Google Must Look At Verticalization

It looks as though the recession has finally caught up with Google. Yesterday the search giant announced Q1 results which reflected the troubled economy and more particularly the decline in clients’ advertising budgets. This post discusses Google’s missed opportunity in verticalization.

Autonomy Going Gangbuster

While most stocks across tech sectors are reflecting the economy’s depressed condition, Autonomy (AUTNF.PK)(LSE:AU), a leader in unstructured data management software, has been growing since its founding in 1996 and posted impressive results for the December quarter.

John Donahoe’s Early Thoughts

We are all trying to second guess what John Donahoe wants to do with eBay. NY Times’ Saul Hansell says that he plans to focus on better Search. Not a bad starting point. I hope this won’t be one of Jerry Yang’s “we want MyYahoo to be the starting point of your lives” vision without

Read Full Article »

IAC – Divided we stand

Interactive Corp. (NASDAQ: IACI) recently announced its decision to split its whole business into five separate listed entities. The stock has lost around 24% in 2007. The spin off will hopefully lead to value unlocking for shareholders. It will create 5 different entities – Interactive (including Ask.com, Match.com and Citysearch), Home Shopping Network, Ticketmaster, Interval

Read Full Article »

Web 3.0 & Google (Part 3)

Web 3.0 Framework discussion Below is a quick overview of the Web 3.0 framework for the Google sites. This is, in fact, an interesting analysis, since Google’s horizontal approach is pretty much against the grain of the vertical nature of my Web 3.0 framework.

Web 3.0 & Amazon (Part 5)

Conclusion We have reviewed Amazon’s strategy in the upcoming Web 3.0 world over the last few days. Amazon has been focusing on enhancing its technology, introducing new categories of products and services (recently introduced, Amazon MP3 and Grocery), increasing depth of selection in each category, opening new markets (UK, Germany, Japan), offering better shopping tools

Read Full Article »

Web 3.0 & Amazon (Part 4)

Acquisition Targets Amazon has been slow to acquire companies. Amazon acquired dpreview.com, a London-based digital photography review site in May 2007. Amazon needs to use acquisitions to enter businesses that have a higher profitability dynamic in their business models. For example, Amazon could consider acquiring on-demand, customized product creation company CafePress. CafePress.com is a growing

Read Full Article »

Web 3.0 & eBay (Part 5)

Conclusion We have had a look at eBay’s business and verticals and discussed them from a Web 3.0 perspective over the last few days. eBay has been experiencing a slow down in its growth rate. Skype is struggling and the Company is working on better monetizing Skype. PayPal on the other hand has been doing

Read Full Article »