Was Microsoft Snookered?

The premise of this article is that Microsoft needed a social network in the worst way…and Facebook fit the bill.  But since then, Google has come out with (I guess you could call them) plans to use their Gmail contacts data to re-target ads.  Yahoo as well.  Social ads are certainly not a dead concept.  And Microsoft only took a bite out of Facebook: it didn’t swallow hook, line and sinker.

Facebook: Who Else Wants to Invest at $15B? No One? – Silicon Alley Insider

the company has apparently still been unable to close a single additional dollar at that desperate-Microsoft $15 billion valuation. This suggests a few things:

• The joke was indeed on Microsoft.
• The “Social Ads” announcement that Microsoft was obviously privvy to failed to spark the expected interest in anyone else.
• Facebook’s war chest is going to be smaller than most people anticipated

IBM to offer cloud computing

Are local server farms in the Enterprise going the way of the local helpdesk?

IBM’s Blue Cloud is Web Computing By Another Name

Blue Cloud is being billed as more of a distributed computing architecture than what you find in most corporate data centers. It is based on an open-source project called Hadoop that manages computing resources across large clusters of computers. Hadoop includes an open-source version of MapReduce, the same software Google uses to efficiently distribute its computing chores across its servers around the world.

So IBM is basically bringing this massive-scale computing architecture to its corporate customers. That will be good for corporate applications because this sort of distributed architecture lends itself to Web 2.0 apps, which are already invading the enterprise.

WSJ Reports Google Will Bid

This is a very well reasoned article.  It covers everything from Google’s investment in Ubiquisys, to its talks with Clearwire, to its development of Android.

I’ve pulled out some interesting chunks, but the whole article is a must read.

Google Has Even Bigger Plans for Mobile Phones – WSJ.com

The company is gearing up to make a serious run at buying wireless spectrum, a chunk of the airwaves that can be used to provide mobile phone and Internet services, in a Federal Communications Commission auction in January. Google is prepared to bid on its own without any partners, say people familiar with the matter. It is working out a plan to finance its bid, which could run $4.6 billion or higher, that would rely on its own cash and possibly some borrowed money.

Google has hired game-theory specialists to help plot its auction strategy, say people familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, back at its headquarters, Google is already operating an advanced high-speed wireless network under a test license from the FCC, according to people familiar with the matter. The company has erected transmission towers on its campus for the network. Prototype mobile handsets powered by the Android software are currently running on it.