Pakorakorner

Yahoo! is shooting in all directions hoping that something falls from the heavens. First it was Google, then it was News Corp., then it was AOL. In short, anyone but Microsoft. But as the deadlines nears and Microsoft and Yahoo try their best to outsmart each other, the battle lines appear to be re-drawn all of a sudden. The mighty News Corp. appears to have joined hands with Microsoft while Yahoo has teamed up with AOL and simultaneously announced an ...

The rumored and the inevitable has finally occurred. Microsoft is out to buy out Yahoo! and it appears that the deal might go through despite Yahoo's best efforts to stay independent and Google's baseless attempt to sabotage the deal. Microsoft Needed to Strengthen It's Search Strategy Microsoft's move is not the least bit surprising. The online advertising market is here to grow and Google has been enjoying a virtual free ride. While cashing in on the online ad market, Google has ...

It is amazing how things have changed over the years in the world of home computing. Computers have become ever more powerful. Dell (and other PC vendors) today sells a desktop for about $600 inclusive of a flat panel monitor, 160GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. Microsoft Vista requires a minimum of 1GB RAM (this means you better make sure you have at least 2GB!). There was a time when you could not buy a monitor for the same ...

Nice to see Google desperately trying to play catchup.Facebook after a long period of being out in the cold, recently opened up its platform. Since then, it seems to have caught fire and today appears to threaten to Google's (and all other social networks) bread and butter (Adwords) from a new unexpected direction. Google has had Orkut for years but has done little with it. It is slow and clunky and used mostly in Brazil and India.On the other hand, ...

With a $6B acquisition, Microsoft is significantly beefing up its online ad strategy. Although the rumors of the Yahoo acquisition having died down, the aQuantive acquisition just confirms the fact that Microsoft is looking very actively at various strategies to counter Google's huge lead in the advertising space, before its too late. With Yahoo's acquisition of Right Media and Google's acquisition of Double Click, the online ad space is prime for some serious competition among the big 3 and the ...

Google is growing from strength to strength. A lucrative advertising industry is at stake. Yahoo's Panama might have been an improvement over what Yahoo had before, but its in no way strong enough to pose a challenge to Google. Besides with the recent management exodus, the peanut butter memo-gate, the none to impressive quarterly results, and a shaky top management, Yahoo has hordes of challenges at hand. As for Microsoft, their search and advertising strategy is simply way behind. It ...

There was an article the Mercury News the other day about a home furnishings company by name Divine Designs. Its a great story about an Indian immigrant who was into Home Furnishings as a hobby. She started her business after she re-decorated her home with custom drapes and caught the interest of friends to start with and then slowly expanded beyond that rather organicaly. In the midst of all the conventional hi-tech stories that make the rounds in Silicon ...

The Viacom-Youtube battle is nothing but an attempt to sort out in court what the two could not settle behind closed doors. On the one hand, it just proves that Google made a huge mistake paying 1.5B for a company with $15M in annual revenues and a whole bunch of copyrighted content. On the other it shows that the old media folks like Viacom are clueless on how to deal with the emerging Internet. "When you can't compete, sue". What would ...

Check out this news report about new shoes that are available with a GPS chip in the sole! Considering that it is new and innovative the high price tag is understandable ($325-$350 plus $19.95 monthly subscription for 24x7 monitoring service). "A plug-and-wear version that allows wearers to remove the electronics module from their old shoes and plug it into another pair" is in the works. Wonder when these shoes are going the cell phone route, sign up for 2 years ...

Youtube has been asked to remove Viacom video clips. ...According to Viacom, which owns more than 120 networks around the world, YouTube has shown clips of its television shows, music videos, movies and documentaries more than 1.2 billion times. ``We are asking to get paid,'' said Mike Fricklas, Viacom's general counsel, in an interview with the Mercury News. ``Our content is very valuable and we think that has obviously contributed to YouTube's growth and to Google.'' Viacom is not the only one who ...