Relentless.com: At 20 Amazon is bulking up. It is not-yet-slowing down

Relentless.com: At 20 Amazon is bulking up. It is not—yet—slowing down

Jun 21st 2014 | PHOENIX AND SEATTLE | From the print edition

HIGH-TECH creation myths are expected to start with a garage. Amazon, impatient with ordinary from the outset, began with a road trip. In the summer of 1994 Jeff Bezos quit his job on Wall Street, flew to Fort Worth, Texas, with his wife MacKenzie and hired a car. While MacKenzie drove them towards the Pacific Northwest, Jeff sketched out a plan to set up a catalogue retailing business that would exploit the infant internet. The garage came later, in a suburb of Seattle, where he set up an office furnished with desks made from wooden doors. About a year later, Amazon sold its first book. Read more of this post

How far can Amazon go? It has upended industries and changed the way the world shops. But it should beware of abusing its power

How far can Amazon go? It has upended industries and changed the way the world shops. But it should beware of abusing its power

Jun 21st 2014 | From the print edition

WHEN Jeff Bezos left his job in finance and moved to Seattle 20 years ago to start a new firm, he rented a house with a garage, as that was where the likes of Apple and HP had been born. Although he started selling books, he called the firm Amazon because a giant river reflected the scale of his ambitions. This week the world’s leading e-commerce company unveiled its first smartphone, which Amazon treats less as a communication device than an ingenious shopping platform and a way of gathering data about people in order to make even more accurate product recommendations. Read more of this post

Can HP Build the Computer of the Future?

Can HP Build the Computer of the Future?

By Ashlee Vance June 19, 2014

On June 11, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) revealed plans to make a new kind of computer that it’s playfully calling The Machine. If HP can pull it off, it will mark a major rethinking of how computers are built. The design aims to combine huge advances in operating systems, memory, and data transfer technology to create a refrigerator-size computer able to store and analyze much of what an entire data center does today. Still years from the market, The Machine has become the talk of the industry, with rivals such as Dell mocking HP’s effort as “laughable” and other experts cheering on HP for trying something big and daring. “I think this is terrific,” says Greg Papadopoulos, a partner at venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates and a former computer architect at HP and Sun Microsystems. “This is new territory where people could get real benefits, and I hope they’re successful.” Read more of this post

‘Google Schmoogle’: the downfall of Yellow Pages; Once directories like the Yellow Pages served a valuable need in most developed economies. They provided basic and inexpensive local advertising, especially for small businesses

‘Google Schmoogle’: the downfall of Yellow Pages

Published 20 June 2014 10:59, Updated 20 June 2014 11:01

John Rice and Nigel Martin

Yellow Pages directories have been appearing on doorsteps across Australia in recent weeks. As often as not, they go straight into the recycling bin. In the world of the internet and e-commerce, the very notion of a book the size of two bricks being the source of valuable purchasing information seems plain silly.

Once directories like the Yellow Pages served a valuable need in most developed economies. They provided basic and inexpensive local advertising, especially for small businesses. Read more of this post

Women Are Actually Buying This Cocktail Ring That Lights Up When Someone Texts You

Women Are Actually Buying This Cocktail Ring That Lights Up When Someone Texts You

CAROLINE MOSS TECH  JUN. 14, 2014, 9:47 PM

Earlier this week we reported on Ringly, the wearable tech that comes in the form of a cocktail ring. The ring lights up when you have a new text, email, or push notification.

Now Betabeat is reporting that after its launch, the product saw massive success, exceeding its pre-sale goal of $60,000 less than eight hours after its June 10th launch.
Ring pricing starts at $145 for a limited time and the rings come in various colors. Ringly offers a referral program. When 10 of your friends buy a Ringly, yours is free. Read more of this post

Uber offers a cautionary lesson for retail investors

Uber offers a cautionary lesson for retail investors

Lauren Silva Laughlin

@FortuneMagazine

JUNE 13, 2014, 12:55 PM EDT

Companies like Uber might be worth big someday. But hitting those marks comes with risk. In the meantime, investors are paying tomorrow’s price today.

Are venture investors confusing future value with present price?

Last week, a group including Fidelity, Wellington, and others plunged $1.2 billion into taxi app Uber, valuing the company at $17 billion. It was the latest in a string of multi-billion deals for tech startups. The companies might be worth big prices someday. But hitting those marks comes with risk. In the meantime, investors paid tomorrow’s price today. It is an instructive lesson to the next group of investors–likely the retail lot–in valuation. Read more of this post

After OpenTable, what online company could be next in line for a billion dollar buyout?

After OpenTable, what online company could be next in line for a billion dollar buyout?

Laura Lorenzetti

JUNE 13, 2014, 5:03 PM EDT

Yelp, Groupon, Grubhub could be acquisition targets in wake of OpenTable buy.

After Priceline’s  PCLN -2.99%  $2.6 billion deal for restaurant reservation service OpenTable  OPEN 48.35%  hit the wires early Friday, a number of online and local-focused companies saw their shares jump. While traders may be hedging their bets, here are some reasons why three of these companies may be worth the investment. Read more of this post

A businessman’s guide to social media

A businessman’s guide to social media

Stephanie N. Mehta

@FortuneMagazine

JUNE 13, 2014, 5:13 PM EDT

A Harvard Business School associate professor breaks it down for the non-hoodie-wearing crowd.

When Mikolaj Jan Piskorski was an assistant professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, he met a couple of entrepreneurs who were poised launch an online networking company. Piskorski initially dismissed their idea, on the theory that the offline world already provides executives and employees with plenty of opportunities for interaction. But he changed his mind on his commute home and asked the fledgling entrepreneurs if he could hear more. The founders, Konstantin Guericke and Reid Hoffman, would go on to unveil LinkedIn. Piskorski, meanwhile, has developed a body of research around social platforms. Now an associate professor at Harvard Business School, Piskorski spoke withFortune about his new book, A Social Strategy: How We Profit from Social Media, which aims to help business leaders figure out how best to use this new medium for fun and (mostly) profit.  Edited excepts follow: Read more of this post

Five trends that explain why the Priceline-OpenTable deal makes sense

Five trends that explain why the Priceline-OpenTable deal makes sense

BY KEVIN KELLEHER 
ON JUNE 14, 2014

The Negotiator must be hungry. Priceline is paying $2.6 billion for OpenTable, the app we fire up when we’re too lazy to call a restaurant to make reservations.

True to the trend of recent Internet M&A, the valuation is pricey. OpenTable closed yesterday with a valuation of $1.7 billion. That means a company whose stock has flatlined this year is buying a company whose stock had, until then, been slumping this year. At a 53-percent premium to the value investors believed it to be worth. Read more of this post

From toy shelves to the oil sands, drones are taking off in Canada

From toy shelves to the oil sands, drones are taking off in Canada

Armina Ligaya | June 14, 2014 7:50 AM ET
They come in crayon-like colours, with glowing eyes and even a sticker mustache to give the appearance of a friendly face — not exactly what most people associate with a drone.

But drones are taking off beyond the military zone and finding new uses in Canada’s commercial industries and the consumer realm.

Recreational drones — smaller or miniature toy versions of their menacing forebears aimed at hobbyist photographers and children — are already on the shelves at Canadian big-box electronics stores. Read more of this post

Welcome to the varied world of tech start-up fundraisings; Recent eye-catching start-up fundraisings tell only part of story

June 19, 2014 3:17 pm

Welcome to the varied world of tech start-up fundraisings

By Richard WatersAuthor alerts

When it comes to putting money into high-flying tech start-ups, not all investments are created equal.

The bald numbers that have hit the headlines after recent eye-catching fundraisings – such as Uber’s $18.2bn valuation two weeks ago – tell only part of the story. In reality, the varied terms of this and other deals have made direct comparisons misleading.

There is also a risk that, with the valuations of late-stage private tech companies booming once again, the fundraising tactics involved will store up trouble for initial public offerings to come. Read more of this post

Why Did Amazon Make a Phone? A Conversation With Jeff Bezos

Why Did Amazon Make a Phone? A Conversation With Jeff Bezos

By FARHAD MANJOO

JUNE 19, 2014 11:18 AM 13 Comments

Shortly after he introduced the new Fire phone on Wednesday, I spoke with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, about the device and Amazon’s goals in the smartphone business.

Here is an edited transcript of the conversation. Sadly, it does not do justice to Mr. Bezos’s booming laugh, which punctuated many of his sentences.

Why did you make a phone? Read more of this post

KKR Pumps $1.2 Billion Into Struggling Payment Processor First Data; Firm Has Been in the Red Since Its $26 Billion Leveraged Buyout in 2007

KKR Pumps $1.2 Billion Into Struggling Payment Processor First Data

Firm Has Been in the Red Since Its $26 Billion Leveraged Buyout in 2007

MIKE SPECTOR and ROBIN SIDEL

June 19, 2014 12:34 p.m. ET

KKR KKR +0.04% & Co. pumped $1.2 billion into First Data Corp., an unusual move showing that its debt-fueled takeover of the payment processor seven years ago remains a burden for the buyout firm. Read more of this post

For TV Reruns, an Existential Crisis; Lack of Big Hits on Networks Creates a Drought Downstream on Cable Channels

For TV Reruns, an Existential Crisis

Lack of Big Hits on Networks Creates a Drought Downstream on Cable Channels

AMOL SHARMA

June 19, 2014 7:02 p.m. ET

The TBS cable network agreed in 2010 to shell out top dollar for reruns of theCBS CBS -1.40% hit comedy “The Big Bang Theory.” The bet paid huge dividends, as the show made TBS one of the most-watched cable channels.

So in 2012 TBS committed to write an even bigger check for another CBS comedy, “2 Broke Girls,” hoping it would become the next big thing. It didn’t. TBS won’t start airing the reruns until next year but the show’s audience has fallen 20% on the broadcast network since the licensing deal was struck, according to Nielsen, suggesting it won’t be the ratings workhorse TBS expected. Read more of this post

Amazon’s Bezos on How the Fire Phone Is Like Chocolate Ice Cream; Amazon’s Fire Phone Is Too Much, Too Late

Jun 19, 2014

Amazon’s Bezos on How the Fire Phone Is Like Chocolate Ice Cream

GREG BENSINGER

Amazon.com AMZN -2.21% Wednesday introduced the Fire smartphone, a device the company hopes will stand out from a crowded field with face-tracking cameras and gesture-based navigation. It’s a big bet that Amazon can take market share in a cutthroat business dominated today by Apple AAPL -0.35% and Samsung.

The Wall Street Journal sat down with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to talk about how the Fire phone came to be, why it’s an important next step for the company and how it’s like chocolate ice cream. Read more of this post

Regulation Could Weigh on Buoyant Markit

Regulation Could Weigh on Buoyant Markit

PAUL J. DAVIES

June 19, 2014 3:15 p.m. ET

When a group of well-informed insiders decide to sell, it pays to be careful about what is on offer. This is doubly true when those insiders are running the sale process.

So it is with Markit Group, the financial data and services firm whose stock debuted in New York Thursday. Most of the shares sold came from investment banks that not only owned almost half the company, but are among its key customers and suppliers.

Markit was a smart idea in a different time. It was set up to provide much-needed transparency to a world of over-the-counter derivatives and securities trading. Since the financial crisis, though, much of that world is being forced into the light of centralized clearing, trade reporting and even futures exchanges. About 44% of all over-the-counter derivatives, or swaps, were being centrally cleared by the end of 2012, up from just over one-tenth in 2007, according to Aite, an independent group. Read more of this post

Hard Questions Remain on BlackBerry’s Turnaround

Hard Questions Remain on BlackBerry’s Turnaround

DAN GALLAGHER

June 19, 2014 2:54 p.m. ET

BlackBerry BB.T +9.33% may no longer be doomed, but what it will look like in a year remains up in the air.

BlackBerry wants to shed its dependence on selling smartphones in favor of software and services mainly for enterprises to manage their fleets of mobile devices. Thursday’s quarterly results offered several encouraging signs for this effort. Adjusting for one-time items, BlackBerry’s loss of 11 cents a share was less than half what analysts expected. And service revenue came in 9% above Wall Street’s estimates. The stock duly jumped on Thursday. Read more of this post

Taiwan’s Quanta to start mass production of Apple’s smartwatch in July: source

Taiwan’s Quanta to start mass production of Apple’s smartwatch in July: source

7:41pm EDT

By Michael Gold

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan’s Quanta Computer Inc 2382.TW will start mass production of Apple Inc’s AAPL.O first smartwatch in July, a source familiar with the matter said, as the U.S. tech giant tries to prove it can still innovate against rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. Read more of this post

Power of Microsoft’s Bing an open question in search industry

Power of Microsoft’s Bing an open question in search industry

3:50pm EDT

By Bill Rigby

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) new chief executive, Satya Nadella, likes to boast that Bing is growing and powers 30 percent of the Internet search market, making it a worthy competitor to Google Inc (GOOGL.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

But within the advertising and research industries that measure and manage search as a business, Microsoft’s strength is an open question. Read more of this post

Silicon Valley Tries to Remake the Idea Machine

Silicon Valley Tries to Remake the Idea Machine

JUNE 10, 2014

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Like any supersecret lab that’s supposedly trying to invent the future, Google X looks rather nondescript from the street. Besides the occasional hot pink driverless car parked out front, the facility is an archipelago of unmarked, low-slung, redbrick buildings, more Sunset Park than Silicon Valley. Inside, however, whiteboards offer clues about what exactly the future — at least as Google sees it — might look like. And while some diagrams — including one with parts labeled “snooze” and “set time” — suggest more mundane inventions, others, like one outlining a “space elevator,” seem a bit more ambitious. Read more of this post

Does the advertising business that built Google actually work?

Does the advertising business that built Google actually work?

By Tim Fernholz @timfernholz June 13, 2014

What if the advertisers who pay Google most of the money it earns are getting a negative return on their investment, to the tune of -63%?

That’s the question raised by a new paper that uses internal eBay data to assess whether the company’s investment in search-engine marketing is actually paying off. When major brands spend to make sure their results are at the top of a Google search page for certain keywords, they like to think they’re effectively targeting the customers looking for their products. But what if they are paying for something that they could be getting for free?

Read more of this post

In print or on dead trees, there’s money in long-form journalism

In print or on dead trees, there’s money in long-form journalism

BY TED RALL 
ON JUNE 13, 2014

Like others who got into journalism while print media was fading, I have been offering my theories about what has been going wrong. (Hint: newspaper circulation has been declining since the 1960s, so industry executives might want to stop blaming the Internet.) Read more of this post