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Outside the Lines

Obama's CTO: Watch out for the turf wars

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is out of the running for the chief technology officer (CTO) position that the Obama administration is planning to create. In an interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer, Schmidt said, "I love working at Google and I'm very happy to stay at Google, so the answer is no." Schmidt will remain a close adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, but his first call to duty is Google.

Based on the job description below, it could be difficult to find a worthy candidate from the private sector willing to take on a task of such … Read more

Google and Microsoft executives trade jabs

SAN FRANCISCO--"We don't control the platform. It's magical when it belongs to all of us." Those were the words of Vic Gundotra, who spent 15 years at Microsoft and is now leading Google's application development efforts. He was speaking about the open Web, and Google's open sourcing of much of its code to the developer community at large at the Web 2.0 Summit on Friday.

David Treadwell, vice president of Live Platform Services, took issue with his former colleague's statement about Google not controlling the platform. "If you want to … Read more

Yahoo's Jerry Yang runs into a wall

The reviews of Jerry Yang's performance at the Web 2.0 Summit have not been glowing. The Yahoo CEO's interview with Web 2.0 Summit co-host John Battelle this week has been described as a train wreck, self-delusional, and as making a mockery of the vaunted company he helped create.

During the interview, Yang defined Yahoo's vision as a "consumer brand that allows people to get what they want on the Internet." Yahoo is a destination site with starting points, such as Yahoo Finance and the Yahoo home page, and is rewiring its platform to … Read more

Dreamforce: Neil Young shows off his green machine

Legendary rocker Neil Young made a special appearance during Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference keynote address. He didn't mention cloud computing, but talked about his 1959 Mark IV Lincoln Continental.

Young has spent more than $100,000 to green his 5,000-pound "Thinkin' Lincoln" former gas hog. "It's a piece of America art," said Young, who is an avid car collector. He hopes to get the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon and take the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. "We are over halfway there (to 100 mph) with this car,&… Read more

Dreamforce: Benioff preaches cloud computing gospel, Facebook

SAN FRANCISCO--After a decade as the chief evangelist in the wilderness of software as a service, which has morphed into cloud computing, Salesforce.com founder and CEO Marc Benioff is having a more challenging time coming up with groundbreaking industry disruptions. But that isn't stopping him from enthusiastically preaching the cloud computing gospel.

Benioff and company have built a $1 billion business and gradually expanded a CRM application, run like Google runs search in the cloud, into a platform that greatly reduces the friction involved in business software development and delivery. With Microsoft recently entering the cloud-computing platform arena with Azure … Read more

Microsoft's Manhattan Project

This week Microsoft gave evidence that it will continue to be a major force for at least the next decade. The company outlined its products and strategies that more fully embrace the "cloud," such as the Azure set of cloud services; Web-based, lighter-weight versions of Microsoft Office applications; and the latest iteration of the Live Mesh middleware. Google may have won the search war, but Microsoft isn't about to cede the global cloud to the search engine giant.

Ray Ozzie explains Azure to CNET News correspondent Ina Fried.

As in past epochs in its 33-year history, Microsoft … Read more

Glue binds the social and Semantic Web

For the last few years AdaptiveBlue has offered a semantically rich Web application that understands things such as books, movies, and music. Clicking on text, such as a company or movie name, brings up a context-sensitive menu of related links. The company is taking its technology a step further, adding a social dimension and renaming the product, "Glue." Along with Radar Networks' Twine and Powerset's Wikipedia search engine (acquired by Microsoft), Glue offers a compelling glimpse into how the Semantic Web will add a new, powerful level of intelligence to the Internet.

Rather than just connect things … Read more

EIC Squared: Recessionary tactics

In this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet's Larry Dignan and I discuss the flailing economy. The CFOs explaining the financial results on tech company earnings calls echoed the sentiments and uncertainty of every other company and industry. As Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell stated:

We're not economic forecasters, and there is a high degree of uncertainty in outlook based on the state of the economy. As a result we've adjusted our guidance approach as follows. At the top end we're assuming a mild recession, and a relatively modest growth rate for all IT-based products. While at … Read more

Amazon's Kindle obsession: Bury the printed book

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos loves to talk about the Kindle e-book reader. He's even got media mogul Oprah Winfrey pitching the device: "I'm telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world," she recently said.

The Oprah endorsement is just the latest marketing scheme Bezos has applied to making the Kindle the next iPod. He has been relentless in promoting the Kindle at the expense of maximizing Amazon.com revenue on the virtual storefront.

Every time I go to Amazon I am greeted with a huge Kindle ad that takes up … Read more

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