[via Loic & Hugh MacLeod]

Phew :-)

Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon have published their last quaterly financial results. Let’s have a look! All figures are quarterly ones (2nd quarter), compared with the same quarter in 2005.

Google

• Revenues: $2.5bn, +77%
• Operating income: $815m, +110%
• 42% of revenues done internationally (outside US)
• 7’950 employees
• $1.25m revenues per employee!
• Cash available: $10bn

Yahoo

• Revenues: $1.6bn, +26%
• Operating income: $230m, -12%
• 31% of revenues done internationally (outside US)
• 10’500 employees
• Cash available: $4bn

eBay

• Revenues: $1.4bn, +30%
• Operating income: $311m, -18%
• Revenues per sector: eBay: 73%, Paypal: 24%, Skype: 3%
• 203 million of registered users, thereof 78 million of active users
• Skype: 113 million users

Amazon

• Revenues: $2.1bn, +22%
• Operating income: $47m, -55%
• 43% of revenues done internationally (outside US/Canada)
• 12’700 employees
• Cash available: $1.4bn

[via Seth Godin]

Simple, direct, interesting, funny, Seth Godin!

People don’t believe what you tell them.

They rarely believe what you show them.

They often believe what their friends tell them.

They always believe what they tell themselves.

After having found some tickets for the coming Placebo’s concert in Zurich in October, I could order 2 tickets (I will also go with Laurent :-) for the second concert of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (have a look also a t the Wikipedia’s article) in Zurich (they have decided to stay two days in Zurich because the first one was sold after 10 minutes) in December.

This one will be surely cool, I am sure :-)

Their last double-CD, Stadium Arcadium, is simply great and exciting. One of the best of the Red Hot, and surely one of the best CD in the last months!

August 1, this is the Swiss National Day. Good and happy celebration to all my Swiss colleagues, friends and partners!

More to learn about this beautiful country at Wikipedia. And something very interesting concerning Swiss politics: the so-called “direct democracy“. Have a look, Switzerland is the only place on Earth using this system!

Switzerland features a system of government not seen at the national level any other place on Earth: direct democracy, sometimes called half-direct democracy (this could, or could not be correct as theoretically, one could state that the people have full power over the law). Referenda on the most important laws have been used since the 1848 constitution.

Any citizen may challenge a law that has been passed by parliament. If he is able to gather 50,000 signatures against the law within 100 days, a national vote has to be scheduled where voters decide by a simple majority whether to accept or reject the law.

Also, any citizen may seek a decision on an amendment they want to make to the constitution. For such an amendment initiative to be organised, the signatures of 100,000 voters must be collected within 18 months. Such a popular initiative may be formulated as a general proposal or – much more often – be put forward as a precise new text whose wording can no longer be changed by parliament and the government. After a successful vote gathering, the federal council may create a counterproposal to the proposed amendment and put it to vote on the same day. Such counterproposals are usually a compromise between the status quo and the wording of the initiative. Voters will again decide in a national vote whether to accept the initiative amendment, the counterproposal put forward by the government or both. If both are accepted, one has to additionally signal a preference. Initiatives have to be accepted by a double majority of both the popular votes and a majority of the states.

[via BetaNews and SpreadFirefox]

Today the Firefox download counter crossed the 200 million mark.

We know that this number doesn’t represent actual users because this number includes both Firefox 1.0 and Firefox 1.5 (soon Firefox 2,) because not every one completes every download, and because not every download results in a new Firefox user.

That being said, 200 million people seeking Firefox is a huge accomplishment and we’re right to celebrate our role in driving that number.

Pfffuu, some days off at home, very slow posting during the last weeks, due to a very high work load. Really need to rest my brain :-)

For this time, we have decided to stay at home. So, no travel, excepted 2 days near Paris to visit Disneyland next week.

[via BetaNews]

Technorati continues to improve its services, and introduced a new interface. Have a try!

Blog aggregator Technorati relaunched its popular site on Monday, redesigning the site to make it easier to use while making changes to the backend to improve indexing time of new posts. Additionally, the site has improved its link-counting mechanism, which in turn will improve its ranking and authority features, it says. […]

A “discover” section will group interesting Web log posts into categories, which uses an algorithm to give a snapshot of whats being talked about in the blogosphere at any given time. The favorites section also has received a facelift, allowing a registered user to see posts from the blogs he or she most commonly visits on the front page of the site.

Finally, the site has also launched an area where it plans to highlight bloggers across the Web, putting faces to the blogs that people may read on an everyday basis. “I hope you’ll enjoy seeing the many ways in which we try to highlight the people who are the real power driving everything we do,” Sifry said.

[via BetaNews]

For one time, I think that this merge deal makes sense, from an industrial and customer-offering points of view. Great.

AMD confirmed rumors Monday and said it was merging with graphics chipmaker ATI in a transaction worth $5.4 billion. The first computer systems that would take advantage of the strengths of the combined company will begin appearing in 2007, the company said.

The merger will allow AMD to offer integrated processor and graphics solutions to its customers. By 2008, AMD plans to introduce new processor configurations that would integrate the CPU and graphics processor into a single unit. The end result will be smaller, more powerful computers. […]

The transaction also carries financial benefit: while positive impact would be limited next year, by 2008 AMD expects it to have a noticeable impact on its bottom line. Combining the two companies would save as much as $75 million in operating expenses.

ATI CEO Dave Orton will now serve as executive vice president of the ATI division. Two ATI directors would join AMD’s board of directors after the merger closes.

An article from Daniel Joelson, business journalist based in Washington, D.C., published in Insurance Networking on July 1, 2006. Have a look here or here as pdf. The article is called “Helvetia Patria Architects A Drastically New E-Look“.

Some quotes:

Flat-footed Helvetia Patria had to first invest in a new IT system for a new distribution channel. Its headache only worsened when, as its web of systems grew, it had to adapt the systems to accommodate new products. This process is debilitating for insurance firms such as Helvetia Patria that want to experiment in finding the most effective distribution channels through which to sell its products.

“In the past, the back-office systems were like closed systems that were used only in-house,” [Nick Stefania] says. “And in-house, the systems are open so it is easy to access a lot of information regarding the customer, the policies and the claims. And when the e-business systems were opened for the outside brokers and partners over the Internet, we had to make sure data security and data protection was ensured.”