Competition in the Digital Age
Even though I am a regular reader of Slate, I missed this announcement last month that they are putting in a metered paywall for International (i.e., non-US) readers. Like many other news sites, you can have, in this case, 5 free articles a month and for more will have to pay $5 a month for …
Continue reading "Slate's new international paywall seems ill-conceived"
Last week I presented at the Lear Antitrust 2.0 conference in Rome. While there was no specific agenda beyond thinking about search and advertising, much of the discussion centred around Google's travails as EU Competition Authorities investigate its Google Shopping results (yes, really) and its dominance in Android. It was clear from the presentations by …
Sometimes a post appears that just annoys you so much that you need to comment on it. That happened to me yesterday with this post from Arjun Sethi on at all places, BackChannel (a blog I ordinarily like). Sethi is a product manager at Yahoo but was actually motivated by this passage from Facebook's Little …
Continue reading "Killing yourself to survive is not the same as innovating"
We currently are in the Wild West of "sharing." Many people hate that term but I actually think it is useful. I would define the "Sharing Economy" as follows: 1. Individuals own key assets -- cars, dwellings, their time etc. 2. There exists a market platform to match those individuals with consumers that satisfies the …
Continue reading "Uber, sharing and the compensation mechanism"
Following on from yesterday's post I discovered several things: 1. Taylor Swift is powerful. Really powerful. Apple responded to her letter and agreed to change course and pay artists etc for the three month free trial period. Maybe she can do more than just move the dial in music compensation. 2. Readers of this blog …
Taylor Swift took to her blog today to, very politely, explain her decision to keep her latest album out of Apple Music. I’m sure you are aware that Apple Music will be offering a free 3 month trial to anyone who signs up for the service. I’m not sure you know that Apple Music will …
Yesterday, the folks at Andreessen-Horowitz released a slide deck on their reasoning why "this time it is different" on tech funding and bubbles. It is worth a little of your time but here are the take aways: The amount of money going into tech start-ups is still much less than it was in the dot.com …
Continue reading "The Shift from Public to Private Markets in Tech Funding"
Chris Sacca, an investor who predicted Twitter's success ahead of everyone has penned some thoughts. If you are really interested, it is worth the read but he helpfully provides a summary. Twitter simply needs to: Make Tweets effortless to enjoy, Make it easier for all to participate, and Make each of us on Twitter feel …
It happens often. An old media company makes a crazy and misunderstood statement about new media. Sometimes I start to think that after all of these years, maybe just maybe, they will start to get it. But then a story appears that demonstrates how far off things are. That happened today. The Globe and Mail …
After years of seeming missteps (e.g., Google Plus, Google Glass, Google Wave, Google Keep), Google roared back yesterday with a new Photos service. This seems pedestrian in terms of Google's usual ambitions but actually it is incredibly on mission; that is, if Google's mission is to organise the world's information. The new service is billed …
Continue reading "Google's Big Photos Jump and Machine Learning"
Digitopoly 