Yahoo, Silicon Valley’s most precious web company is in great trouble, it has reported a great loss these past few days, about $303 million in its Q4 earning reports. The online giant is struggling; its core US business is in great trouble. Yahoo has already announced thousands of layoffs and shutdown some of its services. I’ll been following Yahoo! Since the Microsoft attack broke out, so far Yahoo! is not looking good. The Company clearly lacks the bold leadership that it needs in this moment of economic crisis, Yahoo‘s $303 million loss in Q4 is Yahoo’s first loss since 2002. The Company without a doubt got a very serious problem its stock plunged, the Company is going nowhere. The recent confirmation of its new CEO Carol Bartz ( Image courtesy of TechCrunch ) won’t help Yahoo, most of the tech people at the Silicon Valley were not impressed about Yahoo! new CEO Carol Bartz even Wall Street guys, they keeps asking questions what exactly Yahoo doing? What direction would Carol Bartz will take Yahoo? My guess is Bartz would dress up Yahoo! for sale or seek another elephant in the room. I’m talking about Microsoft; Yahoo! should strike a search deal with Microsoft. And if Yahoo! should consider staying alone and not taking a deal with Microsoft then it should enhance its search business to remain highly competitive and profitable in online business Yahoo! should focus more on the search market. The online search market is the main revenue generator for web giants like Yahoo! and Google. The search market is the lifeblood of the Company’s business model. But Yahoo’s search market share is dropping fast and it’s not good, its’ could threaten Yahoo’s online business. Yahoo! must undertake survival tactics and drastic measures. The Company needs a major makeover. Yahoo’s mistake was in the operational and management side, it failed to reduce operational costs and increase efficiency. Plus the growing threat of the global economic crisis. The current economic crisis has sent ad rate plummeting everywhere, advertisers are cutting back on ads spending elsewhere. If Yahoo! new CEO wants to remake the Company and conquer the web then Bartz should take an aggressive move here. Bartz must focus mostly on US advertising market; the US is the center for online advertising spending, in order to survive the Company need to focus to the US Market not just abroad. Bartz got a lot of “cracks” on its once highly impregnable foundation. Despite Yahoo! tragedy the Company won’t stop rolling out “creative works”. A great example is Yahoo’s Open Strategy Initiative well it’s an awesome idea it’s add social networking components to Yahoo! services and allows third party integrations. But not all of those creative works are good for Yahoo’s business the Company has spent time and financial resources maintaining services that have a huge financial unjustified overhead. Yahoo! is already losing a search market share to Microsoft, Microsoft keeps growing and it got a strong commitment in search business. Yahoo! is not in position to experiment or invest in technology that won’t integrate with its core business Yahoo! should focus mostly on search just like Google. Yahoo! should take evasive maneuver and move fast before it’s too late, Google always keeps watching and Microsoft is always on guard.
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For years the Chinese government has keeping a close eye on its people’s internet usage. The Chinese government has already rolled out filtering systems used to block access to forbidden sites. The government has been watching every websites, blogs and search engines their people visit. The Great Wall of China represents Chinese government huge efforts to keep the internet under its boots. It’s Beijing’s attempts to silence dissent and block references to politically sensitive topics like human rights and democracy. But despite of those heavy handed censorships on internet usage it won’t stop internet from growing fast thought out the country. The China Internet Network Information Center claims the nation’s online population has grown 41.9% in 2008, a whopping 298 million users BBC reports. It’s already surpassed the US as the world’s largest online population. Although internet penetration is still low about 22.65. Most of the Chinese internet usage growth is happening in the countryside, according to TechCrunch, the countryside is growing faster than in the cities it’s pretty high about 60.8% compared to 35.6% in the cities. The Chinese bloggers population has also increased from 16 million to 162 million and with the advent of high speed internet connection we could expect more on Chinese online population. The recent development in the mobile industry would also give China a commanding lead in internet usage, Chinese could now browse the web through their mobile phone as the mobile phone starts to make a sleeper hit and presence in China we could expect terrible growth here. China government has already approved the deployment of 3G network for mobile phones, licenses for 3G enabled mobile phones have finally been issued to Chinese Telecom companies.
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Yahoo, the iconic company of the web has reportedly loses $303 Million in its Q4. Yahoo’s Q4 loss is its first loss since 2002. The Company is in chaos. But despite of those loses Yahoo! stock were up at $11.69 a share about 3% up, that’s good news for investors but not enough Yahoo! still in great trouble the Company it needs of a bold leadership. The online giant is struggling; its core US business is us under siege. Yahoo has already announced thousands of layoffs and shutdown number of services. I’ll been following Yahoo! since the Microsoft search deal broke out so far Yahoo! is not looking good. The recent confirmation of its new CEO Carol Bartz won’t help Yahoo. A lot of tech savvy people in the Silicon Valley are not impressed about Yahoo new CEO. What exactly Yahoo! should? Well Yahoo! must undertake survival tactics and drastic measures. The Company needs a major makeover Yahoo’s mistakes was in the operational side and management, Yahoo! failed to reduce the operational costs and also to increase efficiency. But the biggest threat to Yahoo’s online business is the current economic crisis it could hurt Yahoo. The current economic crisis has sent ad rate plummeting, advertisers are cutting back on ads spending elsewhere. If Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz wants to remake the Company and conquer the web then Bartz must focus on US market. The US is the center for online advertising spending and in order to survive and conquer the web (if the God forbid) the Company needs to take or focus mostly to the US market not just abroad. Bartz got a lot works here at Yahoo!, we seen a lot of “crack” at Yahoo’s foundation. We still don’t know what direction Carol Bartz will take Yahoo. My guess is Bartz would dress up Yahoo! for sell or maybe seek an elephant in the room; I’m talking about perhaps some Microsoft search deal. Yahoo! got lot of potentials despite Yahoo’s tragedy it still managed to roll out some “creative works”, the Company recently launched Open Strategy Initiative, and the works is great it adds social networking components to Yahoo! services and it’s allows third party application integrations. But this is not enough; Yahoo! is spending time and resources into web products that won’t integrate to its core business. The search is Yahoo! core business, Yahoo! is losing the search market share, and Microsoft is growing stronger. Yahoo! needs to do something if it’s to thrive in the online business it needs to integrate it web products to its core business just like Google did. Is Carol Bartz got plans for Yahoo?
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The global economic crisis keeps getting worse and claiming more victims. Companies have announced thousands of layoffs. Dozen of companies in the IT business have suffered huge losses or folded completely. Seagate Technology the California based Storage Company is under attack. The Company has just announced that it was laying off 6% or 2950 employees worldwide. It also get downsizing spirit, cutting staff and executives salaries. Seagate Technology (Image courtesy of VentureBeat) has reported that it had a net loss of $496 million or $1.02 a share. According to VentureBeat quarterly revenue was $2.3 Billion. And there’s a big story at Seagate, it’s CEO Bill Watkins and COO Dave Wickersham has just resigned. The current economic crisis has eroded Seagate’s core business; Seagate has already announced they are cutting back on their spending and production capacity. There’s no doubt that business are facing tough challenges but smart companies continued to thrive. Seagate Technology is doing creative works; it’s trying to be flexible enough to cope with the current economic crisis
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In pure destructive power the global financial crisis has become Wall Street’s version of Hurricane Katrina. It has wreaked havoc on the nation’s iconic company, Microsoft Corp. The Company has already announced thousands of layoffs and loss. Despite its size and global presence Microsoft is not able to escape the shock of the global economic crisis. Microsoft is about to fire 5000; the Company got no choice but to save money, the move will save the Company $1.5 billion a year. Microsoft missed its Q2 revenue and earnings. Revenue was down at$ 16.63 billion against $ 17.08 billion expected. The current economic crisis has eroded Microsoft’s core business which is the Windows. It’s taking a heavy beating and it’s not looking good right now
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It’s still unclear how badly the financial crisis and slowdown will affect an ecommerce site like eBay. Ecommerce giant eBay (Image courtesy of TechCrunch) has announced it’s earnings for the Q4 of 2008. Well it’s not good, eBay is not looking good, it missed Q4 revenue of $2.04 Billion down 7% and below Wall Street estimates of $2.12 Billion Alley Insider reports. The strength and online reach of Google, the growing popularity of Amazon and the sheer number of other web retail sites have eroded eBay’s dominance in marketplace. EBay main source of decline is in core products its online marketplaces eBay.com, Shopping.com, Stubhub.com and others. EBay’s marketplace revenue fell to $1.27 Billion down 16% from Q4 of 2007. For eBay the strengthening of US dollars has contributed to its decline, eBay does half of its business outside the US about 55% of revenue comes from outside the US. EBay businesses are under siege. The troubled economy and weakness in eBay’s core business are all contributed to a drop in market share, eBay stock has fallen 6.1%.
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Intel shutdown Malaysia, Philippines, Oregon and California operations. Intel is struggling its core business is not doing well, it already announced layoffs. It involves around 5000 to 6000 employees worldwide, including 1800 in the Philippines operations. The company has plans to consolidate and streamline its operations. Intel got also plans to restructure its manufacturing operations. The Company needs to align its capacity to current economic condition.
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We got a bad news to Microsoft’s rival Apple; the Redmond Based Software company is on the move its readying a massive counterattack. It’s preparing to roll out the mobile version of Windows Live Mesh. It’s a terrible technology it designed to takes on Apple’s MobileMe. This could be Apple’s MobileMe biggest threat. The name is SkyBox ( Image courtesy of TechTree ) an automatic backup and restore system, its works the same as Windows Live Mesh. It syncs pictures, calendar, contacts, SMS and emails into the cloud; yes it’s similar to Apple’s MobileMe. I hope Steve Jobs know this MobileMe got a lot of problem at launch. SkyBox provides a better data management. It also provides easy communication and sharing with others. The SkyBox service would be a tough competitor to Apple’s MobileMe and its works similar to MobileMe the only difference is Microsoft is set to offer SkyBox to non Windows Mobile devices. The SkyBox offering represent Microsoft’s latest efforts to move towards the cloud, a second step to a major Windows Azure (Microsoft Cloud based OS) announcement last October. Microsoft is betting hard on the cloud business for its future growth, SkyBox would give Microsoft a major beach head in the cloud wars.
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The word application store reached buzzword status a few months ago when Apple announced its very own App store for its iPhone platform. It was a blockbuster hit, it revolutionize the whole mobile industry. Apple’s App Store has taken the tech world by storm. But Apple is not alone, there’s a lot of competition and with pretty good brand name; Google got its very own “Marketplace”, Palm has “App Catalog” and RIM” got Blackberry and its preparing to launch its Application StoreFront. We got a new entry here, something big and with very good reputation when it comes to mobile software, it’s Microsoft. The Software Company has been preparing to launch its own application store for it Windows Mobile platform, Codename “SkyMarket”(Image courtesy of Gizmodo ). Currently SkyMarket service is not yet operational. Microsoft will use Mobile World Congress event at the Barcelona Spain next month for its official announcement. Microsoft is already betting hard on SkyMarket, the Company has already thousands of mobile applications available for its mobile platform but it got no centralized system or way to handle it. What Microsoft wants here is to provide a much better environment for third party developers. Microsoft also wants to build an application store something that will delight the masses. We expect a brutal fight here between Microsoft and Apple and other similar competing services. The entry of SkyMarket would heats up the competition; it will make Microsoft’ rivals more jealous.
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Reports have been confirmed that Yahoo’s share of all search advertisers drops 36% in Q4 according to search marketing firm AdGooroo. While rival Microsoft continue to thrive it’s gained market shares closing the gap with Yahoo from 17.6% in Q3 to 3% in Q4 Alley Insider reports. Well that’s pretty close. Microsoft has been investing heavily to search business; it’s determined to close the gap with Yahoo. Google the search leader continued to dominate the web. Google has now at least 1.3 million advertisers. While Yahoo online business continued to deteriorate, its entire business is taking a beating due to the poor economy. Still we don’t know what exactly Yahoo’s new CEO Carol Bartz plans for the Company.
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Yahoo got new look, Yahoo has now starts to add deep links and images from Wikipedia in its search results. Well its looks nice and awesome. What’s exactly it looks when Wikipedia result is returned for a query, Yahoo will include deep links to the first four sections of the article, an image and then a text summary. These past few months Yahoo has rolled out some innovation and features to its Search business. I’ll think Yahoo’s Wikipedia deep links is part only of its online search strategy; Yahoo is doing effort to add structured data from the third party sites like Wikipedia via the searchMonkey platform. Yahoo needs to innovate to compete and catch on rival Microsoft and search leader Google. Despite of Yahoo’s internal problems it’s still mange to thrive in online business.
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The US financial meltdown crisis keeps getting worse and claiming more victims. Dozen of companies in the online world have suffered huge losses or folded completely. Tech companies have announced thousands of layoffs and more sure to come. Google is one of them despite of its huge size, sizable revenue and global presence the Company is under siege or simply not feeling good. Google has already announced layoffs and shutdowns services. Recently it has released several blog posts detailing about the upcoming closures are Google Notebooks, Dodgeball, Google Video, Google Mashup Editor, Google Catalogs and Jaiku. Google got no choice but to cope with the current economic crisis, its doing cost cutting strategy. The Company has been experiencing a very tough business. Although there still no further development from Google, these Google services that included in the upcoming closures will continue to stay online Google has yet to establish and announce an exact date. Google Notebooks ( Image Courtesy of WillINeedIT?.com ) will continue to stay online but no longer accept new sign ups. Dodgeball, a Google acquisition which allows users to share their currents locations using SMS will be discontinued permanently and entirely. Was the company at risk? Jaiku (another Google acquisition) the micro blogging platform will be ported to Google App engines and will be released as an open source project on Google Code. Of course there are always plenty of good reasons for Google’s decision to close these services, the company are eyeing on those services that does not performing well. But for me Google Video needs to shutdown completely it’s just a redundant service Google got already Youtube so it’s no longer needed Google Video. What Google need to do right now is to focus mostly on Youtube monetization.
