Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

But Who Has Time for This?

Posted on May 1, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

As an abstract matter, Lockergnome’s Price Drops RSS Feeds seem like a great idea. But who has time to monitor these on a regular basis? Not even relatively obsessive price-sensitive consumers like me, that's for sure.

Posted in Internet | 1 Comment

More on Fallujah

Posted on April 30, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

It seems I wasn't real clear in the previous post. I don't mean to suggest that the right answer to the Fallujah crisis was starting a major urban campaign and killing lots of civilians. I do mean to say that:

1. If this is the end state, the seige was a blunder.

2. But, because I don't think the administration is willing to accept the likely consequences of this move — it will be seen as the weakness that it is — I fear even more what this seems likely to lead to, which is bloodier consequences in Fallujah and especially elsewhere. And I suspect that the US administration's response to those facts — when faced with possible widespread chaos as Iraqis decide the US can be driven out — will end up with more casualties on both sides. Therefore, I think that leaving in these circumstances has very bad side-effects. That doesn't mean that turning up the violence (“going in” to urban warfar) made any sense either.

3. Putting a Baathist in charge doesn't seem real smart unless he's a very unusal one. Is this a calculation that Baathists are better than Islamicists? Is the best-case exit scenario now reduced to a Saddam-like regime without Saddam? Is Saddam lite really the best we can do?

Posted in Iraq | Comments Off on More on Fallujah

Another Such Victory and We Are Undone

Posted on April 30, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

George W. Bush today, defending the famous flight suit speech announcing the end of major combat operation in Iraq:

“we're making progress, you bet” in bringing stability to Iraq.

What the grunts say about about today's pullout from Fallujah, turning the town over to a Baathist general (source: UK Daily Telegraph, Saddam's man takes over in Fallujah )(reg. req.):

Many ordinary marines said they did not believe the initiative would work and it could endanger their lives when they had to revert to the “plan A” of a full-scale offensive to take Fallujah.

“Honestly, I don't think they're going to be able to do it,” said Cpl Elias Chavez, 28.

“We had the insurgents cordoned off, they couldn't go anywhere, we had a chance to get them. Now they can flee wherever they want and we're still going to have to deal with them.”

He said the new force, largely made up of Fallujah residents, would be unlikely to apprehend or clamp down on anti-coalition fighters.

By leaving without defeating the insurgents, their deployment since April 5, following the killing and mutilation of four US defence contractors, “was a waste of time, of resources and of lives”.

“Everyone feels the same, especially those who know someone who was killed.”

L Cpl Julius Wright, 20, said: “Now it's going to get worse. We pulled out when we should of gone in.”

I'm with the grunts on this one. This is “progress”?

Posted in Iraq | 1 Comment

Characteristically Funny

Posted on April 30, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

After a week or two of trying (and failing) to be fair and balanced by finding a flaw in Firefox to match the problems with IE, User Friendly explains why we don't have Lynx -friendly cartoons.

Posted in Completely Different | Comments Off on Characteristically Funny

Joi Ito: Did Google Help China Censor Search Results?

Posted on April 30, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Not trying to make this an all Google day, but given what a clean reputation google has, and given all the stuff in their IPO about how they plan to Be Good and not be short-termists, it's a little disturbing to read this Joi Ito item collating various bits of info suggesting that Google colludes in government censorship.

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Joi Ito: Did Google Help China Censor Search Results?

Venturpreneur Throws Cold Water on Google IPO

Posted on April 30, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

The Venturpreneur is an interesting blog I stumbled on last week. Now I discover that the author is Gordon Smith, someone I met in Tilburg, the Netherlands (not as strange a place as it may sound for two Americans to meet — Tilburg, along with Amsterdam, is an Internet studies powerhouse).

Gordon is now a law professor at Wisconsin, and he's writting some provocative comments today about the new Google IPO:

The Growth Story: Selling stock in an IPO is not about convincing people that your present performance is stellar. It is about your growth story. People who invest in IPO shares are hoping that your company will become the next Microsoft. A compelling vision is crucial. I have been reading the prospectus for clues about Google's growth story, and this is what I have found.

…

Bottom line: The prospectus is worse than I imagined it could be. I assumed Google would have a difficult time telling a growth story, but I thought that they would give it the old college try. Instead, their growth story is nothing more than a celebration of past accomplishments. “Don't you just love our search technology?!”

Yahoo is currently trading at a price/earnings ratio of approximately 125. Google is currently less efficient at servicing the bottom line, and it admits that operating margins will decline. In the face of these realities, it will need to achieve a price/earnings ratio higher than Yahoo's to obtain the kind of valuations projected over the last few days. While it may reach such lofty heights if retail investors get overly enthusiastic, those prices are not sustainable under any scenario contemplated in the prospectus.

I hope this is pessimistic, although it certainly seems right as far as I can tell. I'd like the first major IPO which is run on a pure public auction, without huge margins to the parasites investment banks, to be a stunning success.

Update: John Battele's take on the IPO

Posted in Econ & Money | 2 Comments