Andy Boyer

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Category: Business (Page 20 of 24)

Where is news on the Google China Tax Evasion story?

November 25, 2007 /

So, here’s something that’s news because there’s no news about it.

On November 19, TechCrunch reported that Google was being investigated by the Chinese government for a number of tax issues, all of which were too difficult for me to understand or techCrunch to analyze or give perspective on.  My initial thought was that this was simply a follow up shot across Google’s bow.

If you remember a few months back, all the U.S. search engines in China had their traffic redirected to sina.com, in what many said was a response to President Bush meeting with the Dali Lama.  So now after a "tip" from someone, the Chinese government is going to fine and/or punish Google for some allegedly shaky financial bookkeeping.

Now if you ask me, when a company has more money than it knows what to do with, cheating a few bucks in taxes in a country it desperately wants to do business in would be downright foolish.  I simply can’t believe Google would purposely do anything improper in dealing with Byzantine Chinese tax laws when they desperately want to do business in this market.  It simply makes no sense for Google to try to cheat the Chinese government out of less than what one of their GM’s is worth in stock options.

But the bigger question for me is, why is TechCrunch the most respected news outlet covering this?  On a search on the terms – Google Tax China – there’s no WSJ, New York Times or even anything from the Bay Area papers.  Why isn’t anyone writing about the Chinese accusing Google of tax improprieties?   Is it part of some U.S. mandate that "We will not question the Chinese government?" 

 

Movaya Wants to Make It Easy to Sell Mobile Games From Your Web Site

November 15, 2007 /

movaya1.jpgNew product announcement from Movaya today, as they released version 2.0 of Plug N Play, which is a technology that makes it even easier for any online merchant (or even a blog) to sell mobile games from their web site, deliver them directly to the customer’s phone, and directly charge their cell phone bill. 

While the mobile game industry is still in its early stages, all signs point to an explosion in revenues of mobile games in the coming years. The new version of Movaya’s product comes after months of research and feedback from the several hundred web sites already implementing the platform.

The entire press release is available in a Social Media form at their blog.

A few notes

November 12, 2007 /

So now that the dust is settling from the BlogWorld / Vegas trip, I’ll sprinkle in a few little bits that I have highlighted here in notes.  One curious
company we ran across was the expo’s media sponosor, a magazine called Blogger and Podcasting.

If you recognize the same kind of ironies that roughly 98.6% of the conference attendees noticed, you will chuckle and say to yourself, "Interesting.  A print magazine dedicated to an industry whose sole purpose is to put print magazines out of business."  Or, you might be less generous and say something far more disparaging or mean.  Even the conference panelists on VC funding made special note, commenting on how they would pass on any deal that involved a magazine about blogging.

Is this newsworthy from a "Bubble Watch" standpoint? It certainly shows that there are market inconsistencies.  And it probably wouldn’t be too problematic, if it wasn’t coupled with the fact that Exhibitor booths at BlogWorld were peppered with Booth Babes.  I think this shocked me more than anything, because I can’t think of a group of people that would be less impressed, and dare I say possibly intimidated and annoyed, by scantily clad models who have no idea what they are talking about.  When BlogWorld starts taking on a Comdex feel, something seems off-base. 

 

Amateur Writers, Start Your Engines

November 5, 2007 /

For months, maybe years, it’s been increasingly difficult to determine the blurry line between "professional" and "amateur" when it comes to news reporting or developing entertaining videos.  Now that line seems to be simple enough – If you are developing content, you are an amateur, and if you are a professional, you are on strike.

What a perfect storm for the aspiring amateur writer who never had the stomach to quit their job, move to LA, and battle for seats on ‘Joey" or "The Danny Bonaduce Show."

With the writers on strike, and thousands of cable channels still running 24 hours a day, content will be in demand.  Now if I was running programming for a network, I’d probably look two places – International and the Internet.

With only so many countries that speak English, the International channel dries up pretty quickly.  So the next stop is YouTube and the Blogosphere.  How many ways are there to turn some sort of blog or YouTube channel into a hybrid Internet / TV program?   And if a kid is developing content for kicks and giggles, how much do they really need to pay him?

It’s a huge open window for aspiring writers.  During the last threat of a writer’s strike, the "reality show" was hatched by networks as a defense mechanism, and that genre ended up dominating TV for nearly a decade.  What genre will this strike launch?

Sonics 2.0

November 2, 2007 /

The NBA kicked off season #40 in Seattle last night, in a game notworthy for it’s few absolutes:

  • It wasn’t the actual first game of the year, as the team had played in Denver the night before
  • It may or may not have been the last home opener in team history.
  • They never looked like they would get killed, and never looked liek they would win.
  • The roster is stacked full of people you may have heard of, but wouldn’t recognize if they sat next to you.
  • The arena was almost full
  • The fans didn’t quite know how to root for the players and boo the owners

But that made for an interesting dynamic. Some of the recognizable attractions remain – like Squatch, the Boom Squad and Sonics Dance team. T-Mobile still has big ads and the Dunking Ushers still put on a cool show. But there were no more Starbucks ads, and unless I missed them, the Southwest Airlines promotion seemed to be gone. At least there was no ad for the Stillwater Savings and Loan or Petroleum Workers Union 476.

There were some very noticeable handmade signs that I’m surprised fans were allowed to bring into the arena, including, "Noklahoma" and "Trade Bennett." It certainly would not have been unreasonable for an ownership group to force security to remove signs that denigrade the team or execs.

The loudest roar of the night was not prompted by the scoreboard, Squatch or PA Announcer – it was started by the fans and was simply a cheer of, "Save Our Sonics" that reverberated through the stadium for a few minutes. KJR’s Softy Mahler could be seen in the corner of the stadium taking part, and maybe 10% of the stadium was standing for it. With a little more organization, this cheer could take on a bigger role in future games, much like the "Go" ‘Huskies" cheer at UW shifts from side to side.

And finally, here’s an angle people aren’t writing about. The sales, marketing, admin, HR and other folks who work for the Sonics today are all Seattleites. They don’t want to move to Oklahoma. So you have owners who want to go, fans who want them to stay, employees who want them to stay and players who don’t care.

But one thing that is absolute – Kevin Durant is going to be a stud.

Technology Finally Slows Down the Rockies

October 22, 2007 /

Well, they’ve won something like 23 of 24 games, so other teams can’t stop them.  But the Colorado Rockies finally found a nemesis they cound’t vanquish.

According to reports, "on Monday, there were 8.5 million attempts to connect with the computers in the first 90 minutes after sales started, and only several hundred tickets had been sold before the system had to be shut down."

One has to assume many of these 8.5 million attempts are from the automated robots now being used by ticket brokers and resellers.  This indicates the technologies that have been so useful in selling tickets have now become an impediment to getting them to the real fans. 

In fact, the Denver Post reports on the issue, including this section.  "The bots pose a significant challenge to companies such as Ticketmaster, which won an injunction Monday blocking a Pittsburgh software company – RMG Technologies Inc. – from making and distributing such programs.

"We will not allow others to illegally divert tickets away from fans," said Ticketmaster chief executive Sean Moriarty in a statement.

The flooding process has also come under fire from parents trying to purchase "Hannah Montana" concert tickets for their kids, only to learn tickets are sold out minutes after going on sale."

 

U.S. Search Engines Have New Pot Hole in Dance With China

October 18, 2007 /

When you have a few billion potential customers living inside your country, and a totalitarian monopoly on who gets to sell to them, you wield quite a bit of power on the global business climate.

Such is the case this week as the government of China is now redirecting searches from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft search engines, and sending them to the China based Baidu.com.

The fact that this action comes about 3 minutes after the Dali Lama received a Congressional Medal of Honor is at best, "sketchy."   

This kind of activity puts American companies in a tough spot.  From everything I know, supporting the Dali Lama is the *right* thing to do.  China is effectively pushing American companies to try to convince the U.S. government to change their chance.  This will not be the last time a U.S. firm is going to have decide on whether they are beholden to shareholder value or global ethics.  Redirecting IP packets is simply the easiest thing China could do.  It will be interesting to see what comes next.   

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