Apples to oranges: Google and Amazon are too timid to copy Apple’s retail success

There is a strange duality in the world of brick and mortar tech stores today. In the last four years CompUSA, Borders, and Circuit City all went out of business. Many expect Best Buy to follow in the near future. At the same time, Apple has opened over 300 retail outlets worldwide. And recent reports indicate that Microsoft, Amazon, and Google plan to follow Apple’s lead.

The new Google store, which Bloomberg reported on yesterday, … Continue Reading

Amazon exec: standalone Prime streaming video service isn’t likely

Despite an aggressive push to increase its variety of TV shows and movies, Amazon isn’t planning to split off its Prime streaming video service into a standalone subscription offering, according to the company’s management team. At least not anytime soon.

Currently, Amazon offers its streaming video service as an added perk for members of its Prime membership, which costs $79 per year and includes free two-day shipping on lots of items sold on the online … Continue Reading

Google likely to launch Dropbox-like cloud storage service soon

Search king Google is close to launching its own cloud storage service similar to Dropbox and Amazon CloudDrive, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

If the report holds true, Google will be entering an extremely crowded market with a product simply called Drive. (No relation to the awesome Ryan Gosling movie.) On top of Dropbox and Amazon, the market consists of strong players like Microsoft SkyDrive, Box, SugerSync, and many others.

Drive’s … Continue Reading

New Amazon deal brings MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central to Prime Instant Video

If you’re considering an Amazon Prime subscription, you might be persuaded by Amazon’s new deal with Viacom to bring 2,000 new titles to the service.

The Viacom agreement will bring a new slate of programming to Amazon’s video offering and will include popular shows from MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central.

Amazon Prime, which costs $79 per year, is a service that gives customers free two-day shipping on most products and access to streaming movies and … Continue Reading

Cloud companies rejoice: Amazon S3 lowers prices for storing your precious terabytes

Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud infrastructure provider, has lowered the price of S3 cloud storage for its basic U.S. customers, the company announced today.

Just last week, AWS reported massive growth for objects stored in S3, with a staggering 192 percent increase year-over-year. At the end of 2011, there were 762 billion objects stored in Amazon S3, which is 500 billion more objects than the same period in 2010. And now all those … Continue Reading

LivingSocial lost $558M in 2011

Amazon spent $175 million for a 31 percent stake in number two daily deals site LivingSocial, and in so doing bought us all the best look yet at the privately-held Groupon competitor’s financials.

Buried in Amazon’s annual 10-K filing, made public following the company’s disappointing fourth quarter earnings report, we get to take a gander at its investee’s financial well-being.

LivingSocial, according to the financial information it shared with Amazon, made just $245 million in … Continue Reading

Amazon stays frustratingly silent on Kindle Fire sales data

With the rumblings from Amazon about the early success of its new Kindle Fire over the holiday season, the company’s disappointing fourth quarter results came as a surprise.

More surprising was Amazon’s silence regarding total Kindle Fire sales for the quarter. During the earnings call, Amazon’s executive team deferred questions about the device to the press release, which simply regurgitated sales data from December.

The Kindle Fire, which is Amazon’s 7-inch Android-based tablet device, did … Continue Reading

Amazon disappoints with dramatically lower profits for Q4

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is probably not a happy man today, with the company reporting disappointing fourth quarter 2011 earnings, including a dramatic 58 percent decline in net income.

Many analysts were unsure where Amazon would stand this past quarter with the launch of the much-hyped $199 Kindle Fire tablet. The device wasn’t estimated to be immediately profitable for Amazon, but the company expected people to purchase media for their devices and was counting on … Continue Reading

Clouds in the forecast: Amazon S3 grew 192% year-over-year

Keep your eyes to sky because clouds are in the forecast. Amazon Web Services has reported massive growth for its number of objects stored in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), with a 192 percent increase year-over-year.

Amazon Web Services is by far the most popular cloud infrastructure provider in the world, so measuring the number of objects stored in S3 can help us quantify just how ubiquitous the service is. Jeff Barr, Senior Manager … Continue Reading

Amazon estimated to have sold 6M Kindle Fires in Q4

Amazon will reveal its fourth quarter earnings Tuesday and finally put to bed the hottest question of the new year: Just how many Kindle Fire tablets did the company sell?

Can’t wait one more day? You’re in luck. Stifel Nicolaus digital-media analyst Jordan Rohan estimates the Kindle Fire performed better than expected, with Amazon selling 6 million of its affordable tablets in Q4.

The Wall Street veteran upped his fourth-quarter sales guesstimate by one million … Continue Reading

96 percent of Google’s revenue is advertising, who buys it? (infographic)

A whopping 96 percent of Google‘s $37.9 billion 2011 revenue came from advertising, but who is putting all that cash in Google’s wallet?

Google is best known for its web search product, which has completely overturned how we research and find answers. But the search itself is only the basis upon which its golden empire has been built. Advertising based on search, as well as banner advertising on websites touches nearly every industry. It even … Continue Reading

Kindle Fire leads Android in taking a bite out of iPad market share

Good sales of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet led to significant gains for Google’s Android operating system in tablet market share during the fourth quarter of 2011, according to new data from mobile analytics firm Flurry.

Flurry, which purports to measure application sessions on more than 90 percent of all Android devices, found that Android tablets gained 10 percent share from Q4 2010 to Q4 2011 and now represent 39 percent of the overall tablet market.… Continue Reading

Why you should stop trusting online user reviews (if you haven’t already)

When you look at products online at Amazon or another site, it’s instinctual to take a glance at the star ratings by your peers. But with a new expose just posted by the New York Times about user review bribery, this is a good time to remind yourself not to trust those reviews.

The article shows how a small company called VIP Deals (which has no website) offered a full refund on a product in … Continue Reading

Why it’s stupid for Netflix to focus on competition at home

With increases in revenue and higher than expected subscriber growth, video rental service Netflix is once again the darling investment among Wall Street analysts (for the most part). However, not all the comments from Wednesday’s fourth quarter earnings results were positive.

Netflix warned of increasing competition against its domestic streaming service, while celebrating its shrinking DVD-by-mail business — two subjects analysts spend far too much time obsessing over. The biggest threat Netflix faces overall has … Continue Reading

Joyent grabs $85M from Weather Investment II, Telefonica to take on Amazon in cloud computing

Cloud computing startup Joyent has raised a humongous $85 million round of funding, which will help the company with its plan of out-innovating Amazon in cloud computing technology.

Joyent provides infrastructure cloud computing services for customers like LinkedIn, THQ, Gilt Groupe and Kabam. The company’s core offering will now be enhanced with a wide-ranging partnership with Telefónica Digital, the global business division of London-based telecommunications company Telefónica. With the new partnership, Joyent will be able … Continue Reading

Tablet ownership doubled over the 2011 holiday season

Between Kindlemania and the usual gift-giving glut of gadgets, the number of e-reader- and tablet-owning U.S. consumers doubled between mid-December 2011 and early January 2012.

According to research just published by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 29 percent of adults own at least one tablet or e-reader. Over the winter holidays, ownership numbers rose for both device types from 10 percent to 19 percent.

The Pew project conducted three surveys, one in mid-December … Continue Reading

Amazon sells the Kindle Fire at a loss because it makes so much money on media

During the holiday season Amazon used its massive sales channel to push the Kindle Fire hard. It moves millions of units, and according to studies from IHS iSupply, was losing about $2 per unit. That’s a big difference from Apple, which makes a healthy profit on sales of its iPad tablet.

But according to a new poll from RBC Capital, Amazon stands to earn about $136 in additional revenue from every customer who bought a … Continue Reading

Surprises abound as Amazon reveals its 10 best-selling games of 2011

Amazon has released its top-selling digital and physical game titles from 2011. The online retailer has quickly become the quintessential center of great gaming deals, release-day shipping, and exclusive pre-order bonuses (including up to $20 back, in some cases).

There are a few surprises to be found, including Deus Ex: Human Revolution as the top digital download. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the top-grossing video game of all-time, dominated physical sales, but barely made … Continue Reading

Ashton Kutcher invests in another Berlin startup, “Etsy for experiences” Gidsy

Gidsy, a new company from Germany, could be a way for you to make a few bucks from your more unusual talents.

Gidsy is a “marketplace for authentic experiences,” and it just landed a $1.2 million investment from a combination of Sunstone Capital, Index Ventures, Werner Vogels (CTO of Amazon), and the actor Ashton Kutcher.

Are you a dumpling expert, urban survivalist or DIY manufacturer? If so,  Gidsy may be for you.

Gidsy’s founders were … Continue Reading

Click.to wants to make copy and paste obsolete

Copy and paste is so 2011. Or so says Click.to, a new app for Mac and Windows that lets you copy content and send it exactly where you want it to go with one click — no pasting required.

With Click.to, you can send email attachments, publish content to Facebook, save text to Evernote, upload images to Flickr, search products on Amazon — the list goes on and on. You can even create custom actions … Continue Reading