en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/1/25/336bec3f29eb5e9c433fcfb9fe9343cf.html Tue, 25 Jan 2005 09:59:30 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/1/25/336bec3f29eb5e9c433fcfb9fe9343cf.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/1/26/468731db9cd1769a468296fdb5fb3885.html Wed, 26 Jan 2005 09:13:07 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/1/26/468731db9cd1769a468296fdb5fb3885.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/1/30/6193584841d289c142b2f81ed9175b2f.html Sun, 30 Jan 2005 06:31:02 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/1/30/6193584841d289c142b2f81ed9175b2f.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/1/ebf40d2483dc58e2e9c7ac2a3d2dc91d.html Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:51:39 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/1/ebf40d2483dc58e2e9c7ac2a3d2dc91d.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/3/b80aa88ee3017cf7f62d59d11f0978e5.html Thu, 03 Feb 2005 12:41:28 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/3/b80aa88ee3017cf7f62d59d11f0978e5.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/20/c3195001997efa183f981cedb6e07619.html Sun, 20 Feb 2005 21:51:13 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/20/c3195001997efa183f981cedb6e07619.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/24/90ecddcacbe2995f962d4c8f197fc61b.html Thu, 24 Feb 2005 23:18:49 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/2/24/90ecddcacbe2995f962d4c8f197fc61b.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/3/19/d8602b3fc44e992cad683eff2276dc59.html work). With money being tossed around frivolously, the market truly became a "Free Market Economy" rather than a winner take-all event. The only technology Republicans worship are those for controlling the masses: Weapons and security. Other areas such as improving our lives and medical are thrown out as evident by Bush's proposed Budget.]]> Sat, 19 Mar 2005 11:46:32 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/3/19/d8602b3fc44e992cad683eff2276dc59.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/4/19/e94044022b6203efb07a6fd52e0be7eb.html Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:18:36 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/4/19/e94044022b6203efb07a6fd52e0be7eb.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/6/1/00af59ba32fd50ae2240e6d5ce1402d3.html Wed, 01 Jun 2005 13:22:26 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/6/1/00af59ba32fd50ae2240e6d5ce1402d3.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/12/c98d120d286f4a2ab563368bff2b0d1d.html Mon, 12 Sep 2005 21:41:35 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/9/12/c98d120d286f4a2ab563368bff2b0d1d.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/10/24/f2199f57165d2c3f94ae6656fd00a119.html Mon, 24 Oct 2005 16:40:37 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/10/24/f2199f57165d2c3f94ae6656fd00a119.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/11/21/baea5d3fe0270144417662ae7047918e.html Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:30:45 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/11/21/baea5d3fe0270144417662ae7047918e.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/12/25/20235932f1116e86d463e8d255b8803a.html Sun, 25 Dec 2005 06:37:02 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2005/12/25/20235932f1116e86d463e8d255b8803a.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/1/22/bd9b9b06a025feecb14b18a8eb7adb5c.html Sun, 22 Jan 2006 00:46:08 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/1/22/bd9b9b06a025feecb14b18a8eb7adb5c.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/1/29/9ba3851460d5fd2a0a498867fa3f7acf.html Sun, 29 Jan 2006 08:49:02 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/1/29/9ba3851460d5fd2a0a498867fa3f7acf.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/2/13/14ea514e4716e911c9801e946bbb38f3.html Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:46:44 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/2/13/14ea514e4716e911c9801e946bbb38f3.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/2/20/b9aa161a92a2925b3d53e55c3243aa26.html Mon, 20 Feb 2006 07:40:49 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/2/20/b9aa161a92a2925b3d53e55c3243aa26.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/3/25/093aba3ee6d2a5471705bd6e232fc156.html Sat, 25 Mar 2006 21:47:12 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/3/25/093aba3ee6d2a5471705bd6e232fc156.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/6/13/395f831b8d87b19319a9a33b1e0048f4.html Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:05:21 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/6/13/395f831b8d87b19319a9a33b1e0048f4.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/8/10/6753cc443e5d76446ed6aec9a266f873.html Thu, 10 Aug 2006 10:57:29 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/8/10/6753cc443e5d76446ed6aec9a266f873.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/10/9/fb17ade960c72505c91fd53c988ca789.html Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:23:01 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/10/9/fb17ade960c72505c91fd53c988ca789.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/11/8/5f37abe66e07386cf9ebb759aecf7c0b.html Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:26:49 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2006/11/8/5f37abe66e07386cf9ebb759aecf7c0b.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/13/38d5bd277513852e7d4f92a9dfe3acf2.html
I see too many acquisitions that often times don't make sense. For instance, ebay's acquisition of skype, meetup and stumbleupon made zero sense considering that their core business is auctions. Their other acquisitions such as shopping.com, rent.com, and even PayPal made some sense because there was somewhat of a clear relationship to ebay's business model (which is essentially online shopping). However, it's obvious that ebay is only making acquisitions to show some sort of growth.

To an investor though, just buying up companies like these in truth probably doesn't make a lot of sense. A company can have a portfolio of products, but one must ask what business focus does it have overall? IAC figured this out when they spun off Expedia into its own stock ticker. Still to do it for the sake of growing and showing some sort of return to investors seems silly to me.

Okay, maybe making more money to people is common sense, but what I'm saying is that how big is too big? How is it that Toyota can create a few models of cars every now and then with cosmetic improvements yet not be forced to acquire other companies that do keychains while ebay needs to purchase things that only relate through being online?

Maybe this isn't really a 100% investor related question but one of business saavy that I don't understand. Or maybe what I'm really looking at is the greed of a company to bloat itself to unbelievable levels. Or maybe it's that one of these three business models really does well and the others survive mostly through leechdom.

Regardless, I think there comes a point where a business like an ebay or BEA need to stop thinking of massive growth and focus on their improving their core business. BEA's systems aren't rock solid. They have flaws and are unwieldly. I don't see enough add-in products that make development of J2EE that much easier. Why not focus on those areas rather than trying to simply get more buys? If the product was better quality, more people would want to buy it. Yet for the headaches and cost, a person is better off with a LAMP application stack.

Or in ebay's case, why not improve their search and real time auctions? Or create APIs for more 3rd party tools to create something useful that relates to ebay's core business model?

Anyway, I doubt my idea would get through because all of this is just capitalism.]]> Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:10:57 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/13/38d5bd277513852e7d4f92a9dfe3acf2.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/17/3121e1ab2e8ecb0801bbc12711158307.html
in the case of skype, there is no doubt of the future for such a service. however, it made little sense for ebay, of many of the juggernauts, to make that purchase. skype makes money...only a little less than $100 million per year(?). but the intrinsic value of such a company pertains more towards a company like AT&T than ebay.

I don't think buying a company like skype is a bad idea. I do think overpaying for it and not having a clear strategy to an investor is worse though. and, as i mentioned, expanding for the sake of showing growth to investors is a terrible business strategy. ebay is now obviously and literally paying for the acquisition while the previous CEO is laughing to the bank.

that said, i do hope other companies have the same chance that skype did so that new groups of people can make decent money from acquisitions. i hope that these buyouts continue for a while (i'm certain they will), although these situations should send warning signals to these companies to be more careful of their purchases. not to mention that they really need strategies to utilize these companies.]]> Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:34:09 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/17/3121e1ab2e8ecb0801bbc12711158307.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/25/6075a06abab5b029af7e29de5b2261f8.html
The thing to me is that Facebook has no real value to the individual except maybe a slightly better interface. The AJAX capabilities outshines Friendster and Myspace. Overall though that should not persuade someone like myself to put such a high emphasis on this company. More than that, it's extremely tiring when one has to continuously migrate their data and friend's data from one site to another since these sites continue to perform poorly in terms of unique services.

With regards to Micro$oft's renewed attempt to get into the SNS space, I think it's a dumb move. Micro$oft doesn't know jackshit about people, which is why they've failed at getting into the web. As long as people like Baller is in charge, I believe that M$ will continue to fail in becoming involved in the web. They don't understand it, they never will. M$ really needs to stay away from the web and allow other companies to move forward. M$ is the main perpetrator of problems on the web like viruses, data theft, usability issues, etc. since their software is built for them to have a monopoly, yet lacking essential things to make people's lives better.

If M$ wants to continue voyaging in this space, they need to invest in unique sites that add value to the web, not put tons of money into worthless sites. BTW, M$ if you want a site some day, forward me $2 mil. I've got a couple of nice ideas for you.]]> Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:08:34 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/25/6075a06abab5b029af7e29de5b2261f8.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/6/f3cc412b932ac85b404ef902784ecb47.html
Despite my own frustration at myself for leaving such a great opportunity behind, I have to say that this is a great move on IAC's piece. The situation is quite simple: how does one walk into a boardroom and describe a conglomerate of companies glued together? At its heart, IAC is not a venture company, although it does spin off companies on occasion. It's no a true incubator company like Idealab. People could describe it as just some ecommerce spot. But you have things like loans, search, tickets, home shopping, etc. without any real relationship with one another outside of the fact that they interrelate through a common company and the fact that they are mostly internet companies.

Having five distinct companies makes a lot of sense each one could focus clearly on some objective rather than having the parent company achieve more revenue/profitability through sheer numbers. Still these companies can hold strong partnerships with each other through the bond of having been part of IAC.

However, the bigger questions is if IAC's move will impact other large internet companies? Talks abound for Citigroup's split since CEO Chuck Prince stepped down. While Citigroup does, indeed, have a large portfolio of financial tools and assets, the sheer size and bureaucracy involved makes the company slow and clunky. You already have too much political infighting in places as bifurcated as a Nikko Citigroup, so imagine the scale when you have something on a much larger global scale!

I seriously doubt that all companies will follow suit. Also, I think the move was more specific to IAC and Citigroup's split is necessary on the basis that the internal operations are just paralyzed in the attempts to standardize things at so many different levels. Plainly speaking, it just is an impossible wet dream to get that many levels on the same page (i hate that phrase).

I do think that more companies should follow suit though. Yahoo is horribly unfocused and their continuous buyouts to demonstrate growth to investors have done little to truly add value to Yahoo's portfolio. ebay's acquisitions of irrelevant companies recently demonstrated poor judgment from their management; the huge $450 million write off on Skype clearly illustrates my point.

The key thing overall is that a company really needs focus. I think buyouts are a great thing because the company getting bought out can have more security financially through the buyout. I just think that companies need to be careful in choosing what they want to buy rather than just buying for the sake of growth or picking up a company because it looks like a good deal.]]> Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:43:58 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/6/f3cc412b932ac85b404ef902784ecb47.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/9/3077bd76f309a6de04d433a8c14a1415.html
That said, Sun has been getting killed by OSS, Linux and cheaper chips. Rather than trying to do all these fancy, just improve what's there. Make Java slimmer, more agile. Simplify J2EE. Have a better package management system. Build trust with your customers. Stop throwing things against the wall and trying to make it stick.

Either way, I won't put a dime into Sun.]]> Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:21:31 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/11/9/3077bd76f309a6de04d433a8c14a1415.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/5/d8d4d0011c849354b45175764130e372.html
I think the whole web 2.0 thing has been limited to a few companies. The IPOs are not as hot as in the 1.0 as people are super cautious of overvalued, under performing stocks. Not to mention considering that the ad market is essentially circulating money coming from an ethereal source, that makes the whole 2.0 web just theoretically valued until the moment the source comes crashing down (and with Google, it's hard to say). But there are a few very interesting industries to look at:

• Green energy. This seems to be the big topic right now. With oil constantly hitting new highs and cost of energy rising, alternate, renewable and safe energy sources need to be considered. The biggest two talked about green energy will be solar and hybrid technologies. There's a few interesting companies like Energy Innovations that are focused in the area of solar power. But it'll take a significant period before companies start adopting it in larger quantities. So far only Google and Sony have made their move at least with regards to Energy Innovations (and with Google recently announcing their participation from their non-profit branch).
• Hybrid technology is the next hot topic, but it's mostly in the automakers where this technology plays the biggest key. Unfortunately, the US market will severely lag since the auto industry is going through a tough period. However, Japan's automarket is booming and probably will see the biggest benefit in this at least for the next 3-5 years while the US manufacturers play catch up both in sales and in research.
• International stocks. Obviously, the bigs ones are China and India. These are just hotbeds with all their huge developments in software and hardware. But with their massive populations, it's no wonder why so many people want to invest in those countries.
• Online media. Obviously, internet advertising has experienced a massive bubble but it's hard to say if this cycle will end soon. Nonetheless, the competition is perpetually fierce and looks to cook even hotter. But I expect more money to be put into advertisement, video and audio online more than anything.

Tech stocks, in my opinion, will not be smashed as they once were back in the dot boom era. I think most companies are better put together these days and don't have to worry about the ambitious and massive overheads of the pure ecommerce sites. Tech companies will probably be focused more on building better client-server software while infrastructure companies attempt to improve on reliability and bandwidth.

However, areas which I would avoid investing in are the following:

• Traditional publishing. I like paper books as much as the next person but any news related print media has no value in the internet age. I think newspapers and magazines will be eradicated and turned into a purely online, even community supported spots. I mean, it makes no sense to buy a newspaper when the latest news can go to your keitai or RSS reader....and for free! Also, traditional publishing makes no sense in the Green Economy.
• Non-digital media. Most media companies are quite clueless when it comes to digital media distribution. It's why their only response is in the form of lawsuits (because they can't stop their bitching). But I'm a firm believer that all media will be consolidated into an online format dished out as a service. I can easily see homes having their own large, networked storage spaces like a new room in the garage which is cooled. Once networks are globally interconnected with 1-10gb ethernet/wireless, people will have little to no use for computers. They'll eventually evolve in a simple interface to your network storage device, which contains some service that connects to other services. You can still house your own media but it'll be proxied through some legal, standardized means onto your storage device. Regardless, this vision will happen in my estimation within the next 3-5 years. When this happens, portable media like CDs, DVDs, etc. will fade out completely since the amount of information will be far too large, but the wireless networks would be able to support near instantaneous connectivity to your mobile devices. You'll just need something like an iPhone that does everything and has a nice interface for all your on-the-move needs.
• Securities/Stocks. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Stocks are meaningless in the digitized age. They're too unreliable as money makers except for institutions and the most wealthy of investors. Stocks will be replaced by keywords that you can own part of from internet advertising. These keywords will have more monetary and USEFUL value in the information age and will be tied into your monetary account. So imagine this: instead of speculating on a company, you speculate on the value of keywords in the market place. You buy into these keywords to either drive more value to your customers or the customers driving the value to themselves. Useful, highly valued keywords will bring you higher quality information. As a community process, you're able to democratically increase the value of these pieces of information rather than just benefiting the pockets of a few shareholders.
• Big media corporations. I think the writers strike in Hollywood as well as the monetization of video for anyone with a simple web cam has signaled the end of Hollywood as we know it. Surely, only Hollywood has the funds to produce monstrous effect movies, but I've constantly problemetized Hollywood's self indulgence with regards to effects and stars over plot, character and quality. With online software allowing people to freely touch up photos and video, we'll see more independent shows spring up. This system will compleletely dismantle the whole notion of Hollywood's vision of the reality show as the people in Hollywood would look like spoiled brats with a camera in front of them saying and doing nothing interesting, compared to the huge wealth of independent film makers that just have a simple web cam and pass their videos to their friends. The other thing is that Hollywood is so full of shit and slow to react that they'll dismantle themselves with their internal problems. By then the web will win by a monstrous margin and Hollywood will be a sad footnote in humanity's history.

There you have it. My little prophesy. Stay tuned to see if it comes true!]]> Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:02:44 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/5/d8d4d0011c849354b45175764130e372.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/25/47e7ed528b2e0714fc43715626f0d569.html
On the other hand, web technologies really made a comeback in the past few years, with the most emphasis being placed on online advertising. And of course, with the gas/oil crunch comes the whole desire to look towards alternate energies, which now is a huge buzzword, even with the elections drawing near.

The thing is just based on what I've said, the key is momentum and enthusiasm when it comes to investment. A lot of investment is based on raw emotion and the energy shared by something. But a lot of that is really focused on areas where buzzes are generated.

Truthfully though, if we are to use Graham's notion of investment, what I'm talking about is more speculation than investment. So I guess we could focus on sector based speculation as something more appropriate here. But I think there's a lot of truth to what I've said.

For myself, I'd prefer to get into specific areas of funds that handle these things. It's far too difficult to watch each and every stock, but you can read about an entire industry. And I think it'd be a lot easier shifting funds around compared to dealing with large numbers of cumbersome stocks.]]> Tue, 25 Dec 2007 14:05:15 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/25/47e7ed528b2e0714fc43715626f0d569.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/18/bf99900ad345f5c9da6bdfaefc163b06.html
It doesn't look good boys and girls.

One thing I learned though is that fortunately markets are highly cyclical. After weathering the storm from the dot com fall, I realized that if you manage to persist, you probably just need to lay low for about 2-3 years. That's how long the dot com fall out took. But some good came out of that (Google, Skype, the numerous buyouts) and the fact that technology got confidence back likewise instilled confidence back into me about the industry.

The housing market has trickled into the finance market in profound ways. But then again the financial market has always been a sleazy one; anytime you involve money, the sin of greed pops up and people are more willing to sell their souls than benefit mankind. That said, despite having all the excess housing, it'll be very good for people looking to break into the US housing market within the next 3 years. The Federal Bank has intervened in cutting the lending rate and probably will continue to do so while the US economy falls. That implies that interest rates will eventually feel the effects, especially as less loans are taken out. For the individual it means that those who weren't able to get into the housing market at the right moment will have a new chance to sneak in. At that time though, the US government will probably do some watchdog service to ensure that financial institutions will have some checks and balances to prevent customers who aren't able to handle such payments. In short, a lot of potential good but only in the future.

Unfortunately though, it's still going to be rough for people. The climbing gas prices haven't come to a screeching halt yet. And the country is excessively spending for wars. That does little good for the little people stuck in the middle of all this. As a result, much of the political Presidential campaigns have turned towards the economy and what each contender will do.

So far, I haven't been that impressed with most people, except Obama. I think he's more clued into what the average person might feel, so hopefully he'll really help provide tax relief to low to medium income families. Bush's own plan for handling the situation wasn't impressive at all. The stock market wasn't receptive at all with his plans, dropping after feeling disappointment. Then again, I feel that when Bush took power, most people were disappointed in the choice and sold off since people realized that he added no value to the domestic economy. And truthfully outside of military spending, Bush has improved zero things domestically (doing just the opposite).

While the stock market will mostly be driven this year by the fallout from the housing bubble, the thing on everyone's minds that will drive the US economy for the next 4-8 years will be the next presidential candidate. I think that America's investors will go into hibernation this year and wait to see the impending election. The economy potentially can recover quicker if the next president is domestic friendly. In that case, I think that Obama or Edwards would make good choices in this regard. I'm too wary of Clinton and her recently pathos plea; it was unprofessional conduct on her part and hopefully people are smart enough to see beyond the tears to realize that you still need a platform and strength as a world leader. Crying will make you seem weak (the only positive thing I can say about Bush is that people fear him. Not because he's intelligent, a strong character, etc., but because he's an idiot that believes in his own hype and has enough power to back himself up).

Either way, I think a lot of people will lay low this year. But in terms of jobs, engineering is still doing quite well.
]]> Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:30:16 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/1/18/bf99900ad345f5c9da6bdfaefc163b06.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/2008/2/9/584ba03f8a7bac00f6b4b7475a9214b4.html
This article relates to an article I read about IAC and how Barry Diller wants to split IAC into more companies. His justification for the split was that each company would provide more value for their investors while being free to make their own decisions. I mean, if you look at the internet properties from IAC in the past, you'd see a number of non-related items like travel with friend invitations or match making or even ticket sales. Obviously, Diller's intent there was to become a major player in the internet by taking over some hot internet properties. But these properties all had distinct brands like CitySearch, Ticketmaster, Ask, Expedia, etc. Having them under one unified, cohesive umbrella was a challenge that Diller wasn't able to meet.

In this case, giving each company a sense of independence honestly to me properly won't make much of an effect in the end. In my employment with Ticketmaster, we had business partners within the company like CitySearch and Evite, but we didn't do much with them. There was a challenge for the employees to come up with an idea of how to link them. So people said something like an event, movie and dinner. Well, great but it's almost like people were having difficulties writing their senior thesis for a university. And for the most part, I think Ticketmaster was fairly independent and agile enough. I did not see much bureaucratic issues. So perhaps at the board level, things were different.

Compare that to some financial companies like CitiGroup or HLIKK where bureaucracy runs rampant. Zero agility exist in those companies. There's a big joke about CitiGroup's international homepage. Did you know that from an organic search point of view, CitiGroup's webpage is one of the lowest in the Hong Kong market? Yet when it comes to paid searches, CitiGroup's is one of the highest. The reason is that all approvals for anything done in CitiGroup must go through the NYC office. So it's completely fine for them to spend tons of money when they could be doing cost if each individual sector could manage their own company independently.

With HLIKK, the common complaint I'd receive would be the lack of direction and vision within some of the departments (IT, etc.). You'd have this constant tug-of-war especially in IT where the international architects would hold some domain of control and the local groups were in some way forced to follow these standards. Yet there was honestly nothing enforcing these rules. Worse yet, the projects suffered from extreme degrees of micro management and unending project management hell. It wouldn't be uncommon to see a project die out before it'd get completed because of bloated cost, times, and resource allocation failures.

But if you look at Google, it remains one of the more (apparently) agile companies around. I think the 20% rule helps a lot and the fact that everyone in the world has access to the code as well as being able to fix it when they need it. With the various range of success stories coming from Google Labs, these elements of company culture are good examples to demonstrate to other companies in being able to expand at rapid rates.

So let's take a look at the areas where large companies can improve upon to allow agility within their organization:

• Flexibility for employees to work on their own projects.
• Allowing brands, departments, geographical regions or companies acquired to operate independently.
• Avoiding micromanagement.
• Removal of bureaucratic project management (e.g. the waterfall methodology for software engineering).
• Eliminating the notion of "cost centers". (You are one business)
• Eliminating the notion that some areas of the business make more money than others, thereby creating interdepartmental competition (which occurs heavily within finance companies)
• Eliminating the notion of the timesheet (most companies use timesheets, in my experience, to budget the hours for projects, which then relate to the dollars per hour for a single employee. But these timesheets do not accurately reflect "incidental" time detractions like coffee breaks, casual conversation, meetings, etc. because in practice most employees don't record nor really give a shit about the "little numbers")
• Emphasizing project cost rather than strategy and the end goal of a project as a determinant of continuing a given project (imagine the look of horror to the team's faces when a project is eliminated after spending their weekends and late nights in the office)
• Eliminating enforced standards across a company. Instead, providing shared areas of expertise and knowledge bases like Wikis to help other groups train members and improve the local areas points of expertise.

This allows groups to tackle projects on a more independent basis. You still need the unified vision of what a company's purpose is to determine whether projects have relevance to a company. I mean, in most cases, companies don't want people aimlessly doing things for no good reason on company time. For instance, you don't want developers working on a physics projects if the company's main products involve selling annuities (unless these people are intending to figure out a way of aging young kids so that they'll be in the mindset of buying an annuity :p). But the main point is that you really want people within the company to take initiative to help improve what a company does. Having restraints from unreasonable costs restrictions, etc. prohibit companies from reacting to the market in time.]]> Sat, 09 Feb 2008 19:37:23 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/2/9/584ba03f8a7bac00f6b4b7475a9214b4.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/2008/3/8/29f9dff1168b0564e1ae4ac6e9660719.html

• Lock down of engineers. Remember the embittered battle between M$, Google and Kai-Fu Lee? All engineers would face similar non-compete clauses upon the transition. Obviously, Google would be a safe haven, but it's doubtful that they could fully employ all engineers initially.
• Lack of support for non-IE browsers. Considering Yahoo's global reach, the impact of revoking support for non-IE browsers would be a tremendous blow to the internet market, especially browsers like Firefox, Safari and Opera. Don't think they'll do it? Just check out their new 3-D image technology which forces people to upgrade to Vista and the latest version just to view! It's not a coincidence people.
• Absorption of numerous user accounts. M$ has long wanted to create a standardized portal for user information management. Remember the failure called Passport? Getting Yahoo's tremendous registered user base would take them one step closer to that reality.
• Intellectual property absorption. All that information that Yahoo has collected over the years and given away for free would be owned by M$ in nefarious manners. While people criticize Yahoo for not monetizing their properties, it's almost a lock that the absorption of Yahoo into the M$ fold would imply that slowly they'd determine a method to get a return on investment for each Yahoo property. In other words, all that hard work you've done uploading photos, creating social networks, etc. would more than likely be charged in the future. The only reason for the moment while M$ gives away things for free is that they don't have the reach that collectively all these competitors have. But grabbing Yahoo brings them closer and quicker to that goal.
  
• Absorption of all the partnerships that Yahoo has. I think one of the internet's strengths, especially companies like Yahoo, is that it provides smaller players the chance to succeed by utilizing these services. Moving Yahoo into M$ means that M$ can now control these services and do whatever they want like increasing fees. In the case of APIs where other sites might employ the various web services provided by Yahoo, M$ would be able to shut them out or force them to sign new contracts and monetize those services (not a bad idea in reality, but M$ is not the player I'd want to be handling this)

A skunk is still a skunk. I think people are only looking at the dollar signs and failures of Yahoo recently rather than examining the big picture. M$ will continue to play a zero sum game when it comes to business for as long as they exist. And here it will not be any different.]]> Sat, 08 Mar 2008 08:43:21 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/8/29f9dff1168b0564e1ae4ac6e9660719.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/17/9dd11447599e1f427a7386c760ad57f1.html
George Carlin had a lot of interesting points that simply magnify what's being done. He talks about how the game is "rigged" and that these "cocksuckers are now coming for your social security." It's true. My poor dad, before he passed away, barely was able to receive any money and got the worst care and that was only after my mom had to deal with stress inducing bureaucratic forms. America put an honest, hard working person into a little room with sick old people and my dad caught pneumonia and died from it.

Then you see this company get bailed out and probably the CEO making shit loads of money in the end. It's very frustrating watching these crooks get away with murder like this. I'm certain other families have suffered similar situations in varying degrees due to the irresponsible greed of Wallstreet.

With all the audits and distrust that goes on with the way Wallstreet earns it cash, one must wonder at times if it can be sustainable long term? Of course, Wallstreet with all the bankers are the ones financing many businesses and digging their grubby hands into things (I mean, why else would Yahoo dismiss those bastards from a boardroom meeting with Microsoft the other day?). Even if Wallstreet morphs into some other fungoid manipulation racket scheme run with their mob friends in the government and media, I truly wonder how much longer they are going to last? The stock market practically has no true value. It's just a bidding zone on paper at the end of the day. The information has no value, except for accountants and those within the circles. You can eat a stock, for instance.

More and more I get convinced that these crooks will slowly die off while information from the net replaces their valueless system of staying in power. That's my vision. Call it 10-20 years and the entire stock market and Wallstreet will die off completely, replaced by information commodities in the form of information trading. More companies like Google will turn information into a commodity itself without monetizing it so that anyone will some talent can reinvent this system of interdependence, but at the same time giving it meaning.

In the meantime, I hope that people start recognizing how the world really is run by the NWO. It's all these elites in power trying to create a single club and enslaving the rest of us and instilling fear through their security systems. All these people are simply criminals against humanity. They should be tried as if they were mini-Hitlers.]]> Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:56:14 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/17/9dd11447599e1f427a7386c760ad57f1.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/30/77c9d600918848d85b5d174c52f2383c.html Yahoo in agreeing to this deal: as part of the agreement, Steve Ballmer must step down as CEO of Microsoft and only receive non-voting shares of the new combined companies.

I think this is a perfectly legitimate counteroffer on top of the monetary proposal by Microsoft.

While Steve Ballmer has been in charge (supposedly), his visionless leadership has caused massive failures for the company. Let's face it: he's just a Pointy Haired Boss. And the butt of many jokes I might add. Ray Ozzie, for all intents and purposes, is the current driving force behind Microsoft's strategies. I figured that the vestiges of the old guard of Microsoft is what's causing the distance in Yahoo's acceptance of the bid. Most notably Ballmer's tactics and personality as head most likely prejudices people's viewpoints of Microsoft. I mean, Bill Gates has long passed the torch along to others and it's clear in that passing, no one has been really able to step up to the plate outside of Ozzie.

If you take away Steve Ballmer's arrogant demeanor from the acquisition and re-proposal it to Yahoo, their board and most importantly, their employees, what would the reaction be this time? It seems like in the upcoming acquisition, Microsoft is perfectly willing to open up its deep coffers to bribe Yahoo, its employees, and shareholders in everything that's possible to make this deal (and again, I argue that the one making this deal is Ballmer). It's not such a bad proposition, but I think the biggest stigma are the negative connotations associated with what Microsoft has been spewing.

But again, I figure also most of the negativity is associated with the Google-killer obsessed Ballmer, who has made the whole thing a personal issue (because again I suspect his neck is on the line). Well, if Microsoft is truly sincere in moving forward with this deal, the best option outside of pure money is to take away the only real cause of emotional disturbance.

And for those who still believe that this deal is good outside of the immediate monetary benefit for the shareholders, here's a nice video that clearly explains what will happen during the merger.]]> Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:22:49 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/30/77c9d600918848d85b5d174c52f2383c.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/2008/5/6/238d6793d46a1382b23017b544e053b3.html
The market is also reacting funny. Today, Yahoo's shares climbed back by $1.24 (not done yet), which either means that the saving face speeches are a way to keep the stock somewhat steady or that people are looking at Yahoo as a cheap buy.

Now, the best part is reading the commentaries from various message boards on what Yahoo's stock ought to be. Well, last time I checked, this wasn't Wheel of Fortune. Come on big money! People seemingly randomly assigning value figures from an ethereal part of their body just is wrong to the real investor. I bet these are the same people that cannot stop withdrawing cash at an ATM in a Las Vegas casino once they get on a losing streak.

Forget all this speculation on what the stock price ought to be. You gotta go back to the fundamentals whether or not Microsoft buys Yahoo out. Is Yahoo making a profit? How much debt do they have? What is the total market cap? How is their revenue doing?

When you see reactionary, irrational actions in the market, you have to take a step back and look at the overall picture. In Yahoo's case, the only thing is that they've just lost some traction to Google and Microsoft offered to partly bail them out in creating a large industrial monopoly. That's reality. You have to ask is the move the best option for the market? People seem to only look at the current reality and hype, rather than digging deeper into the situation. Reminds me of Spiderman where the Green Goblin tells him that people like to see heroes fall. I guess he was right because Yahoo has always been good to most of us. They've made some bad decisions, but haven't had enough of a chance to recover. Things like this take time.

The other thing is that as I've been saying, a lot of people seem to have hidden agendas in all of this. I think investors' have overt hidden agendas of simply trying to cash out as soon as possible, especially in this downtrodden market. And I think the naysayers are simply bored and want something to keep them excited. To me, neither really helps the overall situation.

Regardless, I think we need to re-assess the issue in 6 months. It's too early to really tell if Yahoo's position is indeed weakened by not taking Microsoft's offer. As part of the buy-and-hold type of philosophy, I'm someone who likes to wait and see how things turn out. You can't just constantly react and speculate. But you can use history to see whether or not you're repeating your mistakes. We don't know if Yahoo's position was a mistake so I say sit back, relax and watch the show.]]> Tue, 06 May 2008 12:07:45 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/5/6/238d6793d46a1382b23017b544e053b3.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/19/15f43b790f821b708d9ef31590379bd1.html
Google is another one that got shot down big time and unmercifully by Wall Street the other day. The recent disappointing profit drop naturally caused former investors high on the tech giant to flee in panic with a $52 drop in price. Obviously, the stock has been overrated for some time, but the lack of confidence in the company demonstrates that across the board, the US stock market is experiencing one of the worst seasons.

Tech isn't being as hard hit last time, which is good news for myself. However, the overall outlook just isn't pretty. I have a feeling that several industries might completely collapse in the wake of this. The least stable at the moment are airlines and auto. On the other hand, it's obvious that we need transportation, so it's natural to assume that some replacements will be on they're way. Toyota and Honda will probably make the most headway in this area. It would be quite the coup to see Toyota or Honda buying out one of the distressed auto manufacturers to gain greater ground in the US. I mean, already we're seeing more plants being built for Toyota in the US, especially for the Prius as the demand for that car seems endless.

However, what also seems to be emerging rapidly is the electronic car industry. Tesla Motors is releasing their vehicle soon and has a fair number of orders. Of course, they are facing some lawsuits and other troubles as well as cater mostly to yuppies. However, they've also got a new sedan lined up for late 2010 production. The future looks bright for them. Aptera is another one I frequently blog about to keep your eye on.

Not sure what will happen for the airline industry. 9/11 was certainly the beginning of the end for the airline industry as we knew it. Some are blaming gas prices, but I think that the protocols implemented after 9/11 also gave rise to the industry experiencing an irrecoverable collapse. It's been said that the industry is heavily competitive and a money losing one at best. Without something like a Star Trek teleportation device though, we're still heavily dependent upon the airlines industry. One possible outcome from this is that the industry will simply become one for luxury and business executives. The prices for flights just aren't worth it as it relates to oil. For that part, I place most of the fault on the manufacturers for being lazy and not considering ways to upgrade the design of planes. However, it's a distinct possibility that commercial space flight might be the next real phase from this, using suborbital technology. Now, I think that it'll be tough and that at the same time that new industry would simultaneously need to consider fuel alternatives to oil. If that happens, it'll be the way to go.

Of course, we have to mention solar and other Green shops. The oil crisis is leading people to move extremely fast in this industry. Unfortunately, it's hard to say if the cost in the near term will resolve some of the major problems. It might cut some areas down like electricity for the home, business cost and maybe car cost if people move quickly onto electric cars. But I don't know if it'll affect other areas of cost like food.

Then you have finance. I personally think finance as we know it should disappear. It definitely will not be owned by Americans as before. Maybe a few large banks will still exist, but many seem to be in desperate need of a bailout. Citi's $2.5 billion loss is just an exorbitant number....and yet it's said they still beat the Street. That's just mind boggling. Maybe it's time for Wall Street to collapse and be rebuild into a new institution. I personally think that the finance sector is going to move towards a completely electronic version. You already have things like PayPal and ETrade. But I'm thinking AdWords and other forms of information will increase in value since the stock market has become unstrustworthy for investment.

Housing....one vision I had was people moving inward. The cost of land and housing towards the center are far cheaper than in places like California. But it's a distinct possibility that people might discover states like Nebraska, Kansas or Iowa and colonize those parts. I've read stories about how some poorer cities are being turned around. People would buy up real estate, put a fancy coffee shop and increase the value. As a result, people within the area no longer can afford it, thus driving out the poorer folk. There's actually a few South Park episodes like that. But it's an interesting idea of how housing might turn out.]]> Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:33:31 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/19/15f43b790f821b708d9ef31590379bd1.html