From The Business Insider, Nov. 23, 2009:

Microsoft (MSFT) wants to pay News Corp (NWS) and other large publishers to de-list their Web sites from Google's (GOOG) search index, the Financial Times reports.

The idea is to force Google (GOOG) to pay for content, thinning its currently fat margins.

Problem is, we can't imagine Google going for it.

For one, the FT reports that Google’s UK director Matt Brittin told a conference last week that Google did not need news content to survive.

“Economically it’s not a big part of how we generate revenue,” he said

For another, we can't imagine links to worthwhile stories originating from News Corp not finding their way onto sites that will happily remain indexed in Google's search engine free of charge.

Still, if News Corp were to "de-list" from Google, we'd expect to see all kinds of ads touting Bing as the only place to find the Wall Street Journal and MySpace pages online. Maybe that'd swing search engine share some, but we doubt it.

More coverage from The Business Insider:

• Droid price drops to $120
• AOL unveils new brand, new logos

Many investors still look to those tech giants for leadership, but Howard Lindzon, CEO of StockTwits.com, says there's a new group of "horsemen" that deserve your attention and (perhaps) your investment dollars:

• Apple
• Amazon.com
• Google
• Priceline.com
• Gold
• Twitter
• Facebook

Lindzon gives the rationale for investing in this pack in the accompanying video, and talks about how his investing style compares with Warren Buffett's. In a nutshell, Lindzon's momentum style is the complete opposite of the value legend's approach. But "it's not the buying [of stocks] that matters, it's the holding and selling that matters," Lindzon says...

Click "more" to view the rest of the post and embed the video.» More

From The Business Insider, Nov. 12, 2009:

It's apparently significantly easier to get admitted to Harvard University than it is to get a job at the Apple Store. At least for Apple's newest store in New York.

At a press event today, Apple said that 10,000 people submitted applications to work at the new store on Manhattan's Upper West Side, according to Gizmodo's Matt Buchanan.

Of those, just over 200 got jobs, for a 2% acceptance rate.

Meanwhile, Harvard's acceptance rate was 7% this past year, according to a March report in the Boston Globe. That's 29,000 applications for about 2,000 admissions.

Obviously, the requirements and admission processes for college and a retail job are much different -- these aren't direct comparisons. But it's amazing how selective Apple can be with its retail employees. And it's amusing that, at least statistically, the odds of getting into Harvard are better than getting a job selling iPods.

This may put new meaning into the term "Genius Bar."

Click here for a few first-look photos of the new store, gathered from Twitter

Microsoft still has dreams to the contrary, but Google has won the search game. With an estimated 70 percent market share worldwide and nearly $25 billion of revenue, the company has left the rest of the industry in the dust.

But what's next? Search growth is slowing, and there's not much more market share to gain. So unless Google wants to have all the sexiness of a utility, it needs to find another growth engine.

There are three possibilities, says Ken Auletta, author of the new book Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It:

• YouTube
• Mobile
• Internet-based applications (like email)

None of these businesses is as profitable as search, and Google has been trying to build all three for years.

But YouTube's new emphasis on professionally produced content has radically improved the unit's financial performance.

And as evidenced by the advertising blitz accompanying Motorola's new "Droid" phones, the mobile business is finally gaining traction.

Again, neither if these businesses currently have economics that look anything like those of the search business. But people didn't think much of search economics in the early days, either.

It's difficult to deny Google's transformative -- and disruptive -- power on many traditional businesses from newspapers to book publishing. Now a decade after its founding by two Stanford University students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the digital media behemoth is experiencing growing pains -- while reaching for even more.

"And they're not always well-equipped for those challenges," says our guest Ken Auletta, author of the new book "Googled: The End of the World as We Know It." Based on more than a dozen visits to the tech campus, Auletta had access to the founders, CEO Eric Schmidt and about 150 present and former employees for the book.

Challenges ahead.

From The Business Insider, Oct. 28, 2009:

Google is about to make life trickier for GPS mapping companies, and could make its Android platform more attractive: It's releasing a new, free turn-by-turn GPS mapping service, which will launch next week on Motorola's Droid phone.

It will follow on more Android 2.0 phones, and could eventually follow on Apple's iPhone. According to Gizmodo, "Google implied they are working closely with Apple now on it."

This is potentially bad news for GPS companies such as TomTom and Navigon and telcos like AT&T, which charge up to around $100 per year for this sort of service.

More coverage from The Business Insider:

• The SAI 50+ The world's most valuable Internet startups
• Silicon Valley abandoned

From The Business Insider, Oct. 23, 2009:

Microsoft delivered a solid third quarter. The stock is up 7% in the pre-market.

EPS of $0.40 fell 17%, but beat Street estimates of $0.32 EPS.

Revenue was $12.92 billion, a 14% drop from a year ago, but it beat estimates of $12.32 billion.

Microsoft's web properties continue to sputter. Online services division revenue is $490 million versus $520 million a year ago. The operating loss on Online services is $480 million versus a $321 million loss a year ago.

The Entertaiment and Devices Division had $1.9 billion in revenue, which is flat year over year. The operating income for the division soared to $312 million from $159 million a year ago.

Here's the numbers

More coverage from The Business Insider:

• Microsoft's new stores look exactly like Apple stores
• MSFT shows off neat Twitter search tool at Web 2.0 summit

From The Business Insider, Oct. 22, 2009:

Amazon just came out with a great Q3, soundly beating expectations. The stock is popping 9% after hours.

EPS was $0.45 versus Street estimates of $0.33. Revenue came in at $5.04 billion vs. estimates of $5.03 billion.

Importantly, Amazon also raised Q4 guidance. Net sales are expected to be between $8.125 billion-$9.125 billion. The Street was expecting $8.11 billion.

In the release, Jeff Bezos says the "Kindle has become the #1 bestselling item by both unit sales and dollars – not just in our electronics store but across all product categories on Amazon.com."

Here's a quick take from JP Morgan's Imran Khan:

• The revenue growth rate accelerates to 28% Y/Y from 14% in 2Q09. We had modeled 17% growth....

  Click "more" to view the full post.

  More coverage from The Business Insider:

  • AMZN cuts the price of the international Kindle 2 to $259
  • Wal-Mart launches price war against Amazon
  » More

The last few years for Microsoft have been tantamount to abject humiliation.

Windows Vista bombed, once-declared-dead Apple roared back to steal computer-and-mind-share, Windows Mobile disappeared, and a decade of futility on the Internet continued.

But now, for a day, Microsoft is king again.

Windows 7, an operating system that even Redmond skeptics describe as "great", launches with enormous fanfare. So eager are customers to get their hands on the thing that it's already the best pre-order selling product on Amazon.

And then there was yesterday's Twitter-Bing integration. Not only was Microsoft the first major search engine to take this obvious and important step, the announcement forced an embarrassingly lame response from search giant Google: A blog post promising that, someday, it would offer Twitter integration, too.

Will Bing's Twitter integration allow Bing to gain real share again Google?

Unlikely.

But this and Windows 7 demonstrate that, at least for a day, Microsoft's competitive mojo is finally back again.

From All Things Digital, Oct. 19, 2009:

Apple’s September quarter saw, among other things, the release of Snow Leopard, the latest upgrade to its OS X operating system andthe first public appearance of CEO Steve Jobs, who’d been on a medical leave of absence for a liver transplant. It was also the first full period since the company launched the iPhone 3GS, in late June.

No wonder it was a blowout quarter.

After market close Monday, Apple reported a fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 a share, on revenue of $9.87 billion. That topped the estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, who’d expected the company to earn $1.42 a share on revenue of $9.2 billion.

The company sold 3.05 million Macs during the quarter, a 17 percent increase over last year. It sold 10.2 million iPods, eight percent decline from a year-ago quarter.

And iPhones? It sold 7.4 million of those — seven percent more than it did during the same period last year. So much for those supply-chain issues that some analysts warned might undermine iPhone sales.

“We are thrilled to have sold more Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve got a very strong lineup for the holiday season and some really great new products in the pipeline for 2010.” [Editor's Note: "...really great new products"--is that a euphemism for tablet?]

Apple shares, which closed at $189.86 today, are spiking as I write this. At $203.90 they’re up more than seven percent in extended trading as I write this...

More coverage from All Things Digital:

• Intel CEO Says Had No Knowledge of Trading Probe
• AT&T: Are They Trying to Lose Wireline Customers?

Click "more" to view the rest of the post.