en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/8/18/d42c87acd2e147043cb8a390f47bd6af.html Sat, 18 Aug 2007 01:58:12 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/8/18/d42c87acd2e147043cb8a390f47bd6af.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/16/f751ae16a2b9ec6dea6e368cca0ee9ee.html Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:29:41 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/16/f751ae16a2b9ec6dea6e368cca0ee9ee.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/28/4c829295a4febfe6ba73821a64759bd3.html
I can't say that I'm said for Netscape's death as they really weren't producing anything noteworthy in the past few years. Their portal site, browser and Digg clones have all been failures, so it isn't a surprise that AOL let them go.

That said, I put all the blame for Netscape's lack of success from AOL's continuing business failures. The Time/Warner merger was flawed from the start and destroyed WCW back when it was hot. Later AOL stopped supporting in earnest Netscape and even WinAmp, one of the best media players up until that time. It's as though anytime sometime arrives at some level of success, company politics kill projects in AOL. Even their sales flops with the controversial situation where the guy wasn't allowed to cancel his contract further demonstrates AOL's lack of commitment to quality and customer satisfaction.

Well, despite their empire from years ago, the growth of broadband has killed AOL's primary business of dial up. Hopefully, this makes them attractive as a buy for a company like Google, who will in turn just shut them off, showing the world that karma is, indeed, a muthafucking bitch. After such a buyout, Google should fire all those executives and make the remaining dial up free while refocusing AOL's core business into free cable/internet access, thus challenging the telecoms in their monopoly.]]> Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:23:32 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/28/4c829295a4febfe6ba73821a64759bd3.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/2/6e2091393f15b8454dc35f95637ba0b8.html I like Google and admire what they do. But whenever I look at them, I always see something missing that scares me. Web 2.0 has been mostly an eco system supported via Google's advertisements. I explained before how Google handles their success (at least I think I did). But to me it's a real frail environment and once someone figures out how to pull the plug from Google, many companies will fall hard.

Of course, there's a lot of things plugged into Google. They figured out how to be needed. So in another way, they won't be gone so quickly. They are kinda like a new OS forming through their APIs. And with things like OpenSocial and Android, it's clear that they want to be more like a crack dealer in getting people addicted to their drug of OSS.

But that's the ting to me. They try to not only be the crack dealer, but the alcohol shop, the vending machine for tobacco and the old Everclear song "Everything to Everyone." If Ads is their biggest single point of failure, their other Achilles' Heel would be spreading themselves too thin. I like what they've done for things like office applications and their charity arm. But in the end, how do these things fit Google? When you go up to someone in Google and attempt to have them answer, "What is Google's purpose as a business?" I don't think anyone could provide a clear answer. They used to be search. But what has creating a spreadsheet or powerpoint slide have to do with search?

Then you have them entering the mobile market in many ways like getting into the 700Mhz bid and their Android platform. I understand the marketing plausibility of it, but again what has that to do with search?

So I see a paradox going on, or maybe even an oxymoron: being everything to everyone or having no sense of identity whatsoever. I remember reading about how Larry Page grew angry at Google employees for not spending enough time on search. Is that because Google is supposed to be search?

Honestly, for myself, I don't care whether or not Google as a business model is supposed to be search. I just want them to answer it for themselves. They need to, in 2008, finally declare who and what Google is. They cannot make the claim, "They are not Evil" because Evil is too subjective of a word. And it simply is not a business model since business models are about making money through products and services. Once they've answered this question, I hope that they can focus their efforts on whatever model they pick.]]> Wed, 02 Jan 2008 01:28:40 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/2/6e2091393f15b8454dc35f95637ba0b8.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/2/2a85ded9a6471b256aef75886510d7f8.html You can't talk about Google without talking about Yahoo in some way. I think MSN should be made irrelevant as it is truly a 3rd rate copy of copies. But the big question should be how these two behemoths focus their energies for this year?

While Google looks mobile bound, Yahoo might be moving towards social. I really hate looking at these two companies in these terms because I think these terms are passe. I think there is another picture to look at, something bigger than just mobile and social (while these two are big, to me, it's just marketing's current buzz).

I think Google needs to become something like the engine of the internet. I guess you could call it the Web OS. It will form the basis of all internet related aspects. APIs, links to websites, data relation, etc. In other words, Google will become more of the foundation for how the internet runs. You have all of their open APIs like Base, Maps, Ads, Android, even OpenSocial to a degree.

Yahoo should focus on becoming The content provider/creator. If I were to refocus Yahoo, it would be to first get rid of all the useless things that it bought or things that doesn't do it any real good. For instance, I'd kill Yahoo's search. Just let Google power it. I don't see any difference anyway (which is a huge problem in my book).

Next I'd kill Yahoo's notion of it being a portal. A portal for what? What a stupid term that got a lot of companies in trouble for forcing people to try to do everything, but doing everything in a sloppy, disorganized, unfocused, and low quality manner. Yahoo shouldn't even have a "front" page anymore. They should get people to move towards "My Yahoo" or something more useful. Help people build their own page. I'm not talking about another shitty "let's share my stupid page with my friends" type of deal. I'm talking about going through their troves of content and letting users filter out all of their crap which makes their front page so confusing.

Yahoo should then focus on purely content APIs. News, weather, movies, music, TV, etc. Content, content, content, content. Let Yahoo be this middle man of content, a content distributor and even creator. Google will then find ways of mining it. It's a nice symbiotic relationship that they could build.

Also, Yahoo should be a front end service. If Yahoo is to be a content provider/creator, it must also figure out how to make such services presentable. In other words, make them look nice, make it easy for people to create more services, make it easy to access and figure out what's available for them. If you go to Yahoo's homepage, you'll see a bunch of junk floating around. You got some news items, a ton of confusing ads, this horrible sidebar in which my eye hardly glances, and a TINY search bar. Oh not to mention that stupid appearing menu for my email that enlarges and shrinks the page in annoying ways. What the hell is this? Yahoo is trying to push a ton of garbage onto me without figuring out what I want at first. It's almost like going to a generic buffet in Vegas. Going along the analogy of buffets, Google is more like the Wynn buffet, where you have smaller quantities of food, but the stuff is done well. On the other hand, Yahoo would be the Main Street of buffets, where you get tons of choices, but the preparation is done in a mediocre manner.

If I were re-designing Yahoo's pages, I would start with a blank page and just ask questions about what a user wants and slowly build up a page with all the content available for them. I suggest anyone with some authority at Yahoo to read my rant about Linux on the desktop. Yahoo needs a similar strategy. While Yahoo has the marketshare due to their long reign, I can easily imagine them losing it or at least pieces of it slowly to competitors who simply have more focused capabilities and better marketing.

Along those lines I'd also make Yahoo a single point of sign on for the internet. There should be some trusted crossover between Google and Yahoo to allow people to reutilize their email addresses as the same login between platforms. If that happens, then they should also get rid of the stupid page that forces people to re-login everytime and put everything into some framed version so that people don't have to go between various pages and have all their main applications and links centralized from a logical point.

Finally, Yahoo needs to return partly to their roots on what made them successful: a directory. While Yahoo as a pure directory is impossible because of the sheer number of services out there, Yahoo needs to re-invent itself in terms of marketing its applications in the form of a directory structure. Or something that bears resemblance to a directory to make sense of the hundreds of things within Yahoo. Having that sad little strip on the left side just doesn't cut it and I'm certain more services could potentially see the light of day if people weren't obstinate and realized how horrible of a front page that they have.

Google and mobile/wireless are combos people are going to start murmuring about since, well, it's Google trying to get in. While it'll be interesting to see their plans if they can get the bid, I'm more afraid of them failing in getting it. Probably if they make the bid, they'll open it up for everyone. I don't think that would be a great business decision. The infrastructure cost in that would be insane. But let's say that they don't get the duke. My alternative plan is for them to buyout AOL, kill dialup, improve LAN connectivity through installing fiber in major cities and lowering rates and selling that. Personally, I'd love to see that happen more than Google getting the wireless bid. I mean, it just makes more sense from a business perspective. The customers are already known, all you're doing is just upgrading lines, you destroy that evil faction of sales that AOL has, you get rid of the old dialups, move everyone to IPv6 so everyone will have a static IP and you can give the cable monopoly a real run for their money (i'm not sure if Time Warner still has a part in AOL, probably do so that'll make this deal even sweeter). Not to mention you'll make M$ shit in their pants because you end up controlling the other side of infrastructure.n The other major thing is that Google will finally have a new form of business to earn continuous revenue from. It will be a natural fit and a good way for the internet to finally evolve.

Yahoo should NOT make a purchase or investment in Facebook. I just think the whole SNS is passe. Yahoo should focus on improving what they have rather than continuously broaden themselves out. Let some other company like M$ make the mistake of investing in a piece of junk like Facebook. Have you seen Myspace recently? It still sucks even with the interface change! People just migrated over to Facebook! So is Murdoch's $650 million still worth it?

Both of these companies need to realize what they have and make better utilization of their resources. I think Google has a lot of momentum and brilliance while Yahoo has the legacy. But both simply lack focus to improve on what they have.

Anyway, if anyone wants to hire me as a strategist for either company, go to my profile page here and contact me through my linkedin account or facebook account.]]> Wed, 02 Jan 2008 02:22:15 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/2/2a85ded9a6471b256aef75886510d7f8.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/5/310b4dc2796c841e3b35979b6118560e.html idea that reflects what he wants.

However, as we all know, synonyms are useful in creating additional relationships in words. So rather than just coming up with an exact match for "achilles heel" (where google wouldn't really have a synonym at this point), the search engine would go out and locate words or idioms analogous to "achilles heel" such as "weakness", "soft spot", etc.

This would be pretty fun(ny) for some search terms like "sex" or "fuck". But in truth, this is very useful as someone who wants to locate an idea rather than keywords would receive richer amounts of information that might be more relevant than the process of continuously retyping in keywords in trying to extract a true match.

Also, synonym searches would change the game of how keyword bidding works from simply having people pay for keywords/phrases to key intentions. In the process, we probably would be able to learn a lot more about ourselves in the way we'd use these types of searches.]]> Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:55:04 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/5/310b4dc2796c841e3b35979b6118560e.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/7/c1e7b92e9745b23b17930e68e7f365ed.html
Instead, you really need stronger ways of filtering results. One idea off the top of my head is by solidifying similar search results into a grouping. This is what I call "Search Result Coagulation." Truth be told, search engines really have no way of easily discerning results, so it's probably up to humans to, initially at least, inform these systems of their error. One way would be if people could group redundant results with each other. So you would find one result, drag it on top of another result, and it'll form a grouping.

In that sense, you don't want to tag the group, although you could. I mean, it's just a result group. Maybe you could have a little plus by the side of the result group that inflates the other similar results. When people attempt to locate such results again, they too might see this grouping.

Unfortunately, this methodology is prone to human asshole-ness. That is, the typical netjerks who screw up results for other people intentionally by purposefully mis-grouping results.

Alternatively, you could create success result clouds, which would bundle up the most useful related results for a group of search terms.

I guess I'll have to check around to see if someone has done such a thing. Certainly, I'm not the only one who probably thought of such a thing. But at least, there aren't anything available that's widely publicized.]]> Mon, 07 Jan 2008 16:40:58 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/7/c1e7b92e9745b23b17930e68e7f365ed.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/1/f1033a369b039e1b3c14415bab3bed4b.html
On second thought, the idea horrifies me.

It horrifies me, not in the thought that M$ and Yahoo would be this mega corporation. But it horrifies that it's really a dumb idea. For both companies.

Both companies see Google as The Enemy. This is erroneous thinking and a myth that's become perpetuated horribly in Silicon Valley that people have been utterly brainwashed by the hype.

Google is simply a company with a lot of innovation, a vision of how it wants to shape the future, and it's uncompromising nature to make good on that vision. Yahoo, M$, Ballmer, and a lot of other people see it as simply a territorial war in ad space. Ads are the only thing that fuel Google and it's probably why Ballmer wants to strike them in that area. Honestly, there's absolutely zero reason for M$ to get into that market in the first place because they dominate in so many other markets.

But when I look at M$ after Bill Gates stepped down, I realized that they took an incredible misstep in promoting Ballmer to the position of CEO. Ballmer, for all intents and purposes, is indeed the stereotypical Pointy-Haired-Boss from Dilbert. Heck, I'm certain Scott Adams must've got his inspiration from some where :p Ballmer was an operations guy, someone who knew how to streamline the internal business. But as far as a leader in technology, Ballmer lacks vision, except tunnel vision. One slashdotter aptly put it that Ballmer's myopic quest to end Google is probably going to end up killing whatever dignity M$ has left.

The combination of Yahoo and M$ would be horrible for the industry. People predict that the acquisition would make the combined companies stronger in terms of a rival for Google. Instead, the truth is that the acquisition would end up killing both companies while Google sits back and watches the flames spurn from the distance.

I believe that the acquisition would cause more irrevocable harm to both companies because it'll simply bloat M$ up even further than it is. Think about the internal politics, the restructuring, the name calling when it comes to using which product. Both companies have incredibly strong personalities and senses of identity. So a merger would just rip into the fabric of time and space.

And it'll make both companies even less agile in this market.

Google's internal culture promotes agility as much as a company of that size can. In Ballmer's obsessed state, I think he'll go mad micromanaging what stays and goes in the Yahoo brand. Why would there even be a Yahoo brand after the acquisition? Everything would be re-branded and slowly migrated to a decaying Vista platform. Then the services would grow slow, less open, and charged. In the meantime, companies like Facebook and Google will continue to open up their services and give out the crack called open source and APIs to hungry developers that will consume up such gifts while M$ begs old customers to stay on their aging platform.

This is the reality of what will happen if this acquisition goes through.

Now, to Mr. Jerry Yang.

My advice to you is this. Your shareholders are important, but money isn't everything. M$'s deal is their own poison and they don't even realize it. All the work you've striven to accomplish with the Yahoo brand will slowly fade. And honestly, do you really need more money?

Move away from the deal. If you take it, you will be one of the most despised men in the industry. All your loyal Yahoo employees will migrate away to companies like Google, Facebook (if they haven't already) in disgust at your selling them out. The Yahoo must remain independent to allow for people to choose. Terry Semel did a lot of damage in a similar manner that Ballmer is doing to M$. But if you want to correct the damage that Semel did, you must allow the Yahoo identity to remain, give the customers what they want and show guts and vision in this period. Yes, Yahoo isn't doing well financially as expected, but many companies will face a similar crunch in the coming quarters. That's how the market is just going to react from the greed of the housing market. The buyout is nothing more than a short term snort of cocaine for your investors, but in the end they'll lose and you'll lose.

Don't sell Yahoo to M$. It's a bad deal.

Besides, if you do sell to M$, Google will simply buy Sun and merge with Apple. Then what are you going to do?]]> Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:25:18 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/1/f1033a369b039e1b3c14415bab3bed4b.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/0fd6ac98f50d9094f34f6ad5cd2596f4.html
I feel it's like being on a battle field where you're seeing all the lines of allies and enemies being drawn up. Or maybe it's closer to who's going to pull the trigger first.

I've already stated that I firmly believe that Yahoo should remain independent as M$'s move would simply hurt themselves and the industry. I think Yahoo themselves both internally and key members of management feel the same way. Not to mention that there was an interesting reaction where Yahoo mentioned increasing their relationship with Google. I'm hoping that people aren't just looking at the sheets, but all the different angles of what this buy out means. It's not that easy and I continue to believe that hostile marketing by companies like M$ have been bestowing negative imagery upon Yahoo.

While I do believe Yahoo hasn't done so well for itself, you cannot deny the power that they hold. It's just that people hold huge expectations for them. The truth is that right now, economics in the world have not been doing well. It's just a simple casualty of the fall out from the subprime loan situation in America.

If you just take these three players, the thing is that you have to make them realize what their relationship to each other is. Google is becoming the OS/engine of the web. Yahoo is the media and supplier of information in the web. And M$ is a steering way or maybe a window to the web.

These three companies should respect each other on these grounds. If I were the government and forced to intervene on these warring parties, I would have them make an agreement to how their businesses are divided.

Regardless of what's going on, I have to admit that this is one of the most interesting times to be part of this industry. Glad, I'm working in it and for it.
]]> Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:30:46 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/0fd6ac98f50d9094f34f6ad5cd2596f4.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/001c4b1ebaa65176fae393eba52a6351.html

• Buy Sun out. Sun bought Mysql out and practically are a great hardware distributor. Spin Sun's hardware business off as an independent company, and as a primary distributor to Google. Take over all patents for Java and release them as pure Open Source. Re-do the whole N-1 grid programming project and combine Google's OS with Sun's Unix in creating a distributed, grid programming platform, completely supported by Google. Cater to start ups and midsized companies by eliminating the need for DBAs, system administrators and production support groups by providing round the clock service for all areas of support. Kill Sun's SunOne Identity management system in favor of OpenID as a de facto standard for the industry's constant id management system crisis.
• Merge or partner in a closer relation to Apple. Force Apple to lower the cost of desktop systems, get rid of Safari, and only provide Firefox as the true browser of choice.
• Buy Facebook already. Orkut is useless so get rid of it. Also, OpenSocial sucks because it's too limited. Give that kid his money already and put someone with experience in charge.
• Buy the Mozilla corporation out. Come on. We know you want them.
• Create a new business for web businesses. A complete investment model. Think of it as building a new town. You have the land, the wood, the construction trucks. But you have no dependent businesses to make the town a city. To initially attract the people to your city, you give them what you need. In return, your citizens pay tax to help the city to prosper.

This is my vision for Google. Want to hire me as a strategist yet?????]]> Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:43:37 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/4/001c4b1ebaa65176fae393eba52a6351.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/9/5ff7691a596840ed7ad265af06d8c08d.html
My feeling about this deal is that it's a personal agenda item from Steve Ballmer. It's been well documented on Ballmer's personal attacks against Google and his desire to put an end to them. It's kinda strange because I don't think a lot of businesses are quickly converting over to Google in terms of their office software. A lot of companies still employee and will probably continue to employee M$ Office just for compatibility in sharing documents between other businesses. I mean, Open Office probably does a better job than Google's Apps for handling M$ Office compatibility issues. And by the time Google can rival M$ on these areas, M$ just has to create further incompatibilities. In other words, M$ will continue to make a boatload of money from their desktop products and can mutually survive with Google in the playing field.

So why would M$ fear Google?

I don't think that M$ honestly fears Google at all. I think the reason for this mess is that Steve Ballmer is fearing for his position as CEO of M$.

M$ in the past few years has been for the most part a joke. Some items on my list to ridicule M$ on are:

• Vista. Bloated, people are asking for XP. Not a good sign.
• XBox. At one time, M$ was losing money for each XBox produced. Other companies are excelling in the game industry and M$ isn't the only one in the field.
• Zune. iPod holds the better product and M$ was just far too late to get into this playing field.
• MSN. It just sucks. Face it.
• Live/Spaces. M$ doesn't understand the web and never will.
• Ads. Google owns with Yahoo being the closest second.
• Firefox catching up in terms of market share compared with MSIE. IE is a terrible product and is a cause for many viruses on the web with its insecurities.
• Security. M$ has the worst record for security.

And so on. M$ has just an awful track record in the past few years. And who's at the helm?

Steve Ballmer

What does that say? While Google made headway as the fastest and largest growing software company around (and it's funny calling them a software company), M$ has been nothing but the biggest butt of jokes. Steve Ballmer hasn't done a thing to take M$ ahead of the game because he's just a pointy haired boss. He's not a visionary like Gates, he never was a tech guy. He's just an operations fellow who managed to move up because of his past relationship with Paul and Bill.

With such a list of failures, I'm certain numerous people within the company and shareholders alike are calling for Ballmer's head in the near term future, kinda like how people wanted to impeach George Bush for his failures. Well, their product line ups have failed in not being able to copy as successfully as their competitors. And bullying is no longer an option at this point because they lack the market share in the internet compared with Yahoo and Google. So their last resort in M$'s typical business tactics is to buy.

If the deal went through, Ballmer might initially look like a star. He'd have his place in M$ history as being the guy who had slain the ancient dominant dragon of Yahoo sitting on a mound of global shares of wealth and connections. He would get his 2-3 year extension as CEO and probably receive renumeration in shares from the deal with Yahoo, making him one of the most powerful CEOs around.

It's purely ego driven.

What it isn't is solid business sense.

This is the deal that will honestly kill M$ in the long term. I think Ballmer will promise Yahoo and M$'s shareholders of being able to reorganize and turnaround both companies in being able to compete in the market place against Google. Initially, shareholders thrilled at hearing news will become emotional, not really seeing that this ploy is simply a tactic to buy time for Ballmer's lack of vision. Heads will roll at both companies, more likely Yahoo's than M$'s. Products will be deactivated or slashed out of existence. Fights will occur between teams. There might even be a stupid notion of trying to migrate the entire Yahoo platform onto Windows. That would definitely destroy everything Yahoo has built. Look at Hotmail when they tried to migrate it to NT. How can either company do anything productive while organizational battles go on to survive within both companies? How can innovation thrive in a big re-organization?

Look at the HP-Compaq merger. It took them about 3 years before things came about. In the meantime, other players like Gateway/Emachines and Dell surged. The HP-Compaq merger offended a lot of veteran HP employees. Certainly, the policies between Yahoo and M$ would differ enough to cause cultural clashes between both companies.

But I think that the market in the internet is far more competitive and more agile than the PC hardware market. Applications can be built faster and better than selling a PC at lower cost. In the internet market, you have to blast out applications at a rapid pace and innovate where your competitors are not focusing their strengths. Google has a culture of the 20% rule. With the threat of M$-Yahoo, this rule might be the key for Google's survival.

And probably some of the most valuable employees that Yahoo will lose are their engineering team. I can easily see engineers leaving by the dozens while Google offers them a safe haven. You gotta think about how an engineer inside Yahoo might react. I'm certain many Yahoo engineers love Linux, love open source and hate Windows. The very thought of having to use a restricted proprietary system would make them want to leave. And I'm certain many of these people are highly motivated and extremely bright, wanting to get their chance at their own 20% rule that probably was killed off when Terry Semel took hold of the reigns in Yahoo.

Either way, this deal only has one benefactor: Ballmer. But he's not going to be the star he believes he's making himself into. He's going to be another Carly, and at the end of the day, he's going to have a miserable farewell and will be ridiculed as a visionless, do-little CEO.
]]> Sat, 09 Feb 2008 11:40:23 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/9/5ff7691a596840ed7ad265af06d8c08d.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/c12cf6afb863830230ec09c720d414dc.html
"It involves breakthrough engineering. We think that the combination with Yahoo would accelerate things in a very exciting way, because they do have great engineers, they have done a lot of great work. So, if you combine their work and our work, the speed at which you can innovate and get things done is just dramatically more rapid. So, it's really about the people there that want to join in and create a better search, better portal for a very broad set of customers. That's the vision that's behind saying, hey, wouldn't this be a great combination."

The importance of this quote stresses how Bill Gates is attempting to soothe in Yahoo's engineers a notoriously weak point about engineers: their ego. While I'm certain that the shareholders couldn't care less about this issue one way or another, the key for Microsoft to purchase Yahoo is through assuaging the internal strife from people who have zero desire to work for Microsoft. This is very biblical on some levels as it's basically asking Christians to take a bite of the Apple in the Garden of Eden as Satan tempts Adam. And certainly, many Yahoo people probably own a fair amount of stock within the company, so a buyout simply means that these people would be able to make more money. On the surface, it seems like a win-win deal.

I won't go further about what makes this deal bad, as I had already covered this issue several times. I do want to say that Bill Gates' reply to Yahoo's current stance is brilliant and is the tactic I would've taken and even suggested Google's lawyers in reprimanding Microsoft's push for the web space. By complimenting what essential was an enemy for a good decade, Bill Gates is doing exactly what he did with IBM and Apple during the 80's. He's simply partnering up with them and getting them to believe its in their best interest.

Watch Pirates of Silicon Valley to show the quote from the Steve Ballmer character in how he praised Bill Gates in handling Steve Jobs when they were stealing the ideas from the Mac to make Windows. This is simply classic Bill Gates. He knows that Ballmer can't execute the deal and that the only one that can handle it is Bill Gates. You don't have to like the man, but you have to admire his business savvy.]]> Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:49:57 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/c12cf6afb863830230ec09c720d414dc.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/c083b7cfa7302c0ef531b372234970c3.html
These comparisons probably are what the industry should look at. It's 1984 all over again. Once again, we have a major giant in online search and advertising in the form of Google, giving little choice as Microsoft is painting. Jobs made a similar infamous speech playing the Ridley Scott directed Macintosh commercial. Everyone is eying Google as being like IBM back then. This time there are some changes in the roles, but I see similar outcomes. Here, Google is IBM. Microsoft's Gates and Ballmer are playing Steve Jobs giving a speech to the tech industry. Yahoo is Apple with their portal, branding, and search as being the only chance of survival for the rest of the industry. But Microsoft again is lurking in the background, waiting to pounce on the unsuspecting industry. They've done it once, and they can do it again.

We all are very familiar with the history that Microsoft and Apple had created after that. It was like George W Bush coming into power, after Clinton freed the nation from the GOP. But for some reason, people believed that we needed a war and that war cost the US its reputation, its dignity, its internal economy, the freedom of its people and turned the rest of the world into a hostile environment rather than a progressive one.

Yahoo and Google (along with open source software and the web) essentially have freed us from reign of closed systems, of limiting people's career potentials and of geographic boundaries. By uniting Microsoft and Yahoo, we would be returning to those days of being enslaved, kinda like the downtrodden masses in the 1984 Macintosh video. I don't think we want to return to that space again.]]> Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:06:30 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/c083b7cfa7302c0ef531b372234970c3.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/b805c8197b3d77a137807e09c83a96f8.html
That said, online video is quite limited and I've not been impressed by most of the stuff out there. Occasionally, there's a good idea or two, but most fall into a limited number of categories. It's obvious that people are building things to get a piece of the pie (what's remaining at least after Google/YouTube's share), but I personally consider leftovers something like four month old food. Without giving precise numbers, here's a quick summary of the types of websites just for video out there:

• Video Hosting
• Video Search
• Aggregation Sites (i.e. adding links into a database)
• Social Networking
• Chat
• Conferencing
• Slideshows
• Podcasts
• IPTV
• P2P
• Instructional/Howtos
• Wannabe American Idol sites
• Video Blogging/Personal Shows
• Mobile versions of these
• Video Advertisement
• Studio Sponsored sites
• Specialized Media players

If you examine these closely, there's not one except perhaps IPTV that you cannot do with YouTube. And what's more amazing is the amount of money these sites receive. Many of these sites might be funded from $2 million all the way up to $100+ million. I'm honestly not certain why companies are willing to fund sites that are YouTube copies. But I'm guessing that they're hoping on making some cash from a highly risky IPO.

What's more disturbing is how these sites make their money. The forms of money that these sites can make their money off of are:

• Online advertisement (duh)
• One time fee
• Revenue sharing (with partners)
• Account basis

I probably reviewed over 100 sites now (credit: crunchbase.com). The majority of the sites earn money through some form of online advertisement. Usually, Google ads or maybe they partner up with some of these newly established video advertisement sites. But most are banner ads or ads injected into their video. I guess in some ways, it makes sense because inserted commercials have always been successful in terms of revenue generation. I mean, for the most part you can't fast forward through a commercial (unless you TiVo or record it). Video simply pacifies the audience in a submissive state so it's far more effective than banner ads.

That all said, the thing that bothered me the most was that most of these non-YouTube sites were going for extremely niche markets. In a way, it makes sense because the saying goes, "Do one thing and do it well." But there's so much duplicated work. I mean, take the media players using Flash, for instance. Some of these players are absolute crap. For example, AOL Video or Veoh. Heck, both of those are flagged as some form of spyware on my virus scanner. Also, many of these companies are building their own networks, which means they have to deal with the cost of serving streaming media and dealing with high bandwidth cost as well as facing server redundancy issues.

Unfortunately, I see online video as something where only players with big bucks can really compete in this space. Data centers and homes really need to upgrade their infrastructure to handle some of these cases to hopefully reduce the cost and lag.

Along those lines, I came to an idea as a suggestion to Google (or other big companies who have this kind of infrastructure). You really need to start opening up your media player and data moreso to allow people to customize the features. My gut feeling is that the start ups (outside of Myspace, AOL, etc.) do so for two reasons: 1) the potential to make bank; 2) the interface needs improvement. Well, perhaps as a business opportunity, Google can open up their data and interface to allow more developers from the outside to contribute, kinda like how Facebook and Myspace have opened up to allow developers to customize the look of people's pages.

My other gut feeling when it comes to the Big Players in their attempt to go online is that they're fearing a YouTube/Google dominated media market. It's quite obvious now why Murdoch/News Corp bought out Myspace. But I'm seeing a lot more partnerships between big media companies and these start ups. For instance, Hulu, Veoh, AOL, Grouper/Crackle. Disney too announced that they will purchase 20 online companies. And the main reason for these trends is that these traditional big media companies are not internet savvy companies, have tons of red tape but need to react to the market sooner.

Still, with the recent mutterings of Yahoo going online with their own type of streaming video, my belief is that you have to improve the entire experience of video. I think that everyone in the online space is simply replicating work, without improving what we can or the content of it. I mean, why put instructional videos on a dedicated site? Why have streaming video from it? I hardly commented anything positive during my 100+ website review. Perhaps the only one that was semi-cool was a website that had facial recognition.

The social networking thing is fun and easy, but it's WAY overdone. i don't see a point in trying to build another niche network. Instead, people should start reutilizing APIs out there unless these sites are not capable of putting forth something that doesn't satisfy a need. And honestly, I'm not seeing a lot of needs being satisfied through these redundant sites.]]> Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:35:53 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/b805c8197b3d77a137807e09c83a96f8.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/92e141ebb99ea15b96b03f8631951c15.html
This whole situation got me thinking the other day about other major companies and how they could open more of their systems to developers to improve what they can do in creative fashion. In relationship to Google, as I mentioned with YouTube, they ought to continue opening up their applications to allow more developers to contribute to them. Although they are the giant in search, video, advertising and whatnot, they still suffer in terms of quality at times.

For instance, I find their search to be limited, constantly filled with junk results that waste my time. And certainly others must feel the same way. That isn't to say what they have is poor. However, the reality is that their search product needs a massive facelift and internally I'm not certain that the developers are able to push out their products fast enough. Similarly, I find Ads to produce a plethora of irrelevant junk ads when I had hosted them on my site. And I already mentioned what we could do with YouTube's player.

As a result, I've concluded that a potential business development move that Google ought to make is to open more of their APIs, most notably search, Google Apps, YouTube, and Ads. I noticed that Google had cut off their older web service where people could extract results via XML. This service was rebuilt as an AJAX type of search, which in my opinion, is practically useless for people who want to do more with their results. You have to use their branded search and the API is rather bulky and limited. Of course, the purpose is to maintain their hegemony over the search market. But I think this is a dangerous mode of thinking for them.

Instead, opening up more of their APIs would allow smaller businesses created by highly motivated and talented developers to improve upon Google's products where their current staff isn't. In turn, Google could also act as a venture capital company that could provide seed money for these small businesses and perhaps a controlling stake in them. In some ways, it's almost like hiring developers but in truth my plan would allow Google to let smaller, more focused teams do what they need without the business criticality one might come to expect in working at Google. I mean, if I wanted to work on a better search interface at Google, I probably wouldn't be able to, except during my 20% situation. That limits my productivity to 1 day a week as opposed to 5 up to possibly 7 days of pure coding.

Another clear benefit would be that Google wouldn't be forced to go through a dedicated hiring process. They might require a business review process if they go with the seed money/controlling interest thing. But in the end, the goal would be an acquisition if the application becomes successful. This, imo, works for both parties as Google would supply the base technology while the venture would handle everything else.



]]> Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:30:16 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/21/92e141ebb99ea15b96b03f8631951c15.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/5/105549fffa33c4dfaf4b5a1148b1815d.html
Honestly, I think this partnership also makes sense. I need to go back and do my research on the numbers, but last time I checked (and I admit it was a while back), AOL still had a good amount of dial up users. Yahoo has their own ISP offerings so this would nicely compliment what AOL has. Yahoo could easily move users slowly towards their broadband offerings (hopefully decreasing the price to make it seem more appealing than using Cable modems).

The other thing is that AOL has some good content that would compliment nicely with Yahoo's properties. For instance, their video section and merging chat together. There's a lot of redundant overlap that Yahoo does better and integrating the platforms (namely the user base) would hopefully end this redundancy.

Also, this move would help improve Yahoo's image somewhat. Many had at one time considered Yahoo as "The Internet." However, that face slowly got eroded with Google's move into the market. Still, Yahoo dominates a good portion of the market in terms of traffic. Having people using them as an ISP simply reinforces this idea, which recently, seems to have been weakened with the increasingly dominated Google.

Where does Yahoo stand? I think that the whole M$ deal would make sense only to shareholders in the short term. It's actually very bad business in the long term and would hurt the market. Unfortunately, with the market souring overall, shareholders seem to want their returns immediately. I'm hoping that companies like Google and maybe Time Warner can do some equity swap, convert the voting capabilities of those "bad" shareholders and help get Yahoo back on track.]]> Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:45:09 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/5/105549fffa33c4dfaf4b5a1148b1815d.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/11/64090cef6aabb3b0e72925b57135b2fa.html Tue, 11 Mar 2008 09:28:52 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/11/64090cef6aabb3b0e72925b57135b2fa.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/7/dff17ffc5e69eebc7116b93f48e783aa.html
Of course, Google isn't the only company getting into this. Sun had long ago announced their N1 Grid platform (but I think that mutated into something else since it seemed that not many customers got on to it). And of course hosting companies already offer more expensive versions of this. But the one thing you can say about Google doing this is that you're practically guaranteed 100% uptime.

At the moment, it seems Google is utilizing this platform for start ups and hobbyists. And the initial round will force people into using Python (and BigTable for people's backend database needs). It is mentioned that more languages will eventually be supported. Hopefully, they'll support a few other databases too (Mysql and Postgres for those of us who would like to migrate our stuff over). Also, you get the neat little benefit of integrating your applications with Google's various APIs.

Basically, this is what I said that Yahoo should've been doing long ago to make themselves competitive against Google. With the whole Microsoft bid, Yahoo and Microsoft will simply war with each other as Google slowly becomes THE platform for the internet. This is simply a brilliant tactic on Google's behalf to get more people to utilize the Google platform.

That all said, I do have a few complaints. One is that Google really needs to start investigating options for enterprise support. Google is a great benefactor for smaller groups and even mid sized companies. For enterprise companies though, there's really no benefit at the moment to using Google. Sadly enough, I think it's the enterprise customers who probably need such an infrastructure more than anyone because a lot of the big boys get these wannabe IT people who can't setup a lick of servers properly. Not all companies are like this of course, but when I see some of the internals in these large companies, it's quite disgusting. It seems these companies have so much money that they spend it on Dogbert Consulting companies who end up ripping them off and providing a solution that looks like an F-14 crashing into a house.

Also, as I mentioned the need to increase the support for languages and some backend platforms also is key. I'd love to migrate my stuff over as I'm sure to get a nice boost in performance. While PHP might be supported in the future, I'm not so certain about normal databases. I already written up my own little framework for handling DB stuff and I don't think it's going to be that easy to switch over.

Regardless, this was an excellent move on Google's part. Of course, reading my mind is always an excellent move :p, but this is what's going to continue allowing Google to become the OS/engine of the internet. Hopefully, Yahoo drops their deal and plays catch up, otherwise Microsoft is simply going to be holding a lot of air. The deal is bad guys, get used to it!]]> Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:55:24 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/7/dff17ffc5e69eebc7116b93f48e783aa.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/14/878058e4e242d279cf74b087427031aa.html
I haven't delved into detail in terms of Salesforce's applications to see what they offer that will compliment Google's applications. However, when I think at the enterprise level of what people need or even desire, you boil down to the following list:

• Email/mail server
• Documents
• Spreadsheets
• Database
• Single sign on
• Presentation
• Calendar
• Document repository (wiki)
  
• Project management tool
• Code repository (for those with IT/development departments)
• CRM
• Bug/issue/trouble ticket tracking
• Employee/company blogs
• Budgeting tool
• Discussion forums
• Inventory management
• Vacation/holiday/time tracking
• Software deployment tool
• Entitlements management
• Code promotion
• Testing tools (for those with QA departments)

Certainly, this is not an exhaustive list. But at the moment, the combined Google and Salesforce would probably meet a good majority of these. I think startups could do well to leverage the foundation laid by Google. You do get into vendor tie up with Google, but I don't think in this case it's that bad.]]> Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:09:45 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/14/878058e4e242d279cf74b087427031aa.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/20/b3865904f730eb612b6bb3340bdcc4d6.html Google's Page Rank really is a bad, not very scalable solution for determining search results on the web. While in the old days, it supposedly was better than other search engines, these days I think we're starting to see many cracks in the system. In particular, I want to point out about old, archaic articles interfering with Page Rank.

Supposedly, Page Rank works by ranking a page through the number of inbound links to a given page. So if a hundred articles reference a single link, then it might be quite popular. This type of ranking works decently for product pages or the core homepage. However, for finding a particular article, this algorithm is actually its own problem.

Older articles would naturally have high page ranks because more than likely numerous other sites would link to them over a period of time. However, these articles would also become irrelevant as well because older articles would precede newer, more relevant articles on a given topic. Take for example a tech article on a given technology. You do a search for say mod_security. The results you'll get are quite outdated and you might be working with a deprecated API. This is a common incident with Page Rank and really is frustrating. You can easily spend hours going through old, impertinent links trying to find a relevant topic.

Unfortunately because of the way Google spiders pages, I don't think there's any easy way around this at the moment. However, my suggestion for Google (or someone!) to improve upon this would be to have some kind of interactive filter. Something like a relevance filter or grader where you could decrease a page's relevance.

Obviously, there are ethical problems with this approach as people might abuse this capability. And it's not something that you can let AI or a group of 100 trusted people handle either. The amount of articles and randomness of information simply negates any practical way of handling this.

Nonetheless, I just feel that something like this is necessary. We still need to teach the engines things like this because there's no obvious easy way of handling something like this. You need context and page contents are far too difficult to analyze at this stage to be able to truly allow a program to independently handle a situation like this.
]]> Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:52:51 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/20/b3865904f730eb612b6bb3340bdcc4d6.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/2/6cb3044d42256654d9efe0edc5ed748d.html Google Guys had shot footage of my area back in September when I was fixing my roof. The evidence? Well, you can see the guys on my roof that morning with all the tools and stuff. Pretty cool!

On a side note, many of my Japanese friends have cited privacy issues. Honestly, this hasn't really bugged me. Actually, I find the Street View to be quite nifty for a multitude of reasons. First, it offers one to be able to see the place they're going. Certainly, this might not be that practical while driving. However, if you're planning to visit some place for the first time and are driving there, it'll offer you a first hand peak at what the place looks like, so you won't get too confused.

Second, I don't mind seeing my home. It's nice to be able to see my hometown while living in Japan. After a while, you get homesick and miss certain things. Well, I'm really starting to miss my little hometown with the local shopping centers, the poisonous fast food and boring neighborhood and the general quiet that I'm completely lack in Tokyo.

Third, I really just enjoy being able to take a road trip without having to take a road trip and spend gas. Maybe this is an indication that my life sucks but sometimes out of boredom, I'll click the little direction bars on the Street View and navigate through the streets, watching the houses and buildings. It's neat because I get to see certain places in the US I've never been to and may never visit in my entire life. I mean, you can see places like Nashville Tennessee, or Little Rock Arkansas without leaving your home. Maybe one day if you get fed up with city life, you can preview a new zone to see if you want to move some place else. Heck, I've been using this little tool to check out some prospective housing spots in Las Vegas.

People bitch and moan a lot about privacy, but I don't think this issue really is that big of a deal. In fact, it's quite the opposite. This is a great convenience (and a new way of doing virtual tourism).]]> Fri, 02 May 2008 12:05:25 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/2/6cb3044d42256654d9efe0edc5ed748d.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/5/e29254d4cd89247185bc7211f50a006c.html
First, obviously there's going to be some nasty shareholder backlash. Well, I think Yahoo's stock will trickle down but those who sell off their shares aren't true investors in my book (and my book is more on the Warren Buffet/Benjamin Graham side). Probably the worst thing that will happen initially is a series of lawsuits against the company. I doubt that these lawsuits will permanently cripple the company, but the next few months Yahoo (in America) will be severely hurting from the inside (and hopefully, Yahoo can buy back shares from those disloyal shareholders and have people like myself figure that it's going to be a GREAT buy once Yahoo's stock tanks).

Jerry Yang is going to have a lot of pressure on his head. More than that though, people are going to probably call for his head. However, I don't think he'll step down and the company (and shareholders) should at the very least give him a 2-3 year trial period for which he and the others at Yahoo can repair the company. So hopefully rather than going golfing with his Republican buddies, he'll concentrate on the technical side in terms of creating a vision for his company. But personally I see it as a few billion dollars of disillusion too late.

Next, we turn to Microsoft. Honestly, I think it was better for Microsoft to call off the deal. This was one of the better moves they've made recently. No joke. The whole thing was a damn poker game and Microsoft folded this round. But they'll be back.

One of the things mentioned in the memos from Steve Ballmer to the troops was increasing competition in social, advertisement, search and web cloud computing spaces. My opinion has been that Microsoft is trying to fill a void that has long been filled by people who better understand what the web is about. Microsoft has been trying to catch up by either buying or copying what exist, but their tag has been branded as being poor in the web space. Also, they just don't get social and probably never will (when have engineers/geeks really understood what social means anyway!?!?!?!!!!?!?). Trying to compete in those areas is really a bad form of investment for them as the social and advertisement areas have limited lifespans (the only people who seem to NOT believe in this are investors; guess we should continue to hide the truth from them!!!!)

Microsoft is really better off spending money in areas where there's hardly any competition or innovation. Like internet appliances, robotics, space exploration and biotech. No stupid kid off the street can build an internet appliance that easily. It takes large amounts of resources, a real engineering background and the facilities to do such a thing. Someone who just knows a little bit of PHP won't be able to do this. However, university electrical/computer engineering students with a good deal of training can, in my belief, pull this type of stuff off. And it'll take a company with a lot of money to be able to fund such an operation.

That said, Steve Ballmer too will have to face some sort of consequence by backing up his words. I don't think he's really the person to be able to pull off helping Microsoft regain their former glory. You need a visionary and someone hungry. Ballmer made a huge mistake in my estimate in this whole situation; he made a business situation personal by making his hatred for Google public. Mistake number one. It's the same mistake that WCW made back in the day when they were trying to put WWE out of business. But look what happened; things backfired, WWE purchased WCW and WCW is just a page in history with the WWE's fingerprints re-writing the tales. My interpretation of Microsoft is that you need to go back to the game of appealing to geeks and do geeky things. That's the driving force behind the culture of Microsoft, so get back to technology and innovation (but asking Microsoft to innovate is like asking Hillary Clinton to provide concrete examples on "her" energy plan). In short, Ballmer has to go as the CEO. Let him play the pointy haired Operations Manager guy, but he can't be the face of Microsoft any longer. Microsoft needs a technical visionary who understands what society needs from technology.

Then there's Google in the corner just watching these companies duke it out. Hey, they've always been the clear winners in this. As long as Google maintains an agile company culture with the ability to adapt and innovate in environments, they will clearly stay several steps ahead of whatever behemoth monstrosity would come out of Microhoo.

Despite all this, it boils back down to Yahoo and what will go on from here. There was a lot of promises put on the table with deals with Google, the Open Platform as being their savior, the purchase of AOL, etc. But what will the reality be?

The Open Platform is a cool idea, but there is no concrete examples of what developers can do. More importantly, I fail to see how Yahoo can monetize these efforts. Amazon has been smart all along by asking for (relatively reasonable) payments for utilizing their services. Yahoo wants to open their service up. So either they have a few choices here:

• Monetize their platform a la Amazon, putting a charge per usage or some hosting plan.
• Purely absorb the initial cost of their services by providing unlimited queries and exposing more of their data and services, thus driving a huge stake against Google's platform (which is limited) and making Amazon's service less valuable on paper. Also, this will allow quick adoption of these services compared with Google.
  
• Do what I proposed before in absorbing the cost of rights for copyrighted material in giving developers and content developers the ability to use their platform without the horrible royalty charges from groups like the music industry, movie industry, etc.
• Go after enterprise level customers to helping them to migrate their existing infrastructure onto Yahoo, thereby getting Yahoo to help them implement best practices and assured 100% uptime (or something close to that level)
• Providing the incubation service for businesses as I mentioned (my personal favorite and something I think that would be a killer idea for Yahoo).

The Google deal obviously was a time buying trick, which would serve in both of their interest until Yahoo could somehow heal itself up a bit. Obviously, it was done to fend off Microsoft from both their backs (in other words, your enemy is my enemy too). However, the deal reeked so much of desperation that it sounds more like shooting themselves in the foot. Might as well have Google just buyout or merge with Yahoo at that point. Either way, I think all three of their ad services suck and that they simply need to improve how to cater to the individual viewer to finally get real click throughs and actions with their advertisement platforms.

Purchasing AOL is something someone should do to put the AOL brandname out of its misery, move the poor subscribers away from dial up, install high speed internet access, but manage it through a stronger, centralized access point. It makes sense for Yahoo or Google to do at this stage. It'll help boost Yahoo's revenue a little bit and give them more business on that line up, but they need to improve the infrastructure for paid AOL subscribers fast. I mean, thanks AOL for helping to get people onto the net, but you're days of usefulness have LONG left.

Overall, I don't really expect much to happen. It's going to be exciting for a few days watching Yahoo get nailed, more news pour through, and people play fantasy booker. Truthfully though, I think this is a big nothing because the follow ups won't be fantastic, everything is going to be underdelivered and overpromised and nothing in the industry will really change in a good manner (unless they follow my advice since I'm always right about things like this :p). But I have to admit that it was a lot of fun, got me excited and motivated me to write a few thought provoking articles. However, experience has taught me that a lot of this is over-the-top hype, with some short term invested interest, and really not doing anything for the industry at large in a positive manner. Thanks for the memories. Hope to see you all again soon.]]> Mon, 05 May 2008 06:53:08 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/5/e29254d4cd89247185bc7211f50a006c.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/22/b9824fa5af094d779237b27531136518.html
Probably, we need to start with the deal on M$ and Yahoo that never went through. For a few months, I remember reading more than one site discussing the possible buyout of Yahoo by MSN. I believe even I suggested something like that with the threat of Google looming in the background. Despite the actual move, I never actually thought MSN would make the move so soon, but that move had triggered a chain of events that are historical and political in nature.

The natural reason for the buyout from M$'s point of view was to thwart Google. Steve Ballmer has been notorious for his outburst, directing his rage against Google. Rather than utilizing the situation as a real business opportunity, Steve Ballmer turned this situation into what seemed (to me at least) like a personal crusade to bury Google and Eric Schmidt in particular.

Ballmer ought to watch the Godfather (kinda like Bill Gates' character in Pirates of Silicon Valley) in emulating Vito Corleone in never showing his true intentions and feelings. If anything his outburst aided in the perception that M$ was purely going to do this deal to hurt Google, much in the same way Sonny Corleone would tip off Solozzo "the Turk" in being interested in Solozzo's drug deal, something Vito Corleone wanted no part of.

My interpretation of Ballmer's choice of Yahoo in particular was to get that final feather in his cap he desperately needs in his tenure as a CEO. Thus far, Ballmer's reign as CEO has been plagued by highly publicized disasters. The XBox money losing fiasco, Vista's lack of acceptance by the public, M$'s failure to capitalize on new grounds on the internet market (particularly social networking), the massive loss of ground of the server side to Linux, and Google's slow but imminent penetration in the enterprise through their free apps. Thus far, we have yet to see M$ come out on top as they had conquered the 80's and early to mid 90's.

The deal in itself is nothing new to M$. In fact, M$'s typical business practices historically have been to buy or copy, never innovate. In relation to the internet, M$ has no clue. Without monopolistic practices like bundling Internet Explorer with the operating system, M$ would have a difficult time catching up to some of the mega internet crazes such as social networking, blogging and open APIs. With Yahoo having a huge percentage of the internet in their pocket due to their longevity and brand name recognition, Yahoo would fit nicely in M$'s scheme of things.

That aside, another well known fact about M$ is their anti-competitive practices. For some reason, it seems that many of the internet writers had suddenly favored the deal, rather than remembering M$'s infamous past cases of monopolistic practices (and I for one believe that these writers probably had some stock in either M$ or Yahoo). Still, many of us remember the pre-internet days where we were enslaved to the M$ OS. With M$ potentially acquiring Yahoo, the outcome would be a monstrous capitalization on the internet ad market, something that M$ wants dearly as everyone knows for a fact how Google uses that market as their primary course of survival.

Fortunately, for whatever reason, M$/Ballmer did not go through in the end. Of course, Jerry Yang and other Yahoo executives had staved off the invasion temporarily through attempting to raise the price (although Yang himself doesn't really need the money), provide excellent severance packages for their employees and just delaying. Threats of proxy fights would be imminent as would shareholder lawsuits. But truthfully, there is far more at stake than money on the table.

From there until now, Yahoo itself would go through a new barrage of assaults. Although Yahoo and Google would ink a deal (which I will discuss hereafter), that would not halt the acid rain coming from the murky clouds of disgruntled employees and the wrath of their shareholders. The shareholders, in their infinite myopic perception, only care about immediate return, especially in this downturn economy. In some ways, Yang and company are now finding out the hard way why having a public company isn't always about just making money from stock options and that those years of loyalty were non-existent and that these people were waiting just for a moment like this to cash in their checks.

Worse yet, Yahoo, kinda like a whore spreading her legs and awaiting an infection, would receive a truly menacing threat from Carl Icahn when he would purchase up a good number of their shares on the market. I can't say anything good about this guy. I don't even know if he understands the implication of what he's doing in his proxy fight. But it's obvious how some investors had managed to manipulate him into going into this fight as a cause.

Then you have the mass exodus leaving Yahoo. As I mentioned the other day, this doesn't necessary imply a bad thing. But I'll get on to that later.

But let's step back to my previous point about the Google-Yahoo deal. I think this latest and known development is pretty blatant and really is where you have to read carefully between the lines. The deal in a nutshell is Google giving Yahoo some bribery money to appease their shareholders. It's not the level of money that the shareholders want, but it's meant to prevent them from bitching too much. It's also a (begrudging) thank you to Yahoo for helping them out before, back when they were starting out. Most importantly, it's a way to keep Yahoo in Google's pocket (which is the irony of ironies) and for M$ to stay away.

Now, one may ask, "Is that really such a great thing? Isn't that collusion?" YUP!!! It's collusion kinda like George Bush and Cheney getting hidden handshakes from the oil companies in supporting their campaigns while the administration goes through great lengths in protecting these industries. Well, if that's the case, why isn't that considered monopolistic or why would I slam M$ for only doing what Google ended up getting?

It's simple. From my point of view, I really don't fear and mind Google as much as other people. Do I trust them? No, I don't trust anyone (for that matter). But I know for a fact based on history, based on Ballmer's rants against Google, that the deal was basically the lesser of two evils. The main thing is to continue allowing a company like Yahoo to remain independent.

At this point, both Yahoo and Google are propping up a lot of smaller companies through their ad networks. Eliminating one or both would stifle competition potentially. Back in the day when I was attending UC Irvine, the "in-thing" (prior to the IPO dot com craze of the late 90's) was the MBA guys hooking up with the computer science undergraduates, building an application and hoping to get the company sold to M$ so that the founders could make out like bandits. These days, we have a lot more players that can provide that assistance in the form of eBay, Google, Yahoo, Amazon (though not as a common), etc. Eliminating those companies would mean that a more limited selection of companies and people could make it, rather than having an increasing number of competitors on the market. Just common business sense for anyone who isn't a shareholder of M$ or Yahoo.

The other thing is that when I look at Sergie Brin and Larry Page, I don't perceive the same obsessed nuttiness of Ballmer nor the domineering, business savvy of Bill Gates. I see two guys who are very smart scientists/engineers working with someone who has a good sense of business in Eric Schmidt. Maybe 10 years from now, that might all change, but seeing their interviews and such, I just don't get the same vibe as I do with Ballmer. And that to me means a lot in this episode.

Circling back to Yahoo, I have to say that when I saw the so-called mass exodus of executives or managers, I thought it was a great thing. I believe the count of people leaving was somewhere in the neighborhood of 140. Well, if you read/worship Dilbert like I do, you'll realize that having that many executives is probably what's killing the company in the first place. Sometimes, you'll get these mid-level managers who attach themselves to companies like parasites until the rum runs out. It looks like the rum is running dry at Yahoo quite quickly. But again, I feel this is a great thing because potentially, younger, hungrier people can move up the chain faster.

The other thing is that you have to realize 140 executives/managers means that you had that many more competing viewpoints to deal with. Now, with 140 less people, you can try focusing the business more. Forget trying to hire from the outside (unless it's me). Go internal and get some of those kids who are itching to climb the ladder faster and move them into more strategic positions. If anything, those people are the ones that ought to be able to re-vitalize Yahoo. You don't want to insult the employees' intelligence by hiring more external help (except me) when you have all the talent within the organization. I'm certain there's more than one person who has the energy and vision to help drive a component or two in the company back to success.

Then you have Jerry Yang and the remaining top people. Let me advise something to Yang: maybe let the people below do the driving. In situations like these, you really need someone like a Steve Jobs to rally the troops. You need visionaries who understand what people and/or need. I don't know if Yang has that vision nor passion. I think when you make as much money as someone like him at his age, it's easy to become complacent. Rather than being on the streets, hungry, yearning for that first taste of success, you're hanging out with celebrities and living a glamorous life. You need to be street to execute something like this because it's the common person that's going to be using these things.

I already know where Yahoo ought to be taking itself. I know where M$ should go too. And I leave Google alone because they've got enough vision and talent to do without me. Nonetheless, this whole year is going to continue to be interesting. Good thing for me I'm back with the net!]]> Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:50:14 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/6/22/b9824fa5af094d779237b27531136518.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/ef5e419d2756d9e63d8b079e75dd7cb8.html
I urge everyone to stop viewing any of Viacom's products. That company has done more damage to the world with their crappy MTV compared with any other media industry. Heck, the makers of South Park had even stated in one of their episodes how MTV is solely responsible for damaging most of America (or in my opinion the entire world). In a way that is ironic considering that Comedy Central is the parent company for both networks. But that just goes to show how it's all inside jobs.

Well, the American justice system is just so damaged when it comes to copyright and intellectual property. Funny how a company like MTV or VH1 can hold something with the words "intellectual" and manage to get away with major lawsuits.

Maybe someone should sue the US government and WTO to force everyone to change the entire notion of "intellectual property" to just assets. If that were the case, I think people would have a better chance of arguing how most things cannot be protected since there's very little academic stimulation involved in all this.

Going back, I really hope that Google fights this case. I hope even further that someone investigates the judge and finds out how much he was bribed behind the scenes by Viacom. This is just plain wrong and it affects people not just in the US but around the world.

For myself, I don't have problem of Viacom shutting down entirely if one day people stop purchasing their goods, clicking on ads or draining them of resources after pirating their stuff. I want them to go out of business. I want all those people to lose their jobs and think even harder about being overly greedy. I shed zero sympathy for any of the staff members. As long as they support that fascist company, to me they are nothing more than Nazi soldiers obeying an order for the simple sake of money.]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:00:35 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/ef5e419d2756d9e63d8b079e75dd7cb8.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/f184fe13e9a66b149ce015da08a47103.html
All musicians know that they are enslaved to Big Media. In their case, they have little to no alternatives. But for them it's like their next hit of crack (which I think the Big Media companies support anyway in a literal sense to keep most of these artists stupid and weak; I mean, I've heard stories in Japan how many puppet artists are drugged up to keep them under control and it's no secret about the so called sex-drugs-and rock n roll lifestyles of celebrities that demand these people in needing money which screws up their lives). Also, people working for companies who build their own tools end up losing their inventions once they sign contracts with non-compete clauses and company ownership clauses. Then you get the medical profession which is completely hampered by patent disputes, preventing more companies from coming out with vaccines. A while back Intel's former CEO had criticized medicine with this argument.

Copyright and intellectual property were supposedly used to allow people to take ownership of what they create back in the day when kings ruled the land. Individuals, not mega corporations. But what we're seeing in the global economy (especially American politics) is the return to feudalism, where we're simply enslaved again to the owners that we work for.

Right now, over at TechCrunch, I see a lot of spammers, people who fear their activities with YouTube, and those even supporting the notion of copyright and the judge's decision in NY over this. However, I find it ironic that because of so-called copyright infringement technology like YouTube that, for instance, Japanese game shows had become so popular, it's now going to be produced in America. So without YouTube, these Japanese game shows would be hidden gems in Japan, while Hollywood runs around producing another creative-less crappy reality show. And isn't even further ironic that it's Hollywood literally copying the format (more or less) from another source? Are the Japanese studios going to receive proper compensation or even recognition for this? Or remember that horrid movie Stealth? That was a blatant ripoff of Macross the Movie. I don't recall seeing any credits being given to the makers of Macross. Or lets go to movies like Lost in Translation or Babel. It's known the shots of Japan in those movies were taken in gorilla-style because obtaining a proper license to film in Japan is quite difficult. So those activities in themselves are considered illegal, yet they're being perpetrated by the same industry which is 1) breaching users' privacy unlawfully; 2) suing users for perceived violations of law.

The world really needs to re-examine the whole issue of copyright, patents and intellectual property. I'm not talking about the constitutionality of them. I'm talking about the real purpose of them in the first place. In reality, artists, engineers, scientists, etc. are not the ones being protected by the law. The firms are using these people as puppets to protect their own interest. But individuals are losing out at every turn as well as society.

Personally, I would like the world/court systems to at the very least:

• Demolish the usage of the word "intellectual." You can't call what Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Justin Timberlake, or MTV put out "intellectual." Call it a cold hearted asset because that's the only thing the court is protecting. Something intellectual means something smart from someone talented and smart; not a tool, not a puppet. In this case, it doesn't insult a truly talented person's intelligence when their capabilities are not protected by a court system, but some figure head for these capitalist machines.
• Don't ever associate copyright protection, etc. with individuals. These days individuals aren't the ones being protected. Just the lawyers and companies. People cannot use this argument anymore because it just isn't true.
• Make it illegal for companies to use the defense of protecting their artists' property. Companies can only say that they are protecting their assets because individuals in the post-feudal world basically have no rights without being subordinated to a large company to pay them off for pennies.

For myself, I don't want to be driven into fear of my activities online. I fully support Google/YouTube on what they've done. From a cultural point of view, the presence of viral video/music sites like YouTube has allowed more cultures to interact and be appreciated, even at the expense of large companies like Viacom. This case is unfair for the legally uploaded videos and users who employ YouTube for their own benefit. Also, this situation is global since people all around the world participate in these activities.

I hope that the judge realizes that what he's done is perpetuate favoritism for one company whose sole purpose this entire time is to simply benefit their shareholders and executives. And I'm not talking about Google/YouTube. I doubt that this judge realizes anything except the money that Viacom is handing him in the back parking lot to make these decisions. But that's the US court system these days.]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:18:10 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/f184fe13e9a66b149ce015da08a47103.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/0f2c4d265e6c6efdd07a1121e3f2bac6.html

• No longer go to any movies in theaters
• Stop watching TV permanently
• Never to purchase another album again
• Never to click on an ad related to media promotions
• Inform my friends, family and acquaintances to do similar actions whenever possible
• Support only independent artists, movies and labels.

Fortunately, I've been doing almost 100% of these actions. But I will urge people to do the same in order to put dents in Big Media's profits whenever possible.]]> Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:09:11 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/0f2c4d265e6c6efdd07a1121e3f2bac6.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/3/08e61e65af13f8bda35db0720e23c734.html
First, I think that Google/YouTube should create a new sector for employment within their company. For artists, they ought to hire them full time for the rate of a good junior to senior level engineer. Say between $40k - $120k/year. Many artists complain that the biggest problem in file sharing is how artists get swindled by the recording industries and "need to put food on the table for their kids." Well, in the case of people like Scott Wieland, or Lars Ulrich, their kids must be pretty obese by now with all the millions their parents make. And in many of these artists' cases, most of the money goes to luxury goods and bad drug habits. So if someone pay them a reasonable rate like a full time employee, then they'll benefit without becoming mentally fucked up like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise (I blame the money not Scientology for this one). I mean, if really all these people want is food, shelter, water and transportation, that salary range is quite good in fact! Besides, do we want another MTV creating yet more generations of skanks, drug induced losers and poor role models for our kids?

The thing with the recording companies traditionally been the whole issue of mass producing and marketing their artists. These days anyone can honestly mass produce their own stuff. Just go to iTunes, or some other online distributor. So the real big issue is marketing. The videos, branding, interviews, etc. We already cut cost down tremendously in this schema by eliminating the need to physically produce goods (which has been said to be one of the largest cost).

Well, videos are great but I think they mostly send the wrong message regardless. When you see hip hop videos, they tell you to be a slut, stupid or dress in a certain way (hence being a conformists). Rock videos glorify sex, drugs and rock n roll. Pop music simply induces stupidity and besides those so-called artists are just puppets propped up in front of a mic so that some puppetmaster in the background can vicariously use them for their own incapabilities.

So that leaves branding and promotion. Well, branding is bullshit most of the time because marketing is telling us to buy something that is really worse than it is. Or they're telling us that without something, we suck. So I think branding can be eliminated from the equation.

That leaves promotion to improve distribution sales for the artists as well as the management aspects for venues. Unfortunately, venues are typically run by a different mafia (i.e. Ticketmaster or the Yak in .jp). So we have to avoid that. But most management are just leeches in all of this anyway. And if an artists does not want to perform, they either are 1) closet artists that really should be sharing their music with friends; or 2) fakes because they don't care about their fans.

As a result, the real thing in the end is the promotion aspect that would be in the hands of Google/YouTube.

So here's where everything comes together for Google/YouTube. The problem with music is that it's all trend based. As I mentioned, labels don't really support their artists. It's like a guy who is 60 years old, been a veteran at software engineering but only knows COBOL. Now and then, these veterans have their comebacks (Y2K bug, Rolling Stones), but most companies and labels prefer keeping them in their pastures or moving them to a different role (management, producers, etc.).

The truth is that the labels should never stop supporting their artists. So if we end the whole notion of the "in-artists" and create the "intern," "junior," "mid-career," "senior," and "lead" type of artists just as we have created for engineers and similar positions, then the game changes entirely. And if we promote these artists in a similar way, say veterans with their larger catalogs can be in the forefront to represent certain categories of music or headlining shows while younger people are proving themselves in learning the business, we might create a new, less vicious model of handling the music business.

But alas! I still have yet to reveal the model of making money for Google/YouTube. I mentioned before about how music (and other digital goods) is priced at an inequitable level because of the way supply and demand works in the electronic/online world. So if Google sets up a "credit" account where users can employ different methods for compensating artists, then that's where Google can earn their money.

Here's some possibilities:

• Charge as you go. .02 cents/song for a full download. Video requires .10 cents/viewing or .20 cents/download.
• Users must click on ads.
• Users get credits for spreading the music/video to other friends
• Users receive viewing credits for actions performed (creating Google Application spreadsheets, signing up with orkut, sending out an email from GMail)
• Users receive credits for performing some exchange service for the artists (e.g. building a fan page, signing up with a fan site, etc.)

The thing is that none of this has to be directly monetary. We're seeing online games do creative campaigning for giving users credits who don't have money. Eventually, these actions convert into something between businesses (partnerships, revenue sharing, traffic sharing, etc.)

I think one problem that needs to be resolved is that artists have to become multi-millionaires with these excessive lifestyles. I don't think it's fair that a guy like Tom Cruise can earn $25 mil + 20% gross at the box office for doing so little. Or watching some jerk like Vince Neil tell everyone that living like a rebel is great then become a fat slob with numerous personal problems with drugs, alcohol, etc. Sure there's an artistic glory to it, but is this for everyone? Why is it that some fake artists with no talent like Jennifer Lopez make tons of cash for shaking her phat ass, but hard working artists like Fernando Miyata get little recognition (until recently)?

I think giving these artists fair compensation with stable jobs (not treating like session players) is a great thing. I don't like the idea of a middle man still, but the recording industry is just too ruthless and handles their people worse than cannibalism. At least this model seems fair at the surface, except for the ruling elite. But those people already made their money and maybe it's time to send a message to them as well.

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