“China snubbed Google but picked Apple when it decided to divert some of its $300 billion investment fund into U.S. stocks,” Glenn Hall reports for TheStreet. “Anyone surprised? Could it possibly have anything to do with Google’s threat to leave China over a dispute about censorship, hacking, etc?”

“We could get up in arms about China buying up America, but that’s yesterday’s news,” Hall writes. “Why shouldn’t the Chinese invest in the U.S.? Let’s take it as a sign of respect that they like what they see here — at least as far as investments go.”

“So let’s review what the Chinese government considers good investments in America,” Hall reports. “There’s Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson (two of Warren Buffett’s favorites) and China also put some cash in big banks, including Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Bank of America.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Google Inc. sold about 80,000 Nexus One mobile phones in its first month on the market, roughly one-eighth the number of units the original Apple Inc. iPhone sold in its debut month, according to analytics group Flurry Inc.,” Scott Morrison reports for Dow Jones Newswires.

Morrison continues, “Observers have also been skeptical about Google’s decision to spend virtually nothing advertising the Nexus. Google briefly pitched the phone on its home page, but the link quickly disappeared… Perhaps more importantly, the early hype around the Nexus was quickly overshadowed by a series of reports about connectivity snafus, customer service shortcomings and eye-opening ‘recovery’ fees.”

Full article here.

“Steve Jobs is walking the same path as Walt Disney,” Jason Schwarz writes for TheStreet.com.

“As soon as California’s Disneyland was completed, Disney knew he had made a terrible mistake by not securing the surrounding real estate,” Schwarz writes. “He had built this wonderful Walt Disney destination but his oversight allowed hotel chains and restaurants to come in and make more money off his customers than he did. So Disney immediately went to Orlando, Fla., and built Disneyworld the right way.”

“The moral of the story is that Apple isn’t something you want to depend on for your livelihood. Jobs’ goal is to build a closed digital neighborhood where Apple controls who makes money and who doesn’t,” Schwarz writes. “I’ll bet that in one of those Apple board meetings that Google CEO Eric Schmidt used to attend, he realized that Jobs was on the verge of building AppleWorld and he’s been scared ever since.”

Schwarz writes, “Google has no moat around its search. Users can change their habits in a day and they will. Jobs thinks mobile advertising is terrible and is ready to revolutionize it with Apple’s purchase of Quattro. Why should he allow Google to make money off the billboards in his neighborhood?”

Schwarz writes, “Apple’s stock is at $210, Google shares are at $585. Twenty-four months from now, the two stocks will have changed places.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Some analysts believe the Apple-Google battle is likely to get much rougher in the months ahead,” Peter Burrows reports for BusinessWeek. “Jonathan Yarmis, research fellow with the consulting firm Ovum, thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut Google off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising and Android technology. Jobs might cut a deal with—gasp!—Microsoft to make Bing Apple’s engine of choice, or even launch its own search engine, says Yarmis. ‘I fully expect [Apple] to do something in search,’ he adds. ‘If there’s all these advertising dollars to be won, why would it want Google on its iPhones?’”

Burrows reports, “‘This rivalry is going to accelerate innovation,’ says Andreas Bechtolsheim, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and an early investor in Google. ‘Apple goes pretty fast, but having someone chasing you always makes you go faster. This is going to be good for consumers.’”

“Still, in a battle over the future of computing, friendship will almost surely be a casualty of progress,” Burrows reports. “‘You can just feel the tension rising,’ says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. ‘Until the Nexus One, the competition was at arm’s length. But the iPhone is Apple’s darling. Now it’s personal.’”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Yesterday we reported that Google’s long awaited own-brand phone, the Google Nexus One, hadn’t enjoyed the best start in life, having only sold 20,000 units in its first week in the US,” Adam Bunker reports for T3.

The Nexus One “has just had its price slashed,” Bunker reports.

“Up until today, anyone in the US who’d wanted to upgrade to the Nexus One on T-Mobile had to pay out $379,” Bunker reports. “With the price cut in effect, this figure stands at $279… Not only that, but anyone who’s already upgraded receive a $100 refund.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Safari, eat Google’s dust — its Chrome Web browser — under its developmental title Chromium — has hit version 4.0 on the Mac, and our tests confirm it’s the fastest browser in the world on both PC and now on Mac OS X” Nate Lanxon reports for CNET UK.

“But despite its 4.0 moniker and its impressive speed, Chrome for Mac is still riddled with bugs,” Lanxon reports. “Big ones, like those spiders in Eight Legged Freaks, only even more hellacious.”

“When benchmarking Chrome 4.0′s rendering speed on a PC last week, it obliterated its previous record and scored 100/100 on the Acid3 standards-compliancy tests. On the Mac, it only gets better. It completed the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in just 657ms. Only 4 percent faster than its PC brother, sure, but 34 percent faster than Safari 4.0.3, which scored 886ms on the same 2.0GHz Intel MacBook,” Lanxon reports. “Keeping things in some sort of delicious context, Firefox version 3.5.2 on OS X scored 1,508ms and Opera 10 beta 3 scored 5,958ms.”

“As Apple and Google’s businesses converge, Apple’s ability to create different experiences for the mobile user is standing out,” Darcy Travlos writes for Forbes. “Last week, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt received a lot of press as he stepped down from the board of Apple because it highlighted to the investor community that the two companies’ businesses were converging. This is true, on the surface, as both now have operating systems for smart phones and computers. However, there is one very stark difference in their strategies–Apple has created a different experience for mobile users while, to date, Google has not.”

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