Daily Archives: July 24, 2008

Ballmer: Yahoo a tactic, not a strategy

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Microsoft Chief Steve Ballmer spoke to the Microsofties today about the companies plans.   For Yahoo merger followers there was nothign much new as he simply reiterated this point:

Related to Google and our search strategy are the discussions we had with Yahoo. I want to emphasize the point I’ve been making all along—Yahoo was a tactic, not a strategy. We want to accelerate our share of search queries and create a bigger pool of advertisers, and Yahoo would have helped us get there faster. But we will get there with or without Yahoo. We have the right people, we’ve made incredible progress in our technology, and we’ll continue to make smart investments that will enable us to build an industry-leading business.

Some would argue that the reason Microsoft needs Yahoo is that their online strategy has so far failed to do very much.   My take is that they have not moved the online market as they’d hoped, but that they also have not worked nearly as hard in this area as they could have because Microsoft (correctly) sees that their huge presence in the software market is where the big money remains, at least for the next few years.    They have chosen in large part to protect their huge revenue ship rather than act more aggressively and nimbly (and expensively) to find online revenues or pull market share from Google.    I think many analysts – especially those in blogging – fail to recognize that Google’s revenues simply pale in comparison to Microsoft’s.   Google has the lion’s share of online money but Microsoft still has the lion’s share of the lion’s share money, which is in software, gaming, and entertainment.      I agree that the power curve is shifting from MS to Google, but MS remains the 800 pound revenue Gorilla.    Money beats buzz to the bank every time, and this point is not lost on Microsoft or Google.

Disclosure:  Long on YHOO

The aliens are out there, but they have not landed

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Robert Roswell IIIRobert Roswell III

Uncle Bob?
You’ve lost some weight!

Given the prevalence of planets, water, and our own observations in our solar system, I think there is a near certainty (99%+ likelihood) that there is plenty of intelligent life in the universe.

In fact I’d guess the universe is *teeming* with life – at least billions of planets with intelligent life and probably hundreds of billions.

If you simply assume there is a *single planet with intelligent life* in each of the 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe it suggests we have a *lot* of company.     Although we only have a single data point (= ourselves), it seems we should also assume that we are about in the median range of the intelligent life spectrum, meaning that about half of the life in the universe is smarter than us and half is …. dumber.

But I would assert that Aliens probably wouldn’t bother to visit earth because we are at the edge of the galaxy and we are probably not very interesting once you have advanced technologies that can simulate almost all aspects of reality.    What would they come here looking for?

Also, they would likely not visit un organic “bodies”, rather as automated devices.     The idea that Aliens visit earth, interact with people and thus appear not to have a  “no interference” policy, and then leave without saying official “hello” or making their presence broadly known is very questionable.

If they have a no interference policy we’d never detect them.   On the other hand if they allow some interaction why would they probe a few lonely lumberjacks deep in the woods and then leave?   In the case of the Roswell incident you seriously think they have technology that allows an organic being to travel *quadrillions of miles* over a likely period of *millions of years* only to run out of gas and crash?
Whoops, ET didn’t have a quarter to phone home for a tow – BAM !

I think there’s a tiny possibility we’ve been visited, but a much higher one that people imagine things and use silly, obvious hoax stuff to spur interest.

Visits and Alien existence are totally different issues.  Of course Aliens are very, very, very likely to exist but there is pretty much zero credible evidence they ever come here.

The technology to travel here by organic beings would be incredibly advanced.   If they wanted to “hide” they would have no trouble hiding and erasing all evidence we have of their visits.   If they wanted us to know they were out there they could take over the network and simply announce their presence.   Niether of those happen.  Instead, we have thousands of obviously bogus reports and a handful of seemingly credible people who have odd experiences they think come from Aliens.   Whenever I look into these they are incredibly weak.   No quality photos, no souvenirs, no Alien DNA or probes left in bodies.  You have to believe the Aliens do an incredible cleanup job but then leave sloppy, inconclusive pieces of evidence around in a haphazard way.   Sure, it’s possible those little items are evidence of alien visits but reason suggests that instead we are seeing yet another example of … mistaken impressions.

You can think the tiny number of credible people misinterpreted things as we humans are prone to do, or you can believe the Aliens allowed those guys to interact with them and only them.

But hey, maybe distinguished astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who believes the Government is covering up the Alien visits, is right:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Mitchell

Malik: Facebook Connect is better than Colin Farrell?

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I can’t help but think Om Malik is under some kind of Facebook conference spell when he first criticizes their presentation as too stylish (comparing Mark Zuckerberg to that bastion of style and wit Colin Farrell = OUCH!) but then gushes that Facebook Connect is going to be the big winner in terms of bringing web-wide social functionality.

Malik notes:
In addition to offering a simple authentication method, FC allows granular social interactions to be embedded in non-Facebook services. If Facebook can work with its partners to build interesting use-case scenarios that go beyond simple sign-on, it is quite feasible that Facebook can out-execute Google, MySpace and everyone else with its ID ambitions.

I suppose it depends on what he means by “quite feasible”, but I’d still predict that Google Friend Connect (still in Beta) is the system to watch in this space for two very simple reasons:

1) It’s Simple
2)  It’s Google

A great example of the first challenge is to read the Malik excerpt above.   How many mom and pop websites will read that and say “wow, gotta have it!”.   The answer is very few.  Instead, I think in a few months they will be working their PPC account at Google and be prompted to “click here for the code to make your site a social masterpiece”.

Even assuming Facebook’s social application will allow very simply integration with any website, it’s going to be very hard to compete with the web’s top brand as web empires as well as mom and pop websites seek to integrate social functions into their sites.

I’m not suggesting Facebook will fail however.   I just think that once the game begins in earnest both Myspace and Facebook will struggle to keep up with Google.   I think we’ll see social functionality spread quickly across the web, probably starting from the three key places working this angle right now:  Google, Facebook, and Myspace.  A key question will be how these three will choose to allow their applications to interact, but luckily for users there is a lot of pressure for cross compatibility of social networking.

So, in the end everybody is going to win, and we should soon see a great new layer of social functionality spread across the entire web.  And  that….is a good thing.