News and analysis to 24th May 2007
Micro6,ooo,ooo,oooft
The pay per click (PPC) market is reaching boiling point as
Microsoft responds to Google’s DoubleClick purchase ($3bn). The Seattle giant
is offering to pay $6bn for online advertising company aQuantive. Competing
bids drove the price to an 85% premium. Notably this is the biggest acquisition
ever made by Microsoft, four times greater than the next most expensive. The
fact that aQuantive is also based in Seattle was no doubt built into the
pricing model, as I am sure the savings in travel will more than offset the
premium. PPC appears to be the new dotcom.
Bill G predicts future
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates used his keynote speech at
the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Los Angeles to outline his
vision for the future. No mention of thin client computing (or even pay per
click). As far as he is concerned powerful desktops and palmtops are the way
forward. For the benefit of the delegates he used the term 64-bit computing to
articulate this trend. He also mentioned web services, unified communications,
in-memory database technology and natural interfaces (voice recognition).
Microsoft’s chairman took the opportunity to boast of the fact that Windows
Vista has already sold 40 million copies in the first 100 days. Microsoft has a
vested interest in the survival (and thrival) of the PC market. Anything that
causes the desktop operating system to become irrelevant would have a
detrimental impact on Microsoft’s power base.
Novell embarrassed by partner
Novell is now discovering what it is like to fall in love
with Prince Charming only to discover that once the honeymoon period is over
the prince reverts to boorish, aggressive and generally antisocial behaviour.
Having locked in Novell, Microsoft is now making claims that Linux and open
source software contains 235 of it patents. Novell is distancing itself from
this claim. However it may well benefit as Microsoft’s manoeuvre appears to be
a scare tactic to encourage more people to adopt Suse Linux; the Linux flavour
promoted by the Microsoft-Novell union.
Microsoft is no stranger to conflict. But in the eyes of many people
this looks like the ultimate good versus evil battle.
Microsoft eyes up Yahoo
It must be delightful for the Google management team to know
that they are a regular feature on Microsoft’s boardroom agenda. But there is a
fine balancing act between simply irritating a larger opponent and triggering
biblical retribution. Certainly the acquisition of aQuantive is a defensive
response to Google’s DoubleClick purchase. But Microsoft’s renewed interest in
discussing Yahoo’s future looks like a calculated step towards extinguishing
the online upstart. Yahoo has a market capitalisation of circa $38bn. Microsoft
is reportedly willing to spend $50bn to secure a large slice of the pay per
click market. Perhaps Microsoft should stop dancing around the handbags and
make a bid for Google?
Dell says save Switzerland
Dell, the troubled PC maker, is in the spotlight for all the
wrong reasons at the moment. The latest being its alleged bait and switch scam
that attracts PC buyers with zero interest rate deals and then hops them across
onto a very high interest rate without the customer’s knowledge. So it is not
clear whether Dell’s concerns over Switzerland are altruistic or
finance-engineering related. It is of course currently fashionable to be
associated with green issues. One of Dell’s senior product group managers has
pointed out that most green initiatives are aimed at the data centre, with the
desktop being seen as statistically insignificant. However according to Dell,
if users were to decrease desktop power consumption by just 30%, that would
save enough power to fuel Switzerland. Possibly this is the start of an
eco-initiative from Dell based on Swiss battery-free watch technology? How long
will it be before we see PCs that are powered by user key presses or
mouse-mileage?
Greener Apples
Apple, the purveyor of high tech gadgetry for the
fashion-conscious, is under pressure from environmental groups to clean up its
act in respect of its use of toxic chemicals. CEO Steve Jobs took the
opportunity to attack competitors, highlighting the fact that Apple has not
sold Cathode Ray Tube displays (which use lead) since 2006, whereas its
competitors continue to do so. Jobs is taking the issue seriously, so it is
unlikely that the iMac colour range will expand into arsenic yellow, mercury
silver or toxic florescent green.
Concern over Internet homeless
According to the American Registry for Internet Numbers the
pool of available IP addresses (4.3 billion addresses in fact) will soon run
dry. The current addressing system known as IPv4 is currently 81% depleted and
current trends suggest that this may be an issue as soon as 2010. The new IPv6
specification offers 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
addresses, which if my memory serves me well is 2 to the power of 128 minus 1.
This will enable every grain of sand on the earth to have a million IP
addresses and then some. That should cover it unless we get to a point where
molecules get their own IP address, which doesn’t bear thinking about.
Symantec’s new Trojan offering
The anti-virus software vendor surprised the Chinese market
place when its Norton anti-virus software attacked the files it was supposed to
protect. A recent online update caused the software to treat inoffensive and
crucial system files as hostile. The unavailability of these files meant that
thousands of users could not subsequently reboot their machines. Symantec have
corrected the problem, though it is not clear how the affected users will be
able to make use of the revised update.
