Alles ist möglich :-)
junge - 17. Feb, 16:41
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Freitag, 17. Februar 2006
Quo vadis google?
Enthusiasm for Google drains away as doubts set in
SERVING fine wines to chief executives and “global leaders” too drunk to appreciate it made Google's party the talk of last month's World Economic Forum in Davos. Its generosity with 1959 clarets and 1990 Krug champagne seemed, at the time, only to confirm the firm's greatness. Yet, three weeks on, Google's pristine reputation has been damaged by its willingness to collaborate with the Chinese government's censorship requirements, its shares have tumbled, and the Davos party is in danger of resembling the Great Gatsby's glorious last hurrah.
Google's share price peaked a couple of weeks before Davos, at $475, on January 11th. After slipping during the rest of the month, the price plunged on February 1st, after the firm reported results that disappointed Wall Street analysts, and then plummeted again this week—for no obvious reason—to $343 on February 14th. In barely a month, some $38 billion has been wiped off the firm's market capitalisation, which now stands at a mere $101 billion. Investors have fallen out of love with Google. Is there a good reason for this?
On the face of it, that Google's results disappointed analysts is no grounds for panic, especially as—for all the right reasons—the company refuses to give analysts advance “guidance” about its likely performance. (Most firms are happy to play the Wall Street earnings game, whereby their guidance ensures that their results typically come in a fraction better than the analysts predict.) In fact, Google's latest results were strong—profits of $814m in the fourth quarter of 2005, net revenue up by 23% quarter-on-quarter—and certainly provided no basis for investors to slash one-quarter off the firm's value. Moreover, shares of the other internet superstars—eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon—have also tumbled this year (see chart), suggesting that this may have more to do with a decline in investor exuberance towards the internet than in the underlying performance and prospects of the firms themselves.
A serious debate about how to value internet shares, and above all those of Google, is long overdue. Since the disappointing months after Google's initial public offering in August 2004, when the shares appeared to have been overpriced at $85, they had risen inexorably, without anyone providing a particularly compelling reason why. An article in last week's Barron's newspaper suggested that—on plausible assumptions—the right price for Google shares could be as little as $188. Yet some bulls think there remains plenty of upside: Mark Stahlman of Caris & Co, a brokerage firm, has $2,000 as a long-term target, on the assumption that Google eventually wins a 1% share of the global digital-services business.
Having survived the 2000 internet bubble—almost alone among Wall Street internet analysts—Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley is keen to be seen as prudent in her bullishness. Yet like most of her peers, she thinks the shares are worth more than $400. Discounting expected cash flow for the coming ten years, she calculates a fair price of $413. Using other valuation techniques, she gets as high as $597. But these valuations all rely on Google delivering the now expected future performance—which, as is clear from its current high ratio of share price to profits of 68 (compared with an average of 18 for the S&P 500), means spectacular growth. Whether it will achieve this growth, or even come close, is frankly anyone's guess, especially given how rapidly its market is evolving—a risk factor that surely argues for a far larger discount rate to be applied to future cash flow than the 11.5% in the Meeker model.
On the other hand, as Ms Meeker points out, Google has so far consistently beaten her forecasts, both for revenues and for profit margins. Strikingly, just after Google went public, she predicted that it would generate revenues of $7 per user in 2005, up from $2 in 2002. In fact, it generated $10 per user—a number that, she plausibly argues, can be greatly improved on as ever more advertising dollars shift to new media from old (which still account for 95% of total advertising spending).
One reason that Google has been able to exceed earnings expectations in recent years is that the full-frontal attack some analysts predicted from Microsoft has yet to materialise. Ms Meeker had forecast a competitive search product from Microsoft by Christmas 2004, supported by a $100m advertising campaign. The passage of time has allowed Google to deepen its relations with its customers, making it more able to fight off competitors. Yet, ominously, Microsoft's share price has edged higher as Google's has tumbled. Will Google be serving cheap plonk in Davos next year?
Quelle
SERVING fine wines to chief executives and “global leaders” too drunk to appreciate it made Google's party the talk of last month's World Economic Forum in Davos. Its generosity with 1959 clarets and 1990 Krug champagne seemed, at the time, only to confirm the firm's greatness. Yet, three weeks on, Google's pristine reputation has been damaged by its willingness to collaborate with the Chinese government's censorship requirements, its shares have tumbled, and the Davos party is in danger of resembling the Great Gatsby's glorious last hurrah.
Google's share price peaked a couple of weeks before Davos, at $475, on January 11th. After slipping during the rest of the month, the price plunged on February 1st, after the firm reported results that disappointed Wall Street analysts, and then plummeted again this week—for no obvious reason—to $343 on February 14th. In barely a month, some $38 billion has been wiped off the firm's market capitalisation, which now stands at a mere $101 billion. Investors have fallen out of love with Google. Is there a good reason for this?
On the face of it, that Google's results disappointed analysts is no grounds for panic, especially as—for all the right reasons—the company refuses to give analysts advance “guidance” about its likely performance. (Most firms are happy to play the Wall Street earnings game, whereby their guidance ensures that their results typically come in a fraction better than the analysts predict.) In fact, Google's latest results were strong—profits of $814m in the fourth quarter of 2005, net revenue up by 23% quarter-on-quarter—and certainly provided no basis for investors to slash one-quarter off the firm's value. Moreover, shares of the other internet superstars—eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon—have also tumbled this year (see chart), suggesting that this may have more to do with a decline in investor exuberance towards the internet than in the underlying performance and prospects of the firms themselves.
A serious debate about how to value internet shares, and above all those of Google, is long overdue. Since the disappointing months after Google's initial public offering in August 2004, when the shares appeared to have been overpriced at $85, they had risen inexorably, without anyone providing a particularly compelling reason why. An article in last week's Barron's newspaper suggested that—on plausible assumptions—the right price for Google shares could be as little as $188. Yet some bulls think there remains plenty of upside: Mark Stahlman of Caris & Co, a brokerage firm, has $2,000 as a long-term target, on the assumption that Google eventually wins a 1% share of the global digital-services business.
Having survived the 2000 internet bubble—almost alone among Wall Street internet analysts—Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley is keen to be seen as prudent in her bullishness. Yet like most of her peers, she thinks the shares are worth more than $400. Discounting expected cash flow for the coming ten years, she calculates a fair price of $413. Using other valuation techniques, she gets as high as $597. But these valuations all rely on Google delivering the now expected future performance—which, as is clear from its current high ratio of share price to profits of 68 (compared with an average of 18 for the S&P 500), means spectacular growth. Whether it will achieve this growth, or even come close, is frankly anyone's guess, especially given how rapidly its market is evolving—a risk factor that surely argues for a far larger discount rate to be applied to future cash flow than the 11.5% in the Meeker model.
On the other hand, as Ms Meeker points out, Google has so far consistently beaten her forecasts, both for revenues and for profit margins. Strikingly, just after Google went public, she predicted that it would generate revenues of $7 per user in 2005, up from $2 in 2002. In fact, it generated $10 per user—a number that, she plausibly argues, can be greatly improved on as ever more advertising dollars shift to new media from old (which still account for 95% of total advertising spending).
One reason that Google has been able to exceed earnings expectations in recent years is that the full-frontal attack some analysts predicted from Microsoft has yet to materialise. Ms Meeker had forecast a competitive search product from Microsoft by Christmas 2004, supported by a $100m advertising campaign. The passage of time has allowed Google to deepen its relations with its customers, making it more able to fight off competitors. Yet, ominously, Microsoft's share price has edged higher as Google's has tumbled. Will Google be serving cheap plonk in Davos next year?
Quelle
junge - 17. Feb, 16:16
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Karikaturen Streit
...und hier einer der wenigen Artikel zum Thema, der durchdacht ist:
Free speech should override religious sensitivities. And it is not just the property of the West
AFP“I DISAGREE with what you say and even if you are threatened with death I will not defend very strongly your right to say it.” That, with apologies to Voltaire, seems to have been the initial pathetic response of some western governments to the republication by many European newspapers of several cartoons of Muhammad first published in a Danish newspaper in September. When the republished cartoons stirred Muslim violence across the world, Britain and America took fright. It was “unacceptable” to incite religious hatred by publishing such pictures, said America's State Department. Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, called their publication unnecessary, insensitive, disrespectful and wrong.
Really? There is no question that these cartoons are offensive to many Muslims (see article). They offend against a convention in Islam that the Prophet should not be depicted. And they offend because they can be read as equating Islam with terrorism: one cartoon has Muhammad with a bomb for his headgear. It is not a good idea for newspapers to insult people's religious or any other beliefs just for the sake of it. But that is and should be their own decision, not a decision for governments, clerics or other self-appointed arbiters of taste and responsibility. In a free country people should be free to publish whatever they want within the limits set by law.
No country permits completely free speech. Typically, it is limited by prohibitions against libel, defamation, obscenity, judicial or parliamentary privilege and what have you. In seven European countries it is illegal to say that Hitler did not murder millions of Jews. Britain still has a pretty dormant blasphemy law (the Christian God only) on its statute books. Drawing the line requires fine judgements by both lawmakers and juries. Britain, for example, has just jailed a notorious imam, Abu Hamza of London's Finsbury Park mosque, for using language a jury construed as solicitation to murder (see article). Last week, however, another British jury acquitted Nick Griffin, a notorious bigot who calls Islam “vicious and wicked”, on charges of stirring racial hatred.
Drawing the line
In this newspaper's view, the fewer constraints that are placed on free speech the better. Limits designed to protect people (from libel and murder, for example) are easier to justify than those that aim in some way to control thinking (such as laws on blasphemy, obscenity and Holocaust-denial). Denying the Holocaust should certainly not be outlawed: far better to let those who deny well-documented facts expose themselves to ridicule than pose as martyrs. But the Muhammad cartoons were lawful in all the European countries where they were published. And when western newspapers lawfully publish words or pictures that cause offence—be they ever so unnecessary, insensitive or disrespectful—western governments should think very carefully before denouncing them.
Freedom of expression, including the freedom to poke fun at religion, is not just a hard-won human right but the defining freedom of liberal societies. When such a freedom comes under threat of violence, the job of governments should be to defend it without reservation. To their credit, many politicians in continental Europe have done just that. France's interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said rather magnificently that he preferred “an excess of caricature to an excess of censorship”—though President Jacques Chirac later spoiled the effect by condemning the cartoons as a “manifest provocation”.
Shouldn't the right to free speech be tempered by a sense of responsibility? Of course. Most people do not go about insulting their fellows just because they have a right to. The media ought to show special sensitivity when the things they say might stir up hatred or hurt the feelings of vulnerable minorities. But sensitivity cannot always ordain silence. Protecting free expression will often require hurting the feelings of individuals or groups, even if this damages social harmony. The Muhammad cartoons may be such a case.
In Britain and America, few newspapers feel that their freedoms are at risk. But on the European mainland, some of the papers that published the cartoons say they did so precisely because their right to publish was being called into question. In the Netherlands two years ago a film maker was murdered for daring to criticise Islam. Danish journalists have received death threats. In a climate in which political correctness has morphed into fear of physical attack, showing solidarity may well be the responsible thing for a free press to do. And the decision, of course, must lie with the press, not governments.
It's good to talk
It is no coincidence that the feeblest response to the outpouring of Muslim rage has come from Britain and America. Having sent their armies rampaging into the Muslim heartland, planting their flags in Afghanistan and Iraq and putting Saddam Hussein on trial, George Bush and Tony Blair have some making up to do with Muslims. Long before making a drama out of the Danish cartoons, a great many Muslims had come to equate the war on terrorism with a war against Islam. This is an equation Osama bin Laden and other enemies of the West would like very much to encourage and exploit. In circumstances in which embassies are being torched, isn't denouncing the cartoons the least the West can do to show its respect for Islam, and to stave off a much-feared clash of civilisations?
No. There are many things western countries could usefully say and do to ease relations with Islam, but shutting up their own newspapers is not one of them. People who feel that they are not free to give voice to their worries about terrorism, globalisation or the encroachment of new cultures or religions will not love their neighbours any better. If anything, the opposite is the case: people need to let off steam. And freedom of expression, remember, is not just a pillar of western democracy, as sacred in its own way as Muhammad is to pious Muslims. It is also a freedom that millions of Muslims have come to enjoy or to aspire to themselves. Ultimately, spreading and strengthening it may be one of the best hopes for avoiding the incomprehension that can lead civilisations into conflict.
Quelle
Free speech should override religious sensitivities. And it is not just the property of the West
AFP“I DISAGREE with what you say and even if you are threatened with death I will not defend very strongly your right to say it.” That, with apologies to Voltaire, seems to have been the initial pathetic response of some western governments to the republication by many European newspapers of several cartoons of Muhammad first published in a Danish newspaper in September. When the republished cartoons stirred Muslim violence across the world, Britain and America took fright. It was “unacceptable” to incite religious hatred by publishing such pictures, said America's State Department. Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, called their publication unnecessary, insensitive, disrespectful and wrong.
Really? There is no question that these cartoons are offensive to many Muslims (see article). They offend against a convention in Islam that the Prophet should not be depicted. And they offend because they can be read as equating Islam with terrorism: one cartoon has Muhammad with a bomb for his headgear. It is not a good idea for newspapers to insult people's religious or any other beliefs just for the sake of it. But that is and should be their own decision, not a decision for governments, clerics or other self-appointed arbiters of taste and responsibility. In a free country people should be free to publish whatever they want within the limits set by law.
No country permits completely free speech. Typically, it is limited by prohibitions against libel, defamation, obscenity, judicial or parliamentary privilege and what have you. In seven European countries it is illegal to say that Hitler did not murder millions of Jews. Britain still has a pretty dormant blasphemy law (the Christian God only) on its statute books. Drawing the line requires fine judgements by both lawmakers and juries. Britain, for example, has just jailed a notorious imam, Abu Hamza of London's Finsbury Park mosque, for using language a jury construed as solicitation to murder (see article). Last week, however, another British jury acquitted Nick Griffin, a notorious bigot who calls Islam “vicious and wicked”, on charges of stirring racial hatred.
Drawing the line
In this newspaper's view, the fewer constraints that are placed on free speech the better. Limits designed to protect people (from libel and murder, for example) are easier to justify than those that aim in some way to control thinking (such as laws on blasphemy, obscenity and Holocaust-denial). Denying the Holocaust should certainly not be outlawed: far better to let those who deny well-documented facts expose themselves to ridicule than pose as martyrs. But the Muhammad cartoons were lawful in all the European countries where they were published. And when western newspapers lawfully publish words or pictures that cause offence—be they ever so unnecessary, insensitive or disrespectful—western governments should think very carefully before denouncing them.
Freedom of expression, including the freedom to poke fun at religion, is not just a hard-won human right but the defining freedom of liberal societies. When such a freedom comes under threat of violence, the job of governments should be to defend it without reservation. To their credit, many politicians in continental Europe have done just that. France's interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said rather magnificently that he preferred “an excess of caricature to an excess of censorship”—though President Jacques Chirac later spoiled the effect by condemning the cartoons as a “manifest provocation”.
Shouldn't the right to free speech be tempered by a sense of responsibility? Of course. Most people do not go about insulting their fellows just because they have a right to. The media ought to show special sensitivity when the things they say might stir up hatred or hurt the feelings of vulnerable minorities. But sensitivity cannot always ordain silence. Protecting free expression will often require hurting the feelings of individuals or groups, even if this damages social harmony. The Muhammad cartoons may be such a case.
In Britain and America, few newspapers feel that their freedoms are at risk. But on the European mainland, some of the papers that published the cartoons say they did so precisely because their right to publish was being called into question. In the Netherlands two years ago a film maker was murdered for daring to criticise Islam. Danish journalists have received death threats. In a climate in which political correctness has morphed into fear of physical attack, showing solidarity may well be the responsible thing for a free press to do. And the decision, of course, must lie with the press, not governments.
It's good to talk
It is no coincidence that the feeblest response to the outpouring of Muslim rage has come from Britain and America. Having sent their armies rampaging into the Muslim heartland, planting their flags in Afghanistan and Iraq and putting Saddam Hussein on trial, George Bush and Tony Blair have some making up to do with Muslims. Long before making a drama out of the Danish cartoons, a great many Muslims had come to equate the war on terrorism with a war against Islam. This is an equation Osama bin Laden and other enemies of the West would like very much to encourage and exploit. In circumstances in which embassies are being torched, isn't denouncing the cartoons the least the West can do to show its respect for Islam, and to stave off a much-feared clash of civilisations?
No. There are many things western countries could usefully say and do to ease relations with Islam, but shutting up their own newspapers is not one of them. People who feel that they are not free to give voice to their worries about terrorism, globalisation or the encroachment of new cultures or religions will not love their neighbours any better. If anything, the opposite is the case: people need to let off steam. And freedom of expression, remember, is not just a pillar of western democracy, as sacred in its own way as Muhammad is to pious Muslims. It is also a freedom that millions of Muslims have come to enjoy or to aspire to themselves. Ultimately, spreading and strengthening it may be one of the best hopes for avoiding the incomprehension that can lead civilisations into conflict.
Quelle
junge - 17. Feb, 16:05
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Alzheimer korreliert Mit Bildungsgrad
....na, wer hätte das vermutet?
High levels of education speeds up the progression of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in next month's issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Mental agility dropped every year among Alzheimer's disease patients with each additional year of education, leading to an additional 0.3 percent deterioration, the researchers from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York found. The speed of thought processes and memory were particularly affected.
Bloomberg News
High levels of education speeds up the progression of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in next month's issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Mental agility dropped every year among Alzheimer's disease patients with each additional year of education, leading to an additional 0.3 percent deterioration, the researchers from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York found. The speed of thought processes and memory were particularly affected.
Bloomberg News
junge - 17. Feb, 16:01
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