IBM sells $3.9 billion in corporate bonds

IBM Corp. sold $3.9 billion in bonds on Thursday, a sign that the stalwarts of the corporate world are still finding lenders."The markets were open to us at this time, so we decided to enter," said IBM spokesman Doug Shelton. He added that it was an opportunity to cover pending maturities as the company enters the fourth quarter and approaches the new year.Late Wednesday, the Armonk, N.Y.-based tech company gave Wall Street an early glimpse into its quarterly results, reporting a better-than-expected profit.

Shares of IBM fell $1.55, or 1.7 percent, to close at $89 on Thursday. That was a smaller drop than the 7.3 percent decline in the Dow Jones industrial average, which includes IBM, and the 5.3 percent decrease in the technology-laden Nasdaq composite index.Still, analysts have expressed concern that IBM could have problems in the fourth quarter and into 2009 if the lending and spending environment deteriorates, as many expect it will.

IBM's bond sale was in three parts: $1.4 billion of 5-year notes, $1.5 billion of 10-year notes, and $1 billion of 30-year bonds. Those bonds had rates of 3.875 percent over Treasuries for the 5-year and 10-year notes, and 4.00 percent over Treasuries for the 30-year bonds.

It was the second major corporate bond sale to go forward since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September. Last month, Caterpillar Inc. issued nearly $1.3 billion in notes with rates of 7.05 percent and 6.2 percent.

Google-Yahoo Ad Deal Put on Hold

Google-Yahoo Ad partnership deal was announced in June and was set for implementation from October. But was opposed by Association of National Advertisers (ANA) saying that such deal may undermine interests of advertisers and lead to lack of competition. All Yahoo intended was to make up for the lost mile while Google wanted to be helping hand with returns over investment, of course.

Both companies have now decided to delay their ad deal implementation as they are still in conversation with the US Department of Justice, AntiTrust division.

Yahoo said in a statement, "We have had discussions with regulators and look forward to responding to their questions about this agreement". Further to that Google issued similar statement, "When we announced our advertising agreement with Yahoo in June we agreed to delay its implementation until October to give regulators time to look at the details."

With this deal, advertisers feared that Yahoo's online advertising space would become costly since Google would put up their ads on Yahoo. Hence, the deal was expected to delay by a month however the deal is still expected in October. "We're gratified that Google and Yahoo are delaying", said Bob Liodice, president-CEO of ANA.

Yahoo's partnership with Google will lead to attracting more consumers who'll actually buy the products they want and advertisers on the other hand will get what they're looking for. Advertisements are sold by auctions hence very less price control is possible.

However, the delay in ad deal implementation by Google-Yahoo may not favor them entirely. Both may have a tough time getting a clean cheat over the deal and if they're ready to delay there must be something really serious in the deal, said an antitrust lawyer involved in escorting mergers to Justice Department.

Along with this, details about Yahoo-AOL merger deal spice up the web where Yahoo is speculated to take over AOL's content, services and advertising business. If this happens, Yahoo will obviously gain more footage in the search market and along with that AOL will earn handsomely based on Yahoo's advertising platform technology. Even Yahoo-AOL's combined email and instant messaging will bother Microsoft a bit. Microsoft might've denied the historical buy out of Yahoo but showed interested if Yahoo-AOL merger turned into reality.

The context of concern still remains the same. Yahoo needs competitive and unique search advertising technology for long term survival.

Google Chrome = Dead, Google Search = Hot

Last week, Computerworld reported that Chrome's market share has slipped again - now fighting for a fourth spot with the Opera browser. That means IE, Firefox, and Safari are trudging on the fledgling Google browser, which has just a .7 market share, according to Net Applications. I think the browser has now almost become inconsequential, a bright blip that has faded faster than my summer tan.


But was there really any hope? I wrote about all of the challenges facing Chrome recently, but I think the biggest challenge by far is compatibility. Web developers know that you had better make sure your site works with IE, and it probably better work with Firefox. Adding another one to the list is a losing proposition - how many more hours of coding should they do for a browser with a .7 market share? I understand WC3 support, but in the open market of Web browsers, it's about more than just standards. The fact is, anytime a user tries to fire up Cinemanow.com and finds that Chrome doesn't work, it's like a stop sign on the Internet - it makes the average surfer wonder: why am I using Chrome at all? It leaves an indelible impression on them and they eventually switch back.

It's time for a post-mortem. For one thing, Google is known primarily as a search giant. People don't equate search with the browser platform. A browser is the shell for Web sites, but they don't wake up in the morning and think, man, I really need to get a new browser so I can search the Internet better. No, they go to Google.com and start typing. And, they do this many multiple times per day, all year long.

I noticed that, last week, when Google released an updated to their Blog search engine, that it started working right out of the box. I now use it just as much as Techmeme and Technorati. My own blog posts, such as this one last week about Sarah Palin, showed up in the search listing at Google Blog Search just a hair faster than other blog search tools. Google knows how to do search, they have the best algorithms in the business. This is a market they can dominate. (By the way, does anyone remember Cuil? It's funny: former Google employees taking on Google in the market where they are way more dominant than Microsoft. Brilliant.)

Chrome was intended (notice I am speaking in the past tense) as a kind of operating system for the future Web. I think it made a huge splash, but not as big as Google wanted. I don't think the engineers, let alone the co-founders, were sitting in a conference room saying, I sure hope we have a .7 market share in October! The company is not known for thinking small. They want to own the smartphone market, not just become a bit player that fawns at the feet of the iPhone.

So, what's next for Chrome? I think it's destined to become a developer platform, a tool that coders use to test speed benchmarks against the "real" browsers, just for fun. IE and Firefox are never going to clear the path for Chrome, at least not this year, or next. My prediction: by early next year, Google may even pull the plug on Chrome and say, sorry - we agree that Chrome was kind of lame.

Google 10 Birthday

The Google doodle tradition started a long time ago (in summer 1999, in fact) when Larry and Sergey put a stick figure on the homepage to signify that they were out of the office at Burning Man. Nothing against stick figures, but our logo designs have become rather more varied since then. Today you’ll see a special design that commemorates our 10th birthday. We’ve incorporated a little bit of history by using the original Google logo from 1998. And since everyone keeps asking what we’d like for our birthday (besides cake and party hats) — the first thing we thought of was a nice new server rack.