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Businesses Google The Internet Technology Hardware

The New Boom 176

Posted by Zonk from the the-bubble's-back-it's-been-such-a-long-time dept.
DarkClown writes "Wired is running a piece discussing the recovery from the burst Bubble in Silicon Valley. This time, though, it's no Bubble: it's a Boom. They suggest that this latest boom, fueled by Google's ascent, is under steadier footing than last time. Technology and the market seems to be catching up to the hype." From the article: "A boom perhaps, but not (phew!) a bubble. There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions. Bubbles can be good: They spark a huge amount of investment that can make things easier for the next generation, even as they bankrupt the current one. But booms - with their more rational allocation of capital - are better. The problem is that exuberance can make it hard to tell one from the other."
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The New Boom More

The New Boom

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  • Actually, I saw it and I'd say its more like a bulge. The difference being that there is a firm foundation and it ends up with a messy splatter in the end.

  • Oh, no hot air, I see... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dachshund ( 300733 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:22AM (#14578147)
    So when Amazon.com was selling for hundreds of dollars a share, that was ridiculous. But when Google is selling for $434 per share, everything's just fine. Because, um, they sell advertising, or something.

    • Infrastructure not old business model (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Flying pig ( 925874 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:35AM (#14578238)
      Amazon is (just) a department store that runs over the Web. All its tricks are just derivatives of the way that traditional department stores operated - hosting stores within stores, customer accounts, POS advertising. It arose at a time when the infrastructure did not really exist to support it. Google is an enabling technology. It is funded through advertising, but it is something fundamentally new. I'm in the process of completing a personal engineering project. When I look at the stuff I have had to learn and the technology I have had to acquire, it's probable that without Google and the Internet it would have taken several times longer and not worked so well. As for my day job, it would be nearly impossible.

      Google shares are possibly over-hyped, but they reflect a very interesting perception: that the Internet is now good for something, but that we don't know where it is going. We had the mass transit revolution (railways), the personal transit revolution (bicycles, then cars), the communications revolution (telephony.) Now we have the information revolution, and anyone who looks like they are reading meaningful signposts is likely to be highly valued.

      • Google shares are possibly over-hyped, but they reflect a very interesting perception: that the Internet is now good for something, but that we don't know where it is going.

        Ah, well, when you put it that way it's obviously totally different from the bubble.

        KFG
        • Story one:

          Prime Minister: What use is it, Mr. Faraday?
          Faraday: I know not, but I wager one day your government will tax it.

          Story two:

          Prime Minister: Waht use is it, Mr Faraday?
          Faraday: What use is a new born baby?

          Probably both urban legends (BTW I'm a former RI member, I'm allowed to say this) but they make a point.

      • The future is tangiable (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "Google shares are possibly over-hyped,"

        Google shares are very overhyped.

        Google has done nothing that is new. They have nothing backing them. If you liquidated Google you would make back a tiny fraction of their stock worth. It is fucking asinine is what it is.

        When a company that makes the world go round (IBM) stock is not even close to half the worth of a company that has no product, you know the world is fucked up.

        All idols fall, and goggle will fall as well. It is the way of things. Soon another young ma

        • Yep, nobody expected Yahoo could be overthrown. Google's results are pretty heavily tainted these days, just as Yahoo's were/are.

          There's room for somebody to make something better, and overnight, millions of default homepages will change.

          I will say that Google is diversifying into new technologies, so I don't think they'll disappear for a long time, but they may become a has-been... like Yahoo.

          BTW, Wired sucks.

        • Not that I patently disagree with the spirit of your post:

          "The future is in deliverables, not data."

          In some situations data is the deliverable.

          How does the saying go, knowledge is the cheapest thing to acquire and the most expensive thing to buy. Some people/groups/businesses have a better model of how to exploit that fact than others, thus making money.
        • Microsoft never did anything new, either. Look what their stock did.
        • IBM stock is worth about as much as google stock is. It is just that IBM has A LOT more stock out there (1.58B for IBM as opposed to 295M for Google) so each share is worth less.

          Google is overpriced though IMO, their Trailing P/E is rather high (95), but if the Forward P/E (49) is correct it is not TOO terrible.
      • over-hyped

        You mean as opposed to just hyped? I absolutely love this word to bits. It's as if mere hyperbole just isn't enough to describe Google stock and instead we have to hype up the word hype with over-exaggeration in order to capture the ultra-extremity of the situation.
      • Google is an enabling technology. It is funded through advertising, but it is something fundamentally new.


        Google is in the first place a search engine and it became successful because it was the fastest, just like altavista was the fastest before (iirc) etc. They may index their stuff a bit different, they may offer other services but for most people I know they are in the first place a search engine.

    • Actually, Google is starting off profitable and share price means very little. One stock split and your whole argument is right out the window.

      But look at what is different thus far. There isn't a myriad of companies covering every little idea, no matter how ridiculous with a blanket of wires. Instead there is a large amount of idle cash slowly being pushed into companies with existing stability and obvious growth paths.

    • That's probably because unlike Amazon, Google has been profitable. The real issue about the dot com bubble was that people forgot about business fundamentals and got caught up in hype. Netscape never made a profit. Amazon took forever to actually make it to an operational profit. However, Google is currently valued way more than it should be. So thinking this isn't another bubble because there is some profit behind it may not be correct. Google is currently trading at 96.20 P/E, which is insane. It's

      • Re:Oh, no hot air, I see... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Exactly- and also they have few hard assets. The google price, in my opinion, is of people being scared sh*tless of missing the next microsoft.
        The issue with google, to paraphrase Matt Drudge from hi radio show, is that right now some 15 year old kid in Idaho or Ohio or Beiijing or Bangalore (insert any place name) is right now working on something that will blow google out of the water, and take the market by storm.
        PS- has anyone ever clicked on a google ad? I haven't.
        BTW-Did anyone notice that Chipolte

        • Re:Oh, no hot air, I see... (Score:5, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:08AM (#14578515)
          PS- has anyone ever clicked on a google ad? I haven't.

          Oh, even if you don't click on them, they're still worth something to the advertiser.

          For example, if I search for "poop" on google, then perhaps an ad will show up saying "Search for poop on eBay!"

          Even if I don't click on the ad, I may happen to read it. This will improve eBay's brand recognition, since it will cause me to think of eBay whenever I see poop.
        • PS. I have. Depends what I'm searching for, of course, but when I've been searching for guitar stuff or gardening stuff (two recent types of search I've done), then I clicked on every Google ad to get comparative prices.

          Grab.
    • The dollar per share value is meaningless. Most companies do stock splits to keep their stock price roughly between 1-100. Google, being full of mathematicians, refuses to do this, as a number is just a number. The meaningful figure is stock price per share * number of shares.
      • The meaningful figure is stock price per share * number of shares.

        Um, have you looked at that number? It's easily available on any finance site. For example: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog [yahoo.com] Compare it to another major corporation of your choice and tell me Google's not overvalued.

        Google, being full of mathematicians, refuses to do this, as a number is just a number.

        Or, alternatively, Google, being run by forward thinking people, does not want to suffer the negative perceived consequences of initi

  • What if it's a "rush?" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aqua OS X ( 458522 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:23AM (#14578151)
    It might not be a bubble or a boom... it could be a rush. I have noticed a lot of grizzled men wandering around the bay area lately. Sure, they might be homeless people, or box car hobos, but they could very well be old prospectors. An abundance of old prospectors is a sure sign of a pending rush.

  • Well, it IS a bubble. (Score:3, Informative)

    by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:25AM (#14578165)
    Regardless of how much firmer the the base is this time, the earnings and earnings prospects are both so very low compared to stock value. So at some point in future there WILL be a correction.

  • No credibility (Score:3, Interesting)

    by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:26AM (#14578171)
    They suggest that this latest boom, fueled by Google's ascent, is under steadier footing than last time

    Oh man, they're actually stating that this bubble/boom/bulge/b???? is on steadier footing but is being fueled by Googles ascent? My, what short memories we have. If anything, the latest b???? appears to be more of an aftershock, related to it's predecessor, just to a lessor degree, but the same root causes and issues.

    • Re:No credibility (Score:3, Informative)

      by ph1ll ( 587130 )
      they're actually stating that this bubble/boom/bulge/b ... is on steadier footing but is being fueled by Googles ascent? My, what short memories we have ... [it] appears to be more of an aftershock, related to it's predecessor, just to a lessor degree, but the same root causes and issues.

      No, people are not saying there is a tech boom because of Google but because technology and engineers are now becoming important. Note:

      There was NO tech boom in the late nineties and early 2000s

      There was, however, a m


      • there wasn't much that was technically new in the late 90s

        Ironically, you're telling us this via the internet.

        The internet existed in consumer easily-accessable form around 93/94, but the 2nd half of the 90s saw 1.) an explosion of the number of people who had access to it, 2.) an explosion of the amount of content available on the internet, and 3.) a shift away from the idea that the internet was a geek toy and towards acceptance that it was a completely new venue for everyone, including businesses, govern

    • There certainly a lot more skepticism about business plans this time. Google's stock may well be overvalued, but they are making money. What's missing this time is all the startups with pure vapor concepts and the VCs who worry that they will be the ones who "don't get it." This threat of a social stigma representing missed opportunity is the new Killer Rabbit. Maybe people even know that the vast majority of internet startup investments are going to be money thrown down a hole.

    • I can go BOOM on the toilet, and still be under control due to steadier sitting.

      The last bubble was like hyperinflation of an insidious liquid. This time, it's probably going to be insidious wand-waving to "spread the love".... lots of colors and pretty floaty bubbles. Some people I talk to suggest the next boom will have to be based on REVOlutionary developments, not the same old stuff gone into slightly increased consumption.
    • I like your term "aftershock", but you may wish to reconsider it given that we seem to be subjected to "asset bounce" or "investment virulence". The monetized asset gains from the dotcom bubble were poured into real estate, and now it seems that people are cashing our their equally ill-gotten monetary gains and are pouring them back into the stock market.

      Excessive monetization has led to a remarkably widespread lack of fiscal sense, as expressed by pervasive and intense asset speculation. We've allowed
  • If it is all based on google, then its a bubble. Not every start up will succeed like google, or even be purchased by google.

    On the other hand the job market is about to boom, or so it seems. I had a developer freind get laid off (by suprise) the first week of Dec., he found and started a new job before New years eve. That is impresive to me, to get a job over Christmas season.
  • 'There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions.'

    I object your honor!

    Booms destroy the foundation, create massive destruction and leave bits and pieces strewn everywhere, but TINLA.

    The future is in computers and the internet, Booms will follow. Now I am off to find the next ubiquitous product with a cool name.
  • Is is a boom around the Google bubble, or is it a bubble around the Google boom?
  • If it turns out to be worse than the bubble, they could call it the IT boil...

    IT abscess...

  • Some people just don't learn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:31AM (#14578212)
    One thing I learnt from the last bubble (and having read up about other ones in history) people always say "It's different this time..."
     
    • What I learned was:
      -live below your means
      -make money while you can
      -diversify your earning opportunities and skill base with the realization that some of them may disappear
      -network like a madman. Connections are what get you work
    • There was a classic quote back when... (I think it was Blodgett whilst on cable
      pumping away at some issue)

      "Traditional valuation methods no longer apply in the New Economy"

      That wouldn't happen again right? We exhausted the supply of greater
      fools didn't we? :)

      Hedley

    • One thing I learnt from the last bubble (and having read up about other ones in history) people always say "It's different this time..."

      Last time we were suffering a credit induced bubble. With the dot.com boom, the fed saw an opportunity to loan out tones of money and get away with it without causing hyperinflation or default because of increased productivity and technology infrastructure. When they turned off the loan faucet, it caused an credit collapse within months and brought down the entire dot

  • In any case.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Knights who say 'INT ( 708612 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:33AM (#14578223) Journal
    .. you have to admit that Adsense is a firmer business model than Pets.com -- or heck, graphical nonrelated banner ads -- and RSS, open web services APIs and stuff like del.icio.us or Flickr are more valuable content than the websites of 1997.

    Maybe some lessons _have_ been learned. That doesn't mean necessarily that current pricing isn't off, or that the dynamics of self-fulfilled prophecies have changed, but there's definitely more value on the internet now than around 1997-1999, with less flowers.com fluff.

    Maybe a part of the 1990s tech bubble wasn't unwarranted overvaluation, and that adds to the hypothesis of a firmer expansion now.

    It's naïve to just go "ah, history repeating itself". History never repeats itself, except as a farce.
  • Atleast with hardware, you have to build something tangible, like a production line, and actually have a product to offer. This is already a fundamental difference to the dotcoms.

    But seriously, take a look at the way the stockmarket works. How does it differ from a classic Ponzi scheme [wikipedia.org]?

    Perhaps there MAY be better returns and stocks do have more legitimacy, but that's about it.
    • Let's see, for starters, the stock market allows common people to own a piece of the capital stock of our nation's economy. You don't have to own an entire business to own a piece of one - this let's anybody with any assets whatsoever participate in our country's economic growth and grow and preserve wealth.

      Your share of a company represents a claim on the residual income stream of a business after service of debt, capital expenditures and operating costs. There are plenty of cheap companies out there, fr
  • What they say: "A boom perhaps, but not (phew!) a bubble. There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions. Bubbles can be good: They spark a huge amount of investment that can make things easier for the next generation, even as they bankrupt the current one. But booms - with their more rational allocation of capital - are better. The problem is th

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:37AM (#14578251)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It would be the truth to realize that the people who have no clue that are using the stock market today would not be there if we still had a functional pension system, and if people could remember how to save their money.

    • Re:Why economic equality is sometimes bad (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      For better or for worse, the stock market used to be something that only those that knew how to invest really did anything with.

      1929 - Anecdotes of shoe shine boys offering stock tips. So what's your definition of "used to be", because it better not be since then?

      Those with no clue on how to invest usually just avoided it, or invested in safe mutual funds or big companies like GE or IBM.

      1987 - Program trading gets partial blame for the unchecked selloff. Such trading was typically used by mutual funds and
    • Now if you just looked at the revenue and profit numbers in a vacuum I might agree with you. What people are really paying for is their growth. Growth which is still accelerating, so if last year they grew at 60%, this year its 65% (these are fake numbers, just trying to get the point across.) Do I think Google with a market cap over $125 billion is overvalued, perhaps. But if it is, its not like the .com era over valuation when some companies were worth a tenth or less of their market cap. With Google

  • "Boom vs. Bust" is not that complicated (Score:3, Interesting)

    by guitaristx ( 791223 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:37AM (#14578255) Journal
    It seems that the difference that TFA sees betweeen "Boom" and "Bubble" is that the latter is marked with unwise spending, from the VCs to the board room. TFA could be simply put in a readers' digest form as:

    There is economic growth in Silicon Valley that we predict will be more stable and longer-lasting than the "Dot Com Bubble" era, because VCs aren't handing out money as freely, and companies aren't being [as] stupid with their money as they used to be. *GASP!* Real, honest, tried-and-true business practices apply to the internet as well!

    Call it a "boom" if you want. It's a new, lucrative market that's gaining financial stability because there are plenty of examples from the "bubble" of what not to do.
  • ...until they burst. Look at almost all of the press before Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" claim - it was all boom, no bubble, "new economic paradigm" talk. Hindsight is 20/20, if people had largely identified the bubbles we've had a significant time BEFORE they burst - they probably would have not been bubbles.

    e.g:
    Stan: "Hey, Bob wanna through your nest-egg in to the stock market? I heard it's a big bubble just waitng to burst!"

    Bob:Um...no.
    • Well, I dunno about you, but I never though the 90's bubble was anything but at bubble. No real business plans, entire companies whose strategy was to give their service away for free and therefore dominate an entire market where they'd be losing money on everything they did.
      • That's what most people in the industry thought at the time. Investors and venture capitalists and self proclaimed entrepreneurs who whad just bought their first PC were the only ones who thought differently. That was largely enough to fuel the whole thing though.

        OTOH, the thing to remember with any boom/bubble/bang/rush/whatever is that the real prospects lie in selling spades, not in digging. So for IT people and for those who actually provide worthwile services (data centres for examples), the future mig
    • Notice the article talks about "exuberance" not "irrational exuberance".

      So there's the key distinction:

      If the exuberance is irrational its a bubble.

      If the exuberance is not irrational (NB: double negative intended since presumably "not irrational" is less strong rational) then its a boom.

      What are the observables? If you see people drinking champagne or buying new BMWs its still a boom. When you see them drinking champagne in their BMWs its a bubble.

  • Definition of a Bubble (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LukePieStalker ( 746993 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:43AM (#14578300)
    You know it's a bubble when people are calling it a "boom".
  • The NY area is pretty dead for tech. Sure, you get paid more for the finance gigs, but the area's cost of living is ridiculous. I know guys who commute in from the Philadelphia burbs.

    Grumble.
  • Cool--maybe the angry unemployed IT workers will get their jobs back! I guess this will reduce the amount of comments around here... Drew
  • I hadn't read Wired for years, and then got a free subscription for something or other. I find the articles almost completely useless and written with such an extreme San Francisco liberal slant that even a commie pinko hippie like me objects. Now THAT takes some doing.

  • All of the points made in the article describe healthy growth, but a bubble looks a whole lot like healthy growth until it gets stretched out really thin. The wired article even points out:

    Six years ago, people were likewise making the case that the dotcom frenzy was more boom than bubble, built as it was on the legitimate ground of the Internet revolution. And until late 1999 or so, maybe that was true.

    What makes this a bubble, just like the last one was is more the outlook. When people are starting compan

  • Almost, if you just consider the alliteration.

    Google's stock price is astronomical and will come to earth when the speculation is over. Even other dot.coms will real revenue like Amazon came back to reality.

    In the meantime enjoy the party. Google's making money, its inventing new technology, and its employees and customers are having fun doing so.

  • Hosing Bubble connections (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xenophrak ( 457095 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:18AM (#14578613)
    One of the things that you need to be very afraid of, is when someone is claiming that there is not a bubble, when there is overvalued speculation and rampant turnover. Case in point is the current housing bubble, which I do believe is a bubble.

    One thing that you'll get an idea of after a while, is that (especially now), investors are trying to keep the economy afloat by generating another bubble to replace the currently failing one (thank you Greenspan). It's really just musical chairs, and I would seriously look at someone who is saying it's different this time as someone who wants to take my money from me.

    Don't be fooled, Wired is part of the media and will further its own agenda and those of its Editors and Shareholders before your interests.
    • It could just be a coalescing, muliti-colored, creeping, effervescent OOZE..

      (image word: incense...)
    • Hopnestly, I kinda figured that when the housing bubble butst, like it's starting to do now in places like Boston and San Fransisco, it'd take a lot of the economy with it. That, and rising energy prices mean that there'll be a lot less money floating around in the system for future tech investment. It really seems to me like we're in for a rough few years.

      P.S.: I googled briefly for links between real estate and the economy in general, but couldn't find anything useful.

  • Bubble, not boom (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dram ( 149119 ) <grant@henninger.name> on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:24AM (#14578669) Homepage
    I think this is clearly another bubble. The difference is that VCs are more cautious, it's Google and Yahoo! that are fueling this boom. Look at the ridiculous sums of money that have been paid for Flickr, del.icio.us and other "Web 2.0" sites. These sites don't have the revenue potential to be worth millions of dollars.
    • I disagree for a couple reasons. First, during the last boom all we heard about was funding, burn rate, anticipated profitability date, etc... Right now all I'm hearing about is actual revenue and actual profits. Google and Yahoo are making money selling ads and advertisers are making sales from the ads. This may change. I'm sure there will be many people/companies out there that have a poor product, poor website or poor marketing overall that will complain about click fraud and sue Google. I'm also s
      • I don't agree with you, clearly Yahoo! and Google are profitable companies. I think they have too much money for their own good. They are spending more money on things than they are worth, inflating the market. I think the cheap hardware and bandwidth and the fast development make the need for money less important that it was ten years ago. That means that VC isn't nearly as important as it was. While ad revenue is nice not all of these sites can be supported by it. Yes, Google has done a great job mo
        • Obviously, Yahoo, Google, eBay, Microsoft and a few others have more money than they know what to do with. I also agree that not all of their acquisitions will be profitably, but that's just business. No company that makes that kind of purchase expects every investment they make to be a good one. OTOH, they are purchasing these companies with money they actually have. We are not looking at VCs or IPOs to fund these purchases and that's a huge differnce between now and the last bubble.

          I also diagree

  • No. The next boom will be automation. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:24AM (#14578679)
    Hear me out on this. The new boom will be automation.

    Cars that drive themselves [autoexpress.co.uk], house hold robots [chosun.com], robotic lawnmowers [friendlyrobotics.com], expert systems, and better search engines etc etc.

    Put your stocks into these areas... Its the next big hype because VCs will see these things and be mystified and start hurling wads of cash at the next roomba.
    • Hear me out on this. The new boom will be automation.

      Not if energy and oil trends continue. I am not banking on anything depending on growing industry until those change. And really, those landfills full of disposable plastic machines look ridiculous already.
      • Not if energy and oil trends continue.

        The energy market will take care of itself and find alternatives no matter what because you can make a profit out of it.

        Otherwise I'd change my stance and suggest everyone invest in canned food and shotguns.

  • There's More . . . (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Dausha ( 546002 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:41AM (#14578849) Homepage
    "There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation."

    Bubbles are also inflated by insiders who exploit the speculation to fleece speculators. In order for this to work really well, however, you need oversight with its hands (intentionally or not) off the tiller. That's what we had in the Dotcom Bubble, methinks. It looked to be good for the economy, so the hand was off the tiller.

  • Google P/E (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:51AM (#14578962)
    As reported by Nasdaq, Google's current P/E is 95, predicted for next year is 36. That means you get 1% return this year. You are predicted to get 3% next year. ING pays 3.80% on a simple savings account today.

    Solid foundation. Right.

  • Hindsight 10/10. I cannot recall hearing a lot of people saying the previous time 'look, a bubble is coming, let's invest and lose'. I don't want to be negative but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In 10 years we'll separate the booms from the bubbles.

  • historical blindness (Score:5, Insightful)

    by elmegil ( 12001 ) * on Friday January 27, 2006 @12:18PM (#14579256) Homepage Journal
    This time, though, it's no Bubble: it's a Boom.

    Riiiight. Anyone remember the Wired with the smiley face, subtitled "The Long Boom" claiming that this time it wasn't a bubble?

  • Technology has finally caught up to what the Internet promised.

    This is especially true for broadband access. With prices of ADSL dropping, cable modem access getting faster and faster, more and more people getting access to land line-based broadband, and soon the USA getting wireless broadband technologies of various types, the promise of the Internet is finally being fulfilled. Indeed, Apple's iTunes Music Store would not have been possible without widespread broadband availability.
  • One cool phenom of this boom-bubble is the number of parasite companies spawned by Google API's, especially Google Map integration. Just google (heh) for 'venture capital google maps' and you get a ton of hits. Here's one [kedrosky.com] thats even self-referential.
  • The current hardware boom is easily explained.
          Historically (prior to 2000) businesses all typically operated on a 4-5 year technology life-cycle. The only thing that's changed is that the Y2K projects of the late 90's brought all those cycles into sync.
          This will be the only "real" hardware boom as differing approaches to hardware replacement are already bringing them back out of sync.
          Nothing to see here, move along...
  • If there's one thing many economists are starting to understand, it's that the rampant abuse of credit in America and the trade deficit are preparing us for a hard landing in the next year or two. The biggest debate is what kind of hard landing... [thomaspalley.com] Bond holders believe banks and consumers will hit a credit limit first at which they finally start conserving and some people think foreign investors will decide they're saturated with American credit and stop buying it. I agree with the bond holders, China wi
  • until it pops.
  • "Orcs got bass, but we got BOOM!" [lordsoftherhymes.com]

  • Noone seems to have mentioned (Score:3)

    by hurfy ( 735314 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @02:31PM (#14580975)
    how they used Skype as an example. I dont get how a company that practically gives away phone calls is worth billions. They make it sound like paying billions for it is a good sign.

    Anyone explain this?
  • So when can I drop out of college to be hired by a new start-up for $60K/year?

    Cause getting paid instead of paying for college sounds great.

    (Before I get berated for trying to skip out, don't worry, I plan to finish college.

    And then make more than $60K/year.)
  • "The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."
  • What did i miss in article?
  • I hate to be so negative, but a lot of people are going to lose their ass on Google stock. There is no way that stock price is rational in any sense. If I owned any shares I'd be unloading, just like their execs are doing.

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