Valleywag is "reporting" that Steve Jobs is undergoing surgery today. There's speculation as to whether this is true or not. Michael Arrington wrote a post that Steve was actually in the office today (according to his source). My position on this doesn't center around whether the information is true or not. If it is true, then we should respect Steve's privacy and give him the time he and his family needs to recuperate. If not, people are just writing gossip for the sake of gossip and the report doesn't deserve another second of thought.
 
After reading the Valleywag article, I couldn't help but feel dirty. Has the technology industry reporting become like the tabloids? What next? Are we going to start hearing about high tech executives on x17online.com? Oh wait, too late. Every Jobs rumor overheard at a party or bar or toilet seems to be getting airtime. And to make matters worse, we're not reporting on the usual brainless tabloid topics - this is a person's health not what shoes they're wearing or who they're sleeping with. This goes beyond journalism's fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders and borders on harassment. I know nobody reads my blog but just so I don't sound like a hypocrite, this will be the last item I write about Steve's health except to welcome him back in six months.

This is a pretty scary statistic - I guess that translates to almost 3.5 million people. It's always been the case that California leads in boom times but I guess the same can be true during the bust. Not only is unemployment at the highest point in about 15 years but home prices have been sliding, as well. On top of all of this, there are reports that the state only has about a month of cash left while the politicians argue about a budget. Let's hope this is the low point.

Om Malik writes in a post that Google is great at search but bad at investments (in reference to today's earnings release within which was mentioned a $1+ billion write down for bad investments). I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment and might even take it one step further. In regards to making money, does Google really do well in any field other than search? For the record, I use a lot of Google services like Search, GMail, Google Maps, and YouTube to name the big ones. I think these are all awesome services but they don't come near to making the huge profits that are synonymous with the Google cash machine (do any of these products even generate some profits?). It's not a knock on Google by any means. They have afforded themselves the right to roll out any product they want regardless of its profit generating capabilities. It just makes me wonder whether they'll be in the same boat as Microsoft someday - a company that never really figured out a way to generate huge profits from anything but desktop software. But hey, if I generated the profits that Google does from search and Microsoft does from desktop software, who really cares?

UPDATE:  To further prove that no one cares, Google is trading almost 8% higher as of 11am the next day.

Was reading the latest post from Albert Wenger, a partner over at Union Square Ventures. His post was about companies that started as consumer sites and who now want to switch to a white or private label service and the potential difficulties in making the transition. His primary reason seems to be that once a company is built as a consumer facing entity, it doesn't have the DNA to switch to a company that has to deal with the whims of white label clients.
 
I somewhat agree and disagree with that statement. Yes, getting into the white label (we call it private label) business is not easy if you don't have the technical infrastructure or the mindset of a client-consultant organization. I wouldn't say it's necessarily impossible though. If your core technology is built on a flexible platform, making the changes to your technology should be relatively simple - like building a different front-end UI instead of rebuilding a new product from the ground up. As for the sales mentality, I think any good entrepreneur needs to have that to become successful regardless of whether they are selling to clients or to investors or to potential team members. If you don't have that mindset already, I don't think you'd be very successful regardless if you're transitioning to a white label path or sticking with a consumer strategy.
 
When we started Centrro, we were solidly going down the white label path. However, we've since added a consumer facing product (KnowBeforeYouApply.com) and will be adding another one shortly. Though they both try to reach two different markets, they both rely on the same underlying technology which we've built to be very flexible. Most of all, I think having good people on board makes things a heck of a lot easier. Our business development and technical teams are what drive our business and with them on board, we'll be able to zig and zag our way out of any jam.