As I’ve said before, the Google guys have got to stop reading the press. First, the executive triumvirate at Google got the cover photo of Time magazine this week, with some glowing coverage inside. (The articles are available here at no charge after viewing an ad.)
Now, Barron’s has torched the company’s stock. In this piece penned by Jacqueline Doherty, Google is systematically dissected and ultimately defined as a vulnerable, over-hyped and over-valued company.
The piece starts out with a pessismistic assessment of Google, and it’s all downhill from there.
INVESTORS HAVE BEEN FIXATED on Google the past few weeks, as its shares have tumbled nearly 25% from a peak of $475 — and the fact is, there could be a lot more tumbling ahead. The share price could well be cut in half over the next year as the Internet giant grapples with growing competition from Microsoft and Yahoo!, increased pricing pressures in its online ad sales and mounting concern about what’s known as click fraud.
While this article is cited as the key factor driving Google’s stock down by nearly 5% today, in truth investors are operating off their own sensitive psychological swings and any bit of bad news is enough to push the pendulum deeper into the red territory.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:32 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Peter Kiley at C-SPAN reminded me that tomorrow is the next hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee’s aggressive slate of hearings leading up to a Telecom Act rewrite. The subject is “State and Local Issues and Municipal Networks,” and the list of witnesses are as follows:
*Mr. Robert Sahr, Commissioner, South Dakota Public Utilities Commission
*Ms. Diane Munns, President, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners
*Mr. John Perks, President, National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates
*Mr. Michael F. Altschul, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, CYIA - The Wireless Association
*Mr. Douglas A. Boone, Chief Executive Officer, Premier Communications
*Mr. Donald Berryman, President of Municipal Networks, Earthlink Inc.
*Ms. Dianah Neff, Chief Information Officer, City of Philadelphia
Directions for the webcast, as usual, will be found on the Committee’s home page or, as Peter points out, at www.c-span.org.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:17 PM | Print | Comments (0)
At the risk of contributing to an unbelievably intense yet so infinitely insular debate that no one outside a handful of people care about the subject matter, I’d like to underscore something raised by the insightful Scott Karp. To recap this absurd debate that has so consumed the blogosphere for the past two days, Tristan Louis started a firestorm when he posted an essay saying that the most democractic tool of communications, the blog, has been co-opted by elite, A-list gatekeepers. These gatekeepers talk only to themselves and foster a kind of myopia, Tristan contends.
Based on the unbelievable flurry of commentary, you might think Tristan has postulated some kind of wild, controversial and important thesis. However, I’m with Scott Karp when he says:
I need to reboot my brain — I’m swearing off blogging about blogging, tech.memeorandum and the whole echo chamber thing.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:45 PM | Print | Comments (1)
Blogs We Read
