Amazon

EIC Squared: Amazon's Kindle, iPhone, and Dell laptops

On this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet Editor in Chief Larry Dignan and I debate whether Amazon.com's Kindle e-reader is the next iPhone.

That is a big stretch, especially given the way the iPhone has turned the smartphone business on its head, at least from a product design standpoint. The Kindle is a nice product, and Amazon could bring music, video, and other kinds of content to the device, but it's doesn't have the Steve Jobs touch.

In addition, all the talk about Kindle's skyrocketing sales doesn't ring true. If the Kindle were … Read more

EIC Squared: Microsoft's plans, Icahn's seat, Facebook Connect and more

On this week's EIC Squared podcast, ZDNet Editor in Chief Larry Dignan and I discuss the news of the week. It was a big week for Microsoft, with several announcements and teases from its meeting in Seattle with financial analysts. Steve Ballmer is still bullish on the online space, but not on Yahoo. We also talk about Kevin Johnson's departure from Microsoft. (See coverage on the Microsoft financial analyst meeting from Ina Fried and Mary Jo Foley.)

We spend a few minutes debating the impact of Carl Icahn joining the Yahoo board and what it means for Jerry … Read more

Amazon's blueprint for cloud computing

In the early morning at Structure 08, AMR Research's Jonathan Yarmis described various tech trends around cloud computing. Mendel Rosenblum, a founder and technical lead behind VMware, outlined the role of virtualization in data centers.

Now Werner Vogels, vice president and CTO at Amazon.com, is talking about why Amazon is in the cloud computing business, how it got there, and why customers should want it. Instead of every company or developer doing the heavy lifting, dealing with the "muck" as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos likes to say, Amazon opened up its software-as-a-service stack (Amazon Web Services) … Read more

Survival of the fittest: Google and Amazon

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay is betting that Google and Amazon.com will loom as the two giants of Internet. According to Lindsay's report, "U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning," cited by Reuters, "Both Google and Amazon.com are still racking up annual growth rates in the 30-40 percent range, with only a relatively modest slowdown in sight."

Given how those two companies own their respective fields, it's not a stretch to forecast them as long-term winners in the coming years. Google and Amazon have done the best job of creating … Read more

Amazon's Jeff Bezos: A passion for Kindle and digital content delivery

CARLSBAD, Calif.--Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos kicked off the morning proceedings here at D6 after a night of polite carousing by industry luminaries. During the interview with D co-host Walt Mossberg, Bezos announced a streaming-video service and explained his foray into hardware with the Kindle e-book reader.

On the subject of video and music delivery, Bezos said, "We are working on a new version of video-on-demand, a for-pay streaming service we will release in the next couple of weeks. The streaming service will start instantly, and it's a la carte, for pay."

Regarding competing … Read more

Tech firms rule Top 100 brand list

Google still rules Millward Brown Optimor's annual BrandZ top 100 list, which annoints the world's most powerful brands based on financial performance and a global consumer-opinion survey.

Technology-related companies did especially well, taking more than one-third of the top 30 spots.

No. 7 Apple was a big mover, increasing its brand value by 123 percent, and BlackBerry (from Research In Motion) increased 390 percent, positioned at No. 51. The staid IBM's brand value increased 65 percent, and Amazon.com, at No. 61, was up 93 percent.

On the downside, No. 62 Yahoo took a 13 percent brand … Read more

Web 2.5: The emergence of platforms-as-a-service

On the road to the elusive Web 3.0 (something to do with semantics, meaning, and context rather than just data, links, and AJAX), core infrastructure is beginning to move from the edge to a center inhabited by companies such as Amazon, Salesforce.com, Joyent, and now Google with its new App Engine.

Call it Web 2.5, where the platform-as-a-service providers allow developers to create Web applications via the cloud and for users to consume them on any Web-connected device, anytime and anywhere. It eliminates what Amazon's Jeff Bezos describes as the "muck," the undifferentiated heavy … Read more

Is Google bringing BigTable out of the closet?

TechCrunch is speculating that Google may begin the first major phase of becoming an infrastructure provider for developers by exposing its BigTable data storage system as a Web service. This service would be similar to Amazon's SimpleDB service, which automatically indexes data and provides an API for storage and access.

I've queried Google on this potential news and await a response. Given Google's prowess at delivering applications from the cloud, it's logical to expect the company to become a platform for application services, with APIs for storage, compute cycles and databases--similar to what Amazon has done … Read more

Amazon reports its best holiday season ever

Online shopping was more prevalent than ever this holiday season and Amazon was right there to cash in. Today, Amazon issued a press release, with some interesting numbers and facts about its "best season ever."

Their busiest day was December 10th, on which they sold 5.4 million items, that's 62.5 items sold per second. Amazon also shipped items out to over 200 countries this season. Here's some more interesting facts and bestsellers that Amazon shares with us.… Read more