Archive for February, 2008
It’s been a busy week in the tech world, but the newsroom highlight of the week had more to do with what was not said. Our own Elinor Mills was dispatched on short notice from San Francisco to Orlando to interview Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He was in the land of Mickey Mouse East to tout Google Health initiatives, which hold promise for advancing the cause of improved healthcare.
(Credit: Elinor Mills)Elinor came ready to discuss Google Health with Schmidt as well as other topics, such as what’s up with the paid click ad business, the economy, YouTube and, of course, the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo union.
A few minutes before the interview she was told by a Google spokesman that Schmidt would only answer questions about Google Health.
He certainly has the right to refuse to take questions, but it’s unclear what led him to stonewall. Schmidt doesn’t seem like a CEO who is afraid to go toe-to-toe with the press. Perhaps he wanted to make sure the message got out on Google Health, but Elinor had already heard all the details at the Orlando presentation and press conference.
In any case, the context of the event shouldn’t exclude Schmidt from responding to the basic questions that are the minds of Google watchers, reporters, bloggers, investors and employees. He is practiced enough in the art of interviewing to evade any question that he doesn’t want to answer directly.
He even declined to respond to a question about how Microsoft’s health care platform HealthVault differs from Google Health.
The notions of transparency and openness are part of the Web culture. Google is the “Do No Evil” company. Speaking to the press without putting restrictions on what can be asked (outside of regulatory prohibitions) is “good.” We aren’t talking about disclosing state secrets, just responding to what are largely anticipated queries.
You have to wonder what drives such behavior. Is it arrogance or just a bit of control freakishness? Whatever, it comes off as Putinesque, which I doubt is what Google PR or Schmidt intended.
Read Elinor’s account of her brief and mostly unfruitful trip Orlando.
Facebook has denied giving the Moroccan government information to identify a man who was sentenced to prison for posting a fake profile of a Moroccan prince.
A Moroccan court last week sentenced the 26-year-old IT engineer to three years and fined him 10,000 dirhams ($1,320) for setting up a Facebook account in the name of King Mohammed’s brother, Prince Moulay Rachid.
Some civil-liberties groups questioned whether Facebook helped the Moroccan government locate Fouad Mortada.
Supporters of Mourtada have set up a Web site to call attention to his case.
(Credit: HelpFouad.com)
But The Wall Street Journal on Friday quoted Brandee Barker, a Facebook spokewoman, as saying that while the company’s privacy policy and terms of use allow it to share data with law enforcement and other government agencies “when it has a good faith belief it is legally obligated to do so…Facebook has shared no such information with the Moroccan authorities.”
According to Amnesty International, Mourtada said two plain-clothes security agents arrested him on the morning of February 5.
They blindfolded him and covered him with a sheet, he said, then drove him to an unknown place where they beat him until he “confessed” that he had placed a profile of the Prince on the social-networking site to “get girlfriends.”
Mourtada, however, said he posted the profile out of admiration for the prince, and not out of a desire to undermine the monarchy as asserted by the prosecution during the trial. The court convicted him of modifying and falsifying information technology data and usurping an official’s identity; the case is expected to go to appeal.
While Facebook prohibits users from impersonating others, the site is nonetheless full of false profiles of well-known personalities.
Mourtada’s family has sent the prince an appeal for clemency. In addition, a Web site set up by Mourtada supporters has declared Saturday as an international day of solidarity, with protests on his behalf scheduled in cities including Rabat, Paris, Montreal, London, Brussels, Washington D.C., Amsterdam, and Madrid.
Also: Snow full of bacteria. Read these stories and more at News.com Extra.
Also: Snow full of bacteria. Read these stories and more at News.com Extra.
Northrop Grumman won a $40 billion Air Force contract to build refueling tankers Friday, a deal Boeing was expected to win.
(Credit: Northrop Grumman)
Boeing officials must be feeling a little bit like the New England Patriots Friday after the aerospace giant lost out on a $40 billion Air Force deal.
According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required to view full article), Boeing was considered the favorite to win a $40 billion deal to build mid-air refueling tankers for the Air Force, but lost out in the end to a consortium made up of Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., parent company of jet maker Airbus.
“Boeing was heavily favored to wni the contract,” the Journal reported. “It had been on the verge of sewing up a similar tanker deal in 2001, only to see it unravel after the revelation that a top Boeing official had conducted illegal job negotiations with an Air Force acquisition official who later joined the company. That thrust Boeing into a years-long ethics scandal, and the U.S. put the contract up for rebidding.”
Still, heading into the Air Force’s final decision on the deal, Boeing was seen as the front-runner for the contract, and even those at Northrop Grumman were expecting to be shut out.
But the Air Force thought otherwise.
“Northrop Grumman clearly provided the best value to the government,” the Journal quoted Air Force acquisitions official Sue Payton as saying.
According to the Air Force, the contract was for the right to build up to 179 tanker aircraft, to be called the KC-45A, for the Air Force.
“The tanker is our number one procurement priority right now,” said Air Force Gen. Duncan McNabb in a press release about the deal. “Buying the new KC-45A is a major step forward and another demonstration of our commitment to recapitalizing our Eisenhower-era inventory of these critical national assets.”
The KC-45A is expected to be able to provide refueling to both Air Force and Navy planes, while its predecessor, the KC-135, must be configured for one or the other before takeoff.
Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that there could be layoffs at Ask.com and that IAC is thinking about dumping the Teoma search engine in favor of Google.
But a person very familiar with the matter told CNET News.com that Ask.com will stick with Teoma.
Ask.com spokesman Nicholas Graham declined to comment on the potential for layoffs.
Ask.com has undergone so many makeovers it’s hard to keep track. A site redesign last year, along with management changes in the past few years, has failed to significantly change its market share.
Earlier in the week Comscore reported that Google’s paid clicks dropped 7% drop between December and January. That was enough to panic already nervous shareholders who proceeded to dump Google’s stock in one of Wall Street’s (increasingly common) panics.
But this morning the Internet ratings agency issued a brief statement meant to contradict the impression that it believes Google had sprung a leak.
“…the evidence suggests that the softness in Google’s paid click metrics is primarily a result of Google’s own quality initiatives that result in a reduction in the number of paid listings and, therefore, the opportunity for paid clicks to occur. In addition, the reduction in the incidence of paid listings existed progressively throughout 2007 and was successfully offset by improved revenue per click.
“It is entirely possible, if not likely, that the improved revenue yield will continue to deliver strong revenue growth in the first quarter. Separately, there is no evidence of a slowdown in consumers clicking on paid search ads for rest of the US search market, which comprises 40% of all searches.”
That’s one heck of a circumlocution: Maybe it’s me but it recalled that signature line from the Wizard of Oz: “Don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain.” For the record, Comscore’s PR department told me that it decided to publish the statement because journalists were drawing incorrect conclusions from the data. The spokesman also said Google had not pressured the ratings agency to act.
Comscore’s “statement of analysis” was good enough to convince CNBC’s Silicon Valley reporter Jim Goldman, whose reliably chirpy optimism about tech stocks seems to gain in the face of each massive selloff. On his blog, he wrote:
“Yet even comScore itself is re-evaluating its own data; not saying it got it wrong, but saying instead that the big January drop might come from improvements in Google’s click programs and not because of some big drop off in business. ComScore says that since it’s not tracking the same kind of drop off in business at other search engines, the issues might be from Google click improvements alone, and not some macro-economic factors instead.”
That settles it then. Happy days are back? Well, not exactly. Goldman is part of the perma-bull crowd which predominates on CNBC. This bunch rarely gets out ahead of a economic trend - especially when the indicators start pointing south. I’m not arguing that Google’s franchise is in deep trouble. At least, not yet. But who still believes that the company’s search-based advertising business will remain intact in the face of a recession?
Henry Blodget over at Silicon Alley Insider sure isn’t buying it.
“This week, as analysts have rushed to check in with search engine marketers, we have heard reports of weakness in financial services, real-estate, and other categories. Athough Google’s click improvement programs are almost certainly contributing to the paid-click fall-off, it seems unlikely that they account for all of it. We therefore continue to view the Comscore report as supporting the theory that Google is exposed to economic weakness.”
Since the company went public in 2004, Google has become a Zelig-like metaphor, for bulls and bears. Both sides project what they want. The optimists justified a $700-plus stock price because they expected the good times to continue. The pessimists questioned why you would value a stock that highly with the housing and financial sectors of the economy blowing up and no end in sight. Where the bulls saw clear skies, the bears saw clouds. And so far, there’s little argument about who is being proved right as of now.
For most of his tenure, Eric Schmidt has had an easy time of it. If he’s as good a manager as his press clips claim, now he’ll have a chance to earn that reputation. History may not repeat itself exactly but if the economy slips further, a lot of companies will suffer more pain before the selling comes to an end.
Including Google.
A ‘green,’ petroleum-free brand of motor oil is due to appear on store shelves soon.
Green Earth Technologies said it’s shipping its line of green motor oils to national retailers starting within the next month. Waste fats from cattle instead of fossil fuels are the key ingredients.
“We turn that into liquid form and use nanotechnology to have it perform in lubricant format,” explained company CEO Jeff Marshall.
Diverting fat from french fries into motor oil.
(Credit: Green Earth Technologies)
Because the slaughter of each cow leaves behind two hundred pounds of waste tallow, the company is making use of a renewable resource, he said.
“We’re doing something to help because there’s no longer a use for french fries and cooking products that use trans fats.”
The company bills its 10W30 and 10W40 G-Oil for cars, as well as motor oils for boats, lawnmowers and weed whackers, as biodegradable and nontoxic.
“You could spill motor oil over the back of boat it doesn’t harm the environment,” Marshall said.
In 2-cycle engines, the smokeless oil reduces hydrocarbons by 32 percent, cuts the emissions of carbon monoxide by 48 percent and of nitrous oxide by 80 percent, according to Green Earth Technologies.
The company also makes cleaning products for cars, boats and homes. The entire line costs the same as traditional, toxic products, Marshall said. The recyclable packaging uses soy inks and biodegradable paper.
Green Earth Technologies’ skunk works are developing 50 more products, including additives Marshall said he hopes could be used in airplane biofuels, which are being tested by Virgin Atlantic Airways.
With headquarters in Stamford, Conn., Green Earth Technologies has 250 employees and is traded on the pink sheets. In January it raised $2.1 million from Founders Technology and eight angel investors.
Marshall, who has worked in venture capital for three decades, said he’s working with the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the American Petroleum Institute to develop a green label for a wide range of consumer chemical products.
“We’d like to create the standard for what is green, very analogous to how we created 802.11 and TCP/IP standards,” he said.
Another clean tech start-up eyeing the market for eco-friendly car products is SOMS Technologies, which claims its engine oil filter could end the era of the 3,000-mile oil change.
Nano Chemical Systems Holdings announced last April that its NanOil, made from palm oils, would become commercially available. However, this writer couldn’t find signs that NanOil is available or reach the company.
Environmentalists object to the harvesting of palm oil particularly in Indonesia, which is clearing virgin rainforests for farming.
When a high-ranking executive at your strongest partner openly thinks your technology “barely works,” perhaps it’s time to make that a higher priority.
A series of internal Microsoft e-mails discussing Intel’s 915 and 945 integrated graphics chipsets in unfavorable terms made its salacious way around the Internet this week. Microsoft is currently being sued over its Windows Vista upgrade programs, which were designed with pressure from Intel, but over the objections of the PC industry, to include support for a graphics chipset that couldn’t run Vista’s Aero interface.
In February 2007, just after Vista launched, Microsoft’s Steve Sinofsky told CEO Steve Ballmer that the 945 chipset, required for the “Vista Premium Ready” logo, could barely run Vista. And everyone (inside the PC industry, at least) knew the widely used 915 chipset that was awarded the “Vista Capable” logo couldn’t even think about running the advanced display driver model used to deliver the fancy Aero interface, considered one of the major selling points of Vista.
Juicy stuff, for sure, but it’s old news that Intel and Microsoft have been in engaged in “coopetition” for years. The real lesson is just how badly even Microsoft thinks of the current state of integrated graphics.
Intel likes to mention that it’s the world’s leading supplier of graphics technology. The only reason it can claim that mantle, however, is because people like bargains, and the way they get those bargains is through the use of integrated graphics chipsets.
Around 75 percent of the notebooks, and around 60 percent of the desktops, sold last year used integrated graphics chips. The rest use discrete graphics chips made by Nvidia and AMD that offer far more powerful performance for games and video.
The integrated graphics chips, usually thought of as “good-enough graphics,” really aren’t that good. Intel has had loads of problems with its graphics chipsets and their support for PC games or other intense graphical programs. Most of that software will run, but not in an ideal fashion, and lots of people expect that shiny new PC to be able to run PC games without fits and starts or jerky gameplay.
Intel has put the 915 and 945 chipsets behind it, but challenges remain. It still encountered problems with the release of the 965 chipset, and the G30 series has yet to make it into notebook PCs. This area represents arguably Intel’s most glaring weakness at present.
The company has shown it’s getting more serious about graphics, hiring more engineers and focusing some of its design prowess on projects like Larrabee. And it tried to take a big step forward in the performance of its 965-series integrated graphics chipsets by adding support for functions like transform and lighting. It had lots of problems delivering drivers for that chipset, however, and when those drivers arrived, they didn’t deliver a uniform boost in performance.
Nvidia and AMD are way ahead when it comes to understanding how to build graphics chips. Nvidia has been doing this for years, and AMD recognized the growing importance of graphics when it acquired (for far more than it should have paid, however) ATI Technologies in 2006.
Graphics chips and CPUs like the Core 2 Duo are two very different beasts, but the wholesale embrace of multicore processor designs means that at some point, graphics technology becomes just a core on the main chip. AMD is well underway with planning for its Fusion processor and Nvidia seems to be eyeing broader uses for its high-powered graphics chips.
This is Intel’s next great challenge, now that it has thankfully derailed the March of Itanium and soothed the burns from the Netburst architecture.
It needs to somehow get up to speed with Nvidia and the former ATI when it comes to graphics knowledge while keeping an eye on the rest of its business. Intel has found it difficult in recent years to break into new areas, such as flat-screen TVs or cell phones, that have very different processing requirements and architectures than the CPU.
But those other bets were just that, bets. This time, Intel has no choice. Intel can’t afford to fall behind as the PC industry changes; it’s one thing to swing and miss when trying something new, it’s quite another to miss the mark on your home turf.
By the time Windows 7 rolls around, Intel will need to do better than “barely works.”
I’ve always wanted to interview Google CEO Eric Schmidt one-on-one and this week I finally got the chance.
Eric Schmidt is all smiles before declining to answer any questions not related to Google Health in a one-on-one interview.
(Credit: Elinor Mills, CNET News.com)
I learned that he was going to be making a big Google Health announcement at a health care trade show on Thursday and a Google spokesman promised me I would get a “one-on-one” interview with him in private afterward if I flew out to Orlando, Fla. from San Francisco for the event.
That Schmidt was sitting down with me proved that even billionaires can let bygones be bygones. Our professional relationship got off to a rocky start shortly after I joined CNET News.com in mid-2005. OK, so it was a really rocky start. To refresh your memories: We googled some personal information about Schmidt and wrote about what we found. He didn’t like it, and News.com was on the receiving end of a very stern corporate silent treatment from Google for nearly two months.
Since then, in fairness, my relationship with the search king has been considerably better. But a sit down with Mr. Schmidt? Of course, I’d fly cross-country, even if there’s a certain absurdity to flying 2,500 miles to interview a guy who works about 40 miles from my office.
I had a list of questions: I was eager to ask Schmidt about recent disappointing ComScore figures for paid search performance and how Google will weather a recession given that lending companies appear to be cutting their ad spending, how it’s going monetizing YouTube and, of course, how Google plans to counter a Microsoft-Yahoo tie-up if that should happen.
My editors agreed to send me to the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2008 annual conference. I got a last-minute ticket and stocked up with camera, digital recorder and the list of questions. I arrived a day early to do a preview of the news and get my footing.
The morning of Schmidt’s keynote I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I was in my near front-row seat well in advance. After covering the keynote and the news conference afterward I waited for a Google spokesman to take me to see Schmidt. Walking to a green room in the Orange County Convention Center, the Google spokesman told me I could only ask questions about Google Health.
What?! I asked the spokesman if he was serious, and he said “yes.” This wasn’t what I was expecting. What is Google afraid of?
Schmidt greeted me and agreed to let me take several photos. That was nice. I was told I had 12 minutes and I dove in with several probing questions about Google Health (Hey, so you play nice and then try to ask the real questions).
Was it difficult for Google to get health industry players like Aetna, Quest Diagnostics and Walgreens on board? “It took a while,” he said, adding that Google lined up health experts to be on an advisory health council and they are integrating their systems to work with Google’s GData. “It was OK. It wasn’t that hard.”
How significant to Google was this project? “We prioritized … (looked at) what do people actually do with search in terms of the volume, and the importance of health came out No. 1. … We tend to think of Google Health as an extension of search. You could argue it’s also an application.”
Like with Google News, Schmidt said he hopes that Google Health will lead to more people using Google search and clicking on ads. “Every month we say to ourselves should we add ads to Google News or add more news features to Google news and every month we decide to add more Google news features because … we make so much money from people just using Google search that we don’t need to get the extra money from News. … A Google News user is more likely to be a Google searcher and therefore clicks on ads more.”
This led into a question about Google’s reliance on search advertising and how the company would weather a recession. Schmidt cut me off, waved his hand and said: “I’m not going to talk about anything other than Google Health.”
Sheepishly, I said, “So, I don’t suppose I can ask you about Microsoft and Yahoo?” The answer: “No.”
Oh damn. This was bad.
“So what?” you’re probably thinking. “Quit your whining, you worthless, note-scribbling toadie and stop annoying this man!” OK, fair point. But give-and-take with the press is part of being in a position of responsibility at a highly visible public company. Saying everything but the topic at hand is off limits is, well, lame.
When President Bush holds a press conference about, say, buying books for a bunch of sweet school kids in Alabama, he doesn’t get to say to the gathered mass of reporters: “I’m happy to take questions, but only if we talk about the books we just bought for these sweet school kids. The economy and the war in Iraq are off limits. So fermez la bouche, Seymour Hersh!
Of course, he’s free to dodge the questions. Some presidents over the years have perfected the art of the dodge. Some, well, they could still use a little work.
Anyway, so back to the interview: Then I said “um, ok” and looked desperately at my notes and all the questions I had that wouldn’t get answered. OK, I’ll admit it, I was stymied. I not-so-subtly tried to use Google Health as an entree to other questions.
Can you discuss your strategy with regard to social networks and whether that will play a part in Google Health? “It may over time. …It makes sense that people who are in health situations are going to want to have a social community.”
And how does this fit in with your mobile strategy? “Everything we do we’re doing for the mobile wireless space as well, so the interface you see will be available in our mobile strategies… We’ll re-whack the pages a little bit …In mobile, we’re having tremendous successes.”
Will Google Health work with other Google properties like Gmail and Google Docs, and what about YouTube? I ask him, grasping for any connection to use.
“In YouTube you could imagine that health videos stored on YouTube would be easily indexable … There are a lot of Google Health videos already on YouTube.” (Earlier, during his keynote, he had this nugget to say about YouTube: “Ten hours of video is being uploaded into YouTube every minute. God knows what the quality of that video is! But it’s coming.”)
So, what will search, on Google Health and in general, look like in five years? “It’s hard to predict what we’ll do in five years. … You could imagine eventually we would know how to rank much better health information.”
This guy was good. Total talking points. I’m not sure why he wasn’t inclined to answer my “off-topic” questions other than that he could decline.
I was told I could ask one last question and I asked him what question have I not asked that I should have? Among reporters, this is generally our last-ditch, I-gotta-get-something-good-or-my-editor-is-going-to-kill-me question.
“I don’t think you have highlighted sufficiently the platform characteristic of this,” Schmidt responded. “Everyone is assuming it is personal health record. … I think of it as a platform upon which many services can be built and it is through that platform that the real innovation occurs.”
Ummm, right on!
As a follow up to that I squeezed in a question about Microsoft’s health care platform HealthVault and how does that differ from Google Health? Getting up from his chair, Schmidt said “That’s it.”
Just like that it was over and I was hustled out the door and S.O.L. for a good interview.
So, my one-on-one with Schmidt wasn’t exactly what I had hoped it would be. But at least I’m getting closer to a free plane trip somewhere in the continental United States on a non-holiday, non-blackout date of the near future.
