The antitrust case against Google

The antitrust case against Google
[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0]

The Senate hearings scheduled for Wednesday will only scratch the surface

Apple (AAPL) is conspicuously absent from the witness list for Wednesday’s hearing on “The Power of Google” before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition and Consumer Rights. Yelp! and Nextag will be represented, but Google (GOOG) has stepped on a lot more toes than theirs to maintain and extend its dominance of the Internet’s sustaining source of revenue — advertising dollars.

As Steve Lohr and Clair Miller’s story Scrutinizing Google’s Reign in Monday’s New York Times points out, Google’s share of search ad revenue is 75% in the U.S. and higher in Europe — well within the definition of a monopoly.

Having the dominant share of a market — or even a monopoly — is not illegal. What is illegal is using that power to enter, dominate and destroy other businesses.

As Lohr and Miller make clear, there is a growing chorus of Google critics — some of them familiar from the Microsoft (MSFT) antirust hearings — who complain that the Google boys are doing just that. But few have banged this particular drum more loudly than Brian S Hall, writing in his Smartphone Wars blog.

[More]

Brian Hall’s list is a great enumeration of how Google really no longer earns the ‘do no evil’ appellation.

Apple innovates to create new markets. Google just seems to leverage its monopoly  to enter new markets in ways that closely resemble Microsoft from the 90s.

Mostly by blatantly copying, instead of innovating. At this rate, it may begin really hurting its main brand – its search functions – as I begin to wonder if it is fiddling with the results to give its own sites a step up.

Microsoft’s update cycle fits enterprise not consumer timescales

OS turning circles: Questioning Windows’ maneuverability
[Via asymco]

I’m glad Windows 8 is named the way it is. With Windows 7 Microsoft went to a numbering system which is much more rational than the mixed naming of the past. The number 8 actually corresponds to the actual sequential number of major versions of Windows released to date.

Windows proper actually did not start with what was called “Windows 1.0″. Windows actually started in April 1992 when Windows 3.1 was released. It was the first Windows which was an operating environment onto itself, apart from DOS. It was followed by Windows 95 (which we can call “2″), Windows 98 (“3″), Windows 2000 (“4″), Windows XP (“5″), Windows Vista (“6″), Windows 7 and now Windows 8.

Given this nomenclature and the dates of general availability of said versions, we can derive a measure of the frequency of upgrades. For example Windows “2″ followed about 41 months after “1″ and “3″ took 34 months after “2″. If we continue this for all the versions, and assume “8″ will launch by October next year, we can plot the cycle times of new Windows versions.

[More]

Interestingly, these numbers can be graphed in a circular format which is very illuminating:

The curves show increasing radii, indicating that as the OS matures, it becomes harder to create full updates. Apple though, has been able to maintain about a 12 month update cycle.

Microsoft’s cycle time is much longer. In fact, while adoption rates for Apple OS are very rapid, enterprise adoption rates for Windows are much slower, being about 60 months for each upgrade they make.

So the iOS and MacOS X OS will be updated 5 times for every time the enterprise market updates. The leisurely cycle of MS updates has been fine for it before,as it made much of its money from the enterprise.

But will it be able to match the much more rapid cycle Apple has been using and succeeding at?  Just to stay even with Apple, MS will have to cut almost a year and a half off of its average development cycle.

I think that might be a very large task for a company to accomplish, particularly one who is usually very late with its OS releases. (Windows 8 was expected by some to be released this summer, not next year sometime as it now appears)

People will expect much more rapid updating of the OS than Microsoft has shown itself capable of. And this is not an easy thing to change.

Not good news for the South: La Niña is back

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center: La Niña is back
[Via NOAA News Releases]

La Niña, which contributed to extreme weather around the globe during the first half of 2011, has re-emerged in the tropical Pacific Ocean and is forecast to gradually strengthen and continue into winter. Today, forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center upgraded last month’s La Niña Watch to a La Niña Advisory.

[More]

La Niña conditions mean drier than normal weather in South and Southwest, while the Northwest is wetter.

So, no apparent El Niño event this year. Just back-to-back La Niña.

One reason I settled in the Pacific NW 25 years ago was because I figured it would be the only place along the West Coast with water.

from National Climactic Data Center.

 

Little did I know that it would also be the coolest. Only Oregon and Washington had lower than normal temperatures this last summer.

from National Climactic Data Center.

Cooler and wetter is better.

Studying the first algal bloom of its type

by eutrophication&hypoxia

NOAA helps New York respond to Long Island South Shore toxic algal bloom
[Via NOAA News Releases]

NOAA has awarded $18,700 to State University of New York scientists to document the first known incidence of a bloom of harmful algae off Long Island’s south shore, study its effects on the area’s shellfish, and test a method that could control it.

[More]

There is a very large restoration effort ongoing in the area to bring shellfish populations back. The presence of these algal blooms cold destroy this effort.

These algae kill fish and other organisms. Finding out why this happened and if it is likely to return will be critical for any successful shellfish habitat.

It is all of our debt, not just government’s, that is the problem

by james.thompson

The pull between spending and saving
[Via macroblog]

In a speech on Wednesday, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart talked about how the economic outlook is being shaped by the process of deleveraging (reducing debt and increasing saving) that is occurring in the economy.

By way of background, President Lockhart emphasized the important role that some amount of debt plays in economic growth: while difficult to measure precisely, research suggests that debt levels that get high enough are associated with extended periods of subpar economic growth.

“Debt is not in and of itself a bad thing. Debt supports economic growth by allowing households, businesses, and governments to smooth their spending and investment over time. Borrowing and lending can help facilitate the allocation of capital to productive uses in the economy. But high debt levels can also result in lower economic growth, a point that Stephen Cecchetti, of the Bank for International Settlements, made in a paper presented at the Kansas City Fed’s symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., last week.”

Relative to the 1990s, the last decade witnessed a surge in borrowing by the nonfinancial sector (comprising households, nonfinancial businesses and governments). Indeed, as President Lockhart noted:

“Relative to the size of the U.S. economy measured in terms of GDP, the total domestic debt of nonfinancial sectors of the economy reached 248 percent in 2009, increasing by almost 75 percentage points over the previous decade alone.”

[More]

The mortgage debt to GDP ratio increased almost 70% between 2000 and 2009. The current economic problems have resulted in this dropping somewhat, as we become deleveraged, about 11%. We see some of this in the devaluation of housing, now some 30% less than its peak. The foreclosures, etc. are all instances of the debt being deleveraged.

Unwinding this debt takes a lot of time. This is  not like other recessions at all.  The mortgage  debt at its peak was equal to 76% of our total GDP.

Let’s look at it in human terms. In 1985, it used to be that the rule of thumb was that mortgage payments should be about 1/3 of your income. In 2009, it would have been like 76% of your income! To get back to the 1985 values, either you would have get paid twice as much or cut the price of the mortgage – or the price of the house –  in half.

The US economy is not growing fast enough to reduce this mortgage debt to GDP ratio very rapidly.  We are adding about 1 million new jobs a year. But we are down almost 7 million jobs then in 2007. It could take another 6 years to get back to ‘normal’ at the rate we are going.

Until this household debt is unwound, the economy will stay pretty poor.

Perhaps one way might be to cramdown mortgages, forcing the holders of the mortgage to accept the new lower price for the house and the loan. This would result  in very large, short term losses to the financial companies but get us back to a better ratio faster.

The financial companies are going to see these losses sooner or later. They want it to be slow and later. But it might be better for all of us if it was faster and sooner.

We seem to be so focused on government  debt right now but until the other debt held by Americans is dealt with, I do not see us recovering soon.

Our savings are hurting banks

by Eddie~S

Bank Deposits increase Sharply
[Via Calculated Risk]

From Scott Reckard at the LA Times: Bank deposits soar despite rock-bottom interest rates

Americans are pumping money into bank accounts at a blistering pace this year, sending deposits to record levels near $10 trillion …

In the last three months, accounts at U.S. commercial banks have increased $429 billion, or 10%, almost double the increase for all of last year.
…
The large amount of cash only adds to expenses such as paying for deposit insurance premiums. … [banks] have slashed interest payments to discourage customers. Wells Fargo & Co. … halved its payments on one-year certificates of deposits to 0.1%; Citigroup … dropped its payment to a paltry 0.3%.
…

[More]

People are scared and saving money at record levels. This actually increases the costs for banks. They are lowering interest rates to discourage new accounts. At this rate, pretty soon, they will be no better than putting it in a mattress.

Why I like Mark Cuban

The Most Patriotic Thing You Can Do
[Via Blog Maverick]

Bust your ass and get rich.

Make a boatload of money. Pay your taxes. Lots of taxes. Hire people. Train people. Pay people. Spend money on rent, equipment, services. Pay more taxes.

When you make a shitload of money. Do something positive with it. If you are smart enough to make it, you will be smart enough to know where to put it to work.

I don’t care what anyone says. Being rich is a good thing. Not just in the obvious sense of benefiting you and your family, but in the broader sense.  Profits are not a zero sum game. The more you make the more of a financial impact you can have.

[More]

Particularly for this one paragraph:

So be Patriotic. Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes , your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write. Your 2nd thought will be “what a great problem to have”, and your 3rd should be a recognition that in paying your taxes you are helping to support millions of Americans that are not as fortunate as you.

As he states, the government does waste money. In a perfect world, life would be wonderful and taxes would be unknown. The only perfect world though is found in the minds of those who believe in Heaven, not here on Earth.

If we hope to get out of this depression as soon as possible, we have to use ll the tools available to us, including strong government support provided by taxes.

It IS the most patriotic thing you can do.

Fun times at the Presidential Job Approval Center

Gallup has a great site called Presidential Job Approval Center which has an interactive graphing function of the longterm trends of Presidential job approval – click the historical trends tab.

Thus we can get this one:

The dotted line is overall approval. The light blue lowest line is Carter’s approval among Democrats. The two upper lines follow Clinton’s – the darker line – and Obama’s – the shorter, blue line – approval among Democrats.

As you can see, the last Democrat to run for reelection and win – Clinton – had almost exactly the same job approval rating as Obama does with those likeliest to vote for him. As opposed to Carter who lost his reelection bid.

Clinton and Obama have almost exactly the same job approval numbers with independents. The big difference between Clinton and Obama is with Republicans who really, really do not like Obama’s time in the White House.

But these are unlikely to vote for him anyway. So he needs to get independents and Democrats excited about him and he should have about the same chance as Clinton did for reelection.

Oh, and one final thing, Obama’s job approval overall, including all Americans, is about the same as Reagan’s was at the same point.