Archive for March 2007

Information Superhighway ranking?

Tuesday, 6 March 2007 Web No comments

This might sound a little vain, but a collegue of mine said to me, “you should always Google yourself David.” I thought I’d go one step better and try out some other?search engines and see what response I get. My blog has been pretty active over the past few months and I’ve had some great emails sent to me thanking me for the information on the Blackberry, TomTom, general gadgets and Vista issues. I’m hoping this might have ‘upped’ my rating. Here goes, I’m just using the text david burden with no speech marks. I’ll try this exercise again in 12 months time:

Google.com

5th and 6th place. Not bad. The fifth position actually points to my wedding website from September 2001. The sixth position is a link to my blog regarding customer service from Apple. My ranking comes below a page for davidburden.net (who is this?), information on imdb.com about David Burden (member of an LA rock band) and the Royal Mail CIO, David Burden.

Ask.com

Number 1 with a link to davidburden.com! Also, third and forth. In your face davidburden.net in 6th place! The CIO for the Royal Mail pops-up in-between again and seems to have something going on on the side from running the nations postal service IT department.

MSN.com

Third, after a mad pharmacist in a mask.

Yahoo.com

I come third with a link through to my LinkedIn.com profile, and fifth and sixth linking to my blog.

a9.com (Amazon)

Third, with a link to my blog about Vegas.

The conclusion I reach about this exercise? None.

Google’s 10-K

Tuesday, 6 March 2007 Business, Web No comments

The US annual business report filings (10-Ks) that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission are usually a bit dull, but not Google’s! There are some gems in there:

  • Average age of the Executive Officers, 43
  • They feel they face significant risk and competition from Microsoft and Yahoo, companies that bundle their services with internet access, traditional media companies, large advertisers who do not spend their budgets with Google
  • That 7% of its revenues came from AOL last year, and that a year ago it valued AOL at $20 billion when it bought 5%
  • The company’s headcount has doubled in the last 12 months to 10,600 employees
  • Google has taken $150 million in stock out of that price and put it in escrow to cover copyright lawsuits
  • They feel their revenue will slow and there will be pressure on their operating margin in the future
  • Innovation is key, if they fail to maintain their innovative nature, it will create pressure on operating results
  • 99% of their revenue was from advertising alone, if advertisers fail to spend on Google, it directly hits their bottom line – also, new technology may block their ads
  • It has $11 billion of cash in the bank and made $461m in interest