Bambi Francisco

True colors

It is profound what being a public company can do to the core values of a young company. It was less than two years ago that Google Inc. co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin thumbed their noses at the U.S. investment banking community with an auction-based IPO and their pledge not to cave in to the short-term demands of Wall Street.

Their mantra was "do no evil," and the company's mission statement still says Google's goal is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Even with one of the largest market valuations of any U.S. company, Google (GOOG: news, chart, profile) tries to set itself apart from its rivals -- Yahoo (YHOO: news, chart, profile) , Microsoft's (MSFT: news, chart, profile) MSN and Time Warner's (TWX: news, chart, profile) AOL -- by underscoring its high-minded philosophical goal to "resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value."

It passionately claims that, "Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site."

Yet Google's announcement Tuesday that it will comply with China's repressive laws by doctoring its search results in that country makes a mockery of those values.

Google is making a sacrifice, and a big one at that, risking its democratic image for more access in a country that will contribute very little business in the near future. Right move for shareholders? Possibly. Ironic move? Yes. Noble move? Hardly. Maybe China's riches are worth it. I don't think so. But when you've tasted billions -- like Brin and Page -- I guess you can hire a boatload of attorneys to justify any choices you make.

A successful serial entrepreneur friend once said that when starting a business, one has to know whether they're doing it because they want to change the world in a good way, or because they want to make money. It's one or the other, not both. He is right. We often have lofty goals. We often remind ourselves of them, as Google does of its own. But more often than not we fail to achieve them. The world changes us far more than we can change it.

Watch my interview with Kurt Opsahl, an attorney at EFF

Read Net Sense on MarketWatch

The network effect of photo sharing

If you're like me, you've taken countless videos and photos during the holidays.  Unfortunately, if you're like me, these photos are likely scattered across a number of camera phones, memory cards, digital cameras, photo-sharing services and old computers. A year or two ago, I wouldn't have guessed at how much messier our digital mess would get. Today, not only are we trying to organize our photos and videos, we're trying to organize the photos and videos friends want to share with us. I guess it's what's to be expected in this collaborative and open-source Internet world.

Consider this: People take about 2,000 digital photos a year, according to Lars Perkins, who founded Picasa, which was bought by Google. Digital camera sales topped 50 million in 2003, according to PMA Marketing Research. So, if you've been putting your photos online since then, you'd have roughly 6,000 photos to manage by today.

Read Net Sense on MarketWatch

I'm testing out various services to see which one offers the easiest solution for me to share my videos from my Treo camera phone and digital camera. So far, my blogs pretty effective. The only problem is that this blog is pretty public. I'm sharing these personal videos that I took at a recent Rolling Stones concert as part of my commentary this weekend on MarketWatch's business magazine show. 

Mick Jagger at the Rolling Stones concert in San Francisco

More of the Stones

Where does Google trade post-results?

Does Google trade below $400? Does it trade below $450? Does it trade between $450 and $500? Does it trade above $500?

Pushing content

Max Levchin co-founded PayPal, and stayed with the company through its IPO and sale to eBay. Clearly, Levchin has experienced building a startup in a very competitive sector. Now he finds himself in yet another crowded sector - photo sharing. I asked him if he's applying any lessons he learned from his PayPal days. He said that what's he learned is that having an idea is 2% of what it takes to win, 98% is execution.

Watch my interview Max levchin about Slide

Watch my interview with Guy Kawasaki about Filmloop

Google expanding into radio

Why is Google pushing into radio? Why not? It's an advertising company, after all. And, radio is not dead. It'll be consumed on the Web eventually, and ad dollars will support it. For now, advertisers still like radio - and they really like local. Marketers are on track to place about $15.6 billion into local radio vs. $3.4 billion in national radio in 2005, according to the figures from the Radio Advertising Bureau. See RAB site

Google's purchase of dMarc Technologies, a company that automates the process between advertisers and radio stations, will at least give the search engine the technology and relationships with radio stations. Ryan Steelberg, president of dMarc Technologies, told me that his company has 100 employees and several thousand radio-station customers. There are about 13,000 radio stations across the country. Oh, and Google paid $102 million in cash, with a maximum amount of $1.136 billion over the next three years. Is that expensive? It depends on the financials. Steelberg won't disclose them, nor would he say how much venture financing the company took since its inception in 2002.

Speaking of radio, check out Pandora.

Google News on Slide

Images often do a better job telling a story or capturing our attention. In this case, Google News is delivered to me via images. This feed was created by a member of Slide, a new photo-sharing service where you can share your photos or images from across the Web. What I like about Slide is that I can get my favorite images pushed to me. In this example of Slide, someone created an RSS feed of Google News. Click on the images and you'll land on the story that goes with the image. I'm not sure if it's my preferred way of receiving news, but so far I like it. What I'd really like is a slide of The New Yorker cartoons.

The startup evangelist

At $140 billion, Google is now worth more than IBM. It's twice as large as Apple, and it's equal to the market values of Yahoo, eBay and Amazon.com combined.  If  you're an entrepreneur, should you try to create a company to sell to Google or the other big Internet companies, or should you be more ambitious and set your sites on building more than a feature?

For that I asked Guy Kawasaki, a venture capitalist at Garage Technology Ventures.

Watch my interview with Guy.

In 2005, U.S. venture-capital funds raised $22.4 billion, up 32% from a year ago, according to Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst.

CES vs. Apple

Apple shares on Tuesday shot up above $80 -  a record high - after Steve Jobs said Apple sold 14 million iPods in the December quarter.  Apple is holding its annual Macworld conference in San Francisco. Apple also sold 850 million songs through its popular iTunes service, giving Apple 83% of the market for legal music downloads, according to Jobs.  Read story by Rex Crum on MarketWatch

At the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas last week, I sought to find out what the consumer electronic industry was doing to catch up with Apple.

At CES, John Starkweather, a Microsoft product manager, showed me the new Windows-enabled portable media devices offered by Microsoft partners LG Electronics, Toshiba and Tatung.  They're designed to compete with Apple's line of mobile devices.

Watch interview with Starkweather

At CES, Google announced its Video Store to compete with Apple's iTunes. I spoke with Jennifer Feikin, director of Google Video.

Watch interview with Feikin

After having been at CES last week, I walked away very much an Apple fan.

Can CES take a bite out of Apple?

Digital video wars

AOL just bought startup Truveo, a video search company that I've written about a number of times. In my opinion, it's done a far better job finding and organizing video online. To be sure, the experience on Google Video is far superior since Google hosts the video and uses its own player.  Truveo directs traffic to the owner of the content, which means your computer has to be compatible with multiple players. Truveo's initial role will be to crawl the Web for great video content that AOL's current search technology can't find. Truveo sold for less than $100 million, but more than the price that AOL paid for Weblogs, which was about $30 million.

Watch Truveo view from MarketWatch Weekend

Google vs. Apple

Google is set to announce on Friday that it will be offering CBS content to its users to purchase. It's not surprising that Google would finally get one media giant to test out Google as a distribution platform. It's been trying for months. And, it'll likely be that Google will be able to secure content from other media giants as well. After all, media companies need to get their content everywhere, and Google is one of the biggest distribution platforms on the Web. The question is whether CBS agreed to a 99-cent rental model or a $1.99-purchase model. Since CBS has already struck a deal with Comcast to offer certain video for rent, it's my guess that the model will be mostly rental.