Ron: Google is a media company. It publishes pages of content with advertising around it. What is so difficult to understand about that?

It is certainly not a tech company. The only "tech" you can buy is a GOOG search appliance, which makes up less than 1 per cent of its revenue.

GOOG is a technology enabled media company. It harvests its content via servers and algorithms. It doesn't have to pay people to create content. That is why it has a very profitable and effective bus

Second on the suggestion that Craig List hurt newspapers more than Google. Just check the regular RPM for local auto/job/rental listing on your local newspaper with $0 RPM "charged" by Craglist, and aggregate the yearly run-rate. You will be surprised.

First time I heard about Dr.Mohammad and Grameen Bank was in my English book back in the middle school and I cannot forget how we loved him for his thoughts and his brilliant ideas.
Now I decided to do one of my master researches in him (as leader) to know more and more about his personality and his ideas that changed people lives.

I still don't understand why you continue to insist that Google is a media company... because they sell advertising? By that definition an airport and a MUNI bus are also media companies.

They are two different models, newspapers create content with their "legions of editors, journalists, photographers, etc," and Google searches and aggregates content using "servers and algorithms." Try as they might, servers don't create content.

Sure, the newspaper business is in trouble, no

Correection: The hyperinflation in Germany was in 1922-23 not in the 1930's

dog is god backwards, how can you doubt?

dog is god backwards, how can you doubt?

This list has nothing to do with influence but attention. There are many people who I know who are influential.

The best influencials are the one's who are invisible.

Half those guys are idiots on the list. Tom: I wouldn't be proud to be on that list.

Wayne: Responsible use of plastic will prevent littering and prevent it from harming animals. Plastic is a very inert substance which means it doesn't react with other substances which means it doesn't release its carbon. Sequestering carbon for many thousands of years is a good thing and I feel that plastic has received a bad rap for the wrong reasons.

Mr. Foremski,

I'm not the best informed scientist concerning plastic, for I am only a high school junior, and it is a very reasonable refutation you have delivered pertaining to carbon emmissons. It would seem better to implement more plastic of some sort, in by creating a material that would stop carbon emmissions, we have reduced carbon pollution and wallah! Problem solved. It would also seem to solve a case scenario with the ammount of trees cut down by allowing an alternative to "

Ka Fung: I can't speak for the author. As for being "too large to fail" then that should qualify for nationalization since it would socialize the profits as well as the losses of such institutions, instead of just the losses.

I'm curious what your stand is on the concept that an institution such as a Bank can be "too large to fail." A little disclosure, I think the idea is a little silly.

Great article. I'm curious, though, I don't think the author mentions the $750B stimulus that Obama wants to put into play (some are saying it'll be at least February before they attempt to get it signed now?). Was this an intention (it didn't get signed) or omission?

Susan: I don't have any investments in anything except this web site. Plastic is very inert, it doesn't react with much at all, which is why it is very good at trapping carbon for thousands of years. Biodegradable plastic returns carbon to the environment very quickly in the form of carbon dioxide. Biodegradable might be better renamed "carbon-returnable."
There is no comparison between the production of plastic and the production of nuclear energy, which is very harmful to the environm

Biodegradable plastic is a good solution but you should really educate yourself on the problems with plastic created from oil, it's effects on human hormones the amount of time it stays around breaking down into smaller and smaller bits. The amount of plastic actually recycled. Plastic is a human horror. the only reason I could imagine anyone making your statements is if they were invested in oil based plastic and blind to reality through human greed. Do you also support nuclear power? Just b

Mroy: The carbon content of plastic is quite high. Plastic is made from polymers-- long chains of carbon and hydrogen--the basic building blocks of oil.

Plastic can be made from vegetable oils, anything that can provide those carbon-hydrogen chains. Fossil fuel oil is the most easily obtained and it doesn't compete with food supplies.

Can you please tell me the carbon content of plastic.

Chrome went out of Beta pretty quick though - didn't that supposedly have to do with Google wanting to package it with PC's, but manufactures not wanting to do so when it is in Beta??

If we're going to use drug analogies, what about alcohol? Going cold turkey with alcohol gives you the DT's which can kill. You can't end up healthier by dying in the process.

This makes complete sense, but isn't it true of much of the high-quality online content AND services we currently get for free? For example, YouTube, or Facebook. Everyone's scratching their heads trying to work out what the business model for these services is - why they're worth the massive prices paid for them. YouTube and advertising don't sit well together, Facebook has already struggled with its attempts to mine its customer base for marketing purposes. The answer is subscriptions,

Here's another missing item that's part of Blackberry but, sadly, missing from iPhone: Telephone number recognition. No matter where there's a phone number entered on a Blackberry (contacts, contact notes, notes, calendar - literally anywhere) the Blackberry recognizes that it's a phone number, underlines it and lets you call with the push of a button. That beats going to my iPhone calendar, memorizing my next appointment's number, exiting calendar, entering phone, calling up the dial pad and