Ok so this is a few days old but I didn’t get around to posting it until now. Plus it’s Memorial Day so I didn’t want to do a too in-depth post. Anyway, if you haven’t heard, Feedburner was just recently purchased by Google for $100 Million. I view this as a very solid move on Google’s part because Feedburner is at the top of the Web 2.0 world right now. Other related services such as Technorati, BumpZee, etc are all things that a blog owner should not be without. Along with Google Analytics and Feedburner traffic stats you can easily keep track of pretty much anything on your blog.

(more…)

Dell has been struggling lately. Sales are down and competition is up. Dell is not about to fail though. They have some tricks up their sleeves yet. You don’t get to be the #1 supplier of home pc’s and office pc’s alike by being stupid. While Dell is going through some bumps in the road, it seems as if they may have just come to a wide open straightaway. The answer for the computer manufacturing giant may very well lie in the hands of the big boys over at Wal-Mart.

According to Forbes, Dell will begin selling desktop pc’s through over 3,000 Wal-Mart stores starting on June 10th. That’s right. Buying a Dell computer just became extremely easy. If you haven’t been the observant type you probably didn’t realize that Dell is not currently available in retail stores. It’s always been Sony, Gateway, Toshiba, HP, but not Dell. Dell is the one that you get free magazines and catalogs from every few months. The deals are great and so are the computers. That’s how Dell became #1, by cutting out the middlemen.

(more…)

A week or so ago I talked about a possible Microsoft purchase of Yahoo. Microsoft just recently acquired AQuantive Inc for $6 billion. While the $6B purchase was Microsoft’s biggest purchase to date, investors and market analyzers alike are calling for the record to be short lived. Microsoft was rumored to be considering a $50 billioon dollar purchase of Yahoo earlier this month. Now with the AQuantive Inc deal in place many people are predicting a Yahoo deal to be next in line.

(more…)

I’m a big fan of ValueClick and have been using them for years on several of my websites. It’s shocking of course to hear the news today that they are being investigated by the FTC for violating the “Can Spam Act” with several of their campaigns. I don’t personally remember getting many emails from them that I would consider spam but then again I’m a subscriber so it doesn’t count as spam in the first place.

Basically, ValueClick is going to have a rough road ahead if the allegations ring true. Spamming is not something to be taken lightly and it’s certainly not anything I want to get involved with. Black hat is never smart but spamming is one of the most obvious “Black hat” methods that companies can use to get extra traffic. After all, the traffic is free, at least until you get caught. Then suddenly all the years of benefiting from spamming are not worth it when compared to the fines and other legal actions that can be taken against you. It will be interesting to see how this all turns out.

(more…)

If you’ve been around the internet for the past few years you’ve almost certainly seen ads for “The Rich Jerk“. Ex-actor Kelly Felix is the man behind the ugly white suit known as the “Rich Jerk.” On his website, the jerk insults people, tells the world that he is better than them, and basically makes you mad by the time you finish reading. You then start to wonder if what he says is true. The Rich Jerk has spawned hundreds (if not) thousands of copycats since it was unveiled to the public in late 2005. The site has been given a ton of free publicity due to its’ offensive and controversial nature, and yes, if you are wondering I’m blogging about this site today for free as well.

So what gives? Why would I resort to blogging about the jerk of the internet? Well, the big news on the street is that TheRichJerk.com is for sale. Kelly has listed his jerk empire for sale on BizQuest.com for a whopping $8,000,000. Now that’s what I’m talking about! You can check out the sale here and if you have a spare $8M you can become the official rich jerk.

(more…)

The latest news from Yahoo is that they will be closing their “Yahoo Auctions” next month. This does not come as a surprise. After all, eBay is crushing the market and in many ways is an unstoppable force. This brings some questions to mind though. There were (and still are) several rumors floating around about Microsoft being interested in buying eBay. As far as I know there has not been any new developments in this yet, but, I’m keeping my eyes peeled. Just lately speculation has pointed to a possible purchase of Yahoo by Microsoft for close to 60 billion dollars… Now assuming Microsoft did in fact purchase Yahoo AND eBay, I could see why Yahoo would close down Yahoo Auctions. Seeing as this has not happened yet, and quite possibly may never happen, I’m not sure why Yahoo would do this.

(more…)

This just in. There are legitimate reasons to believe that Microsoft is eyeing purchasing Yahoo in the near future. Estimated sales values have been projected as high as $50 billion dollars. Yahoo’s stock rose after speculation of Microsoft’s interest became more widespread today. Personally I think this could be an incredible purchase for Microsoft. Yahoo is far superior to MSN in every way. My only worry is that if Microsoft is able to make this purchase I hope they would not try to re-brand yahoo. I have a sneaking suspicion that if Microsoft did buy Yahoo that Yahoo would cease to exist within a year. Instead it would be merged with the inferior MSN product.

(more…)

If you read this blog regularly then you probably know that I am a Warren Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway fan. I believe that Mr. Buffet is one of the smartest investors alive right now. As I’ve pointed out before, his Berkshire shares have gone up 30% in the past 2 years. That, my friends, is a nice return on your hard earned cash. Buffet will be holding his annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha Nebraska this coming Saturday. Berkshire holds large percentages of several large companies including Coca-Cola, Dairy Queen, Pampered Chef, Geico, and Fruit of the Loom. All in all, Berkshire’s portfolio is spread out over $61.5 billion dollars worth of investments. Berkshire also owns over 60 companies on it’s own.

(more…)

In business news it seems like everybody is talking about the recent financial numbers made public about Yahoo and Google. It seems as if Google has taken an incredible chunk of the market share from it’s #1 competitor Yahoo. Google’s first quarter revenue was $3.66 billion dollars while Yahoo’s was only $1.67 billion. I say “only”, but even so, Yahoo’s revenue came in at less than HALF of what Google has raked in thus far in 2007.

This leads me to do some thinking about the two search engine giants (Ok maybe there is just one giant now, but you know what I mean). Yahoo and MSN were the top two search engines up until the late 90’s. In 1999 that began to change with the arrival of Google onto the scene. Google’s homepage was bland, yet eye-catching. It provided users with a quick and easy search form without having to read the latest news headlines, weather reports, and horoscopes. Best of all, Google offered users the convenience of searching ALL of the other popular search engines at once. The results from each were sorted and displayed in standard Google fashion. Google did not start out having it’s own algorithms, let alone massive data-centers. That all came later as more money came in. But what was Google really? At first glance some might think it was a search engine, which in fact it was. But, there was something far more worthwhile within Google that even Yahoo did not catch on to until years later. Google was building what would soon become the largest advertising network on the internet. Enter AdWords and AdSense.

(more…)

It’s funny that just yesterday I was writing about Google buying YouTube for $1.6 billion dollars. Late yesterday afternoon Google just announced their hefty purchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.

Google revolutionized the web advertising industry as well as the concept of creating successful ad supported free services such as gmail, Google earth, Google maps, google desktop search, and of course the Google.com search engine. One area Google has been targeting is display advertising such as banner ads and video ads. Adsense publishers have always had the option to allow image ads to be displayed on their websites, but, Google’s flagship advertising product has always been text based contextual ads.With

the addition of DoubleClick to the Google family, they will have access to the success that DoubleClick has had in the display ad market. Google’s stock price last traded at $466.29 on Friday. It will be interesting to see which direction it moves at the bell on Monday morning.

After Google boought YouTube in October of 2006, their stock saw a steady increase past the $500 mark. Take a look at this stock chart from late 2006. I’m not saying it will or will not happen again. I’m just saying that the initial public reaction seems good. Things could get interesting next week. I’ll definitely be keeping my TD Ameritrade ticker windows open.