News and Opinion in Black and White

Gordon Brown’s government are really up against it at the moment. The latest 48 hour stirke buy the lowest paid public sector workers is completely correct though. These people are the hardest hit by current inflation. The price of wide screen tvs maybe coming down but the price of essentials are sky rocketing. Given that lower paid workers spend a larger portion of their income on essentails they get hit the hardest which is why they should not be effected by the current “tough attitiude” against inflation. There is no reson why the least well off should pay the biggest price, given the minor effect they have on the economy as a whole. Gordon Brown’s government should should some moral principle. Time after time they are making stupid decsions which punish the least well off. Whether they do it soley to raise money or if it’s simply a matter of not realising the actual effects of their policies, either way it’s imcompetence.

This one has got me completely stumped. I honestly don’t see the problem. It’s as simple as this, Google Adwords is by far the best advertising programme out there and it has a monopoly not because the company is so big but because the programme is the best and is run with solid fundamentals that encourage the development of the internet.

Lets take a look at Amazon’s affiliate programme for example. Affiliates only get paid when people buy things from Amazon not when affiliates refer people to Amazon’s website. This is fundamentally wrong. It is saying to affiliates that you have to bring people to our site and also get them to buy something. In other words it is giving the affiliates responsibilty of converting the visitors into buyers on a website they have no control over. It is not up to the affiliate to convert visitors into buyers, that is 100% the job off the shop owner, in this case Amazon.

Google know this which is why websites get paid for creating traffic for other sites and not for converting visitors into sales. If websites converted enough visitors into buyers then they would start their own online shop and not advertise other companies online shops.

Until a company comes up with an advertising system that uses the same honest and fair fundamentals as Google Adwords then Google Adwords will continue to be the Number 1. Not because Google is the biggest but because Google is the best.

Ill be honest, I dont really understand the renewed interest, unless there is a chance the board will be replaced as Carl Icahn wants. Its on the table that it’s possible that Microsoft will buy only the search part of the Yahoo! business. This suprises me. As I’ve said before, if Microsoft can get their act together with their own search techonology they they wont need to buy Yahoo! search. At a price of 1 billion dollars for Yahoo! search it must be a better use of funds to keep that money and spend it on research instead.

From Yahoo!’s point of view they should really be saying where they are going to take the business in the future, this is the only way that they can reasonably say that Mircosoft’s offer is too low. Too low, why? what are you going to do in the next 5 years to increase the share value above Microsofts current bid. I haven’t heard anything, Yahoo! are not doing themselves any favours keeping quiet about future plans. It could be that the press is biased to the Icahn and Microsoft side of the story? Maybe Yahoo! have got plans but they are not sharing it?

If Im honest I believe Microsoft must want to buy the whole of the Yahoo! business. To me anyway, it just doesnt make sense that Microsoft would buy the Yahoo! search for a billion dollars, it just doesnt look like good value. Much better for Microsoft to buy the whole of the Yahoo! business and take over the millions of Email accounts that Yahoo! has and all the content that Yahoo! has and all those millions of viewing hours that the Yahoo! content has. Its content has many times more viewing hours than their search results. Just ask Google, they get what? 10 times as many searches as Yahoo! yet in total, people spend more hours looking at Yahoo! content than Google. Content is where the money and influence is and at the end of the day, that is what all companies want.

As for Microsoft saying to the BBC that they are no longer interested in Yahoo! because they are losing key staff. This is a blatant attempt by Microsoft to weaken Yahoo!’s position by syaing the company really isnt worth that much. In fact ill go one stage further about Mircosoft’s plans, they only thing they are interested in, is the information and the email accounts of Yahoo! users and the fringe benefits that go with Yahoo! are a bonus.