In 2001 the combination of an over invested stock market combined with a terror attack on American soil caused the greatest IT spending crash in the industry’s short history. The need to cut costs made the industry more global and the US centric spending never fully recovered.
New data ranks the current world IT spending shrink as worse than what we suffered in 2001.
Based on current economic conditions and the word that Forrester is getting from the IT departments, Forrester is now saying that global IT spending for hardware, software, and services by companies and governments will drop by 10.6 percent to $1.53 trillion. In 2008, Forrester reckons that IT spending rose by 8 per cent to just over $1.7 trillion globally, and this year was slated to be bad, but not as bad as the IT budget downdraft in the wake of the dot-com, Y2K, and ERP booms in 2001 and 2002, when IT spending fell 6 per cent in both years. (The Register)
While most Americans suffering from the hard times cut their expenses and take second jobs, the insatiable appetite of pols grows. One possible benefit from the recession is it forces most of individuals and business to re-evaluate spending and priorities. That makes for a leaner and more efficient household or company as things improve. Politicians seem to be incapable of cutting anything and are too quick to blame that sales tax boogyman, the Internet. First it was North Carolina, next it’s Rhode Island. At issue are sales that were not shipped from either state, nor delivered there in most cases. In both cases, the states are now to lose more than they could have possible gained, because Amazon has pulled the plug on affiliates operating from both of those states. It’s time for state governments to get efficient, and maybe help get some bigger pipes built if they want to improve thier lagging revenues. Killing a small income stream for bloggers who are unfortunate enough to live in their states helps no one.
Amazon.com Inc. cut ties today with its business affiliates in Rhode Island to protest a provision in the draft state budget that would force the company to collect sales tax, Providence Business News has confirmed.
Rhode Island is now the second state where affiliates in the program, known as Amazon Associates, have been cut off over the sales tax issue. Earlier this month the Seattle-based online retailer also closed its affiliates’ accounts in North Carolina. (Providence Business News)
It has been announced that Pirate Bay, the audio/video/mp3/ogg/flac source site for things not paid for has itself been sold. Why a sucker? Well I will get to that after the jump –
The Pirate Bay has agreed to be sold for $7.7 million, a deal with a Swedish software maker that would ultimately turn the world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracker into a legitimate player.
The move by Global Gaming Factory X AB comes nearly three months after the four co-founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty of facilitating copyright infringement, and face a year each in prison pending appeals in addition to a $3.6 million fine.
While the site is to discontinue pointing the way to free movies, music, games and software, Global Gaming Factory thinks it can turn The Pirate Bay into a money-making venture.
“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” Hans Pandeya, Global Gaming’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Eh, Hans, you are the sucker.
This is not an issue about Pirate Bay going legit. I hope they do, I also hope they are successful at it. For if they are, they will be positioned to offer deep discounts on media, if the sources get a clue. If I could get a copy of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ legit for $2.99 vs $19.95 off the storefront I would do so.
But that is not Pirate Bay’s draw. Bay’s draw was something for nothing. That and the ‘Tee Hee….’ mindset of ripping off The Man. I dare not call it counter-culture. Not quite that but almost. When the chic is off the rose then so goes the audience. That happened to Napster to a certain extent. The other fact is it is too easy to set up another site like it in Pakistan and have free competition vs paid service. Its the mindset in play here.
Possibly Pirate Bay will need to be renamed to Rum’s Cay and Media Emporium when the dust settles.
OK this isn’t big news, but it does introduce some interesting possibilities. As part owner of the Clear service build that began as a partnership between Clearwire and Sprint, Comcast could add quite a bit of muscle to the marketing push for the new service.It’s beginning to look like a service that will be sold under many brands. One service with many brands, outlets and potentially different service levels is something we haven;t seen before in the wireless or broadband space
The so-called fourth-generation (4G) wireless service, is the first execution of a partnership between Comcast, Clearwire Corp and other companies that use the emerging WiMax high-speed mobile technology.
Many consumers already update their blogs and watch videos using their mobile phones. Cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable Inc do not want to become irrelevant by restricting subscriber access to the home.
The new service, called “Comcast High-Speed 2go,” is expected to deliver data to laptops, netbooks and other devices over a wireless network at faster speeds than has been commonly available to date.
Comcast said it will offer download speeds of up to 4 megabits per second. Existing 3G wireless networks typically offer download speeds between 1 and 1.5 megabits a second. (Reuters)
eBay’s plan to spin off Skype with an initial public offering in 2010 is being threatened by a dispute with the VoIP service’s co-founders, who still own a key part of the software.Bloomberg reports Skype’s founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have accused eBay of breaching a licensing deal and are threatening to yank the technology, which would disable the popular voice over internet service.
In return, eBay is suing Joltid, the company operated by Skype’s founders, in a London court to prevent the shutdown.
The Skype founders apparently retained the service’s peer-to-peer sharing technology when they sold to eBay for $2.6bn in 2005. (Which, of course, begs the question why eBay would pay all that money without ensuring they own the entire platform).
Well smart business people always work to sell the cow but license the right to the milk it produces. That appears to be what is happening here with a legal scuffle between Skype founders and eBay. So when Meg Whitman, who was the CEO that brokered that deal, plunk down the money she did not read the fine print on what she was really buying? Certainly appears that way regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit.
Would be a real blow to eBay if they lose. The value of the Skype property that they are trying to spin off would be worth less if the buyer has to pay royalities to the two gents owning the technology. Any buyer worth their salt would know this and only pay accordingly. For what they would really be buying is just the customer accounts and IT infrastructure.
There are still some fun things to watch in the IT biz.
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