臉書隨筆：柯文哲的荷蘭病

以下是臉書上想法的轉戴。也是我對高科技業文化的看法。只是遇上了柯文哲的囈語，順便寫下來。

Inheritance of digital assets

I was wondering about this topic for quite some time. I just stumbled upon this article,

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/who-inherits-your-itunes-library-2012-08-23

This question is not just for estate and inheritance. In one or two generations, ebooks disappear with their owners. There is no longer a physical form to keep for archiving.  It is not because of the technology but the fact of non-transferable ownership. Can libraries and museums collect, display, and share digital contents once the writers are no longer alive and the publishers cease to exist? When publishing goes digital, are we handing those issues to commercial companies like Apple and Amazon. If so, these companies are enjoying more dominance and financial success than it is shown on the book.

iPhone nano

This is my wish for this holiday, a product that I would like to see.

Like an iPhone to an iPod Touch, the size of an iPhone nano should be similar to an iPod nano. It is small and its screen is only good for limited yet well defined functions, such as choosing an album, point-and-shoot camera and address book sync. It will not be a good game device nor a good email reader. It sounds like quite the opposite of all the trendy development nowadays: the bigger, the better. The latest phone is so big that you have to attend to your weight training and fitness program diligently in order to keep your arm strength up with the phone.

But an iPhone nano will be very good for one thing: tethering. It should have the same data connection capability as its cousin. It makes such a device a good companion for iPads and laptops. A user with such a device will not need a separate data contract or go through a complicated data sharing arrangement. When the data connection drains battery too fast, it borrows power from the big device it connects to. In my opinion, a cell phone with a near 5-inch screen serves no purpose well. A cell phone should be compact enough to be dropped in virtually any pocket. And the size of an iPad mini is the minimum to be adequate for a tablet. For people that need a cell phone with a long-lasting battery and a good-sized mobile device, this imaginary iPhone nano is probably a good alternative, if not the best.

Why now? The time is ripe to push further for tablets. The need for data connection is more a given than an after-thought. Wireless carriers may frown at the product as a double-edged sword. Can Android community do this? I have not seen a decent small Android phone yet. All those carrier-branded, dumb-down small Android phones look undesirable. Can Nokia do this? Nokia is very good at building solid yet cute phones. But Nokia may no longer have the influence to persuade carriers to promote such a product. Apple needs an inexpensive phone to combat Android in markets where carrier subsidy is not a preferred business practice. An iPhone nano may fill the bill and sells more iPad.

Apple Map

It started with a map application, CEO's apology for the bad user experience, and now the departure of a senior executive.

http://www.apple.com/letter-from-tim-cook-on-maps/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/30/us-apple-changes-idUSBRE89S18H20121030

It is obvious that Apple would want to have a map application of its own. What a smart phone or tablet can provide that a laptop cannot easily match is its mobility and portability. Many applications on iOS give users the ability to make decisions or acquire needed information on the spot in real time. Map data, or say information for location and surroundings, need to be integrated into the platform, iOS, for more interesting applications to happen.

Up to now, Siri cannot have a real conversion with its user. The usage is still limited to question-and-answer in a request-response fashion. When Siri is able to have a conversion, the conversation will have a context. The context may be defined by the state of the conversation on top of other inputs, say, an email, a previous phone call or voice message, or recent locations. Google search and map application may not be able to provide all that Apple needs, not to mention the competition between the two companies. 

Recent news reported Apple's executive, the head of iOS, Scott Forstall was let go for the blame of Apple map. I think office dynamics goes beyond one product flop. Apple has produced 'sub-standard' hardware and software before. It is not the first time and it will not be the last time Apple makes a mistake. Google has been working on map applications for years. Even if there is no bug in Apple's map application, it would not be as feature rich as Google's map in this first release. Judging from Mr. Cook's letter, Apple is working on some advanced applications that require integration beyond today's interface. For an iOS developer like myself, it is good to see someone firmly at the helm of the company. It is even more important to see the company make steady progress and eventually grow beyond its legendary founder. 

Monster Employment Index Europe

I have been following the US Monster Employment Index for a few years now.  I have not paid much attention to the Monster Employment Index Europe.  There was something caught my attention in the latest (January 2012) report.

The summary of the 2012-01 Europe Index reported,

• The Monster Employment Index Europe grows 9% on a year-over-year basis.
• Germany is the only country to demonstrate strong annual growth at 30%.
• The Netherlands, Italy, Belgium and France continue to report negative growth rates.

I use the US Monster Employment Index as a simplistic current-to-leading index for the US economy. I would imagine there are many differences between US and European economies due to the regulations and political reality. The Europe Index reports only on seven countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, and United Kingdom. Though not covering all of the European Union countries, it is interesting enough for me to keep an eye on from time to time. I looked back to last year's numbers, this downward trend has started around August/September time. If the Europe Index bears a similar characteristics to its US counterpart, the western Europe except for Germany is close to another recession.

Some media thought that Germany's export has benefited from a weakened EURO. If not, there would have been fewer people that can afford their new BMW and Mercedes. I don't know whether that is true or not, but I wonder Germany can single-handedly pull the whole EU along with it. It is troublesome enough to worry about the bad sovereign debts. And now the economy of Europe is in a shaky state. Maybe that explains why all my mutual fund holdings that have European exposures are in retreat.

Screen size of a smart phone

The Android phone industry just hands out one oversized Android phone after another.

Let's look at these big phones.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus 4G, 135 x 67.9mm with 1280x800 pixels (aspect ratio 8:5)
Samsung Galaxy SII 125.3 x 66.1mm with 800x480 pixels (aspect ratio 5:3)
HTC EVO 3D 126.1 x 65.4mm with 960x540 pixels (aspect ratio 16:9)
And Samsung Galaxy Note trumps all of them at 146.9 x 9.7 mm with 1280x800 pixels.
(For reference, iPhone 4S 115.2 x 58.6 mm with 960x640 pixels)

I don't understand why all the obsessions with a gigantic screen on a phone.  Without a big hand, one can hardly wrap his/her thumb around to touch the right spot on the screen with one hand.  A purse or bag is required to carried it around.  Putting it in a pocket is possible but it takes away too much precious real estate of a pocket. And a big screen burns battery much too fast.

Another problem is the aspect ratio of the screen.  It already presents a design challenge for me when designing a universal game for both iPhone (3:2) and iPad (4:3).  But I can make an excuse between a phone and a tablet.  Stretching images into a different aspect ratio does not make it picture perfect.  The other choice is to fill un-used space with background color or image. There are many blogs and articles discussing techniques dealing with this issue.  But none has talked about how to test and see the user interface on different screens without buying all of them.

Bigger screens will not make those products more appealing to consumers, when human factors are taken out of product design. I also wonder whether Samsung and HTC care to tend Android application and game developers.  The two leading Android brands behave like pure hardware manufacturers that don't seem to appreciate the importance of consistency to the ecosystem which adds value to Android phones. At the same time, I heard it is the carriers who drive product specifications.  Well, carriers have never had a love for third party developers.

Kindle Fire

Kindle Fire is not the champion for Android tablets, but it is the right product for Amazon.

I watched review and comparison videos on YouTube as I have not bought a Kindle Fire yet.  From those videos I had the impression that Kindle Fire is not as fast as Apple's iPad 2.  The page loading and refresh speed is slower than that on iPad 2. The touch response does not seems to be as smooth.  By most measures for a web browsing device and a game console, I doubt it can compete with iPad 2.  Nevertheless, I still think it is a good and smart product.

I have complained about last generation's Kindle reader earlier this year. This new generation of Kindle answered my complaints. The touch screen takes away the clumsiness for users to interact with contents. Compared with the previous generation, Kindle Fire provides all the needed improvements in terms of color display, faster page flipping and rendering. It also provides a comparable video experience as iPad 2. Given its price, it is an adequate tablet but an outstanding content viewer. It is exactly right up Amazon's alley for all the digital contents it wants to sell.

Kindle Fire is a smart product with a right compromise and feature focus. I may buy one for my daughter to read on. But I am sure she will ask for my iPad when it comes to Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. Young users do not settle for their game experiences.

No more mobile Flash

Adobe gave up on mobile Flash.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/09/us-adobe-apple-idUSTRE7A84NO20111109

Now it is even more obvious that HTML5 is the technology of choice.  HTML5 originated from the grudge of companies that wanted to break free from a dysfunctional consortium, W3C.  It is not every day that an open standard comes out winning.  Nokia/Symbian used to be the major licensee of mobile Flash.  But Symbian is no longer a viable platform. Windows Mobile is going with Silverlight.  Google has been a major champion for HTML5.  It is up to Adobe to work on various hardware compositions with Android licensees.   I don't know whether Adobe had planned for all the factors or whether Adobe has done its best to meet the challenges head on.  The consequence of the announcement is that Adobe has not just given up on mobile Flash, it also sent a disturbing signal to its developer community.

Developers invest in technologies that they can leverage upon.  When Adobe stopped the development of mobile Flash, it means all the technical know-how and the digital assets invested in Flash are not going to be applicable on mobile devices.  Mobile devices are the new frontier.  If developers have no Flash but HTML5 on mobile devices, the future investment of their money, time, and brain power will go to HTML5. The death of mobile Flash is not just the end of Flash on mobile devices.  It will soon drag down the desktop Flash with it.

HP's next tablet is Windows 8

HP's new CEO, Mrs. Whitman, said the next tablet product from HP will use Windows 8.

http://moconews.net/article/419-hps-whitman-were-going-to-make-windows-8-tablets/

Two features caught my attention when I took a look at those Windows 8 introduction videos for the Metro Interface, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihcIlg37QKU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHrcz7zcm_8. One is the touch area outside the visible part of screen and the other is the support of the original windows interface.  A touch area outside the screen requires the same high density touch sensory to be integrated beyond the viewing portion of display. The desktop Windows user interface requires more memory.  Both add to the BOM cost.  

Based on the iPad 2 3G tear down, the BOM cost is around $326.  This number came with the fact of Apple's own A5 processor and the low memory usage enjoyed by iOS.  A WiFi-only iPad 2 would cost even less. Enough hand-held Windows devices had suffered under-provisioned hardware and failed so far.  HP's decision of adapting Windows 8 will put itself between the choice of higher cost per unit or unsatisfactory user experience.  Mrs. Whitman has one shot on this one.  A decision of using Windows 8 may seem to be a no-brainer.  It may turn out to be an ill-thought decision because it seemed to be such a no-brainer.

Will HTC have its own OS

Rumor has it that HTC is contemplating on buying an OS for itself.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/50859.php

"We have given it thought and we have discussed it internally, but we will not do it on impulse." HTC Chairwoman, Cher Wang said in an interview.  She went further on, "Our strength lies in understanding an OS, but it does not mean that we have to produce an OS."

It takes approximately 40 to 50 million dollars annually to maintain a team of 200 for mobile OS R&D.  It is quite affordable to today's HTC.  But what will be the strategic position for this OS? If the new OS is to replace Windows Mobile OS, an annual operating cost of $40 million can justify some $70 to $100 million royalty paid yearly for Windows Mobile licenses.  But Windows Mobile OS is not the one making HTC feel naked.  It is Google's Android, which does not have a royalty based license.

Maybe the whole thing is just some psychological response to Google's buying Motorola Mobile. Or maybe it is because HP's webOS is available at this inopportune time. HTC did not express this idea in such a way as "We'd like to build our own team and our own OS". HTC actually had an small Linux team before. Without a strategy in mind and a concise goal to develop OS in a culture dominated by hardware business, acquisition will not add value. The interesting part is that, though everyone in the mobile industry thinks OS makes a difference, not many companies got it right or even bother to approach it.  If Google is to build its own hardware business, what can HTC do? Without an alternative, what HTC should keep an eye on is companies like ZTE, not Google's Moto.

Steve Jobs resigned

Steve Jobs announced his resignation as CEO of Apple.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Steve-Jobs-Resigns-as-CEO-of-Apple.html
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/08/24Letter-from-Steve-Jobs.html

Jobs turned Apple around from the brink of bankruptcy.  It was no small feast to say the least.  What he and Apple impressed me most was the way Apple jumped in and woke up a very competitive and already booming cell phone industry by introducing iPhone.  In 2007, more than 1.1 billion units of cell phones were shipped, while there were only 271 million units of PC shipped in 2007.  Among those, more than 110 million units were smart phones. The number one cell phone vendor in 2007, Nokia, owned at least 36% of the overall cell phone market and over 50% of the smart phone market.  Nokia had a record revenue in 2007 at €51 billion, which was approximately $80 billion dollars on an average exchange rate of 1 EUR to 1.5 dollar.  While the whole electronic-hardware industry looked at the cell phone industry as the main source of demand, Apple walked in with iPhone and told everyone the king has no clothes on.  Given an average lead time of two years for a brand new cell phone, the iPhone project might have started in early 2005.  In 2005, North America was only a barren field for smart phones.

Apple's stock fell only slightly to $373.72, a drop of $2.46 or 0.65% today.  It seems that the market believes Apple now stands firm on the ground, not on Jobs' shoulder.  No matter it is an impression or a reality, Apple will eventually out-grow Jobs.  Some people in the Valley refer Jobs as "micro-management". That is an expression of their own preferences.  After all, Jobs delivered products, revenue and profit to underscore his leadership style.  Not many CEOs on earth can say the same, no matter what their preference in leadership styles is.

Seoul Sausage Co.

I just heard about this company from a friend who went to the 3rd Annual San Francisco Food Festival.

I was told its sausages were sensational.  What is more amazing is that this company has no store front, not in the on-line or mail order business.  It only does catering and participating in various festivity events. On the web site, the company states,

In less than one year this little dream has turned into the longest lines at street fairs, requests for private orders for wineries/chefs, catered events from movie studios & Fortune 500 companies, and requests to attend various festivals around the country. All currently with no food truck and no retail space, but simply word of mouth...

Of course, there are Facebook, Twitter and Yelp in the mix for such a viral marketing effect. This is a great example of finding a blue ocean in a red sea.  When I searched it online, the first few hits were the company's web site, Yelp review, Twitter link and Facebook page. On Yelp review, it has only Los Angeles, CA as a nominal address, but the area code of the telephone number is somewhere near San Jose, California. The telephone number in the company web page shows another area code from San Francisco. You can imagine how dynamic its operation is and a form of telecommuting the company employs.

This company addresses the real value its customers appreciate and cleverly bypasses the overhead that traditionally burdened this industry. At the same time, it leverages all the free marketing resources made available to it. This is definitely a new type of company that deserves a little more attention.

HP/Palm webOS deserves a true steward

Now HP's executive is saying "We stand by webOS", after offically abandoning it.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-19/hewlett-packard-webos-software-bought-with-palm-not-dead-dewitt-says.html

I received the WebOS developer blog in my email with the title "The next chapter for webOS", signed by Richard Kerris VP webOS Developer Relations.  In it, it claims the development and innovation will continue, although the planned developer events around the world may have changes.  And one of HP's Senior Vice President Stephen DeWitt said in an interview, "The webOS is not dead... We’re going to continue to evolve it, update and support it. We stand by it."  If you look at the price of webOS tablet went down in the past weekend, those words carry neither weight nor meaning.

In my previous blog, I believed HP should go for products, not licensing business.  Even now there will be no webOS based product from HP, licensing it still makes no sense.  The licensing fee will not recoup the R&D cost, as shown by Microsoft Windows Mobile revenue.  A cost center will not result in a vibrant environment for innovation, which will kill webOS sooner than later.

HP should find a suitor for webOS and sell it, like Ebay eventually did for Skype. WebOS is modern and has a lot of value in it. It is not a burning platform like Symbian and Nokia Series-60. Find a worthy home for the team before they jump ship to Apple and Google and leave the webOS an empty shell.  After all, Palm's office is only 5 to 10 minutes drive away from Google and Apple's headquarters.

HP gave up on webOS

HP decided to stop producing tablets and smartphones based on webOS.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/50543.php

It is really a sad yet harsh footnote to the cell phone industry.  I wonder what webOS folks would think if they look at the history of Google purchasing Android, Inc. and the rise of Android phones.  A little more than four years (August 2005 to April 2010) separated the fate of the two companies. Should I say the vision and execution of a company made such differences?  Excellent technologies can go only so far.

Now HP is going back to a Business-to-Business (B2B) company.  Look back not too far into HP's history. Carly Fiorina took HP past the point of no return to a PC OEM company.  The low-margin yet big-volume business impacted the company culture so much that the next CEO wanted a strategy for consumer products.  Or is it the big share of PC revenue demanded a consumer product oriented CEO?  So the next CEO, Mark Hurd, bought Palm and webOS. When Mr. Hurd left HP, the CEO followed, Léo Apotheker, decided otherwise.  People can say anything about his decision on discontinuing webOS.  But no one can say he made a wrong decision in buying Palm/webOS, because it was not his decision.  That fact makes him safe to call the shot in front of the board.

I registered as a webOS developer almost as soon as it is open to the public.  My attention to the platform however diminished as it has never gathered enough momentum.  I hope this blog will not become an obituary for webOS.  But hope against hope, who is to challenge Apple's supremacy of vertical integration?

Google Buys Motorola Mobility for its patent portfolio

Google is going to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/50468.php

The patent war in the cell phone industry has not ended but Motorola Mobility has benefited from it already. Google is an Internet service company, a software company, but not a manufacturer, not an expert in logistics.  This is purely a acquisition for Moto's patent portfolio. I do not see Google running Motorola Mobility and producing Google phones vigorously.

Some analysts thought Microsoft might be a winner in this deal, because of doubts and distrusts towards Google among the Android licensees.
http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?ID=467053
http://allthingsd.com/20110815/u-s-carriers-silent-on-motoroogle-but-france-telecom-gives-it-a-thumbs-up/
It is just a wishful thinking, in my opinion.  Microsoft was in the market licensing its Windows Mobile OS when Nokia had 60% of smartphone market share in 2006-2007.  The fact of dominant Nokia did not help Mircosoft to a strong second place.  Instead, RIM's Blackberry filled the gap and rose to the second place in 2008 and 2009. When Apple introduced iPhone in 2007 and made its stand in 2008, Android was still in its infancy.  Most vendors went to Google and invested their own resources to develop Android phones instead of diving deeper into Windows Mobile.  Why is that?  I have my thoughts on that, though without direct proof.  It suffices to say Windows Mobile is not attractive enough to OEM vendors given all the incentives and the business environment.

Maybe Google will spin off Motorola Mobility and share the patent portfolio with it once the acquisition is done. After all, it is all about patents and it is better for Google and Motorola Mobility to run separately.

Patent suit Nokia vs Apple

Nokia and Apple settled their law suits over patent infringement out of court.
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/49560.php
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/nokia-likely-netted-600-million-plus-in-apple-patent-settlement/50590

It is said the settlement included a one-time payment between $550 million to $600 million. Apple and Nokia agree on some cross-licensing terms, with a patent license fee up to $11.5 per iPhone sold paid to Nokia. It looks like a victory to Nokia from the result. It is also in a way good for Apple to conclude this fight with Nokia. Based on the latest financial reports from both companies, as of Q2, 2011, Apple has $29.2 billion in cash or cash equivalents, while Nokia has about $16.5 billion. The amount of $600 million is approximately 2 percent of what Apple can pull out of its pocket. With the quarterly iPhone shipment reaches 18 million units, the royalty payment to Nokia is close to $210 million. With Q2 2011 EBITDA income at $7.9 billion, this is affordable to Apple. It is though a boost to Nokia's quarterly EBITDA income of $778 million.

At this point, Nokia has lost one quarter of its global cell phone market share (from 36% down to 27%) and over 50% of its smart phone market share (from around 55-60% to between 20-25%). Nokia lost not just market share, revenue, but also the waning cost advantage associated with scale. Did its patent portfolio protect the company and its shareholders from those aggressive competitors? This patent portfolio did not even help Nokia executives to keep their jobs.

There are two other threads of events worth watching for. One is the patent fight between Chines vendors Huawei and ZTE. Will this domestic dispute result in any legal precedent or will it settle out of court? http://www.cellular-news.com/story/49538.php

The other one is the patent auction by Nortel and Google's intention in Nortel's patents.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/technology/05google.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/14/us-nortel-idUSTRE75C5WT20110614

A complacent company sued an innovative company and get paid. Do patent laws really encourage innovations?

HP webOS for OEM to license

HP is entertaining the idea of licensing its webOS to other vendors. Or is this just an indication that HP has not sorted out its strategy for webOS?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/01/hp-ceo-idUSN0116927120110601

It can be a good news for the industry. One more contender means more choices. But this is just on the surface. Windows Mobile has shown that OS licensing is not a lucrative business in the mobile phone industry. If webOS can collect US$10 a piece, a volume at 3.5 million units a quarter, which is roughly Windows Mobile's 2011-Q1 shipment, makes US$140 million a year. It does not seem to be a reasonable payback for the US$1.2 billion paid for acquiring Palm. It may not even be enough for the operation cost for the business unit. Google Android makes money from advertisement revenue, not licensing fees. What is the leverage that HP can get by licensing webOS out? In the meantime, HP has to make it cost-effective for device vendors to invest in webOS. How many vendors have the extra budget and human resource to take on another OS, chipset, and board support package integration? HP did not talk or hint on intellectual property indemnification. With Microsoft onto everyone who is licensing Andorid, that is also an issue HP has to address when going to partners. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/microsofts-next-cash-cow-android/12998

The talk from HP's CEO seems to be a spillover of internal disagreement on future directions. It has been a year since HP acquired Palm. There can be some pressure built up over what webOS can do for HP. But it is clear to me, licensing webOS out will not help HP, only to create distractions.

Value add

Intel is talking about thin and light PCs, again.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-31/intel-seeks-to-challenge-apple-s-ipad-with-new-ultrabook-pcs.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/computex-2011-intel-unveils-ultrabook-talks-medfield-tablets/6004

Since 2007, there were Ultra Mobile PC, netbooks, and OLPC (my blogs on UMPC). It was clearly the writing on the wall for the system vendors that the mass market was ready for easy-to-use computing devices. But to Intel and Microsoft, it was just a series of protection measures to delay and deter. Intel gave up StrongARM and kept its low-end CPUs one or two steps behind what the market needed them. Microsoft tried to put a limit on netbooks to under 9-inches upon its OS licensees. Maybe it was important to protect the margin of company's bread-and-butter products. But to end users, those decisions did not add any value to them. In the end, competitors step in and eat their lunch. Companies tried to protect their profit margins by preventing new product categories from happening ended up losing more.

All those decisions must have gone through a lot of deliberation, market data analysis and signatures from layers of directors and VPs in both companies. In the end, the defense looked like being built more along departmental business lines than to the battle front line. If Intel and Microsoft had worked with the trend and all their partners, the market might have been filled with different kind of interesting products than just overwhelming Apple iPad and upcoming Google Android tablets, neither uses Intel processors nor Microsoft OS.

Speaking of surprised development and different revenue sources. A Citi analyst said Microsoft makes five times more income from Android than from Windows Phones, thanks to patent licensing fees.

http://gizmodo.com/5806227/did-you-know-microsoft-makes-five-times-more-money-from-android-than-from-windows-phone

Of course, this is not a development Microsoft would like to see. After all, no company is operating and competing in a vacuum. Market cannibalization is not a complicated concept, but can be so hard to get it right for a big company.

Google mobile payment and PayPal

Google just announced it is entering the mobile payment market and PayPal responded with a lawsuit alleging Google misappropriated its trade secrets through hiring its former employee.

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/49343.php
http://www.cellular-news.com/story/49351.php

I just blogged my idea that eBay should spend the proceeds from selling Skype's stake on mobile payment solution for its PayPal division. I believe money and brand name are very important for this emerging product. PayPal's suing Google seems to indicate that PayPal thinks the same way. There are a lot of mobile payment start-ups. I just did a quick search, and within 5 minutes, I got company names like Square, Corduro, Boku, Billing Revolution, Mobillcash, and Zong. But PayPal did not go after any one of them. Instead, PayPal cared about what Google is doing so much that it went to court to prove a point.

There is a quote in Bloomberg's report on this lawsuit:
“Silicon Valley was built on the ability of individuals to use their knowledge and expertise to seek better employment opportunities, an idea recognized by both California law and public policy,” Aaron Zamost, a Google spokesman. In a way, the series of events is a norm in the Valley between companies, employers and employees. I hope this lawsuit is a PR stunt by PayPal. Tomorrow, it can be Yahoo, Facebook, or Microsoft buying a mobile payment company to compete with everyone else. PayPal has so far enjoyed a perception of providing credit card/banking services without being regulated as a bank in the US. The benefit to its users, individuals and merchants, is that the money stays in PayPal's domain to lower cost. Otherwise, it is like a money transmitter business which has other costs associated with its products when the money has to go in and out. A segmented market will not provide such cost benefits and PayPal probably understands that.

Monster US Employment Index April 2011

It just occurred to me that it is time to revisit Monster US Employment index to wrap up my experiment since early 2007.

According to US National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the last recession started from December 2007 and ended in June 2009. (http://www.nber.org/cycles.html) The recession lasted for 18 months and is having a slow recovery. The diagram based on Monster US Employment index seems to demonstrate something we all are aware now. But back in 2007 and early 2008, it hinted a recession that NBER did not announce until late 2008. This chart also echos another known fact, a slow recovery with job creation lagging the economy recovery.



I wanted to revisit Monster US Employment Index because of my last blog on LinkedIn. Usually, one single company's revenue is hardly any indication of US economy. However, LinkedIn's revenue source was so tightly related to employment and recruiting activities in US. It would be interesting to compare its revenue trend to US economy, like the way I used Monster's employment index. But no hurry. The indices from the first two years of Monster's publication were not that useful as Monster did not have enough market coverage and history. Give it another year, I'd like to compare LinkedIn's revenue growth alongside with Monster Employment Index. Maybe it will just give me a set of economic indices of my own.