hey folks, goog's back around 500.

Should they fight back?

If Microsoft wants to cut into goog's search market, maybe it's time for goog to take the mantle of cutting into microsoft's OS/office markets.

This is really what Msft is worried about anyways, is'nt it? that Goog get's too big? It's not really just about 'search' or ad-revenue, per se.

Goog has ventured into phone ops, their possibly venturing into bandwith, they've already begun teaming with JAVA to crosspromote Java's free OSware/software. Could Goog be the one to finally push msft off the block? Are MSFT's day's numbered?

Could Goog form a consortion with PC makers, memory makers, ops developers and server-co's to transform the PC market and reduce msft to a niche/supporting market?

I should appreciate msft for its historical contributions to worldwide computing and the information revolution. And certainly maintaining millions and millions of lines of code for the end-user is no easy task. And they are american right, a symbol of american ingenuity and strength. And i support profit motive and copyright and patent-law etc. etc.

But i'm mainly a utilitarian. And altruistic. And i've also always believed that the most important thing, knowledge, which can separate the have's from the have-nots, should be freely disseminated. Msft mints gamillions of cd-copies of its software for hundreds of bucks a piece. Don't you think it's maybe time that little piece of plastic, or whatever a compact-disk is made of, should be free? or maybe $19.99? Reducing msft from 97% worldwide monoply to under 40% is a long time coming, and reducing their 'intellectual capital' fees for reprinting the exact same cd gabillions of times from hundreds of dollars a piece to a jackson is a long time coming too.

I don't know if Goog would actually consider buying JAVA, as it would dilute the reason people want the stock, from being an embedded-entangled middle-man transaction-cost skimmer with one core business to a multibusiness halfbased commoditizer. But it's an interesting thought. Goog also has been expanding its server farms, and Java also could help to fit that bill. Perhaps with it's ~200 bil expected market cap Goog should just go all out and scoop up JAVA(15bil mkt cap), MU(5bil cap), or SNDK(6bil cap), Acer, AMD(3.5bil cap), or Ubuntu etc. etc. and put together its own Google Pc with all the trimmings.

EXTRA EXTRA: post-script: i've decided to include a satire i was working on for the slo back in late oct back when goog was at 700, but didnt post, as perhaps i felt i was being a little too presumptious... :)

Original Date - Oct./Nov 2007:

The 800 dollar gorilla?

GOOG Insider trading transactions, insider planned sales - MSN Money

Sorry, drank too much of last years' frozen egg-nog earlier, woke up heavy-hearted...

Comments: View Comments |  Saturday February 9, 2008  |  Stocks: AMD, GOOG, JAVA, MSFT, MU, SNDK, YHOO,

i joined slo2.

kept my old portfolio, nav somewhere around 9.?? Mostly losers and i want to sell most-all so i can be more nimble with fewer and larger stocks, but dont like the hassle of picking which losers to sell.

Put 7% of cash into LBAS, Location-Based Technologies, an upstart gps gadget company. I've made it a focus company of sorts, spending a lot of time reading all their 8ks, 10q's, website-info etc. I'll occasionaly dig deeper into a company like this to keep me in tune or to help me brush up or learn more about internal affairs like this, the legalese, accounting tactics and so on, even if i don't actually buy into a company. i'll write up more on LBAS later. there may be an opportunity to churn it. It's already burned its first stage curiousity-rocket boosters, taking it from penny-stock land, past the 4$margin-beginning threshold, and past the 5$penny-stock-warning-reporting-threshold and shorting-beginning threshold, upto the full 6$margin launch zone, before cutting back to 4.50 and now moving back to 5.50. go to locationbasedtech.com or pocketfinder.com to read more for yourselves.

On the surface, LBAS should be tradeable for the next month or two. If they're succesful in manufacturing and distributing their product then i'd say there's definitely a potential market for their product. I have several reservations though, longer-term, based not just on the complete lack of barriers to competition, but more specifically due to the formation of the company. Why did they do a reverse-acquistion with a shell-company to start their incorporation? How did this threesome come together that owns/directs somewhere between 59% and 80% of the company? And what happened to the former owners of the shell company they used/bought to start their new life as an incorporated entity? Were the former wildcatters merely relieved of their debt or given some form of ample consideration? LBAS hopes to market the 'Pocketfinder' for around 129$ with ~15$monthly fees. They've been hoping to go to market by march, but havent yet announced if they've even worked things out with a chinese manufacturer yet to manufacture the product. LBAS has a market cap of about 150million now, about 23million shares issued last fall, at an initial value of .001/.039/.65/1.00/2.00 (take your pick). They have a couple million cash left to burn through, which they expect to burn though quickly by april, by which time they'll need to secure more capital, although they'll likely just reissue. The 18million+ restricted shares owned by the directors i think have a 1year no-sell moratorium which i think means by july they'd be able to sell, though im not familiar with the terms of 'restricted shares'. The officer's contracts look pretty on the up and up to me, with reasonable incentives. Yahoo finance seems to be their chief financial reporting/linking site. i havent checked to see if other sites have more info, but yahoo has the sec-doc-links. Go to finance.yahoo to learn more. Yahoo's historical prices on LBAS show that LBAS didnt have a down day from july17 to november29, nearly 4 straight months of higher-or-even closes, which along with the faily constant volume level makes me think the market-maker for this stock has been doing the trading amongst himself to move the stock up higher to the the 5$threshold.

I wanted to make LBAS 23% of my slo2port and churn it from 4.5 to 6.5, but it dipped to 4.5 a little bit before the slo2 began. I'd have to free up alot of cash by selling losers to buy it. 'Managing' a 'portfolio' can be hard work! I don't feel like selling all my losers even though i feel like selling all my losers... #%$*=`#.

Misc:
If i had cash free'd up i'd probably follow ken kam's lead and buy some aapl at 120 now. Goog's pe's and fpe's are actually starting to look reasonable now with the stock around 500. The qqq leaders have been dead for the last 3-4 weeks. The second half of february may be their time. DVW is at 82cents, its buyout is at 1.02 expected to close by end-second quarter 08 (june), but the proxy-vote takes place feb29; guaranteed ~25% gain minus 10%commish for trading. (DVW pays a 12mil penalty if either side balks - strange). One of my favorite drillers, BRNC, got bought out a month ago by ALY at their bookvalue price. Which means the value goes to ALY now. They'd just gone international too (Libyan contract). Brnc at 15.5 guaranteed payout at 16.33 (with some ALY stock), regardless of ALY price. Now i'll follow ALY (Allis-chalmers) which i think might have gotten a Jubak write-up many months ago. ALY under 10.

I havent traded in my own stock account for months. My ops account was up about 60% in January with sucessful trades on SOV (.sovbv), and ETFC (.eusbh, .eusba). I broke even with a chk straddle placed in dec. I shouldve sold out of my smallcap gold ops on GSS and EGO with much higher gains, but i sold out of the GSS 2.5 and keep rolling the EGO, even though i want out. I got burned on a GFI 12.5, even though i only bought it on a whim to store ITM value, the next day or two it sunk on what i'd thunk was supposedly good news, a full day after the news came out, that being their power-supply being bumped back up to 80-90% by their S.African provider. I lost on the HAL AH jan40's. The qqq's i have a bad habit of buying into on dips, only to have them go lower, and having to sweat it out for a couple weeks each time to break even. Took a really small stake on some 44qqq calls this week a day after the dip, and they arent sittin' pretty. I need to diversify to other index's but i think only the qqqq's give me the volatility i want. I cant believe the market reacted that hard to old/forgone-conclusion/backward-looking news earlier this week. i got slammed hard buy stupidly going a little too long and too OOTM and too close to expiration, even though i knew a post fed-cut-hype-dip was likely. I was heavy on the .chkbr CHK 37.5c, and it knocked my ops account back to even, but today i'm back up 40%. I sold out today at 1.25. Whew! CHK and ETFC might have some momemtum still left for next week (m?). I might try to buy back in them on dips with some feb or mar calls. Overall i'm concerned about late-winter tops for gold and gas, but we'll see. I think that short term rally might occur 2nd half feb. Not so sure about next week as it's ops-expiration week and my recent ops experience is showing that for the last half year the bulls and bears have really flattened out prices going into the final week each month.
Trafe Sading Cand heers

p.s. any questions on LBAS post your comments i've done some research.

p.p.s. here is a copy of an email i'd sent to motorola in 2005 regarding a business idea i'd been working on regarding tracking. I'm hoping there's more than one way to profit from a business like LBAS. I don't like locking things due to the message it sends to society about trust and openess, and what it says about oneself. My mom taught my sisters I never to lock our house growing up. It would bother my dad, and if he'd stop by while we were at church he'd usually lock it, and we'd have to find a way to break into our own house. i do lock car doors just because it's so easy to stick a key into a flat surface, but i dont lock domiciles or bikes etc. I've had lots of bikes stolen. For the life of me i'll never understand or sympathise with how some thiefs must be able to equate bike theft with picking up a dropped mitten or something. I equate it to grand-theft-auto or horse-thievery, worthy of hangin' (or 5 years in the pokey). But i've done the #'s before and it acutally can make more sense to let someone steal it 1x/year than spend the time locking and unlocking it. I'll plunk down some money on a device that can help me catch thieves - (till they get wise), and i hope to acutally make a couple grand on court-settlements with thieves, and have fun catching them too! Don't ask me why i gave up on my idea. I've always got billion dollar ideas in my head; usually i just pass them on and hope someone else does something with them. The bike question still presents several technical complications. Ultimately the best solution would be to have tracking devices built in from the manufacturer, built-into the frame itself, with a keyed-plug for battery acces. LBAS's device is supposedly waterproof, but the battery-life/and/or/pinging frequency would have to be modified extensively for best performace, and the size isnt yet quite small enough to hide, i reckon.:

Sent to Motorola @ https://mcg.motorola.com/cfm/templates/contactus.cfm?PageID=333 (Embedded Communications Computing Group) on 8-09-05.

Hi, just had a bicycle stolen a month ago. I live on a Big10 college campus, & refuse to give in to a culture of locking-up my bike. An INET search shows no anti-theft/tracking GPS/rfid/... products in the U.S I would like to market a cell-chip/receiver-responder that could be employed in a bike handle or seat post or crossing tube, run on a small 2-3yr life battery, and have client log in tracking/mapping to self locate or fax to police for recovery. It should market retail for appx 10-15$ to compete with traditional anti-theft(cable/ulock). Cellphone companies are the logical choice to develop, given the already current triangulation capabilites embedded in current models. Would you help me design and test such a product? We can talk further about my ideas/specs/business if you want. Hopefully your parts fabs already have what we need, or their might need to be some mods

Comments: View Comments |  Friday February 8, 2008  |  Stocks: AAPL, ALY, BRNC, CHK, DVW, EGO, ETFC, GFI, GOOG, GSS, HAL, LBAS, QQQQ, SOV,