Thought Beans Blog

Google is now the monster that creates ripples from silicon valley to Madison Avenue. Google has come to occupy an important place in our lives now. After its IPO, it has become the darling of wall street. Now its foray into mobile software and its association with Apple iphone is creating a new competitor for mobile companies. Google is also testing ads in the newspaper, TV slots & what not. From just a search engine it is meta morphasizing into an ad company, media, mobile & the list goes on. It is even thinking on taking on monster.com in the job space. There are even chatters of anti trust regulation against it. How long can G sustain this growth is a million dollar question? It is like Microsoft, SUN microsystems in its heydays. But at the same time G is diversifying rapidly into many unknown areas. Only future can answer the future of Google

India has lost another opportunity to market itself as a hot destination for Semi conductor industry with Intel’s $2.5 billion Wafer Fab plant going to china. Indian govt always talks of promoting the Hardware sector with number of SEZ’s. What went wrong in this case? A clear lack of planning, vision & beuracratic delays. This is going to make China leap forward in the hardware sector. Ever since IBM’s exit in the 70’s, Indian govt is finding it hard to attract the hardware companies. Intel’s plant would have helped the booming electronics & mobile sector in India. One of the major obstacles is the lack of infrastructure & tax benefits offered to hardware firms. This would have created lots of employment and investment in India. Unless we become more proactive, such things keep happening forever.

The violence that rocked the Nandigram in West Bengal shows how Goverments’ want take control of the Land mafia. The Special Economic zones are nothing but the explotation of the farmers. The SEZ act passed by the govt allow corporates to get hands on thousands of acres at a throw away price. Just imagine where will the farmers go after losing their land. Also govt purchases land at a fixed rate and sells it at a premium. Agriculture constitutes nearly 70% of our economy. But still no one is bothered about the plight of farmers. Why does the govt want fertile land for SEZ? Why cant they go and setup SEZ in a barren land. The same politicians want the votes of farmers and cannot protect their interests. Such a thing never happens in the developed world. SEZ’s are rage only in the developing economy to attract investment from the developed world. Lets unite and support farmers in their protest against SEZ land acquistion

The NBC & FOX announcement that they will create a youtube rival has set the blogosphere agog. Google has not done much with the youtube acquistion. They are slow in striking deals with the content providers and also a string of lawsuits against Youtube videos latest being by Viacom. The NBC -FOX deal might gave the content providers an easy market to target with the NBC-FOX brand name. Also Yahoo, MSN, AOL might also feature the NBC-FOX videos. NBC & FoX have a wide array of content to videocast along with the other deals they can make. While youtube features only videos like humor, action, they dont have the content that can attract advertisers like soap operas, movies & realty shows. This is where the FOX-NBC will make difference and hurt the Google where it hurts most.

does not requrie established faces for a movie to be hit. No one had expected that new kannada directors can produce a film of such a calibre. After many years, we have seen people queing up in theaters for movies. Such directors should be encouraged by the govt and provide tax break. The acting, songs, choreography all are good. The success of new comers has raised doubts about the doyens of kannada film industry. As the director of mungaru male says many actors rejected his offers due to low budget, this should be an eye opener for them. The need of the hour is to produce good quality movies with good songs. Not taking every tom, dick and getting it directed by some Harry for God knows whatever the reason! long live Kannada film Industry

The decision of Halliburton to move its HQ to Dubai has come as a surprise move. There are lots of unanswered questions about the move. There might be a congressional enquiry in to the activities of Halliburton or halliburton ha sbecome latest target of bloggers in the US. The current VP of USA dick Cheney was heading the Halliburton before becomimg a VP. I believe US congress should not let the oil giant to shift outside. They must investigate the company and its activity. With the bush admin and his gang of neocons failing, Halliburton would be under the scanner of congress. Setting up a regional office inDubai is OK but why move the HQ? Reasons like moving closer to the middle east, by being there they can exert more influence doesn’t hold good. Americans would more and more depend on the foreign oil.

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It has been estimated that Toyota will surpass GM as the largest Auto company this year. Toyota might sell around 9.5 Million cars this year. This has already created ripple in Detroit. Now Toyota is taking aim at big three where it hurts most, in pick up truck segment with its new plant in Texas. GM has been burdened by health care plans, too many brands & beuracracy. The new product lines are less compared to Toyota. Toyota is keeping lean structure with a proper goal. GM must reinevent itself to take on toyota. Compared to Toyota, GM has less brand recognition worldwide. GM must shed its loss making brands, build a brand building exercise. For toyota No.1 brings its own problems. Already there has been lots of comments over Toyota’s participation in Daytona. Toyota has been spending on PR exercises in the US for brand building. So watch out for a Pepsi-Coke style battle between Toyota- Gm in the coming days.

The latest sales figures for Consoles indicates that sales of Sony PS3 is down compared to X360 and Wii. While the surprising fact is PS2 sales is as good as PS3. So what went wrong for Sony? PS3 had created a lot of buzz in the media before its release. Wii was the last to arrive in this war of consoles. Sony with its world class research & innovation went down in this war of consoles. People still like PS2 a lot. This was the gaming console that changed the way of games. MS is gearing up for big changes to X360. A company like nitendo with its Wii remote made a big USP for its Console. I think sony should have come out with some USP for PS3. Imagine Apple coming out with a Console. Who knows Steve Jobs might be working on a Console & come out with a gaming console some day soon?

With all the media hype around the budget 2007 & suggestions poring to FM, budget 2007 has disappointed many a lot. We had belived that this budget would be something like the 1997 dream budget. Rather it turned out be simething like Dhoom 2. More was expected in terms of FDI, tax reforms, stock exchange reforms, Infrastructure & others. This budget was done keeping the coming elections. Railway budget is far superior than the general budget. I dont understand why the media should give so much importance to the budget. Every time there is a budget, it will be directed by someone else. Well there is no remedy to such motives keeping budget. This will go on forever. Only when difficulties are faced will we get a dream budget. So hope for economic downturn or something & get a great budget.