> It wouldn’t surprise me to see more such quick-let’s-add-some-page-views-to-our-arsenal deals.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see Huffington Post’s main — and perhaps better — rival, Politco, get acquired over the next twelve months. I would predict MSNBC as a likely candidate to acquire them. People are obviously in quite a tizzy over AOL’s acquisition of the Huffington Post. I say good for Ariana. She made a good business deal for herself. Shrewd business move. And as the linked article above rightly points out, perfect timing. If she had waited any longer, she would surely have left money on the table.

The bigger implication of all these recent mergers and acquisitions, if you ask me, is that we’re finally seeing the dying gasps of the page view model of monetizing information on the web. And it’s about time.

I can’t believe it’s taking so many smart people so long to figure out that page views are essentially worthless. Facebook and Twitter figured this out a long time ago, of course, but the rest of the world still thinks that tossing in ads at pennies per view is still a good way to monetize content on the web. It’s not.

Didn’t we learn this lesson at the end of the first Internet bubble? Apparently not.

It’s becoming a very predictable cycle. Web startups give everything away for free, training their audience to expect everything to be free. Venture capitalists throw millions at these companies, because they have a lot of money and love to stroke their egos thinking they’re going to be responsible for the “next big thing.” A few years go by, and suddenly someone realizes that they eventually have to figure out how to make money. So they run to their old friend, the web ad. They start with one or two ads, then five or six, then they split the articles into several pages to have more ads, then the ads start blocking the view of the content, and then the ads BECOME the content. At this point, the users start flocking to other sites with fewer ads, or they start using news aggregators, RSS readers, Instapaper—whatever they can to view the actual content and avoid the ads. Because they still think that everything should be free. And why not? That’s what you told them.

Right now we’re seeing the next phase of the bubble cycle: the big mergers and acquisitions. The previous generation’s dot com survivors, the Yahoos and the AOLs, start buying today’s generation of successful startups, in a vain attempt to get some of their old mojo back. But what usually happens as a result of these buyouts is that one or two people get rich, while the company that was bought gets poisoned by the old establishment bureaucracy. (Delicious, anyone?) Everything that made that smaller startup successful, the passion for success, the devotion to the content and the users, suddenly gets overtaken by the sole focus on making money.

Sooner or later, the venture capitalists losing money lose interest in the Internet, and start putting their money back into “safer” investments. The whole thing comes crashing down, leaving a few recognizable brands to become the next bubble’s old establishment.

The first bubble saw the birth of Amazon, Google, AOL, EBay, Yahoo. Just a handful of companies that survived the armageddon. This time, we’ll surely see Facebook, Twitter, maybe one or two others. Everything else will be a footnote in history. A Pets.com, if you will.

And I’d be surprised if some of the “established” companies from the last generation survive this one. AOL is surely flailing in desperation, although it’s been here before. Yahoo is on its way out.

And, I’d argue, probably very controversially, that Google is in big trouble this time around, too. All of Google’s income is tied up in web ads, so if web ads become worthless again, where does that leave Google? Not to mention that people are just starting to come around to the idea that Google’s main product—Search—ain’t what it used to be. Rather than improving their search, they seem to be hell bent on criticizing competitors, accusing them of copying their ideas, etc. Never a good sign.

There’s a scene in “The Social Network” where the Zuckerberg character tells his partner that they can’t put ads on Facebook, because “then it won’t be cool anymore.” People recognize the hard sell, the blatant product placement, and they immediately think you’re lame. And then they stop showing up. They go somewhere cooler. That’s what we’re seeing here.

The future of monetizing the Internet is the soft sell.Recommendations from a friend are always going to trump the used car salesman approach. The sooner people figure that out, the sooner this next bubble is going to burst. And the sooner we can get on with the next big thing, whatever that is.

> The proposal submitted by the Central Laborers’ Pension Fund asks that Apple’s board of directors adopt and disclose a detailed succession planning policy that would require annual public reports on succession planning. Apple’s board opposes the proposal. In a January [filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission](http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/320193/000119312511003231/ddef14a.htm), the company said it’s already implemented succession planning. Publicly disclosing succession information would give competitors an unfair advantage and hurt efforts to recruit and retain executives, Apple argues. I love how these piss-ants think they have a right to tell Apple they don’t know how to plan properly for the future. How about you look at the track record of the last decade and put a little trust in the people running the show, rather than questioning their judgement? They’re literally the only team in tech that knows what its doing, and you’re coming at them from the outside with no knowledge whatsoever and questioning the way they’re handling this? That takes some serious balls.

The shareholders, myself included, have done just fine over the last several years with Apple. If you don’t like how Apple is handling its future plans, feel free to sell your shares and buy some Microsoft. It’ll be your loss.

> That suggests most the growth in “Android” numbers is coming from no-name vendors selling devices in countries such as China, using devices that don’t support Google’s development of the OS (via ads or search services) nor even expand the platform in any meaningful way that could benefit Android users. > > Samsung, the most noteworthy Android smartphone developer and the only licensee to ship a well-known Android tablet, just [reported](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/28/samsung-idINTOE70O03F20110128) its weakest profits in six quarters, and was hit by reports that it had overstated the sales of its Galaxy Tab to consumers. A new crop of tablets running Android 3.0 will deliver an entirely new user interface unfamiliar to existing Android smartphone users. If you want to win the numbers game, it helps to fake the numbers. Google is getting credit for millions of “Android” sales that aren’t Android devices at all. If you’re going to count Tapas and OMS devices as Android devices, you might as well count any Linux derivative device as an Android sale, too. Heck, why not throw in RIM sales, while you’re at it?

Meanwhile, Samsung is using the old Microsoft trick of shipping millions of units to stores and counting them all as sold, even though the vast majority of those units are doomed to be part of a fire sale when the Galaxy Tab 2 is debuted in a few months.

All of this, because Wall Street and most of the rest of the business world is still caught up in this ridiculous notion of “market share” as the be all and end all of success in the technology sector. And Google is playing them all for suckers.

How long before the bottom drops out of Android and the world realizes that there’s no real platform there? How long before people take a look around on the streets and on the subway and realize that there’s no way Android is selling as well as everyone claims?

For the ninetieth time, people, history is not repeating itself. The business model of Microsoft is over; the tech world is nothing like it was in the 80s and 90s. There will probably not be one dominant player in the mobile space. Instead, there will be many different choices, which is great for everyone.

Meanwhile, Apple will take all the profit while every other company fights over the last few shekels.

> In Tuesday’s demonstration, Transportation Security staffers walked into one of the newly configured machines and stopped with their arms raised, as passenger being scanned are asked to do. A small video monitor near the unit’s exit displayed the results for both the passenger and the security officer operating the machine. > > Those who deliberately carried objects were detected and portrayed as generic human outlines, with regions of their body highlighted by a box indicating additional security attention was warranted. > > Those who carried no questionable objects saw a screen that was green with “OK” in the middle. > > Pistole acknowledged Transportation Security workers will no longer be able to see the shape and size of the questionable objects that are detected by the machines. > > “That’s one of the things we’ll be assessing in our pilot testing at the three airports,” he said. “How do the security officers engage the passenger based on what they’re seeing, and is there any diminution of efficiency in terms of what we’re doing?” The TSA is banking on this software upgrade quieting criticisms of the full-body scanners. And it does help, as far as privacy concerns go. But there are still at least two remaining reasons why the scanners need to be eliminated altogether. First, there are medical questions about the radiation exposure that have not been completely addressed, especially for frequent travelers and airline staff. And second, there’s still the notion of an “illegal search” to be considered. We do have a right not to be treated as criminals without suspicion in this country, people.

Does the Tea Party have its head so far up it’s ass on the Second Amendment that it’s forgotten about the Fourth? Where’s the protest on this one?

And the most important reason of all, of course, is that these expensive contraptions DON’T MAKE ANYONE SAFER. They just make lobbyists richer.

> Apple’s second statement indicates that this is indeed the case—*sort of*. If an app lets users access content that they purchased via Amazon’s website, for example, then that same app must also let users buy the same book via Apple’s own in-app purchase system. If the app developer doesn’t want to use Apple’s in-app purchases to sell content, then the app can’t access content purchased elsewhere either. Okay, in light of Apple’s official response to this controversy, I’m a bit confused. I still get why they want a cut from apps that sell things within the app, but I’m not sure they’ve thought through the implications of REQUIRING a parallel in-app purchase for anything that could be purchased from outside the app.

If you give people the option of buying something in-app or being sent out to the web to purchase, the user is going to choose the in-app almost every time. They’re not going to think about the 30% cut much, because it doesn’t matter to them directly. So it’s silly to think that developers will include both options. Unless they sell via the web store at a discount, which is just confusing and complicating for the user.

One thing that I don’t think is crystal clear yet: are they talking only about eBooks here, or are they talking about anything that gets sold within an app? Is it only for items that compete directly with an Apple business? Like music, books, etc? Where do they draw the line?

As I said before, an app like Dropbox technically gives you access to previously purchased content. I can put music in my Dropbox that I bought on Amazon. And I didn’t pay for my Dropbox subscription via an in-app purchase. Does that mean that Dropbox will be banned now, unless it offers the option to purchase a Dropbox subscription within the app?

I can’t imagine Apple would expect to take a cut from purchases of physical items made through Amazon’s Windowshop app. But maybe they do.

Seems like it’s time for Apple to solidify its intentions and get an update to the store guidelines as soon as possible. I don’t think we’ve heard the end of this one yet.