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Valley Buzz: Bill Gates Sr, Stalling Android, More Deals in 2009 and Is Craig Newmark Running an Online Brothel?
Posted Mar 06, 2009 03:49pm EST by Sarah Lacy in Computers, Internet, Media, Products and Trends
Related: MSFT, GOOG, YHOO, AMZN, EBAY, CSCO, ^IXIC
Most everyone in Silicon Valley is still talking about Facebook and Twitter and Twitter and Facebook. But I managed to find a few other buzz-worthy topics for those of you who just don’t really care about whether techies are broadcasting What-you-are-doing vs. What’s-on-your-mind.
Let’s start with the daddy of one of the daddies of tech: Bill Gates Senior. He introduced his more famous, techy and far wealthier son at a Rotary event in Seattle last night, and blogger Todd Bishop said the elder Gates stole the show. "If you'd indulge me for a minute,” he said. “I'd like to get something off my chest. There was a time when I was somebody in this town…Now I don't even have a name. I've become just 'Senior.' A suffix. Nobody reports to me. But I report to my son. Worst of all, I've been reduced to a warm-up act at Rotary.” All jokes aside it was clear what had made the elder Gates most proud when he dismissed superlatives like the “smartest, richest or youngest” to describe his son and instead introduced him as “the largest philanthropist in the history of the world.”
Smart phones are still dominating chatter with Roger McNamee quoted on nearly every blog today talking smack about how the Palm Pre is going to take down the iPhone. Memo to Roger: Ship the phone on time first, then talk smack. But while the Palm Pre has been making more waves than expected, Google’s Android mobile operating system has been, for Google, a disappointment. So far, it’s only on one phone, and a terrible phone at that. And at the largest mobile conference in the world last month, Google was practically a no show. Memo to Eric Schmidt: How about you take some of that cash you refuse to pay in dividends and actually invest in making mobile a much-needed second act for your company?
If JP Morgan analyst Imran Kahn is right, Valley Buzz will have plenty of buzz to report later this year. The analyst expects that Internet deal making is going to start taking off. He notes that the five largest Internet companies are Amazon, eBay, Priceline, Google, and Yahoo, and together they have nearly $30 billion in cash. Toss in mega-acquirers Cisco and Microsoft and that number jumps to $77 billion. Kahn suggested Omniture, MercadoLibre, Shutterfly, The Knot and Expedia could be bought. But wouldn’t the big guys be better served spending less money on Internet companies that are actually innovating? I expect some startups to get snapped up, as the downturn wears on.
Finally, when we ran our interviews with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark last year, he talked a lot about his moral compass. One of those core values of the site was to “live and let live.” In other words, he wasn’t going to police why people were meeting up on his site. CNET has another word for it, calling Craigslist “the World’s Biggest Bordello” today. Hey, at least it’s a business model that’s recession proof.
Valley Buzz: Bill Gates Sr, Stalling Android, More Deals in 2009 and Is Craig Newmark Running an Online Brothel?
Posted Mar 06, 2009 03:49pm EST by Sarah Lacy in Computers, Internet, Media, Products and Trends
Related: MSFT, GOOG, YHOO, AMZN, EBAY, CSCO, ^IXIC
Most everyone in Silicon Valley is still talking about Facebook and Twitter and Twitter and Facebook. But I managed to find a few other buzz-worthy topics for those of you who just don’t really care about whether techies are broadcasting What-you-are-doing vs. What’s-on-your-mind.
Let’s start with the daddy of one of the daddies of tech: Bill Gates Senior. He introduced his more famous, techy and far wealthier son at a Rotary event in Seattle last night, and blogger Todd Bishop said the elder Gates stole the show. "If you'd indulge me for a minute,” he said. “I'd like to get something off my chest. There was a time when I was somebody in this town…Now I don't even have a name. I've become just 'Senior.' A suffix. Nobody reports to me. But I report to my son. Worst of all, I've been reduced to a warm-up act at Rotary.” All jokes aside it was clear what had made the elder Gates most proud when he dismissed superlatives like the “smartest, richest or youngest” to describe his son and instead introduced him as “the largest philanthropist in the history of the world.”
Smart phones are still dominating chatter with Roger McNamee quoted on nearly every blog today talking smack about how the Palm Pre is going to take down the iPhone. Memo to Roger: Ship the phone on time first, then talk smack. But while the Palm Pre has been making more waves than expected, Google’s Android mobile operating system has been, for Google, a disappointment. So far, it’s only on one phone, and a terrible phone at that. And at the largest mobile conference in the world last month, Google was practically a no show. Memo to Eric Schmidt: How about you take some of that cash you refuse to pay in dividends and actually invest in making mobile a much-needed second act for your company?
If JP Morgan analyst Imran Kahn is right, Valley Buzz will have plenty of buzz to report later this year. The analyst expects that Internet deal making is going to start taking off. He notes that the five largest Internet companies are Amazon, eBay, Priceline, Google, and Yahoo, and together they have nearly $30 billion in cash. Toss in mega-acquirers Cisco and Microsoft and that number jumps to $77 billion. Kahn suggested Omniture, MercadoLibre, Shutterfly, The Knot and Expedia could be bought. But wouldn’t the big guys be better served spending less money on Internet companies that are actually innovating? I expect some startups to get snapped up, as the downturn wears on.
Finally, when we ran our interviews with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark last year, he talked a lot about his moral compass. One of those core values of the site was to “live and let live.” In other words, he wasn’t going to police why people were meeting up on his site. CNET has another word for it, calling Craigslist “the World’s Biggest Bordello” today. Hey, at least it’s a business model that’s recession proof.
