Are Google's nerds destroying design?
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| A departing designer claims data too often trumps art. Image: Google Sketchup logo |
On his way out of Google, Douglas Bowman has posted a blog missive that might haunt the company one day. Bowman, the (now former) visual design lead, accuses the company's culture of relying too much on numbers, to the point where creativity suffers.
"Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better," he writes. "I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that." More
Rackspace IPO tanks
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| Investors hoped a high-flying debut from Rackspace would reignite the IPO market. No such luck. |
Rackspace took the IPO plunge Friday and fell flat on its face, which will only make other startups more hesitant to follow its lead.
The web-hosting company had planned to offer 15 million shares at between $12 and $16 per share in a modified Dutch auction, but hopes ran even higher. Scott Sweet of IPO Boutique told TheStreet.com that Wall Street chatter indicated Rackspace (RAX) share would price as high as $17; MorningNotes pegged it at closer to $16. The shares ended up pricing Thursday night at $12.50, and they began trading closer to $10 per share. They rose as high as $11.58 in mid-day trading before settling back near $10. More
What's Google News worth? $100 million
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| Google vice president Marissa Mayer says Google News might not make money on its own, but it drives $100 million worth of search. Image: Google |
HALF MOON BAY, Calif. – Google News is free and has zero ads. So what's it worth to Google? About $100 million.
That's the figure Google (GOOG) vice president Marissa Mayer, who heads search products and user experience, threw out during a Tuesday lunch session at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif. How does she put a value on a product that doesn't directly make money? The online giant figures that Google News funnels readers over to the main Google search engine, where they do searches that do produce ads. And that's a nice business. Think of Google News as a $100 million search referral machine.
Mayer's observation about Google News sheds some light on the company's broader strategy for driving traffic to its search engine – a strategy that has helped the company build a dominant market share lead over rivals Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT). It's not all about the search engine itself. Google is happy to build popular products that don't make any money on their own but tie users into a broader Google ecosystem. It’s like Vegas casinos that offer cheap buffets to get people into the building, knowing a lot of them will end up playing slots. More
Overseas sales could revive Apple
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| Image: Apple |
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Can Apple regain its status as a Wall Street darling?
So far 2008 has not been kind to the technology trendsetter. With U.S. iPod sales slowing and iPhone hype fading, investors have been seized by worries that the crew in Cupertino isn’t much of a growth story anymore. The stock has fallen 40 percent from its recent highs, losing some $50 billion in market value –and it isn’t clear what could turn things around.
It does seem certain that major relief won’t come from Apple’s (AAPL) newest products. This week's update of the MacBook laptop line adds speed and memory, but no breathtaking design touches. The super-slim but pricey MacBook Air laptop that CEO Steve Jobs unveiled in January has met with mixed reviews, and won’t provide enough of a boost to make up for the iPod slowdown. And Apple TV, the second incarnation of Apple’s failed attempt to bring digital downloads to the television, doesn’t seem to be attracting an iPod-like following either; on Amazon (AMZN), it’s about as popular as a niche backup hard drive.
So where will Apple go for a sales boost to lift its stock? Perhaps overseas.
Even as U.S. tech spending slows, the market for high-tech gear and the opportunity for Apple to grow, is rapidly expanding in Europe and Asia. To wit: Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Mark Hurd noted last week that emerging markets accounted for nearly half of the industry’s PC shipments at the end of 2007, and well over half of the growth. More
Gadgets and games score with Cyber Monday crowds
Shoppers headed online in droves on Cyber Monday, according to the latest stats: 32.5 million visitors entered virtual stores, up 10 percent from a year ago.
Nielsen: Facebook growth outpaces MySpace
Facebook's unique audience grew by 1.5 million people in October, according to a report released this week by Nielsen Online. That's five times the rate of larger rival MySpace, which grew by about 300,000.
Audience grows for IAC's Evite, Ticketmaster
InterActiveCorp (IACI), a multi-billion-dollar company that manages online brands including Ask.com, Evite and LendingTree, scored its strongest traffic growth this summer from a site that helps people manage their timeshare vacations.
The company reported earnings today. Profit for the quarter that ended Sept. 30 fell to $71.8 million, or 24 cents per share, from $74.9 million, or 24 cents, last year. The 4.2 percent drop was attributed to troubles in the company's home shopping network business. Revenue grew 7.4 percent to $1.52 billion.
Microsoft online growth led by gaming, search
Microsoft (MSFT) mostly saw modest increases in traffic to its online properties in the third quarter, with gaming, technology, real estate and search leading the company's growth.
Apple posts strong summer numbers for online traffic
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| Image: http://store.apple.com |
If its online traffic is any guide, Apple (AAPL) had a pretty decent quarter.
The maker of iPods, iPhones and Macs grew its online traffic 18 percent compared to a year earlier, from a monthly average of 36.6 million unique visitors to 43 million, according to Nielsen Online. Total minutes at the site grew 22 percent, from 7 billion in calendar Q3 2006 to 8.6 billion in calendar Q3 2007.
Nielsen also said that in September, Apple's online traffic ranked number one in its category, hardware manufacturers.
Apple squeezes more profit out of hard drive-based iPods
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| Apple's cost to build the iPod classic is 11 percent lower than the previous verison, iSuppli estimates. Photo: Apple |
Apple's (AAPL) redesign of the iPod classic has allowed the company to make better profits while also offering more storage, an analysis from researcher iSuppli has found.
The iSuppli numbers (below) help shed light on how Apple continues to make money off of its iPod line even as certain versions mature. iSuppli estimates that the components in the iPod cost $127 for the 80-gigabyte version and $190 for the 160GB version. Apple sells them for $249 and $349. (iSuppli's figures don't factor in costs for manufacturing, software development, marketing, packaging and shipping. They also don't factor in some volume discounts Apple receives.)
According to iSuppli, the 80GB iPod costs 11 percent less to build than the previous 30GB version. Apple makes even better margins on the 160GB version.
Increasingly, though, the hard drive-based iPod classic seems to be a niche product. The iPod nano, a sleeker flash memory-based product with less storage capacity, has consistently outsold the classic. And now, based on one month of sales, it seems Apple's new iPod touch, the flash-based iPhone look-alike, might outsell the classic as well.
