Context & Continuity

Announcement, Announcement...

I am delighted to report that I will now be helping out Trapeze Networks on a full-time basis. 

Trapeze is one of the leading companies in WiFi networking and you will be finding out a lot more about the company and what it has to offer because I'm now managing the company's public relations. 

Okay?

If we had more open spectrum would hospitals need wires?

A 300 bed hospital will spend up to $300,000 on a Trapeze system, which is also sold by OEMs like Nortel and 3Com, or the competing Cisco gear. But this lets them give all clinicians these cool Vocera phones.

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What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

I've always been a radio person. 

When I was growing up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and my parents put me to bed, they would turn on a small radio by my head.  During the season, the station joined the St. Louis Cardinal's baseball network, at one time the largest radio network in the U.S.   Stan Musial and Bob Gibson played then and no one else was more important in the entire world.  Off season, the station played bingo as sponsored by the local Piggly Wiggly and I fell to sleep hypnotized by the announcer saying, "B-2 ... B-2.  Remember folks, Piggly Wiggly has a special this week on pork loin and you shouldn't miss out.  B-2.  ..." 

As an undergraduate, I was finally exposed to NPR and a Pacific station and if you don't know what Pacifica is you should look it up because it's something special.  Susan Stamberg was the smartest, nicest person you could ever want to meet and Bob Edwards helped start a show called Morning Edition.  My dear friend Stu Hackel had a program on KOPN, the Pacific station, and it was called The Fox's Minstral show and on hot summer nights I would hang out with him and we'd open the windows and Stu would play any song he wanted to. 

In New York City, there was both a Pacifica and NPR affiliate, of course, and the most beautiful girl in Brooklyn introduced me to WOR, and WEVD.  (And if you can tell me which presidential candidate's initials created the call letters for WEVD I'll buy you a cup of coffee.)  We listened to Lynn Samuels, Paul Gorman, Simon Loekle, David Garland, Delphine Blue, Amy Goodman, Bob Fass, Citizen Kafka, Larry Josephson, David Rothenberg, Peter Bochan, Steve Post, Jonathan Schwartz, John Schaefer and many, many more.  We also listened to WBGO, especially Michael Bourne.

In San Francisco, we listen to KCSM, KQED and we're lucky enough to just pull in KXPR and KXJZ out of Sacramento.   

And that was a very long introduction to the topic at hand.

Goldman Sachs is Not a Corporate Sponsor of the EFF

Today, Google's blog posted an entry from David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer.  In the post, Mr. Drummond contends that Microsoft probably shouldn't be allowed to buy Yahoo as this would give them too much power over the internet. 

This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

Okay, so I believe this is probably true, but it probably shouldn't be the first go-to argument.  Last time I checked Goldman Sachs or for that matter any other investment bank is not a corporate sponsor of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation.  (I am and encourage you to join too.) 

Any argument beyond, "It's a bad business idea," is a bit too sentimental for the business world to care about.  I think the following are probably better arguments to put forward:

1.  Yahoo is injured and it could be fatal.  It hasn't delivered an innovation in a few years and many of its leading applications (mail, photography) have been acquisitions, not inventions.  I'm not sure that they have any innovations in it any more.

2.  Yahoo's installed base of "users" can, at any moment, run for the doors.  Nothing locks them in and they might well flee under new management. 

3.  The bid is far too high.  Yahoo is probably over valued right now and investors are catching on. 

4.  Yahoo's search engine?  I don't think so.  Can anyone make an argument that it stands a chance against Google?  To tell you the truth, my back-up search engine of choice is A2, not that I get to it much after trying Google. 

My view is that Google is best served to stay the heck out of the public spotlight on this one and work private channels instead.  By speaking up, particularly when it uses arguments about the public good, might make Google appeared to be frightened about the prospect of Microsoft acquiring Yahoo.  If it were me, and I had to put out a soundbyte, I might go with something along the lines of, "Well, to tell you the truth, we're pleased about Microsoft taking on Yahoo.  This way, Yahoo will be out of the competitive picture and Microsoft will be too busy trying to digest the acquisition to be an effective competitor for at least five years."