders). Mainly because companies in that position are few and far between. But it's certainly possible for GOOG to become the first trillion dollar mkt cap company if investors think it's worth much more as separate entities than a single unit facing the specter of steps 4-7.
Or this is all meaningless drivel because the business units are too intertwined (core databases, no way to establish Chinese walls, etc.). Just a thought anyway.
Heh. And for folks who have a Microsoft store nearby, stop in and ask if they have any used MBAs for sale ;)
+1 Insightbait
My local McClatchy-owned news site recently went to strictly Facebook login posting. Which whittled out the obvious trolls but as a byproduct, resulted in the same set of commenters on every article.
But what's interesting is that even with their full names, pictures and even employer names showing alongside the posts, they still submit inflamatory and trollish stuff. Especially politics and religion. Like one adjuster for Allstate recently went on a rampage about an unmarried female congressional candidate. Lots of religious invective and called her son illegitimate, etc. Not a joejob either, I actually know this person tangentially and it jives with her meatspace persona.
So I suspect you're right that comments will eventually have to die to maintain revenue generating subscribers. Because no matter how they try to reign in the trolls, there's always a constant flow of average joes who really haven't figured out the implications of exposing yourself through social media. And most likely never will until it hits home (i.e. getting fired).
Excellent answer.
Unfortunately a lot of their competition is pulling a Gnome3 and messing up their sites. Moniker is imploding as we speak, and Namecheap added enough Javascript-for-Javascript's-sake to give Godaddy a wet dream. Incremental development was supposed to generate highly-usable sites because common sense was supposed to be injected by the consumer of the site along the way. But it seems like the exact opposite has happened. "Hot messes" are everywhere.
I honestly think the employment pool for web developers has been deluged by hipsters over the last few years. Where have all the down-to-earth pros gone?
Nope. At the end I specifically said EV. Which for MSFT was cut in half over the period, unlike ORCL which is back to almost the same as the bubble peak. Its direct competitor Apple ate Microsoft's lunch during that period and AAPL's EV shows that fact clearly.
And needless to say, comparing MSFT to pets.com makes no sense, nor does lumping "tech" in one big basket.
Bottom line is they had a monopoly and a golden opportunity to leverage it into the same thing that Apple did. They sat around and tried to protect the empire instead of innovating. That's what the valuation shows in black and white.
Given the dotcom bubble I thought it would be unfair too. But if you look at just large cap tech, it's nowhere near as bad as what happened to the pure-play dotcoms and networkers:
Over the same time frame:
Oracle: $86B -> $185B
Apple: $18B -> $547B
HP: $45B -> $64B
And of course IPOs that happened a couple years later like Google and Salesforce were multi-baggers.
So comparing the peak mkt cap of the bubble is actually not that unfair. Considering Microsoft had a monopoly in 2000 and couldn't even maintain a constant enterprise value over 14 years, again, I wouldn't call that a "wildly successful" performance by the CEO.
Like it or not, CEOs are measured by their share price. When Ballmer took over in first quarter of 2000, Microsoft's market cap was $534.42B.
http://www.wikinvest.com/stock...
Their current market cap is $399B.
$135B in market cap was lost over 14 years while he was CEO. You may be right that he's a great marketing guy, etc., but "wildly successful" as a CEO may be a touch unrealistic.
Whether a drug actually works is immune to politics and bureaucracy because it's a scientific and statistical issue (which assumes professional trial design and execution).
Whether a drug is approved certainly considers politics. See the travesty surrounding commissioner Margaret Hamburg and Eteplirsen for the treatment of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. It's gut-wrenching. So you're right in a sense, just a little harsh imho.
But I think you may be misunderstanding how drug development works and why it drags out so long (i.e. when you said "get her some stem cells"). It's because it's really tough to make something that works. The FDA is responsible for approving trial design, considering input from advisory committees and give final marketing approval to drugs. They do not do the R&D, design trials or conduct any phases of the trial, that's up to the individual biotech and pharmaceutical companies to perform and pay for. It takes a lot of time and money for both sides to come to an agreement that something is safe and effective enough to be injected into a human being.
So the "pioneering medical research" you're referring to is basically 1) consult a specialist to see what drugs/therapies have been accepted as beneficial, 2) there may be some drugs in phase 2 or 3 that have been given accelerated approval or compassionate use status by the FDA or 3) see what's available on clinicaltrials.gov and hope there's one she qualifies for. Very broad but this is the general idea of how it works; going outside of these paths is a recipe for disappointment.
Lastly, your point about finding support groups is really good, it's a way to short-circuit the process and see what others have done.
I'm not either and don't know the answer, maybe the actual neuroscientist that responded earlier can. My main point was that only controlled trials will answer that question. The charlatans specifically target folks like the submitter that are in a dire situation looking for hope. Warnings like I posted above from the FDA help separate the pseudo from real science and results. Thought it was worth mentioning for those who only know the term at a cursory level.
Worth modding up. For years the term "stem cell therapy" has attracted a bunch of charlatans promising cures way beyond what's currently feasible (or realistically possible). The FDA weighed in again recently: http://www.fda.gov/forconsumer...
Having said that, companies like Neuralstem are conducting actual research into regenerative medicine with clinical trials but it remains to be seen how this will work out. And there is serious medical research into cancer stem cells (CD47, etc.) that is an extension of immunotherapy using monoclonal antibodies.
So it's important to be specific. Traveling to Mexico so you can have some "stem cells" implanted in your spine and expect a magical cure...not a great idea.
Given how many folks have gently pointed out the numerous factual, logical and common sense errors in your previous slashdot posts...I wouldn't be too hasty in casting stones.
In other words, regulation?
The article is referring to statistics regarding the amounts received, not the distribution among the congressional population.
In that case, now would be a fine time for them to go under. But not when LIBOR is sitting at 7% and a lot of local munis would have defaulted due to the damaged tax base. My point was that it was mandatory from an economic perspective, not considering the politics.
There are hundreds of thousands of jobs in the parts sector, mainly in poor red states. When the shit was hitting the fan, folks out here in the real world were experiencing a frozen banking system, and the prospect of 30%+ unemployment in states with a concentration of those parts suppliers. It would have taken many, many years to clean up the mess.
Balanced against a bunch of rich blowhards on AM radio/cable news screaming about the pure ideologies of capitalism just so they can increase viewership and charge higher ad rates...the choice was pretty clear back then.
For supermarkets at least, you don't always need to have a rewards card to take advantage of the (manufactured) savings. Tell the cashier you forgot/lost yours and they'll use the card on top of the register. There's a reason it's there; when the customer knows they're paying more than they have to...that's a pissed customer and the manager doesn't want that. Doesn't matter if it's the customer's "fault" or not.
You've already given them a (database) key anyway by using a credit card so the principle of not using them is kind of moot. Why throw away the savings?
The market cap of the company is $189B. That's the stock price times number of outstanding shares (not considering fully diluted share count). It is not related to income or cash+assets on hand. The stock price is a reflection of those items by the market, but is not directly related.
The $200B figure was treated on the balance sheet over time as income or some other accounting item which you'll need to analyze the 10-K to find out for each year. Those dollars were then saved or paid out as dividends to shareholders, corporate expenses, etc. Whatever was most advantageous taxwise and needed for capex, etc.
So the point is that the $200B figure is not directly related to the market cap as you proposed, although funds may have viewed that free money as a positive when analyzing whether to buy the stock.
Dice Dice Baby, Dice Dice Baby
All right stop, collaborate and listen
Dice is back with my brand new invention
Something grabs a hold of me tightly
Flow like a harpoon daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo – I don't know...
Well, personally my first thought after reading the summary was "but how do you trust the BIOS?" A few years ago I'd have immediately said that's conspiracy theory and dismissed it (along with the other items you listed). But after a year of exposure to the Snowden and RSA revelations and everything else, it pains me to say these NSA questions aren't so far fetched any more.
Sure they may not be probable but they could be possible. No matter how rational you think you are, it really messes with one's mind. Subtle paranoia, if you will.
Great article. Including the openssl bug(s) he pointed out...was expecting something esoteric but turned out to be really straightforward i.e. the type of error you make at 2am, taking the size of the pointer instead of the actual size of the buffer.
Corporate profits and GDP growth have a pretty strong dependency on productivity numbers. Over the last 20 years a majority of the rise in productivity was due to the massive network buildout for telecom and internet.
So nowadays the internet is inextricably linked to the economy as a whole. Akin to other vital components such as electricity...things that qualify as "utilities" because of their economic importance to our society. Try removing the internet and see what the effect is on your 401-k.
The real question is whether that projected liability cost would offset the bad PR cost (intangible but notable).
Really surprised Costco let it get to this point and didn't find a middle ground to spin it. They had to know social media would be all over this in a really bad way (facts be damned as usual).
It is a little difficult to parse at first glance. He's saying that Costco is completely focused on the "jars they won't sell" aspect (first two sentences).
By concentrating on that, they're blinded to the issue that the homeless wouldn't be buying peanut butter at Costco anyway. So the third sentence is really the key point, that Costco should do a facepalm when they realize the problem with their logic.
Carry on.