THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: It Isn't Just Facebook, Google Is At War With Everyone (GOOG)

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GOOG In The Black  

Stocks are on the rise after data showed an improvement in the labor market ahead of tomorrow's key U.S. government monthly payrolls report. Shares of GOOG are up, although less than the rest of the tech tape. Upcoming catalysts include second calendar quarter results released Thursday, July 14 at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time; continued Android momentum in the smartphone and tablet markets; regaining ground in China; updated software, adoption and media partners for Google TV; the roll-out of Google Music; and progress in other newer initiatives (Google+, location-based services, mapping, gaming, Chromebooks, etc.). The stock trades at approximately 12x Enterprise Value / EBIT, inexpensive relative to peers and historical trading levels.

Facebook Isn't Google's Only Foe, The Company Is At War With Many (TechCrunch)

Google isn’t just in a war with Facebook, it’s at war with multiple companies across multiple industries. The company must battle on at least six fronts simultaneously:

1. Browser
2. Mobile
3. Search
4. Local
5. Social
6. Enterprise

No other company could compete legitimately take on so many different battlefronts against so many different competitors. And there’s no way Google can win each battle, and they don't have to. They can easily be in the top 3 on all fronts and be just fine.

Facebook Suddenly Looks Vulnerable (The Wall Street Journal)

Mark Zuckerberg recently unveiled Facebook's new video-chatting feature. Too bad Google made the same feature available in 2008. Facebook suddenly looks vulnerable and should take note that Google used the strategy before to kneecap Yahoo in all-important email, a key driver of Yahoo's traffic. Google then rolled out Gmail. The biggest hurdle for Google+ is getting users. But it is integrating the service with Gmail, which already has 240 million unique users worldwide. And Google+ Hangouts will be hard for the social network to top.

Google Needs To Accelerate Display Business (Investor's Business Daily)

Google's search for future revenue growth is contingent on challenging Yahoo and Facebook for a bigger piece of the online display ad market. While the company is far ahead of the rest in search ad sales, Google will increasingly depend more on display ads as that market slows, making display a much larger opportunity. Google and Facebook are ramping up their nascent display ad services, so the big growth that Google needs will come from a small base.

Google Stock Likely To Sell Off After Earnings As Analysts Worry About Facebook (Seeking Alpha)

Some are convinced that while Google’s next earnings release may meet analyst expectations, the headline numbers won’t matter and the stock will still sell off after earnings. Why? Because while Google’s core search business may be okay, analysts will be focusing on plenty of other issues like addressing the growing use of social media as a replacement for traditional search. In fact, Facebook is now competing more fiercely for the same advertising dollars that represent much of Google’s revenues.

Hulu Owner Says Owners Are Committed To Selling (Bloomberg)

Disney CEO Robert Iger said that the owners of Hulu are “committed to selling.” He would know. Hulu’s owners include Disney, News Corp. and Comcast's NBC Universal. Bankers for the video streaming site have met with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft as the company explores a sale. A sale would eliminate a conflict by setting up Hulu as an independent buyer of movies and TV shows for online viewing. The company could fetch more than $2 billion.

Android Crushing Everyone In Smartphone Platform Market Share (comScore)

According to comScore, Google's Android continues to crush the competition, grabbing 5 percentage points to 38.1% market share for March. Android's share is still blowing away all competitors. The only company that's hanging on is Apple which passed Research In Motion in terms of smartphone platform share. Apple claimed 26.6% of the market while RIM had 24.7%, a 4.2% drop from February.

Daily Trader: Why Google Is A Must Own Stock (MarketWatch)

As the saying goes, "buy the rumor and sell the news." Google is no different. In this case because it's a negative catalyst (the rumor being bad news), it's just the opposite. The FTC-to-open-anti-trust-case-against-Google rumor started heating up a few months ago when the stock was near annual-highs. What has it done since then? Sell off. When the FTC finally turned the rumors into outright confirmed news, the stock has been nearly straight up and will likely continue to do so. Trim back around the $550 level.

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See Also:

• THE MICROSOFT INVESTOR: What Do You Think Of The Skype Acquisition Now?
• Next For Facebook And Skype: Calls To Outside Phones
• Mark Zuckerberg Explains Why Google+ Won't Beat Facebook (Yet)

THE GOOGLE INVESTOR: It Isn't Just Facebook, Google Is At War With Everyone (GOOG)

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Social Video Site VHX.tv Could Win the Discovery War

Social video sharing and discovery site VHX.tv is preparing to open up for public beta this Tuesday, after launching for private beta in early April. And with an eye-catching design and plenty of fun features, it might be the ultimate "what should I watch?" solution.

Social Video Site VHX.tv Could Win the Discovery War

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The Real Story Behind The Mom Who Launched A Twitter War Against America's Number One Prep School

What started as a routine dispute at the nation’s No. 1 prep school has gone nuclear on social media. Nick Summers on what’s really behind the outlandish accusations.

Private schools and parents often clash. And in New York, where there are the best schools and the wealthiest parents, those clashes can get ugly. But at Manhattan’s Trinity School—the storied, 300-year-old academy that has educated Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan, Truman Capote, and Yo-Yo Ma, among a long line of notable names—one parent is taking her fight to an unusual, and very public, extreme.

This disgruntled mother has gone beyond drop-off huddles with other moms and dads, turning instead to Facebook, Twitter, and parenting message boards to unleash a series of what are widely viewed as outlandish charges against Trinity’s board, without any hard evidence to support them. But supported or not, her accusations are now percolating through the gossipy private-school community. For an institution like Trinity, ranked the No. 1 prep school in the country and accustomed to resolving its squabbles in private, this is wildly uncharted territory.

The parent is Seema Kalia, whose daughter has a prized position in the second grade at Trinity. Last year Kalia, a law school graduate and former TV host who has also written for The Huffington Post, feuded with a school staffer, telling Trinity that she thought the woman’s credentials were phony. Trinity, as powerful prep schools often do when challenged, came down hard. The headmaster told Kalia and her husband, fund manager Vedula Murti, to stop talking about the subject in the small Trinity world—or else their daughter would be in danger of expulsion.

“If you are unwilling to meet with us,” wrote headmaster John Allman in an Oct. 13, 2010, email, “I cannot see how the school can continue its relationship with your family.” Trinity believed that Kalia agreed to drop the matter. Just to make sure, though, Allman underlined the school’s warning again the next day by email: keep up the smears, and your second grader is out.

In December Trinity chose not to offer a kindergarten spot to the family’s young son—and things got nasty from there. The parents furiously protested. Kalia says that school officials dissed her at faculty meetings, and waged a “horrible kind of hate campaign” against her. The school says that in January, Kalia, who is of Indian descent, wrote emails to fellow parents accusing the school staffer of “racism and incompetence”; claiming that the family was withholding a large financial gift until the woman’s firing; and describing Trinity’s board as “overt bully unintelligent racists.”

The school came down hard again: the family would have to leave Trinity at the end of the school year. And their daughter would be ejected immediately if Kalia kept up her campaign. But Kalia has instead escalated, going to war with hundreds of posts on Twitter, Facebook, and the rumor-hungry forums of UrbanBaby.com—and offering a whole new set of allegations that Trinity’s trustees have conspired to commit tax and accounting fraud.

Little if any evidence has emerged to support Kalia’s many accusations. Asked repeatedly for documentation or even an explanation of how she came to believe there was financial wrongdoing, she has declined. In an interview and email correspondence, Kalia refused to back up her claims with what could be considered legitimate proof, and she rarely dwelled on any one charge long enough or coherently enough to examine it before moving on to the next. Trinity, for its part, denies each of her charges in unequivocal language.

Nonetheless, Kalia’s incessant postings since April 4 have roiled the tiny, super-elite world of the New York City private school system. The patrician school, observers say, is caught in a social media dilemma: respond to the allegations and legitimize them; or stay silent, and allow them to fester.

The tweets are strident and often grandiose. “Trinity trustees:Don't take a great school down with you.RESIGN TODAY.You failed us all, don't destroy the School too,” reads one from Monday. Another: “Controlling internet? Seizing email? CongratsTrinity Trustees are now an ‘oppressive-foreign-dictator-level’ of crazy.” Often, Kalia appends the hashtag #trinitytrusteesfraud. Longer posts with difficult to follow arguments and inaccurate information appear on her Facebook page.

Despite the rancor, Kalia’s daughter remains enrolled at Trinity. The school has avoided speaking about the situation until now, but agreed to talk to The Daily Beast.

“All the allegations that I’ve seen are utterly baseless, and absolutely false,” says Trinity’s spokesman, Kevin Ramsey. Told that Kalia had repeatedly questioned on Twitter why Trinity had not denied that it was the subject of an IRS investigation, Ramsey laughed. “I’ll deny it right now,” he said. “We have received no letter. There’s no investigation, there’s no audit, there’s been absolutely no communication from the IRS regarding Trinity School.” An IRS spokesman said that as a matter of policy, the agency does not confirm or deny whether it is investigating any given person or organization. Ramsey flatly denied Kalia’s allegation that Trinity’s trustees voted themselves compensation and tuition breaks. (At tony schools like Trinity, trustees are typically expected to help bring in millions of dollars in donations, not take $35,000 tuition credits for themselves.)

Some who work in the New York private school scene think Trinity has waited too long to speak. “Parents in general go on ‘all rumor is based on truth.’ So if somebody’s talking this much about it, there’s gotta be some truth to it, and people want to listen,” says Dana Haddad, an educational consultant who helps students get into schools like Trinity, and who has been following the fracas. “Every school, if they’re not stupid, should be worried about social media. They [Trinity] have been going on ‘Let’s not respond,’ but I don’t know how well that’s working.”

In addition to deluging Twitter and Facebook, Kalia has also sought out the traditional media and has hired a public relations firm. By Trinity’s count, seven New York newsrooms, print and broadcast, have begun looking into her allegations. So far, none has bit. (Kalia did not approach The Daily Beast, which began reporting this story upon learning that her charges had become a topic of discussion among parents.)

Murti, Kalia’s husband, is silent on her campaign. “No comment,” he said when reached at his office, a $200 billion Canadian institutional fund manager. “I have nothing to add.”

It is, of course, possible that she will deliver on her proof and deal the 300-year-old school a serious blow. But in Kalia’s world, proof seems always just around the corner. As she tells it, a crossing guard overheard an administrator whisper about trustee resignations “tomorrow.” She has damning IRS documents, but says they can’t be released for 60 days. On Twitter, she advises her followers to “Wait for it…”

Working the gossips of UrbanBaby into a lather is a low bar; losing them lower still. Posters there have now turned against Kalia. “SK should write a clear, chronological account what she knows, how she knows, with links to the evidence. This [linked] Facebook posting is barely literate, and definitely incomprehensible … There is clearly nothing to her ‘allegations.’”

New York private school parents regularly make headlines for their outrageous behavior—last month a Manhattan mother sued her 4-year-old’s preschool for not adequately preparing her for an admissions exam. But the Kalia situation, observers of this world agree, is something new entirely.

“The most normal people can absolutely go insane when it comes to their child’s education,” says Suzanne Rheault, the founder of Aristotle Circle, an educational consultancy in New York. “For this woman it’s gone to a whole ’nother degree.”

Nick Summers is a senior writer for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Previously, he was the media columnist for The New York Observer, founded the blog IvyGate, and was editor in chief of the Columbia Daily Spectator.

This post originally appeared at The Daily Beast.

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See Also:

• The 28 Most Expensive Private High Schools In America

The Real Story Behind The Mom Who Launched A Twitter War Against America's Number One Prep School

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Comment on What Are Apple’s Options in the Video War With Netflix? by Gary

Yeah, just like they pulled iTunes from Windows.

Comment on What Are Apple’s Options in the Video War With Netflix? by Gary

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MUSIC WAR: Apple And Google Services Coming Soon (AAPL, GOOG)

The Financial Times reports this evening that Apple and Google, are on the verge of launching new music services.

The FT report says the services could launch this summer, but we might start hearing about them as soon as March

Here's what the companies are planning:

• Apple will allow users to back their music up online, then play it on any Apple device. This sounds similar to the main feature of Lala, which Apple bought in 2009. Apple is known to be revamping MobileMe very soon -- today it withdrew current MobileMe boxes from its retail stores -- and might be adding free music backup to the service, as previously reported. Apple does not plan to launch a subscription service like Spotify, for fear that it would undercut the very successful download business on iTunes. The company revealed on Wednesday that it had completed a new datacenter in North Carolina which could be used to provide the backup service.

• Google is getting close to launching its much-rumored music locker service, which will also let users back up their collections and stream them to Android devices. It's also trying to get a download service ready for launch as soon as March.

The FT aslo notes that Spotify is close to a U.S. launch of its music subscription service, and has gotten major funding infusions from DST and Kleiner Perkins.

What's probably happening: the record labels are finally loosening their licensing terms, paving the way for all of these services to launch around the same time.

This would be bad news for smaller digital music companies like MOG and Rdio, who have struggled to convince customers to pay $10 a month for unlimited music streams.

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MUSIC WAR: Apple And Google Services Coming Soon (AAPL, GOOG)

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Apple Just Declared War On Amazon Kindle (AAPL, AMZN)

A change in enforcement of Apple's app policy could force Amazon to take its popular Kindle app out of the iPhone and iPad App Store.

Apple is trying to funnel all payments for digital goods through its iTunes store, preventing companies like Amazon from collecting sales through its own channels without giving Apple a cut.

Up until now, Kindle iOS app users could buy a book on the web, then send it to their iPhones, or iPads. They could not buy the book from within the app.

That's changing. Apple is going to force Amazon to offer users the option of buying the book in the Kindle app.

Apple spokesperson Trudy Miller tells us, "We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase."

How is this going to nuke the Kindle app? Because Apple takes a 30% cut of every in-app sale. There's no way Amazon is going to pay Apple a 30% tax on every Kindle eBook sold on an iOS device. Therefore, Amazon could just abandon Apple's store instead of paying up.

Alternatively, it could view the 30% tax as a cost of business, and just play along. Or, it could make the button for purchasing in-app tiny, and the button for purchasing on the web through Amazon huge.

The controversy over in-app purchasing erupted when Sony revealed Apple rejected its e-reader app. Sony says its app was rejected because it didn't offer the in-app payment option. If Amazon follows suit, it could be rejected, as well.

We're emailing Amazon for a comment, and will update you if we hear back.

See Also: WAR: Apple Blocks Sony E-Reader App, Kindle Might Be Next

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Apple Just Declared War On Amazon Kindle (AAPL, AMZN)

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