Because what happens in the end is that, once Bezos has control of the market, he no longer HAS to undersell everyone else. And you won't have author signing events or be able to look at the books and decide by covers if they look interesting. But most of all, once Amazon has managed to run everyone else out of the business, there will be two options left: sorting through millions of crap books because everone is self-publishing on CreateSpace, and/or paying that same $37.87, only to Amazon into your community. And remember, with the no tax, that means it all goes into his pocket instead of into your schools and your social service programs and your sewer/road repairs, etc.
It's not about nostalgia. It's about looking past the short-term and seeing everything that gets lost in the long run.
It's not about nostalgia. It's about looking past the short-term and seeing everything that gets lost in the long run.
Belated congrats on getting married Owen.
Bahahahaha. No. As my lackluster Digg participation can attest. Now if Drew Curtis was launching a new start-up...
Always good to see that in a declining economy, we are supposed to pay attention to how attractive a wantrepreneur is and how pretty his slide deck rather than the overall usefulness of a company. Retort fail.
Owen, think about it from a logistics perspective. It takes all of 30 seconds to set up a robots.txt file to tell bots what they can and cannot search versus setting up an entire department at Google to deal with each and every request from a site? Not to mention recoding their bot every time someone wants something removed? It makes no sense.
@trevo, no, that's not what it does. It tells specific bots what they can and can't search. Don't want the Google freshbot clambering through your recent posts? Then tell THAT bot to stay out of THAT directory.
@emnem I think you hit it... part of the issue was that for "SEO" purposes, the Tribune published that article with eleventy million different URLS and interlinked the living hell out of them. Zell wants the Google hits, but doesn't want people to be able to read the content without hitting the site itself. He can't have it both ways. And I have yet to find a Google News article printed in its entirety, so what exactly is his problem? Or does he not really have one and just enjoys the press? Considering the source, I think we all know what the answer is.
No, Owen, I sure didn't. The Tribune is apparently full of gits who can't tell one Google bot from the next in their raw logs. You honestly think Google is even one iota at fault? They have different bots that spy fresh content. The ONLY way the one that sees updates would be fooled like that is bad data on Tribune's side. No one CARES if Sam Zell "asked" Google to stop crawling the site, because to them, the only way to "ask" them is to deny them in the robots.txt. Google is supposed to care if ONE site wants an exemption because they can't figure out server administration 101? If I were at Google and Sam Zell "asked" me something like that, I'd have returned to my cubicle in the cube farm laughing, wondering how that man thought he'd save a media conglomerate when he couldn't even figure out how to talk to his own IT guys. I'm the last one to defend Google, but I can't tolerate idiocy.
Jackson, this is utter garbage. While I realize most of you guys have never done server admin, any two-bit admin fresh off the Microsoft turnip truck should know how to keep spiders from crawling the site with robots.txt. If they don't have an admin with at least that much knowledge, they have bigger problems than the UAL story. Also, CLICKING a story won't bring it back to the attention of the Google News bot unless it also updates the feed somehow. If it REALLY was a problem on Google's side, don't you think that some other site would have already seen the same thing? Not sure what I'm talking about? Look at the craptastic feed coming out of a site like Entertainment Weekly, where they also can't manage to date their posts correctly in the feed XML. Or sites (like the Gawker sites) that regularly update and republish the entire feed so any of us who have subscribed to comments get inundated with comments from nine months ago as "new" in our feed readers. It's a nice reminder to remove subscriptions, but that's sure not the fault of my feed reader. Or Google.
Crap. For $129K, I'll go back to writing docs.
@Passerby Laughed 'til I cried. But I think the last one in your list should have said (D. Hornik) no?
Best. comments. ever. Valleypro, +2. foo, +1
I know the Gawker pay scale ruins you guys for electronic buying sprees, but my DAD has a Kindle. He loves it. So yes, I've seen one and I don't even live anywhere that people regularly buy the latest electronic doohickey.
I thought someone had already established that the family-suing-family routine is meant to keep money from leaving the family in cases where ownership of the company is up in the air?
"Treachery?" I've seen VCs do some PHENOMENALLY back-stabbing thing, but there's a lesson here for start-ups: if you make money, you won't need a bridge loan. Or anything else from the VC. I realize that's confusing for a lot of start-ups, who think VC IS revenue.
No word yet how many of The 250 may have had their data compromised? They all have Clear, don't they? Can't stand in line with the non-250.
What Julia? You SAID Rachel Marsden got more attention on Valleywag! I was HELPING!
Then they're chickens. The Javawhores did it a few years back when Middleware put out the "Who's Who in Enterprise Java 2004." Complete with Jokers. I think Bile Blog did his own as well.
This meal brought to by Seagate.
The price for TechCrunch? F**k-BEELyun dollars.
Google finally reveals the Google Phone: Code Name Toaster
@pabst You still didn't read what I said. a) AT&T raises the minimum family plan required to the 700 minute plan. We don't even use 500 minutes most months, hence my accumulated rollover minutes. Our current plan is $50.00 for 550 minutes, so that's $20 more per month for the rate plan if the rates shown so far are correct. The 700 minute plan WAS $60 per month, now going up to $69.99. b) Why on earth would I get five iPhones? c) You assume that everyone can use the 3G network, when in reality, it's still limited, so a lot of people upgrading will be paying more for the same old EDGE. d) You assume everyone gets Starcrack every day. Many of us don't live in the Valley, actually own coffee pots, and spend only a few cents a day on coffee, not nearly enough to fund an increased phone bill for the Jesus phone. I already have a 3G phone with an affordable data plan. I see no reason to upgrade to line AT&T's pockets.
