Buffett falls for free ride Google

I'm scared...

amanfrommars almost made perfect sense there... luckily saved it with that last sentence.

Google are doomed

According to Rita Katz at the SITE institute, all terrorists need to do to promote themselves is make a video and put it somewhere on the net and eyeballs of intelligent folks are immediately drawn to those sites by magic and converted to durka durka jihadists.

Ergo.... it follows that Google are doomed! Now that people realize that it isn't sex that sells, it's jihadist propaganda, they'll start making adverts for Jihadists....

"Fedex, for when that letter bomb absolutely has to be there on time"

But then who needs Google to market their products? Nobody! Hence Google are doomed!

Stay away from the chips?

Warren Buffet's is suffering with the current housing climate, it's understandable he would for other industries to invest. Technology his not his forte.

Advice:

Warren, stay away from the chips?

Duh...

"The costly information plants of these technology giants eat up just as much energy as, say, an aluminum smelting center(e - sp X 10).."

Crikey, paradigm shifts do pay dividends, can you spell "Virtuali[s|z]ation"? No? Look, bright light in the sky, argh, crater marking the end of the industrialists...

@amanfrommars

I'd like to know what you drink, smoke, eat mate as I'd love for my brain to be in a complete spin constantly as yours appears to be.

As for the data centers/smelters, what are MS/Google going to do when there's no more land in the areas with cheap electricity as tis going to happen soon.

"Data smelter" != “climate computer"

What Simon advocates is efficient use of computing vs energy, and I would not call them data smelters. A smelter produces a useful product. What comes out of a lot of these energy-to-bits conversion facilities is crap.

Microsoft is building data centers near Washington's Grand Coulee Dam for their power. And just who wants to use their services? Not enough people to justify their construction. Microsoft is good at wasting the money it makes from Windows and Office. MSN hasn't made a dime, and it probably never will.

Buffett needs to get an accountant to look at the return on investment for these money pits. Once he does some simple accounting, he will quickly see that Web 2.0 and fluffy-minded computing is not a good investment. Google makes its money from advertising. Can Microsoft take a chunk out of that? I'm not sure they can.

Google came up with a great solution to a sticky problem. Microsoft has done well with "me, too" but they aren't finding any real solutions to serious problems. Microsoft does not have an internal culture of innovation. Far from it, the culture works to stifle innovation and discourage success. Good people are motivated into leaving Microsoft. This is why Ballmer is trying to buy innovation, even if it is failing innovation (like Yahoo!).

Do your homework, Mr. Buffett, and keep your money in your pocket.

What Makes Business Sense?

This reality of high infrastructure costs could ultimately put the lid on things like Google Apps --- office suites run just fine on home PCs without networks, there' s no need to run them "in the clouds." On the other hand, storing and searching large databases (like Google's web index) is what data centers are really good at. There will certainly be a need for these kinds of services. But I would not be surprised if Google+MS+Yahoo are overbuilding the infrastructure at this point.