Image via CrunchBaseThis is more than putting a few million dollars into Mike Arrington's pocket. The bad boy of Silicon Valley is going to be keep being the bad boy of Silicon Valley, but now he is bought.
"All your chats are belong to me," the Russian founder of Chatroulette said at one point. Well, Mikie, all your blog posts now belong to us. We are New York City. We own TechCrunch now.
We should let Larry and his boys out there in Silicon Valley duke it out with hardware. Let's not get into hardware. (Putting My Money On Larry Ellison)
New York City has the lead on the mobile web and we need to keep that and grow that. Web services have gone global by now, and that is swell, but that is another soccer field we can keep munching on.
BusinessWeek: HP, Oracle Lead Acquisition Spree Tearing Down Tech Barriers: The race to add businesses hearkens back to the early days of corporate computing, when IBM’s dominant mainframes included home-grown chips, software, storage and networking technology. With the advent of the PC, these technology areas split up into their own industries.
I am glad the writer drew this parallel between the mainframe and the PC, because just like that consolidation symbolized the end of the mainframe era, this current consolidation symbolizes the end of the PC era. The PC is running its final lap right very now.
The smartphone is here. The 2010s belong to the smartphone. The mobile web will engulf all of humanity. Big screen broadband will have to eventually get there, but it will not get there first.
The smartphone is an addition to the ecosystem. The smartphone does not replace the PC, it was not meant to. But there is going to be a device that will reside somewhere between the PC and the smartphone. I don't think the netbook is it, I don't think the tablet is it. But they look like siblings, sure.
The PC might stick around, but not at the center of the universe.
"(C)hips, software, storage and networking" will splinter all over again.
I am in talks to do social media for a yoga studio out there in Dumbo. I hope the talks go through because I sure am interested. Dumbo just so happens to be New York City's own little tech hub. There is no Silicon Alley. There is Dumbo.
Looks can be deceiving. I am Indian, so sure, I do know my yoga, but not as much as you might think. But I will learn. More.
BusinessWeek: HP, Oracle Lead Acquisition Spree Tearing Down Tech Barriers: broken down decades-old barriers between industries ..... HP, Oracle, IBM, Cisco Systems Inc. and Dell Inc., with a collective $100 billion in cash, have said they plan to keep making acquisitions. ..... The buyers are pursuing a vision of cloud computing, which lets customers store their software in massive data centers, rather than in the computer room down the hall. Record- low borrowing costs have helped spur the deals. ..... “Nobody wants to be Californicated by Cisco.” .... Oracle, the world’s second-largest software company, snapped up almost 70 companies in the past five years
I am putting my money on Larry Ellison. The guy, for one, has a track record, and a loud mouth, and a big stick. I don't know if you have been following, but the dude spent the past few years eating up all the small fish in his pond. He bought company, after company, after company. PeopleSoft made news, the rest did not make the same kind of news.
Now the shark is after the big fish. This guy has an attitude about him. He will jump into the water first and learn to swim later. Only, he knows how to swim. But the attitude is he would jump in even if he did not know how to swim.
The underbelly of this whole drama is that Larry Ellison is seriously trying to emulate his best friend, Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs has always integrated hardware and software, and so Larry Ellison was going to do the same thing. Steve Jobs got Apple to surpass Microsoft in market value, and now Larry wants Oracle to surpass Microsoft's market value, never mind that Bill Gates long retired.
HP is in for some tough times. And they just stepped on their own foot by hiring Thepo. That was not a good idea. When I say that was not a good idea, I am talking "strictly business."
This fight could last a few years, and most definitely will be worth watching.
Larry, give me data centers that are the size of servers.
Image by Zach Klein via FlickrChris Dixon's is a good blog to follow if you want to keep abreast developments in the fast churning VC industry. He is an entrepreneur and one of those angels that you will read about a lot, people who are changing the face of the game.
Chris Dixon: The segmentation of the venture industry: Venture capital has only existed in its modern form for about 35 years. ...... “customers” (entrepreneurs) have flocked to more specialized “products.” ...... segmentation by company stage. ..... The segmentation of the venture industry is healthy for startups and innovation at large, even if at the moment it might be uncomfortable and confusing for some of the people involved.
I like his conclusion here. He says, and I agree, that the churn has been healthy and the segmentation has been welcome.
Chris Dixon: If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren’t ambitious enough: My most useful career experience was about eight years ago when I was trying to break into the world of VC-backed startups. I applied to hundreds of jobs: low-level VC roles, startups jobs, even to big tech companies. I got rejected from every single one..... I had a strange resume .... I probably got rejected by someone once a day last week alone
And I am thinking the guy still has a strange resume.
Image via CrunchBaseThis is more than putting a few million dollars into Mike Arrington's pocket. The bad boy of Silicon Valley is going to be keep being the bad boy of Silicon Valley, but now he is bought. 
