No Name or Number

The Greatest Depression Is Coming

It's too bad that Seeking Alpha allows wingnuts like this to write articles for them. It's because of the low grade of articles that I don't read Seeking Alpha very much any more. This is not just another opinion, this is someone with a political agenda who no doubt is rooting for a depression so they can blame Obama. When the economy improves, we can expect him to adopt a new pseudonym with more gloom and doom articles. Hey, did you hear the one about the latest Kenyan birth certificate?

The Great Bing Scam

Alex - You need to separate out your stock & investment column from your tirade/entertainment column. If you want to say why you think Bing will be unsuccessful, that fits in here. If you want to say things like their business plan is "trying to stick it to Google" that's just a tirade and not an analysis. It belongs in a different type of column. How do you decide when a company is following a valid business plan (flawed or not) and when they are merely trying to stick it to google? Your tirade shows that your ability to give a good analysis is too weak to be worth reading. Your column sounds more like your intent is to stick it to MS than to give useful info or analysis.

The Great Bing Scam

Let's look at this MS conspiracy theory. According to Filonov, back in 2001, MS released IE 6 with a bug that would hide until the day when Bing was released in 2009. When MS released IE 7, the bug wasn't there, but they did this on purpose ... (why did they fix it, Alex?) Now, though Filonov has no real numbers, according to the conspiracy theory, the traffic numbers can be obscured by the old IE 6 bug.
This is why MS haters have to be taken with a grain of salt. They fit every fact, or even misstated facts, into their conspiracy. Hey, wasn't that Steve Ballmer on the grassy knoll in Dallas?

Palin's Email: Publicity Yahoo Doesn't Need

Two questions:
1. Have the investigators into Palin's dealings subpoena'd Yahoo for her emails?
2. Would Yahoo be able to recover them, even if she deleted them?

Schultz's Move to Cut Organic Milk Drinks Seems Misguided

I buy a drink at Starbucks 4-5 times a week, for years. I didn't even know that organic milk was an option. I would order it every time if I knew that. No wonder no one orders it. Do they tell people it is an option, or is it buried deep in their massive menu of items, which I never look at since I know what I want? Contrast that with items they want to sell, with posters and advertising all over the place.

Surprising Google Trends on Yesterday's Fed Rate Cut

I'm always amused when someone picks a couple of statistics out of a hat, shows some correlation (or lack of), and makes an off-the-cuff conclusion. Politicians do this all the time, and it's laughable. I generally expect an analyst to be a bit more thoughtful. Maybe searches for news items just follow the number of published articles on the articles, and are not a reflection of the public's conclusion. There are many possible explanations for search statistics, and a thorough analysis might be interesting, but this is more like "I have a few minutes to write a blog entry, so I'll just draw this quick conclusion."

As for numbers from India, how does this compare with searches from India on other phrases? Maybe they're always higher, because India has a billion people. Maybe they're higher on US news items because India is not blasted with US news from every angle. Who knows? Certainly Kedrosky doesn't, because he didn't take the time to look into this to any depth.

The Lawsuit That Could Cripple Google: Will American Airlines Ruin Everything?

"upwards of 90% -- come from marketers competing on keywords that consumers associate with their competitors."

Do a few minute of homework before you make statements like this. Look at the lists of most popular searches. Most of them are not trademarked, yet have many sponsored searches. The ones that are trademarked have many legitimate sponsors. I bet the real number is closer to 10% than 90%.

United Online's Classmates.com To Go Public, Then Implode

Completely agree. I go to classmates a couple of times a year, and there's never anything that would make me want to go back more often. I hoped there would be more, but there wasn't. Maybe if they had made it completely free to allow more participation, and provided more features, it might have been successful (based on ads), but now other sites are better. I've got to wonder if they ever did any research to find out what would make users visit regularly.

Greenspan: 2007 Mirrors Worst Recessions

Shame on you for using misleading and alarmist headlines. The quote merely states that the behavior of investors mirrors recessions, not that market conditions, the economics, or anything else does. He is merely saying that when stocks go down, people get worried, and stocks go down further. Duh. By using an alarmist headline, you suggest that this is much worse than it really is. Why do reporters have to sensationalize the news?