Category: Scott Gurvey's Public Offering

This is one of those matches headline writers love and fight promoters wish they could schedule for the ring. Google v. Microsoft, Microsoft v. Google, is there room for both?

This reminds me of the battle in the 1990s between upstart Microsoft and market dominating IBM which, many wags love to claim, was won by Microsoft. The lesson pf those days, they claim, is that Google, now offering products which compete with Microsoft on almost every front, is bound to defeat the reigning software champ just because they are younger, bolder, and cooler.

I spent several hours yesterday pouring over two documents. The first, the Obama Administration's report on Financial Regulatory Reform, outlines a "sweeping overhaul" of the laws and regulations which govern our banking and investment system. The second, the letters written to U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin by people who lost money invested with Barnard Madoff. The letters tell their stories and ask that Judge Chin consider their plight when he sentences Madoff on June 29th.

Go check. Right now. Leave your computer, turn on PBS and make sure we're still there. Oh good, that's a relief.

People have been trying to get us worried for years that the conversion to digital TV was going to deprive us of our television. We delayed the switchover date numerous times. We spent millions in taxpayer dollars to bail-out those who needed to buy a converter box so they could feed over-the-air digital signals into their old analog television sets. And we argued over whether or not Americans have a "right" to TV. This in a country which can't bring itself to acknowledge a right to health care.

And what did we get? Well the over-the-air broadcasters, who a decade or more ago enticed us with visions of ultra-high quality signals and interactive programming have instead given us mostly more of the same. And even though these over-the-air broadcast channels are supposed to be the property of the people, the broadcasters got their new digital channels for free. They did have to give up their old analog channels, which the government is selling. Why these channels are sold instead of rented, which would provide a continuing revenue stream, I've never been able to figure out.

I still like TV. And I like my new wide-screen digital TV even better. But I find virtually all the programs I like are on the cable channels. And it is on the cable channels that the high definition signals really shine. We didn't need to upset the over-the-air broadcasters for that. The reality based junk they keep running looks just as inane in digital as it did before the conversion.

They say a good url is worth a thousand words, but a good url should not run a thousand words. How's that for cute but obscure?

If you are a Facebook member you might want to get up early Saturday and stake your claim to a url in the form facebook.com/yournamehere. Your friends, family and business associates will be able to use that new url instead of the long, obscure link you have been handing out to them and they have been trying to remember.

If you are a company with a fan group based on your name or brand, you can get one of these too. If I've read the rules correctly, and the way they're written frankly I'm not sure, a company must have 1,000 fans to qualify. For individuals the only requirement is that you must be a current Facebook member. New members and new businesses will be able to join the land rush later. By the by, if you are a business Facebook promises to honor your trade mark rights to keep others from grabbing your valuable brand.

Go to facebook.com/usernamefor more info. And while you are logged in, be sure to join the Nightly Business Report group as well, we'd love to have you as a fan.

Thought I'd give a little update on Bing, Microsoft's new search, opps, decision engine which, you recall, I reported on last week.

comScore, which tracks Internet use, has issued a report titled, "Bing Off to a Good Start in First Week of Search Activity". "These initial data suggest that Microsoft Bing has generated early interest, resulting in a spike in search engagement and an immediate term improvement to Microsoft's position in the search market," according to Mike Hurt, comScore senior vice president.

Of course one would expect a lot of people to sample Microsoft's latest foray into the search space. The true measure will come a few months down the road when we see if Bing has won some permanent converts. I'll check back and let you know. Why don't you try Bing and tell me how you like it?

Well... this is interesting. It is never a good idea to second guess the Supreme Court, so we'll just have to wait and see how this develops. But Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has, at the very least. thrown a speed bump in the path of the steam roller which has been driving the Chrysler bankruptcy process.

On Friday the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit gave the OK for most of Chrysler's assets to be acquired by a group headed by Fiat, the Italian auto maker. But the 2nd Circuit stayed its order to give the parties time to appeal to the Supreme Court. Justice Ginsburg, the Justice assigned to first hear such requests in cases from the 2nd Circuit, has now extended the stay at the request of several Indiana pension funds opposed to the deal.

It could be that Ginsburg just wants more time to study the arguments. The Indiana parties claim that the government does not have the legal authority to lend money to a non-financial institution. But it is more likely that she wants to poll the other justices, at least informally, to see if there is enough interest to warrent a review by the entire Court. The Chrysler bankruptcy has raced through the courts with unprecendented speed and a lot fo short cuts were taken. It may well be that the Supremes will be the ones to wave the yellow flag and slow down the process while it checks to see if the rule of law is still being followed.

Some title, huh? Best I could do. What can you say about a month when 345,000 people lost their jobs. Well, you can say it could have been worse. Economists were expecting on average 520,000 jobs to disappear.

In this case one picture, the one you see here, tells the tale.

This year we are seeing a classic "V" pattern of collapse and recovery in the job market. But what of the future? Of course we'd like to see the rebound continue, but Brian Fabri of BNP Parabas told me today he expects to see a sluggish recovery with little job growth all through 2010. That would mean a flatline will grow on the right side of our chart, matching the slow growth period seen in the "tail" already on the left.

If you've been itching to buy a home but have been waiting for mortgage rates to fall even more, I've got some bad news for you. The ship has sailed, the plane has departed, the train has left the station, and whatever old cliché you can think of has occurred.

Don't despair over the recent jump in rates, up a third of a percentage point in just the last week. S&P's David Wyss says it's just the sign of a recovering economy and a return to "normalcy" in the interest rate market. He says "where we are now yields look a lot more realistic" and may well have bottomed for the year. But he doesn't expect them to run-up much higher in the near term.

I could not wait to get into the driver's seat. In Illinois in my day you could get a "learner's permit" when you were 15 1/2 years old. That let you drive with an adult. if you took a driver's education course, you could take the test and get a license at age 16.

The car was my Mom's GM Chevy Caprice. I was armed with my learner's permit and accompanied by my father, who surprised me with his patience in this role as patience was never one of his long suits! But he was an excellant instructor as he put me through my paces in a little used parking lot at 47th Street and the lake in Chicago's Hyde Park.

My Mom was generous with that car, especially as I began to see girls in a new light and discovered that a boy with wheels had a lot more options available when it came to navigating the high school social scene. A few years later, when she was ready to trade the Caprice in she gave it to me and I took it to college for my senior year where it proved equally as effective.

How do you grab the attention of the MTV generation?

The answer, perhaps, is an online game. mtvU, the Internet distributed channel of MTV which is specifically designed for college students teamed up with the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to teach the intricacies of budgeting with a dose of fiscal responsibility thrown in.

The game itself is called Debt Ski and you manage a character named Piggy Banks. You must maneuver through a series of obstacles, maximizing your savings, limiting your debt and maintaining your desired level of happiness while paying bills for necessities like housing and food.