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eBay's Crossroads: Turn Around or Break Up

The thing about corporate turnarounds is that they're supposed to turn a company around -- as in 180 degrees -- not stop halfway and let the company drift sideways. But something like that is happening to eBay: Its long, slow turnaround is, well, turning flat.…

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App Creep and the Case for the Mobile Browser

App stores are so successful that some are arguing that native apps are the way we will experience the web on mobile devices. As more and more companies offer services on the mobile web, I believe the mobile browser will play a bigger role.…

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Is Amazon Losing Its Edge as a Media Retailer?

Amazon’s success as an online retailer is the stuff that entrepreneurial dreams are made of. In 15 years, Amazon has defined and continued to shape how we shop online - especially for media like books, movies and music. But something unexpected is happening as more media is consumed in the cloud and less on printed pages and plastic disks. Amazon isn’t being as successful here.…

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Facebook's Privacy Crisis Is Also Its Opportunity

Facebook is facing an unprecedented crisis as the company’s efforts to weave its social network technology throughout the web’s entire fabric has gone wrong, erupting into a privacy nightmare. But Facebook has an opportunity to emerge from the privacy brouhaha it started even stronger than before.…

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Google Spends a Bundle on Ads — But Why?

Three years ago, a survey found Google to be the world’s best known brand, topping Microsoft, GE and others. It did so with very little advertising. So why has Google spent nearly $2 billion over the past year to strengthen its brand?…

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Why Apple and Google Need Each Other

It’s so tempting to get drawn into the ego battles between Steve Jobs and the Google Triumverate, while placing bets on who will win, that we can forget a deeper truth about this rivalry: Google and Apple need each other.…

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The Spark That Could Ignite Web M&A

The web has evolved to a point where mergers are starting to make strategic sense. Its division into two parts -- an information web and a conversation web -- is becoming more and more of an acute reality to big web companies.…

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The Rise of the Web Introvert

The social web has given rise to all sorts of new behaviors and personalities, not least of them: the web introvert. And in time, they are going to present a problem to the growth of sites like Facebook and Twitter.…

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Books Are Becoming Fringe Media

Of all the books I’ve read in my life, a shockingly small percentage have been read in the past several years. The big threat to Amazon’s Kindle isn’t people reading e-books on the iPad or the Nook. It’s that books are becoming fringe media.…

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