Netizen: Wall Street Journal

Showing posts with label Wall Street Journal. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Balloons, Drones, And Now Satellites

Outside of Google Beijing, Jan 13, 2010 (Photo credit: Junyu Wang | 王俊煜)

How Google Could Disrupt Global Internet Delivery by Satellite

if Google could beam Internet connectivity to countries that have only a single ISP—often one controlled by a government—and very high prices for Internet connectivity, “that could be a game changer for a huge swath of the globe” ..... O3b satellites orbit at a relatively low altitude of about 8,000 kilometers, and the company says this means a more-tolerable 150-millisecond delay coverage to latitudes up to 45 degrees north or south of the equator, a swath of territory inhabited by 70 percent of the world’s population.

Philanthropy is good business for Google. If it takes internet access to 100 million new people, that will be 100 million new people conducting searches on Google. The monetization part is in-built. And so I wonder why Google is not even more muscular in its attempts.

This is my idea of a moonshot.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Net Neutrality In Danger?

Logo of the United States Federal Communications Commission, used on their website and some publications since the early 2000s. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tim Wu: Goodbye, Net Neutrality; Hello, Net Discrimination

The broadband carriers want to make more money for doing what they already do. Never mind that American carriers already charge some of the world’s highest prices, around sixty dollars or more per month for broadband, a service that costs less than five dollars to provide.

It is a matter of disbelief to me that net neutrality should be in jeopardy. That is quite a statement on the political system. This impacts quite literally everybody. And yet the vested interests are ploughing along. What should instead happen is deregulation that brings the price down on broadband services.

So long, net neutrality? FCC to propose new pay-for-preferential treatment rules

Monday, April 01, 2013

No Kidding

The Art of War (Photo credit: kainet)

"A 1999 book by two Chinese colonels put it more aggressively (albeit in a sentence as verbose as it is apocalyptic): "If the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nations being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets," wrote Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, "then, after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent's computer system in advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis." No kidding."

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Friday, December 14, 2012

Why Apple Can't Do TV

Apple can't do TV. It is because Apple thinks TV is a software problem. When Steve Jobs failed with that paradigm he started saying it was not software, it was the industry that was refusing to play along that was the problem. That was progress on his part, but that was not it.

Could Apple Do TV?
Has Apple Peaked?
Touch Is Transient

TV is a broadband problem, or rather a slow broadband problem. The key to reshaping TV is helping move to gigabit broadband speeds. At that universal speed you will have reshaped both TV and movies.

G For Giga, G For Google

Apple is nowhere close to entering that paradigm. Tim Cook wants to take another shot at the TV thing. But he will fail. He is still a prisoner to the thinking that says TV is a software problem.

Not.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Facebook's Sad IPO's Wide Toll

I think Facebook's sad IPO was a wakeup call to many. The mobile trend is unmistakable. But I don't think it is wise to write off the web. Mobile is hottest, true, but the best applications will be platform agnostic.

Fred Wilson: What Has Changed

VC funding of consumer web and mobile companies is down 42% in this first nine months of 2012 (vs the first nine months of 2011). ..... google, facebook/instagram, amazon, microsoft, apple, twitter, ebay, yahoo, AOL, craigslist, wordpress, linkedin together make up a huge amount of the time spent online, particularly in the english speaking world ..... tumblr and pinterest have risen a lot in the past couple years ..... the consumer is moving from desktop/web to mobile/app ..... most new consumer internet startups need to build for iOS, Android, and web at the same time ..... distribution is much harder on mobile than web and we see a lot of mobile first startups getting stuck in the transition from successful product to large user base. strong product market fit is no longer enough to get to a large user base. you need to master the "download app, use app, keep using app, put it on your home screen" flow and that is a hard one to master. ...... We are small on purpose ... We want to invest in a tiny slice of the early stage ecosystem where our thesis collides with great teams and unique and differentiated products. ...... we are seeing fundraising challenges everywhere, even in our very best portfolio companies .... it is a tougher time for early stage consumer internet companies than I have seen since the 2001-2004 time frame. And I think we are still in the early innings of this more challenging environment. ..... the wind that has been at our back for 7-8 years in consumer internet is no longer there

Wall Street Journal: VCs Still Chasing Web Companies, But With Less Cash

Overall the amount invested in consumer information services was off 42% in the first nine months as the difficulties of newly public Internet companies such as Facebook and Zynga cast doubt on the business models and valuations of social media companies.

Dave McClure: What Hasn’t Changed: The Internet Keeps Getting Bigger.

most VCs switching from consumer to enterprise are clueless about why they’re doing so ..... The number of recent internet services that have grown from nothing to hundreds of millions of users is frankly rather astonishing – Pinterest, Instagram, Groupon, Zynga – all of these took less than a few years to get to hundreds of millions of users and in some cases billions of revenue. ..... what we are seeing with the smarter funds – they’re waiting until Series A or B when companies have clear traction before they jump in, when they may require larger amounts of capital to finance growth. ...... many companies can get to break-even without raising big rounds of venture capital, and may simply choose to operate on their own cashflow, or perhaps debt-based financing. ..... monetization keeps getting better and better, and exits are getting earlier and more often. ..... as online payments and monetization improves, again we will see less need for venture capital to finance customer acquisition for successful internet businesses. ..... There will be thousands of small wins, but larger funds can’t handle the scale required to do so many small investments. Maybe we need something like the SBA small business loan equivalent, but on the the equity side

Om Malik: Who Says Startups Are Easy?

The economics of attention is much more ruthless and unforgiving than the real economic underpinning of a product. Just as it is hard for a movie to recover from a bad opening weekend, today’s “apps” lose if they don’t make a good first impression.