Ever wonder what happened to those dot com companies?  Well, most of them went bankrupt not because they sucked but mostly their technology was 10-15 years ahead of their time.  I bet WebVan would do well now, too bad they launched about 10 years early.

They were among the darlings of the first dot-com bubble: Boo, TheGlobe.com, Pets.com, Webvan, eToys, DrKoop.com, Garden.com, Kozmo, Excite@Home, and Entertaindom. Beginning in the mid 1990s, they traced a path of online innovation and IPO riches that lasted through the early part of the present decade. Billions were invested, from the biggest venture capitalist firms on Sand Hill Road down to small investors trying to latch onto the dot-com stock craze. Few of them got rich; most saw their stock and ownership stakes become nearly worthless after the bubble burst in 2000.

via thestandard

One of my favorite pizzas, Pizza Hut, launches Adobe Flex Application.  Basically, you can order using their desktop Adobe Flex app instead of the traditional online ordering.

Mind you, I was an employee of Pizza Hut about 10 years ago.

The new Flex application also lets the user view their older orders as you can see here: (my last order)

The great advantage of an Adobe Flex app like this?  I don’t have to wait for the site to load and ordering is much quicker than using Pizza Hut’s online ordering system.

Adobe Air is a wonderful platform, no doubt about it. Still, who thought it would hit the mainstream quickly enough to get the attention of a multi-national restaurant chain like Pizza Hut? Jay Hathaway of DownloadSquad brings to our attention this release, which you can pull off the Web to start ordering that deep dish immediately. You can place all your usual orders as well as save some of your favorite configurations for quick repeat ordering. Perfect for the college crowd. And the startup crowd. Even the blogger crowd!

via mashable

In a recent article by BusinessWeek, the writer claims that real threat to Google could be mobile phones. Due to the smaller sized screens, Google possibly be facing a lot less advertising space.

This is true if everyone started Googling on their cellphones but I see that is unlikely within the next 5 to 10 years.

Although mobile devices have proven to be more efficient and pretty much everywhere in Asia, the U.S. still has a long way to go because the telecommunication companies don’t want to sell new technology. The biggest scandal in the U.S. is that Sprint, AT&T, and all the other cellular providers are still behind in speed compared to the rest of the world.

In Korea, they’ve had Wi-Max, broadband internet about the speed of Cable DSL here for last 2 years or so. In the U.S., Sprint expects to roll out Wi-Max maybe end of this year, and that’s still a “maybe”.

For U.S. telecommunication companies, they make far more money by selling consumers outdated 3G phones. Why sell new tech when you got $500 million inventory of outdated phones?

So, in final words, no. Google will never have to face any real threat from mobile phones. Instead, they will probably get bigger with viral spread of their new open-source Linux-based mobile operating system, the Android.

With capabilities similar or better than the iPhone, Google’s Anroid will be able to convince the world to use their phone. As for ads? Maybe they will give out free Google phones that have ads on them.

Thanks to Josh for tipping me on this article.