I'm a business and technology columnist at the San Jose Mercury News where I think about innovation in Silicon Valley. I also run The Next Newsroom Project where I think about the future of journalism. This site aggregates all my online writings and conversations.
// August 6th, 2010 // Comments Off // Apple, Innovation, O'Brien, Silicon Beat, Strategy, facebook, google
Since the announcement that it was killing Google Wave, Google has turned on the spin by proclaiming how they “celebrate our failures.” There is a lot to admire about Google, and one of those things is its ability to experiment and, as CEO Eric Schmidt said, “try things.” It’s not just hard for many organizations [...]
// August 2nd, 2010 // Comments Off // Innovation, Silicon Beat, Strategy
With everyone talking breathlessly about cloud computing, it seems I rarely hear this mega-trend being called into question. The advantages of moving your computing onto the Internet seem clear: Lower costs, more efficient management of resources. What’s not to like?
According to BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker, the answer is: Plenty.
I had a fascinating conversation with Klinker [...]
// August 2nd, 2010 // Comments Off // Innovation, Silicon Beat, Strategy
With everyone talking breathlessly about cloud computing, it seems I rarely hear this mega-trend being called into question. The advantages of moving your computing onto the Internet seem clear: Lower costs, more efficient management of resources. What’s not to like?
According to BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker, the answer is: Plenty.
I had a fascinating conversation with Klinker [...]
// June 9th, 2010 // Comments Off // O'Brien, Policy, Silicon Beat, Strategy
During much of the election, the tech world’s attention has focused on former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in their respective gubernatorial and senate races. Both had big war chests, and both won big. Now we’ll see if they can do the same in the general election.
But there were [...]
// May 14th, 2010 // Comments Off // O'Brien, Silicon Beat, Strategy
Call me an securities filings nerd, but one of my favorite things about any merger of public companies is when they file the “background of the merger” proxy. Today, Palm filed its latest proxy giving us the details of events that led to the merger with Hewlett-Packard. I’m still digesting the timeline, but in a [...]
// May 3rd, 2010 // Comments Off // O'Brien, Silicon Beat, Strategy, Technology
Now that I’ve had time to digest the news of Hewlett-Packard’s $1.2 billion acquistion of Palm, I’ve been thinking more about the man who sits at the heart of this deal:
Jon Rubinstein.
He’s hardly a household name in Silicon Valley. But in many ways, he’s got more on the line here than anyone else in the [...]
// April 28th, 2010 // Comments Off // O'Brien, Silicon Beat, Strategy, techcrunch
UPDATE: I just got a call from someone close to Elevation Partners who walked me through the numbers. Bottom line: Elevation expects to receive $485 million from the HP deal for the $460 million it invested.
Why? The original $325 million that Elevation invested was guaranteed in the event of an exit. In other words, out [...]
// April 23rd, 2010 // Comments Off // O'Brien, Silicon Beat, Strategy, flip
The news (or at least the leaks and rumors) surrounding Palm seem to be only getting worse. Today, reports have emerged that Asian wireless companies HTC and Huawei declined to bid on Palm. The speculation now is that Chinese PC maker Lenovo is the front runner.
At the same time, Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein insisted the company could [...]
// April 21st, 2010 // Comments Off // 1, Innovation, O'Brien, Silicon Beat, Social Media, Strategy, facebook, google
After spending the morning at f8, the Facebook developers conference, I’m convinced more than ever that Facebook is about to take over the whole Web. And by the whole Web, I mean, well, all of it.
And if Google isn’t trembling over this, they ought to be. We might look back at this day as the moment [...]
// April 16th, 2010 // Comments Off // Innovation, O'Brien, Silicon Beat, Social Media, Strategy, twitter
I’ve had a couple of days to reflect back on Chirp, the first Twitter Developers Conference held this week. Reading back on my column this week, written the day before, my gut feeling that Twitter is at an inflection point was reinforced by what I heard and saw this week.
What’s amazing about Twitter is how [...]
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