I don't see what this discussion has to do with monopolies. Clearly Google does not have a monopoly; if a competitor with better search comes along, they can topple Google.
I was referring to management's monopoly of voting shares. This is a bad arrangement for shareholders. If senior management is doing a bad job, superclass shares make it quite difficult to fire the execs. You may think Google management is doing a good job, and they have in general with the technology so far, but their bungling of the IPO does not bode well for the future. The problem is that they have telegraphed that they are not be held accountable, which is a bad sign for a public company. If they want total control, they should just stay private.
A shareholder does not own a company in the same way that I own my fridge
You own 100% of your fridge, presumably. It's big enough to acccommodate your food storage requirements. But let's say you have roomates and need a bigger fridge, for mutual benefit. You might split the cost, but that means you will have to share the benefits of the fridge. You will likely have an informal arrangement, but it is implied that your roomate will get to use fridge if he or she put in money. It's no different with a company; the shareholders are entitled to a say in issuance of a dividend, policy, board membership, mergers, acquisistions, etc. Shareholders are entitled after buying a piece of the company.
Studies have been done on companies that have superclass stock. The common stock usually trades at a discount to similar public companies as shareholder discount the price for their diminshed influence. Note that YHOO does not have superclass stock; we can expect Google to trade at a discount to YHOO, which is a price lower than the projected IPO range. There's a reason institutional money managers are staying away at this point.
My point about Communism was that the Bolsheviks had similar notions about what was best for the "public good" while they violently resisted any sort of accountability. You seem to suggest Google management knows what's best and also should not be expected to be accountable. (I don't think Google is run by commies, and the example is admittedly extreme.) Management should be doing strange things with voting rights. If mgmt is doing a good job, execs don't have to worry about being second guessed or being fired. Sorry, I just don't believe in managers of public companies playing the sorts of games the Google people are playing, especially when they are claiming to not be "evil". That's how bad things always start. Arrogance is not a good business attribute.
So "monopoly power" is good thing in your mind evidently. BTW, shareholders just happen to own the company.
What most Google-bashers don't understand is that when Google talks about not being evil, it's always thinking of the general public that uses their search engine, not special interest groups.
But of course, the general public is not to be trusted with equal voting rights. I think a similar approach was tried in Russia around 1917. It didn't work.
I've always loved google, but this sort of bugs me.
Google management lost its credibilty with me when they came out and said "We won't be evil", then issued two classes of stock. One for the public, another for a superclass of shareholders that have superior voting rights. Evidently Google mgmt is All Knowing and Supreme compared to the investing public, and certainly should not be accountable to the "little people." If that isn't "evil", I don't know what is.
This business about buying back inappropriately issued stock should not be a surprise at all, considering the astounding arrogance of a company that would issue superclass voting rights equity. Google deserves to have its IPO implode, but I feel bad for those who would be hurt by the consequences.
Right, that's an amazing sequence, especially when you realize the horse mask is anything but airtight - as if it would really make that much of a difference.
Apparently the bomb designers miscalculated something. The yield was supposed to be about 5 megatons. Turned out to be closer to 15. (Miscalculated!) The fallout irradiated other islanders and a fishing boat that were supposed to be safe. I'd say this event qualifies as one of the biggest engineering f-ups in history.
Here's an interesting animation about fallout from the Nevada tests. Guess it's for people who don't like to read.
Being a scientist himself, he surely knows what's good for his country.
If this is the case, I guess non-scientists can all remove themselves from politics. But would the world really be better off if William Shockley were president? If Edward Teller were in charge of arms control?
I DO use FF. But how do I really know it's any more secure than IE? Or Some Other Browser(TM)? I don't. Seems to me we have come to the point where the computer just can not be trusted. (If you say some other OS is safer, you may be right today, but wrong tomorrow.)
Is it possible to have a truly secure box that is used for
Word processing/spreadsheets
Gaming
Photo editing
Email
Reading/.
etc
and doing online transactions? How many banks allow their employees or customers to use their ATM network for all of these purposes? What's needed is a more robust model: Specialized hardware and software, maybe something sinilar to VPN. I don't think a generic PC will ever be secure enough, regardless of OS. It's time to think of new solutions for security problems.
made deals with PC manufacturers to bundle MS-DOS with the machine
You might want to read about the deal Gates "forced" on IBM. It was actually the other way around. Gates wanted to make a deal with IBM to include MS-BASIC with the PC, but IBM didn't have an OS for it, which they needed first. Gates suggested IBM go to Kildall of CPM fame. (Gates didn't want an OS business, he was more interested in languages) Kildall wasn't there; his wife and a laywer turned away "Big Evil IBM". IBM kept twisting Gates' arm, so Gates and Allen bought QDOS (quick-and-dirty-OS) from a guy in Seattle to make IBM happy.
One concession Gates asked for was the ability to sell the OS to other vendors offering 808x boxes. No one thought this was necessarily worth very much since there were not many clones, and everyone thought IBM had the market locked up anyway.
So many think Microsoft is were it is because it is big bad and evil, so there has to be legislation to box the company. Gates on the other hand, has stated that he is always wondering which garage is going to emit something that will undermine the business. I'm not an apologist for Microsoft. The company has done some stupid things. Just not as consistently as the competition
Sure would be interesting to see the P&L statement from Linspire. Last I heard MR was looking to raise money via IPO to pay off his loan to the company. The move might only be an attempt to create interest in the IPO.
As for the stores, without something like the iPod, it's going to be difficult to draw customers. The specialty stores are already competing with Wal*Mart, among others.
Hopefully, if succesful, the major car companies (Toyota, GM, Ford, Daimler, VW) will take notice and do something similar.
I agree with you. I have been wondering why they don't make it easier to integrate players. One possible answer is their relationship with the sat-radio companies. No doubt all of the manufacturers spent a fair amount of money designing sat-radio features into their systems; there may even be exclusion clauses imposed by the sat-radio people for a certain period of time. (Anyone know?) I believe sat-radio ultimately does *not* make sense, at least the way it is priced today. The only place it is really appealing is in the car, but that's only because it is not easy to plug in an MP3 player.
Wonder how the sat-radio people will react to this development.
I hope that IBM/Novell/SuSe provide some easy and well documented way (should be in the training "If you have a problem, don't mumble, speak up and we'll fix it!")
Sure they will, as long as they get to say: "That will be E200 / hour please..." They might consider taking a loss leader to get things started, but remember these are public companies. Their institutional shareholders care about earnings much more than desktops.
Not once does Spolsky mention code access security. From what I have observed, Microsoft's efforts seem to be directed towards downloaded modules that run on the CLR. Rich client / web deployment. Of course the obvious problem is security. ActiveX fails in this regard since it is all or nothing; the CAS model offers much more resolution. Good for the developer and the user in theory.
The trick is to make it easy for a typical user to understand how to configure their machine to do what it should do, and nothing else.
Interesting how so many people make claims about Microsoft, yet don't seem to be very familiar with some of their key technologies. It would have been a much more interesting article if Spolsky had addressed CAS as well.
Or from their perspective - prevents some small company with a single patent covering the double-click from shaking down as Eolas did. I think we can expect every mundane action being patented by large companies.
Rand would admire Gates for dominating his market and going for more. I think it unlikely that she would criticize his foundation, or Ellison's or Teresa Heinz' either, because of the way the foundations are run. She would disparage government run services to no end. It would be interesting to know what she thought of Rockefeller or Carnegie and their foundations. I don't recall reading any criticism by her.
Interesting to speculate as to who "Toohey" would be whispering to today.
Try explaining the PDF version of the spreadsheet originally embedded in the Word doc to someone. OO works well within each application, but without an equivalent COM framework, replacement of Office is unlikely to happen in a big way.
Price comparisons are also dicey. It's not that hard to find Office greatly discounted if you look.
I have. I didn't think it was that great, at least when compared with the alternative I describe.
Now if it had TiVo functionality it would be well worth it, but I'm sure the RIAA would make that so expensive the subscription price would be far more than $10/mo.
Speaking of satellite radio, at what point does stream ripping endanger that business model? Good rippers will likely increase the demand for Internet radio. People dump the streams to recordable media, then play those streams instead of getting a satellite subscription.
I do something similar now: Make CDs from iTMS, my own collection of CDs or MP3s, and listen to them wherever I might have otherwise listened to satellite radio. I figure the $10 / mo plus the price of the satellite receiver just isn't worth it in comparison. This way I have persistent copies of the stuff I like, and can call it up on demand.
It's anyone's guess what music distribution will look like in the future, but I have my doubts about satellite delivery.
There is no polite way to point out how completely busted you are
I should have been more clear about specifying the overall retail experience, not just music. Amazon is worse for music, not doubt about it. There are no tracks (generally) for sale in eBay. But if you comapre the experience of shopping for books on Amazon with shopping for music on iTMS, Amazon is much better then iTMS in its core space. Just one example: Shopping cart purchasing or buy immediate. Why not both? No wish lists on iTMS. No reviews, either.
This stuff may seem trivial, but it matters to a lot of people.
In addition, iTMS isn't all that great. I use it, I get what I want from it, but it is no where near as polished in terms of retail experience as eBay or Amazon. iTMS may be better than the others in a general sense, but it could easily be overtaken by competitors, especially if a hardware device evolves (or tastes change) that is more desirable than the iPod.
It may very well be that Jobs is about to repeat the mistake he made with the PC.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see what this discussion has to do with monopolies. Clearly Google does not have a monopoly; if a competitor with better search comes along, they can topple Google.
I was referring to management's monopoly of voting shares. This is a bad arrangement for shareholders. If senior management is doing a bad job, superclass shares make it quite difficult to fire the execs. You may think Google management is doing a good job, and they have in general with the technology so far, but their bungling of the IPO does not bode well for the future. The problem is that they have telegraphed that they are not be held accountable, which is a bad sign for a public company. If they want total control, they should just stay private.
A shareholder does not own a company in the same way that I own my fridge
You own 100% of your fridge, presumably. It's big enough to acccommodate your food storage requirements. But let's say you have roomates and need a bigger fridge, for mutual benefit. You might split the cost, but that means you will have to share the benefits of the fridge. You will likely have an informal arrangement, but it is implied that your roomate will get to use fridge if he or she put in money. It's no different with a company; the shareholders are entitled to a say in issuance of a dividend, policy, board membership, mergers, acquisistions, etc. Shareholders are entitled after buying a piece of the company.
Studies have been done on companies that have superclass stock. The common stock usually trades at a discount to similar public companies as shareholder discount the price for their diminshed influence. Note that YHOO does not have superclass stock; we can expect Google to trade at a discount to YHOO, which is a price lower than the projected IPO range. There's a reason institutional money managers are staying away at this point.
My point about Communism was that the Bolsheviks had similar notions about what was best for the "public good" while they violently resisted any sort of accountability. You seem to suggest Google management knows what's best and also should not be expected to be accountable. (I don't think Google is run by commies, and the example is admittedly extreme.) Management should be doing strange things with voting rights. If mgmt is doing a good job, execs don't have to worry about being second guessed or being fired. Sorry, I just don't believe in managers of public companies playing the sorts of games the Google people are playing, especially when they are claiming to not be "evil". That's how bad things always start. Arrogance is not a good business attribute.
So "monopoly power" is good thing in your mind evidently. BTW, shareholders just happen to own the company.
What most Google-bashers don't understand is that when Google talks about not being evil, it's always thinking of the general public that uses their search engine, not special interest groups.
But of course, the general public is not to be trusted with equal voting rights. I think a similar approach was tried in Russia around 1917. It didn't work.
I've always loved google, but this sort of bugs me.
Google management lost its credibilty with me when they came out and said "We won't be evil", then issued two classes of stock. One for the public, another for a superclass of shareholders that have superior voting rights. Evidently Google mgmt is All Knowing and Supreme compared to the investing public, and certainly should not be accountable to the "little people." If that isn't "evil", I don't know what is.
This business about buying back inappropriately issued stock should not be a surprise at all, considering the astounding arrogance of a company that would issue superclass voting rights equity. Google deserves to have its IPO implode, but I feel bad for those who would be hurt by the consequences.
Someone shoot me.
You expect sympathy? Appears you like the money. Why not go to an all *nix shop. I doubt Uncle Bill cares where you work.
Now we know what Microsoft paid for: A legal precedent regarding the name.
Right, that's an amazing sequence, especially when you realize the horse mask is anything but airtight - as if it would really make that much of a difference.
Read the history of this shot:CASTLE-BRAVO
Apparently the bomb designers miscalculated something. The yield was supposed to be about 5 megatons. Turned out to be closer to 15. (Miscalculated!) The fallout irradiated other islanders and a fishing boat that were supposed to be safe. I'd say this event qualifies as one of the biggest engineering f-ups in history.
Here's an interesting animation about fallout from the Nevada tests. Guess it's for people who don't like to read.
You might find this book a fascinating read. It was written in the 1800s
Being a scientist himself, he surely knows what's good for his country.
If this is the case, I guess non-scientists can all remove themselves from politics. But would the world really be better off if William Shockley were president? If Edward Teller were in charge of arms control?
I typed in "slashdotted" and got this:
MSN Search is temporarily unable to process your request.
Please try again in a few minutes.
EID: f:1658889542 - 1041:1041:10004:1059
HC: 71d61b14
Back to the drawing board!
I DO use FF. But how do I really know it's any more secure than IE? Or Some Other Browser(TM)? I don't. Seems to me we have come to the point where the computer just can not be trusted. (If you say some other OS is safer, you may be right today, but wrong tomorrow.)
Is it possible to have a truly secure box that is used for
and doing online transactions? How many banks allow their employees or customers to use their ATM network for all of these purposes? What's needed is a more robust model: Specialized hardware and software, maybe something sinilar to VPN. I don't think a generic PC will ever be secure enough, regardless of OS. It's time to think of new solutions for security problems.
made deals with PC manufacturers to bundle MS-DOS with the machine
You might want to read about the deal Gates "forced" on IBM. It was actually the other way around. Gates wanted to make a deal with IBM to include MS-BASIC with the PC, but IBM didn't have an OS for it, which they needed first. Gates suggested IBM go to Kildall of CPM fame. (Gates didn't want an OS business, he was more interested in languages) Kildall wasn't there; his wife and a laywer turned away "Big Evil IBM". IBM kept twisting Gates' arm, so Gates and Allen bought QDOS (quick-and-dirty-OS) from a guy in Seattle to make IBM happy.
One concession Gates asked for was the ability to sell the OS to other vendors offering 808x boxes. No one thought this was necessarily worth very much since there were not many clones, and everyone thought IBM had the market locked up anyway.
So many think Microsoft is were it is because it is big bad and evil, so there has to be legislation to box the company. Gates on the other hand, has stated that he is always wondering which garage is going to emit something that will undermine the business. I'm not an apologist for Microsoft. The company has done some stupid things. Just not as consistently as the competition
Sure would be interesting to see the P&L statement from Linspire. Last I heard MR was looking to raise money via IPO to pay off his loan to the company. The move might only be an attempt to create interest in the IPO.
As for the stores, without something like the iPod, it's going to be difficult to draw customers. The specialty stores are already competing with Wal*Mart, among others.
Hopefully, if succesful, the major car companies (Toyota, GM, Ford, Daimler, VW) will take notice and do something similar.
I agree with you. I have been wondering why they don't make it easier to integrate players. One possible answer is their relationship with the sat-radio companies. No doubt all of the manufacturers spent a fair amount of money designing sat-radio features into their systems; there may even be exclusion clauses imposed by the sat-radio people for a certain period of time. (Anyone know?) I believe sat-radio ultimately does *not* make sense, at least the way it is priced today. The only place it is really appealing is in the car, but that's only because it is not easy to plug in an MP3 player.
Wonder how the sat-radio people will react to this development.
I hope that IBM/Novell/SuSe provide some easy and well documented way (should be in the training "If you have a problem, don't mumble, speak up and we'll fix it!")
Sure they will, as long as they get to say: "That will be E200 / hour please..." They might consider taking a loss leader to get things started, but remember these are public companies. Their institutional shareholders care about earnings much more than desktops.
Not once does Spolsky mention code access security. From what I have observed, Microsoft's efforts seem to be directed towards downloaded modules that run on the CLR. Rich client / web deployment. Of course the obvious problem is security. ActiveX fails in this regard since it is all or nothing; the CAS model offers much more resolution. Good for the developer and the user in theory.
The trick is to make it easy for a typical user to understand how to configure their machine to do what it should do, and nothing else.
Interesting how so many people make claims about Microsoft, yet don't seem to be very familiar with some of their key technologies. It would have been a much more interesting article if Spolsky had addressed CAS as well.
Or from their perspective - prevents some small company with a single patent covering the double-click from shaking down as Eolas did. I think we can expect every mundane action being patented by large companies.
Rand would admire Gates for dominating his market and going for more. I think it unlikely that she would criticize his foundation, or Ellison's or Teresa Heinz' either, because of the way the foundations are run. She would disparage government run services to no end. It would be interesting to know what she thought of Rockefeller or Carnegie and their foundations. I don't recall reading any criticism by her.
Interesting to speculate as to who "Toohey" would be whispering to today.
I don't recall Toohey donating billions to medical research...
While Ayn Rand was an incredible author, she wasn't beyond structuring situations to her advantage, either...
No doubt she would have had the greatest admiration for Mr. Gates.
Servers, on the other hand, should be linux's play ground
I used to think that, but after doing some work with Win2003, I'm not so sure.
There are some toilets out there that qualify...
Try explaining the PDF version of the spreadsheet originally embedded in the Word doc to someone. OO works well within each application, but without an equivalent COM framework, replacement of Office is unlikely to happen in a big way.
Price comparisons are also dicey. It's not that hard to find Office greatly discounted if you look.
I have. I didn't think it was that great, at least when compared with the alternative I describe.
Now if it had TiVo functionality it would be well worth it, but I'm sure the RIAA would make that so expensive the subscription price would be far more than $10/mo.
Speaking of satellite radio, at what point does stream ripping endanger that business model? Good rippers will likely increase the demand for Internet radio. People dump the streams to recordable media, then play those streams instead of getting a satellite subscription.
I do something similar now: Make CDs from iTMS, my own collection of CDs or MP3s, and listen to them wherever I might have otherwise listened to satellite radio. I figure the $10 / mo plus the price of the satellite receiver just isn't worth it in comparison. This way I have persistent copies of the stuff I like, and can call it up on demand.
It's anyone's guess what music distribution will look like in the future, but I have my doubts about satellite delivery.
There is no polite way to point out how completely busted you are
I should have been more clear about specifying the overall retail experience, not just music. Amazon is worse for music, not doubt about it. There are no tracks (generally) for sale in eBay. But if you comapre the experience of shopping for books on Amazon with shopping for music on iTMS, Amazon is much better then iTMS in its core space. Just one example: Shopping cart purchasing or buy immediate. Why not both? No wish lists on iTMS. No reviews, either.
This stuff may seem trivial, but it matters to a lot of people.
In addition, iTMS isn't all that great. I use it, I get what I want from it, but it is no where near as polished in terms of retail experience as eBay or Amazon. iTMS may be better than the others in a general sense, but it could easily be overtaken by competitors, especially if a hardware device evolves (or tastes change) that is more desirable than the iPod.
It may very well be that Jobs is about to repeat the mistake he made with the PC.