Apparently, Red Herring has run out of KP-backed startups to hype, because they’re so bored they’re simply making up media mergers they’d like to see. They say it would be good to see AOL by RealNetworks, Sony buy Tivo, and Charter Communications buy MGM. All of these probably make sense to some degree, but it still seems like an odd article to write – as none of these have actually been rumored.
Back in 1999 we posted a story here about Microsoft faking a grass roots effort to try to show that the public supported Microsoft against the government in the antitrust case. There was, at the time, a big outrage. I guess no one remembers anything more than a year old. Microsoft is up to its old tricks again, with a twist. This time, they’re calling people pretending to be a “public opinion poll” about the Microsoft case. If the person expresses any sort of sympathy for Microsoft’s side they’re sent a pre-written letter to send to their local politicians. Each letter is slightly different, so that no one would “catch on”, but apparently they weren’t different enough. Plus, the letters often came with incorrect return addresses (sometimes cities that didn’t exist!) and at least twice from people who were dead. Way to go Microsoft.
The latest rumor on the block is about AT&T executives and Disney executives talking about a way to “align” Disney with AT&T Broadband. AT&T seems to be going out of their way to figure out ways to make sure that Comcast can’t buy their cable assets.
Apparently a number of computers that were auctioned off from failed or failing dot com consulting firms didn’t have their hard drives erased and may contain all sorts of classified information. All of the firms involved are looking into this to see what happened. It seems that even when they’re going out of business dot coms can’t do anything right.
Here’s an article written by a former Metricom employee saying that the end is very near for Ricochet. Not that this is a huge surprise, but it’s still upsetting (especially since I’m connected right now thanks to my ricochet modem). The article is also good in that it does a great job summarizing the mistakes that Metricom made. Of course, most of these mistakes (ridiuclous pricing and marketing strategies) were obvious from the beginning and many people (including me) told them they were making a huge mistake. When I told them (about 2 months before they launched their high speed service), they told me that I didn’t understand the market. This might be true, but it appears they didn’t understand the market much themselves. Anyway, if you want to buy a piece of the Metricom network for yourselves head on over to their auction. There’s still a tiny chance that some wonderful, brilliant, visionary company will come along and buy them out completely and keep things running while marketing it correctly. Unfortunately, that doesn’t look likely. Update: The official story is that they’ll be shutting down the network next Wednesday. What a waste of a really great service.
Kelly McNeill writes “Many individuals had anticipated new iMacs at Apple’s recent Mac World Expo, but were befuddled when, not only new Apple all-in-ones were not unveiled, but that last year’s model (and colors) were released with only minor speed improvements. To make things even more bizarre was the fact that the machines were actually a couple hundred dollars more expensive than the models they replaced. As many in the Macintosh news scene have since suggested, It was almost as if Apple was saying, “Don’t buy this machine!”. That was when it hit me. Perhaps this was indeed the case. When you consider a recent comment from Steve Jobs about making announcements periodically throughout the year rather than just at trade shows, and that the second largest computer-buying season (slightly behind Christmas) — the back-to-school season — comes in September, then you have the layout for what might be the most ideal time frame to unveil the ideal educational computer… iMac!” An interesting theory. My only problem with it is that people start planning their back-to-school purchases a bit earlier than September, and if they don’t even know that these iMacs are coming, then people will buy other machines too early. If Jobs had announced the machines were coming by September, then people might have waited for them.
It seems that Orbitz has become quite the paranoid dot com. They’re now claiming that a scary “conglomerate” of companies are ganging up on them to help Sabre’s Travelocity. This is funny because Orbitz is the company that was created by a “conglomerate” of five of the leading airlines. The details of how this came about are somewhat interesting as well. It seems that some folks bought tickets through Orbitz, and when they showed up at the airport, the airline (Vanguard) told them the tickets were no good because Orbitz screwed up. Orbitz then said that the problem had nothing to do with them, but that Vanguard was obviously a part of this mysterious conspiracy to kill Orbitz. All I can think of is how much it would suck to show up at the airport and not be able to fly because your stuck in the middle of some fight between a dot com and an airline.
Last week PeopleSoft lost nearly $3 billion in their valuation thanks to an instant message sent around by a hedge fund partner. The IM suggested that PeopleSoft had accounting irregularities and some huge lawsuits going on. It turns out this wasn’t true, and the guy from the hedge fund later retracted his statements. PeopleSoft, however, is understandably pissed, and have sent all the info they have about this guy to the SEC.
Some more details are coming out about the AOL-Amazon relationship which make it clear that AOL could eventually buy out Amazon if they did so carefully and followed the rules of the agreement (which bring up a lot of conditions). Mainly, they could try to buy them out if Amazon officially agreed to sell. They couldn’t go for a hostile takeover. They also have to hold onto their stake in Amazon for at least two years.
Apparently Napster is on the verge of announcing that a former exec from Bertelsmann is about to become the new CEO of Napster. Most of the article focuses on Hank Barry’s leadership of Napster through all the RIAA lawsuits – saying that he and Hummer Winblad (the venture capital firm he came from when they dumped money into Napster) came in with too much confidence. They thought the lawsuit was a no-brainer and Napster would definitely win. Oops.
