Google has hit the big time, worming its way into our collective conscious in so many ways. As a reflection of Google’s impact on society, the Oxford English Dictionary has added “google” as a verb, according to this piece from the Motley Fool. As in “I googled my old boyfriend the other day.”
In the hopes of rivaling Google in the creation of new words, Motley Fool writer Anders Bylund (great name) writes that “verbing [emphasis added] isn’t always a good thing.”
Just ask Xerox how it feels about its company name becoming a synonym for photocopying, a word use the company has fought tooth and nail for many years. Trademarks such as Xerox have to be defended, or they risk lapsing into the public domain.
However, Bylund doesn’t think Google has anything to worry about because Xerox, for example, is still a huge player in its industry. I think it’s unlikely that anyone using a non-Google search engine (Yahoo, Ask, etc.) would ever refer to that search engine as Google.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:27 AM | Print | Comments (0)
For those of us who travel to New York often enough, it’s a commonly experienced fact that piggybacking on a legitimately free Wi-Fi connection is a big problem in the Big Apple. But, starting in August the city will start moving into the Wi-Fi era with the launch of free Wi-Fi in 18 locations in ten of the city’s top parks. Although the municipal-backed initiative started in 2003, it has been plagued by delays.
Wi-Fi Salon, the start-up that won the city contract for the free service, has got some help in the form of a big sponsorship from Finnish wireless tech giant Nokia.
Wi-Fi Salon intends to activate 18 wireless “hot spots” by the end of next month at Battery, Central and Riverside Parks and in Washington and Union Squares in Manhattan; at Prospect Park in Brooklyn; at the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens; and at Pelham Bay and Van Cortlandt Parks and Orchard Beach in the Bronx.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:41 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Eight of the hot spots will be in Central Park and two in Prospect Park. The first of the 18 locations — a stretch of Battery Park, from the Battery Gardens restaurant to the Castle Clinton National Monument — is to be activated today, with the other 17 to follow, in stages, through the end of next month.
WiMax is a technology always on the cusp of breaking through and changing the dynamics of the marketplace. But it has never quite received the momentum many thinks it deserves. Now Intel, a WiMax cheerleader, and Motorola have together invested $900 million in WiMax company Clearwire in the hopes of giving the wireless, wide-area broadband technology a lift.
Of that amount, Intel is giving $600 million in cash, the biggest investment for Intel’s investment arm to date. Motorola’s investment is a little murkier given that the tech provider has also simultaneously agreed to buy Clearwire’s NextNet Wireless division. With this investment stake in hand, Clearwire is going to cancel its planned IPO, which the company had hoped would raise around $400 million.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:02 AM | Print | Comments (0)The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Karnitschnig reports this morning something that has been inevitable for years: AOL is contemplating the end of its subscription service. (Reuters write-up of WSJ piece here.) AOL CEO Jonathan Miller reportedly presented a plan to parent Time Warner’s board last week that calls for ending the premium option for customers who access AOL via broadband, thus ending a service that revolutionized the Internet in the 90s but suffers from continuing loss in the broadband era. Subscribers who have dial-up service would still have to pay.
The company estimates that a third of its 18.6 million customers use broadband, and the loss of these customers’ payments could translate into a $2 billion per year revenue loss. But the company calculates, quite correctly in my view, that these folks are going to disappear anyway so it’s better to hang on to them and generate ad revenue from their continued patronage rather than lose them altogether.
A look at AOL’s slipping subscriber counts bears this out. As the table below demonstrates, AOL has been losing paid subscribers at a quickening pace since the fourth quarter of 2002. Over the past four quarters alone, the service has lost 3.056 million paid customers — at this rate, AOL is out of the premium subscription business altogether in under six years.
| Total U.S. AOL Subs. | |||
| (in 000s) | |||
| Net | |||
| Subs. | Change | Change | |
| 4Q 02 | 26,481 | -176 | -1% |
| 1Q 03 | 26,192 | -289 | -1% |
| 2Q 03 | 25,348 | -846 | -3% |
| 3Q 03 | 24,658 | -690 | -3% |
| 4Q 03 | 24,259 | -399 | -2% |
| 1Q 04 | 24,022 | -237 | -1% |
| 2Q 04 | 23,354 | -668 | -3% |
| 3Q 04 | 22,708 | -646 | -3% |
| 4Q 04 | 22,204 | -504 | -2% |
| 1Q 05 | 21,696 | -508 | -2% |
| 2Q 05 | 20,778 | -918 | -4% |
| 3Q 05 | 20,100 | -678 | -3% |
| 4Q 05 | 19,475 | -625 | -3% |
| 1Q06 | 18,640 | -835 | -4% |
In all probability, however, AOL’s subscriber loss will only continue to accelerate. Moreover, at a certain point, and AOL is probably pretty close to this, the company is probably losing money on its subscription business.
In what is probably a bit of corporate delusion, AOL is hoping to double its ad revenues to compensate for the loss of the premium subscription revenues. While ad revenues have been growing as AOL pushes more of its content and services to an open web-based model, ad growth is unlikely to cover even a fraction of this revenue loss. As the table below shows, ad revenues for the online unit inched up by only 3%, or $13 million, in the most recent quarter. That’s down from a 16% or $51 million rise in ad revenue during the preceding quarter.
| Total AOL Ad Revenue | ||
| (in mil.) | ||
| $ Amount | $ Change | % Change |
| $ 179 | $ (45) | -20% |
| $ 178 | $ (1) | -1% |
| $ 204 | $ 26 | 15% |
| $ 214 | $ 10 | 5% |
| $ 221 | $ 7 | 3% |
| $ 257 | $ 36 | 16% |
| $ 313 | $ 56 | 22% |
| $ 311 | $ (2) | -1% |
| $ 320 | $ 9 | 3% |
| $ 328 | $ 8 | 3% |
| $ 379 | $ 51 | 16% |
| $ 392 | $ 13 | 3% |
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:20 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Verizon has a lot of guts — the company keeps pumping billions into its next-generation fiber-to-the-premises project despite Wall Street’s ongoing skepticism about whether the initiative, called FiOS, will be profitable. And the massive construction effort, which has resulted in some major (and innumerable minor) mishaps, tests the hides of the company’s PR folks.
The latest: this AP story which starts out with a tale of Verizon starting a blaze in a suburban yard that engulfed utility lines, melted a chain link fence and destroyed a family’s canoe.
Aside from chewing up the time of state regulators, management of the construction is imposing extra costs on government offices charged with the task of making sure the telco isn’t causing severe problems.
“They want to do a lot of work quickly and that’s where the problems start,” said Thomas Rawls, a professional engineer in the public works department of Hillsborough County, Fla., which ordered Verizon to temporarily stop work after a series of waterline breaks in 2004.
Verizon’s project has forced communities to hire people to monitor work and to protect their facilities — such as electric, gas and water lines.
Rawls, for instance, hired 10 temporary inspectors for about $500,000 a year and a consulting firm for another $150,000. In Anne Arundel County, Md., where Verizon hit hundreds of underground lines in its first few months of construction last year, three additional inspectors were hired, said Alex Baquie, a local public works official.
But, some officials say that’s just the price that has to be paid for doing any major construction work in cities.
“On all major construction jobs like this, it’s unrealistic to think you’ll go through the project without damages,” said Doug Hilkey, traffic operations director for Fort Wayne, Ind., where the project has run relatively smoothly.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:03 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Blogs We Read
