Big Joke

Apple pulls out the NBC TV shows after being show the door by NBC.

Apple is the most expensive MP3 player in its class. Even after it has this amazing market share and un heard of profit margins per device that comes out of its scale. It doesn't reduce the price and it doesn't allow the 'VENDORS' to play with the prices as they want. Yes you cannot sell an iPod for less than the price specified by Apple.

But it does not agree to the owner of the content to sell their content for a price they want. That is alright, it can deny if it doesn't make business sense for Apple. But trying to blame NBC and making it look like Apple is for customer and NBC is this evil corporation because they are not dancing to its tunes is stupid.

Of course, Apple can afford to be stupid. After it has a stupid and loyal fan base who thinks Apple is always right and Steve Jobs is God to root for it and blast NBC with out even listening to what NBC has to say about this whole deal.

They might want to have the content sold through their Hulu for a cheaper price or make it available for free with the support of Ads. With the new video technology that can display un obtrusive in line ads with video based on context, it might have its own plans.

Oops, I am an Apple fan boy and I can't think.

Thats a pattern... i can recognize that.

Oh! we are so nice.. we are so great... we want to make the world a better place to live in... we are the greatest company... we love people.. we do no evil... we empower people.. hmmm...

for the 12 questions asked, this guy was able to parrot the same statement 7 times irrespective of what the question is... OK it is good that Google is participating in the auction for the 700MHz spectrum and proposed some constraints that will sure help every one in the US to make it more open.. but to act like they are doing all this for the greater good of the world and not to increase their dominance beyond the PCs. may be they want to do good to people while making money. But not even once he mentioned that they are doing this to reach more people for longer periods and make money off that. He kept repeating the same phrase and want to stress that they this because telecom companies are evil and they are the robinhoods.

"Brand Management"

http://news.com.com/Googles+battle+for+wireless+spectrum/2008-1039_3-6199374.html?tag=st.num
Sacca: "The 700MHz spectrum auction represents the last big chance that the United States has to create an opportunity for meaningful change in access to the Internet for the broadest set of people possible."
"We have fought hard on a number of fronts to make the Internet as available as possible to the largest number of people as possible."
"What is going to make the Internet most available to the broadest number of people at the lowest price possible?"
" Google is willing to do anything necessary to introduce some competition into this space and to really drive the prices of service to where they are most affordable to the broadest number of people. It is reprehensible that there are still so many people left off the Net."
"We are deeply committed to changing this industry for the benefit of end users."
"we are trying to do what we can to remove obstacles that are standing in the way of making the Internet available to the largest number of people possible."
" We are trying to look one by one at those obstacles to see where we can have an impact to make the Internet available to everyone. "

Funny he said this -
" I think we do have to question when Verizon and AT&T jump to accept any proposal. We have to look at what their ulterior motives are."

Yahoo! should think BIG

Yahoo is the largest visited site with more traffic than any other site and is consistently at the top for several years. Still in terms of revenues its lagging way behind Google. It is also lagging in innovation. Yahoo! is coming up with more and more services to keep its leadership intact, but it was not able to deliver that next 'BIG' thing. It adopted web 2.0 stuff like RSS feeds, tags etc.. faster than other portals and even Google. But it has lost on its best opportunity with Yahoo! 360, which could have been a best combination of social networking and taking advantage of the huge content that's generated by users every day on Yahoo properties. Shame, it failed on that and didn't go that full mile. Now facebook has hit with its platform strategy and made it big. Wait till it hits the wall street. It may not be as big as Google, but I think it may topple Yahoo! s position.

So, what should Yahoo! do now. Adding more yahoo properties may not help much. Yahoo should take a leaf from facebook and amazon which are providing the front end and back end of the new innovation on the web with Facebook platform and Amazon web services by building on their core strengths. So Yahoo! which is now creating or licensing and hosting most of the content with portals like Yahoo! news, Yahoo! TV, Yahoo! Sports and like. should build on its strength - Scalability in hosting content.

If you break the content to the elemental types, most of the web sites have text, images, audio, video in various page layouts. There might also be other elemts like maps, lists, comments, ratings etc.. And who is better than Yahoo! to present them to largest user base.

I think Yahoo! should open up its website for content providers. Allow the companies to create their own micro sites. Give them elemental blocks and give them the power to change the look and feel in the way they like. Provide them a hosted web content management system, where they can upload their content and present it in the way they want. Provide them what Amazon and Facebook are providing separately, give them the storage space to store their content and UI blocks to present it in the way they want. Make it really really easy to add content, just like blogger, flickr and youtube. Host it for them, provide them all the web analytics, host the ads and share the ad revenue.

Its taking Yahoo! web hosting to the next level. Make it for the content creator instead of small business. Smaller content creators like news papers, magazines, local radio, local tv channels, smaller television studios, indie film producers, professional photographers, sports teams, celebrities and what not. And you give them access to all your users and all your services where ever it makes sense. With this, they do not need to worry about all the IT infrastructure and web developers and designers and eliminatr a whole lot of overhead and spend their resources on their core competency, ie creating content.

Its a win-win.

Create A Yahoo! Web. (like world wide web)