Gizmodo 
Enter your username and password.
Tip your editors:
tips@gizmodo.com
Editorial Director:
Brian Lam | Email | Twitter
Editor:
Jason Chen
Email | AIM | Twitter
Features Editor:
Wilson Rothman
Email | Twitter
Senior Contributing Editor:
Jesus Diaz
Email | AIM | Twitter
Mark Wilson, Reviews
Email | AIM | Twitter
Contributing Editors:
Matt Buchanan
Email | AIM | Twitter
Adam Frucci
Email | Twitter
Sean Fallon
Email | Twitter
Jack Loftus
Email | Twitter
John Herrman
Email | Twitter
Dan Nosowitz
Email
Chris Mascari
Email
Danny Allen
Email | Twitter
Columnist:
Brendan I. Koerner
Interns:
Don Nguyen
Email
Chris Jacob
Email
Comment Intern:
Nick Ellenoff | Email
Comment Account Questions:
Comments@gizmodo.com
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
10/16/09
10/16/09
That site has to just be a bottomless burn pit for dollars. #googlestock
10/16/09
The one money-maker they do have, though, is advertising. And apparently, it's a whopper. Which makes sense. Google gets tons of money each year from advertisers who enjoy their targeted, intelligent ads. Meanwhile, Google runs other services that boost their name and brand for pennies on the dollar of what they're ads bring in.
Good business isn't about minimizing losses, but maximizing gains. So long as they can keep up their superior ad targeting systems, they can burn through as much money as they have. And frequently do. #googlestock
10/16/09
If MS really did want to get a leg up rather than trying to drive Google into the ground, they'd be attempting to bridge the gap with Google and offering paid for time in their apps/sites - maybe even focus on great products rather than trying to take down your competitors. Then again, that'd be crazy. #googlestock
10/16/09
"By making your biggest products cash losers and your biggest money makers merely integrated into the product"
So they DO make money from their "cash losers" then??
"Essentially if someone like Microsoft actually does kill a free service of Google's they'll almost be doing them a favour."
Then how about their "biggest money makers merely integrated into the product" thing? It got killed too right?
The thing is, if some of Google's popular features die, most likely they're suffering bad rep like Yahoo and it'll severely affect they stock. #googlestock
10/16/09
yeah, but if the website(youtube) itself isn't bringing in any money at all, and they just take a loss on it, how is that good business? Even if other parts of google can pick up the slack for youtube it doesn't change the fact that youtube is a money pit.
just my opinion. I don't know how any of this stuff works haha. #googlestock
10/16/09
Let's say for my day job, I get paid $500/hour. Hey, I can dream can't I? Well, that amounts to $20k a week, or little over a million a year. On that kind of money, I can afford to pay for a nice house, all utilities, college tuition for the kids I probably have and still have some left over to sink into my dream DeLorean (If I'm gonna dream, I'm gonna make it rock). Sinking a few hundred to a thousand a week into that thing is hardly hurting my salary. It's a money pit, but it's one I can afford.
As another real world example, for the longest time, Sony was selling the Playstation 3 at a loss per unit. As in, every time you bought a PlayStation 3, Sony lost money, since it cost more to make them they were charging for it. Yet, they made enough profit on games and peripherals to more than make up for it. Nintendo has banked on this strategy for years, selling cheaper than average systems, and yanking money out of your nose through cheap plastic peripherals.
A single product can take a loss, even consistently, if the revenue streams of the company as a whole make up for it. Even if YouTube is losing money, until it threatens Google's huge ad revenue, it's existence is an asset....like as a place to put ads. ;-) #googlestock
10/17/09
Thus, even at launch every Wii unit sold made Nintendo money. And then Nintendo made even more money from all the games and addons.
10/17/09
The point is to not view any one product as an isolated revenue stream that must sustain itself. #googlestock
10/16/09
10/16/09
10/16/09
10/12/09
10/12/09
I have a monthly reminder to manually backup my gCal, gContacts, and Toodledo tasks in case some major failure like this occurs.
10/12/09
10/12/09
10/12/09
10/12/09
10/12/09
10/12/09
I wouldn't say everything, but just about everything they release really is shit.
10/11/09
The person that designed this should be sued
10/12/09
The problem for this lies squarely on the feet of Danger (and I guess now Microsoft, now that Microsoft purchased Danger last year).
At the time, Danger, composed largely of former Apple and former Nintendo employees, wanted to keep everything about Sidekick's back end fucntionings a closed platform and as such, closed off from the consumer - in a very similar way to closed platforms like game consoles and many Apple devices at the time. So no matter how often T-Mo employees cried about the danger (no pun intended) of a lack of local data backup (mostly passing concern directly from the consumer, up the line), our voices and warnings went unheard against the brick wall that was Danger's corporate policy about how their devices and services were managed.
And even later Sidekick models that were updated to include SD memory slots (not long after I left the company), as I have been led to understand, the use of the SD memory was locked almost purely to media usage (mp3s, photos, etc.) and could not be used for backing up critical user memory, locally.
Of course no one (at least no one I had contact with at T-Mo), had any clue that Danger had established a cloud network with no IT industry standard redundancies built into their user data storage backend.
Shame of it all, is that the Sidekick was and still is an awesome device; I personally owned the original three Sidekick models . . . of course back then I owned as many as 70 different GSM phones (import and domestic). One of the perks of being an employee of a mobile phone company, is being able to own half of the phones they carry at any one time, and a kick ass employee rate plan to go along with. But I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the Sidekicks. As many (bad) policies as Danger had in place to keep the device a toy, they had just as much going for it to make Sidekicks easily one of the best devices on the planet - not least of which, is one of the best formfactors, and one of the best portable keyboards ever invented. And so far as being in the cloud, even the original Sidekick was 5 to 10 years ahead of the rest of the computing and CE industries. Of course none of that really matters if Danger firstly provides no way for consumers to safely back up their own memory, and worse still, manages to lose the same user memory they would not allow users to back up locally. It's really sad (for Sidekick users), and shameful (of Danger), that it had to come to this.
10/11/09
.... no seriously, where you at? I lost all your contact information.
10/11/09
10/12/09
10/12/09
10/11/09
10/11/09
10/11/09
On what basis is T-mobile the worst cell phone company? They are consistently rated as THE best in customer service and their 3g network, while limited, isn't overtaxed and bogged down like AT&T's. This is also the company that offers $80 all-you-can-eat plans, and was the first to offer an Android phone...anywhere.
Yeah, big LOL buddy. Your comment brought so much to all of us.
10/11/09
10/11/09
I have no answers, it is just an interesting situation. We have all lost data before for a variety of reasons - so having our data in a cloud based system is certainly more secure than leaving the average Joe responsible for backing it up. Still, nothing is truly secure, I am afraid.
10/11/09
Either you trust a single provider to backup your stuff, or you don't. Either you have half a clue and keep local copies of your personal data, or you don't.
Now, between MS, TM and Danger, they've made very clear promises to customers about backups and data integrity. If you look at the marketing for the device over the years, it's clear they created the impression that they would safekeep your data.
Some people are talking about the Terms of Service disclaiming liability for data loss. In many states, providers cannot disclaim liability for "gross negligence". I'd say there's a decent basis (at least on the information disclosed to date) for claiming gross negligence in this case. The TOS itself may not even be enforceable.
More importantly, the court of public opinion will make its own judgment. A lot of people are ready to see Microsoft fail big, after watching Microsoft do everything it can to stall innovation. I'm not sure how you can characterize a company that has kept its core userbase on WinXP for (over?) ten years as anything but an enemy of progress.
Karma's a bitch.
10/11/09
I agree with everything you said, except you over-extended yourself at the end there. Maybe you got carried away, but XP was only released eight years ago.
10/12/09
10/11/09
Sidekick users have the option (or maybe they are forced) to store data on the providers servers. The servers crashed and a LOT of data was lost.
Aside from the BS offer T-Mo is making there is another point here. ALWAYS back up your data to YOUR OWN STORAGE NETWORK. I don't care where or how but a person would have to be silly no to do this. For all portable devices not just phones. With storage available for around $100/TB; drive space is no longer a factor. Also, this is another example of why I don't trust cloud computing. I just can't trust my data to some unknown. If I lose it, it's my own damn fault.
10/11/09