MotoGoogle

Last week I announced that I’m planning my own Android phone and the next thing you know Google does the same thing!  Coincidence? I think not.  Our motivations are somewhat different, however, and their budget, at $12.5 billion, is marginally higher. I’ve had plenty of time to think about this as I drive the dogs across country to our next home in California and there’s quite a bit more to this Motorola deal than other pundits have been saying.

Yes, it has a lot to do with patents and that might well explain Google’s goofy bidding behavior during the recent Nortel patent auction. Maybe Google already knew it was going for Moto at that point. Certainly with these 17,000 patents plus the $1 billion worth […]

By |August 16th, 2011|2011|104 Comments

The Cringely Internet Civility Plan

A reader came to me this week with a problem. He was being sued in federal court by a company claiming he had defamed them online.  That will be $75,000, please.  I’m not getting into who the reader is, which company is suing, even what jurisdiction, because none of that matters here.  But the case is real and I feel for the reader. So let’s come up with a way to make sure this doesn’t have to happen again.

America is a very litigious society. We love to get all riled up and sue each other, whether our claims are valid or not.  In this reader’s case he is accused of making improper comments […]

By |August 8th, 2011|2011|77 Comments

The Future of Hulu and U.S. TV

Who will buy Hulu, the IPTV streaming service and why should we care? I’m not sure I do care, now that Lie to Me has been canceled, but in case you are an American who feels the future of series television is important, here’s what I think is going on.

The Wall $treet Journal says Apple is thinking of making a bid for Hulu and Seattlepi.com says Microsoft’s is no longer interested, which leaves Amazon, Apple, Google, Yahoo, and any unnamed parties. I can’t think of any unnamed parties, by the way, so I’m guessing one of these will walk with Hulu, which went into play a couple weeks ago following an […]

By |July 22nd, 2011|2011|44 Comments

The Decline and Fall of Facebook

Roger McNamee is a smart guy and a very successful investor as a co-founder of Elevation Partners. He made a breakfast presentation last month at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles that is well worth watching. I could probably get half a dozen columns out of this one speech, but the part I want to concentrate on here is McNamee’s claim that when it comes to social media, Facebook (in which he was an early investor) has already won. I’m not here to say Roger is wrong, just that I am not exactly sure what Facebook is winning.

The core of McNamee’s speech didn’t have to do so much with Facebook as with Microsoft, Apple, Google, and […]

By |July 20th, 2011|2011|204 Comments

700 MHz opportunity down the toilet (no, make that stolen)

Today, if you have a few million bucks to spare, the Federal Communications Commission will be auctioning wireless licenses in the 700 MHz band — primo space in many respects because it is lower on the RF spectrum and offers longer range. But Auction 92, as it is called, is anything but primo, since it is for licenses that either received no bids in the previous Auction 73, held in 2008, or were sold in that auction to organizations that never paid in full. That earlier auction, which I covered at the time, is a sad story of opportunity lost, especially for Google.

Remember how that freed-up spectrum was up […]

By |July 19th, 2011|2011|68 Comments