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

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

From The Business Insider, Nov. 12, 2009:

In the end, bubbles are bubbles no matter where they're blown.

China Daily: Thirty-year-old Luo Yan and her husband raced to complete the purchase of a three-bedroom apartment in Shanghai with the help of an 800,000 yuan ($117,000) mortgage. The amount they borrowed was the maximum they qualified for.

"I am afraid that if we don't do something now, we will certainly miss the boat," Luo said.

More coverage from The Business Insider:

• China Pushes Massive $12 Billion Bond Issue to Cool Asset Bubbles
• China Will Do What Western Do-Gooders Failed to Do: Save Africa

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.

Many media-industry pundits have dismissed Comcast's play for NBC as the latest foray of a deranged distribution guy (Comcast CEO Brian Roberts) obsessed with getting into the content business.

The evidence?  Roberts tried desperately to buy Disney a few years ago--over his shareholders' screams--and now he's furiously negotiating for a hobbled NBC.  All this while fellow cable-content mogul Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner is bemoaning the hard lessons his company learned when it tried to combine content and distribution into the Holy Grail of "synergy."

But Roberts isn't a madman, says Leo Hindery, managing director of private-equity firm InterMedia Partners.

Comcast's goal here...

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From All Things Digital, Oct, 26, 2009:

Verizon posted a decent third quarter this morning, besting consensus estimates. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had been expecting earnings of 59 cents on revenue of $27.17 billion. Excluding one-time costs, Verizon reported profits of 60 cents a share on revenue of $27.3 billion. That’s a 10 percent decline year-over-year, but still better than expected.

Wireless-subscribership gains, though they trailed AT&T’s iPhone-bolstered numbers, were impressive nonetheless. Verizon added 1.2 million wireless customers during the quarter raising its total count to 89 million. That’s not the 2 million AT&T added, but it certainly demonstrates that the absence of the iPhone from Verizon’s handset line-up isn’t holding the carrier up all that much.

Verizon also added 198,000 net new customers for FiOS Internet and 191,000 for FiOS TV service.

“Verizon continues to generate strong cash flow, which we have used in building the foundation for sustainable, long-term shareowner value,” Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said in a statement. “Even through the worst of the recession, we have continued to raise our dividend and to add new customers, expand markets and grow revenues based on the power and innovation of Verizon’s wireless, broadband and global networks.”

More coverage from All Things Digital:

• Exclusive Xbox 360-Netflix Partnership Not So Exclusive Anymore
• Amazon Pulls Cork on Wine Delivery

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?

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From The Business Insider, Oct. 19, 2009:

It's the myth that will never die.

Jim Cramer has made a career out of promoting it, as have countless other stock-picking gurus since the dawn of time.

What is this myth?

If only you "do your homework," analyze those financial statements, (and listen to such-and-such a stock-picking guru), you, too, can pick stocks well enough to beat the pros.

If there's one thing that should ring out loud and clear from the Galleon insider-trading bust it is that this is preposterous.

Stock trading is a zero-sum game. You cannot make money from trading without other people losing money.* In order to win the stock-picking game, therefore, you have to out-trade other traders.  You have to beat the other traders by enough to offset your costs of research and trading (which are deducted from your returns).  And you have to do this consistently, year after year after year.

Even without illegal inside information, your competition is intense.  The hedge funds, mutual funds, and other professional traders you are competing with have, at a minimum:

• Professional analysts and traders with decades of experience who work 20 hours a day
• Huge industry Rolodexes filled with primary contacts at companies whose stocks they trade
• Research budgets that run into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year
• Dozens of Wall Street brokers calling all day with every scrap of info they can dig up
• Instant access to 100% of Wall Street research and analysts from hundreds of firms
• Proprietary research services that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year
• High frequency trading computers that act on any market info in milliseconds

To win the stock-picking game, you have to consistently beat folks who have all of these advantages and more...

More coverage from The Business Insider:

• The 10 Countries Most At Risk of a Meltdown
• You Won't Believe How Good Life Is for the Super Rich

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Online analysts would like you to know that there's a great new industry growth engine revving up -- mobile ads.

For example, you can't open an analyst's report these days without immediately encountering something like this:

• We're optimistic about mobile ads!
• We're bullish on mobile ads!
• Google's Verizon deal is evidence of the huge new opportunity in mobile ads!

Sounds exciting!

Unfortunately, analysts have been saying the same thing since 1995. And mobile advertising spending is still a rounding error.

Why has mobile advertising been such a disappointment?