Amazon cuts back

Amazon.com says it will cut back on technology spending and hiring as it tries to transform technology into profitable services. “We expect our year-over-year increase in technology spending to decline during the fourth quarter,” Tom Szkutak, Amazon’s chief finance officer, said in a conference call with analysts. In the third quarter, Amazon tech spending increased 42% to $171mn, while sales increased to $2.31bn, compared to $1.81bn a year ago. Profits, however, slipped 37% compared to the year-ago quarter. And Amazon says the fourth quarter looks good, projecting 22-33% improvements over last year's critical holiday season. (NYT

Data centers are back in the black

Want a sign that Silicon Valley is back? During the dot-com bust, there was over a million square feet of unused data center space. Now, there are more customers than space, the Times reports.

Equinix of Foster City is opening a brand new center in Chicago at a cost of $165 million. Before its opening next year, it's already 95% occupied and will consume 30 megawatts of power.

The cost of power is a huge issue for the technology industry. Data centers are now jamming servers into racks and the power demands have jumped from three to 15 kilowatts per rack. “The first thing we look at is power,” Equinix's Margie Backaus said. “Getting generators today is the No. 1 thing that will drive your construction schedules.”

Consider now, Google's investment in a 1.4 megawatt solar installation. Save the planet? Yeah, sure. But something like that goes right to the bottom line.

Working the Google

Chron blogger Jessica Guynn takes note of a Maria Bartiromo interview with el Presidente and bloggers' piling on of abuse for the slightest of slips. The exchange:

Bartiromo: I'm curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google?

Bush: Occasionally. One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps. It's very interesting to see. I've forgot the name of the program. But you get the satellite, and you can, like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.

The video is here. Using the Google's blogsearch tool, we come up with a starting point for the abuse.

Adobe will spend $100mn to seed Apollo developers

Adobe plans to fund third-party startups to the tune of $100 million to promote its sofware development apps, especially Apollo - Adobe's breakthrough for running Web apps without a browser. in venture funding to promote its software development platforms, with a particular focus on Apollo, which allows people to run Web applications without a browser.

Apollo is like Flash, except it runs outside of the browser, and apps can be written in Ajax, Flash or Flex Builder, Adobe's app for authoring complex Flash-based apps. (News.com)