Adam Whippy» Detroit Auto Show 2008 – Diverse Thoughts { Adam Whippy }

Detroit Auto Show 2008

Adam Whippy — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:09:47 +0000

We are all treated this month to the Detroit Auto Show in Michigan, USA. All the heavy weights are present at arguably the largest auto show of its kind in the world. This year has seen a real onus on environmental concerns as Americans in general are starting to move away from SUVs and “trucks” (pick up trucks to you and me) towards smaller more fuel efficient and compact cars. Nevertheless, Ford’s new F-150 truck is a beauty and if you are going to be a true freedom frie, its a must! Other announcements include the awesome Mazda RX-8, the Audi TTS and the pimped out Ford Verve concept car which contrasts with the other concept car Ford has to offer, the Ford Explorer America SUV.

On the environmental front Ford (once again!) has announced its EcoBoost green technology, claiming increase fuel economy and set to be introduced in the Lincoln MKS followed by the Ford Flex. Whilst the world is facing up to environmental concerns, India’s Tata Motors threats to undo all good initiatives with the introduction of the Tata Nano, the most inexpensive car in the world at $2,500. Within an already gargantuan population base with serious congestion and pollution control problems, the introduction of such an affordable and fuel inefficient vehicle is sure to create mass chaos and noxious fumes. I’m extremely disappointed that once again in the sake of value and business concerns, industry leaders are putting our entire ecosystem at risk.

Ownership of the Search Landscape

Adam Whippy — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:30:53 +0000

Over a decade of dot com M&A from the big guns of search have produced some insightful collections of web properties. Google’s latest 10-K filings is a good time to do a quick summary of who owns what in the world of search.

Google – See Google’s full portfolio of subsidiaries
GGLs list of acquisitions exhibit an impressive grass roots approach, their buy-outs have often contributed to eventual product releases in one form or another.

JotSpot and Writely have contributed to the launch of Google Apps for Domains and the Google Docs and Spreadsheets products.
SketchUp, now re-branded as Google SketchUp – a 3D authoring environment.
ZipDash – provides traffic maps, recently incorporated into Google Maps.
Urchin which is now Google Analytics.
Keyhole Corp – now Google Earth.
Applied Semantics which no doubt contributed to the Adwords/Adsense platforms.
The list continues with heavy weights like YouTube, Orkut, and host of Payment transaction holdings to support Google Checkout.

Clearly Google are masters in acquiring enlightened technology companies at their early stages, fostering them and later bringing them to market as rich, comprehensive products.
Yahoo – See Yahoo’s full portfolio of subsidiaries.

Yahoo’s story is quite different, their holdings feature a great deal of search engines which Y! had to acquire to build up the search engine technology intellect base to compete with Google and move away from their original strong editorial model. More recent acquisitions are highly successful and promising enterprises such as Hotjobs, Kelkoo and Delicious.
You might remember Compuserve, once the only ISP available in Belgium which soon became a bottom-less pit for my pocket-money!

Microsoft – See Microsoft’s full portfolio of subsidiaries.

The folks at Redmond have apparently favored an in-house approach with few M&A deals in the search sector.

Ask (IAC) – See IAC’s full portfolio of subsidiaries.

IAC holds a truly diversified and exciting set of subsidiaries:

TicketMaster
A multitude of online dating sites like Match.com
Parts of Excite
CollegeHumor.com
and countless more…

In summary, the strategies at play here are very different. IAC is excelling at diversifying into disparate fields, Google is holding and capitalising on smart investment moves, Yahoo is striving to get back into the game and, alas Microsoft is caught sleeping as usual!

Charly – the parquet figure skating extraordinaire!

Adam Whippy — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 06:58:01 +0000

I couldn’t resist sharing this video with you of my little puppy despite his advancing age exhibiting the same vigor and enthusiasm as when we first adopted him. Miss you loads Basenji!!!

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