Good morning, Today’s update is a little long, so I’ll just get started: Tim Cook’s Announcement Tim Cook publicly came out as gay in an essay that was published in Bloomberg Businessweek. Please read the whole thing if you have not. I feel it a disservice to break out even a paragraph. I myself haveSubscribe […]
Daily Update: Why Apple Pay was Blocked, and Why it Will Succeed; Google Reorgs, Kind Of
Good morning, I appeared on This Week in Tech yesterday; I’ll post something on Stratechery in a bit, but for now you can access the episode here. On to the update: Why Apple Pay was Blocked, and Why it Will Succeed At this point I presume most of you have heard about CVS and Rite-AidSubscribe […]
PayPal’s Incentive Problem
By winning on the web, PayPal was actually disadvantaged when it came to competing in mobile, because its incentives were already shaped by a different problem.
Daily Update: HP to Split, A Secure Golden Key, Microsoft’s Android Cash Cow
Good morning, My piece on PayPal will drop later today, so keep an eye out for that. Just a heads-up that I’m traveling this week so updates may be a bit irregular. Thanks for your patience. On to the update: HP to Split Big news from The Wall Street Journal: Hewlett-Packard Co. plans to separateSubscribe […]
Daily Update: eBay and PayPal, Poor Pebble, Intel Caves to GamerGaters
Good morning, The eBay/PayPal piece I keep promising has turned into something bigger, and it’s not done yet, so I’ve gone ahead and done some more straightforward analysis of the deal below; I think it’s a good move. I did want to follow up on the Box item yesterday to make two points that ISubscribe […]
Don’t Blame Uber
At the risk of painting too broad a stroke, it seems to me that much of the opposition to changes wrought by the Internet undervalue the positive impact said changes have on normal people. For example, people despair over newspapers closing without appreciating the explosion in quality content freely available to anyone anywhere in the […]
Daily Update: Uber, Contract Workers, and Driver Power; Alibaba Raises $21.8 Billion; Larry Ellison Takes Care of Larry Ellison
Good morning, The iPhone goes on sell today, and there are lines all over. Many suspect the lines are longer due to resellers looking to take advantage of Apple’s China delay, but at least one of the licensing obstacles to the iPhone going on well was removed yesterday. Several folks have asked me if theSubscribe […]
Microsoft’s Good (and Potentially Great) Minecraft Acquisition
It’s difficult to overstate what a big deal Minecraft is. It’s the third best-selling game of all time behind Tetris and Wii Sports, and unlike the latter especially, it is a remarkably sticky experience: the vast majority of customers (over 90 percent on PC, according to Microsoft) sign in every single month. Were Microsoft to […]
Daily Update: Another (Inevitable) Uber Controversy, Why Instagram’s Hyperlapse Damns Windows Phone, Pouring Water on Fire Phone
Good morning, I wrote a brief piece on Stratechery about Amazon buying Twitch; my takeaway was in the title: Amazon: Not an E-Commerce Company. One could argue that makes the upside in their stock even greater, but were I an investor, I think I’d be out. I buy the e-commerce story; Amazon ruling the world,Subscribe […]
Is BuzzFeed a Tech Company?
It’s telling that Chris Dixon, in a blog post explaining Andreessen Horowitz’s $50 million investment, goes out of his way to explain that BuzzFeed is not really a media company, but a technological one: We see BuzzFeed as a prime example of what we call a “full stack startup”. BuzzFeed is a media company in […]