Google’s tax rate

Gizmodo: Google’s Shady Tax Evasion Practices Screw the Government (and You) Out of $3.1 Billion

Google’s startlingly low rate–how much do you pay every year?–goes back to a deal brokered with the IRS itself. The feds let Google license its search and ad tech to a subsidiary in Ireland–Google Ireland Holdings–which begins a long, international cash siphon that ends in Bermuda. Licensing tech from Google racks up expenses, which allow Google’s dummy company to duck Irish tax law. The money generated in Ireland is shuttled to the Netherlands, which, because of EU law, further keeps government hands out of Google’s earnings. From here, revenue is paid to another subsidiary in Bermuda, where it becomes virtually invisible–under Irish law, this tropical tail end of this money snake isn’t required to disclose any financial documents.

How awesomely not evil.

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old media

The future of media is unclear. Things are very volatile. New revenue models are needed where ‘traditional’ (I hate that word) models are still in place, getting old and crusty.
Yesterday, news broke that Google TV is being blocked by TV studios ABC and CBS over piracy concerns. Maybe the heads of the TV studios should spend some some with Larry and Sergey at Burning Man next year so they can open their minds man, and like, understand that information wants to be free? K? They need to understand the Google will never be satisfied. It has serious dependency issues on all zeros and ones.
You can’t have a television relationship with someone with data dependencies, but at the same time TV needs to figure shit out, unless they want their breakfast, lunch and dinner eaten by iTunes like the music industry. It’s all-around unhealthy. The TV studios are hoarding, grumpy, old recluses who won’t leave their houses, while crack-fiend Google is knocking on all their doors for a hit.
Then we got News Corp. dropping it’s aggregated news content delivery platform, aka – Alesia. Rupert, like the TV studios, doesn’t want to disrupt current revenue streams.
Old media can’t get in the race with a chain wrapped around their axle.
Innovation doesn’t have a safety net to catch you with.

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So that’s where they come from

I’m thoroughly enjoying Steve Johnson’s new book, Where Good Ideas Come From (I was originally introduced to Johnson by my friend Victor with the book Ghost Map).
I’m about a third of the way through the book, and it’s been a constant process of reading and underlining, reading and underlining.
I’m not going to quote the whole book, but there’s one nugget I found very interesting because it’s something I’ve done for years with my sketchbooks and now something I (and many others) do with this blog:

Darwin’s notebooks lie at the tail end of a long and fruitful tradition that peaked in the Enlightenment-era Europe, particularly in England: the practice of maintaining “commonplace” book. Scholars, amateur scientists, aspiring men of letters–just about anyone with intellectual ambition in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was likely to keep a commonplace book. The great minds of the period–Milton, Bacon, Locke–were zealous believers in the memory-enhancing powers of the commonplace book. In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations.

Wow. A commonplace entry about commonplacing. How meta.

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prohibiting the cleaner fuel

It took 25 % of the fuel market in the midwest.. it was made from corn, it was basically white lightning.

John D. Rockefeller, founder and head of the Standard Oil Company didn’t appreciate Ford cutting into his oil profits, and started funding the ammendment we know as Prohibition.

Because if the constitutional ammendment cut off all alcohol production, all of Fords ethanol alcohol automotive fuel would be wiped out of business, and Standard Oil would increase profits immediately by 25% or more (due to increased growth in car sales) .

Ford continued to make Ethanol compatible vehicles for 12 of the 13 years of prohibition, and then he gave up.

Right after prohibition was over President Teddy Roosevelt broke up the Standard Oil company due to its monopoly of the energy market and interference in Government.

The two parts recombined 88 years later, and now Exxon Mobil have bigger profits than any other company, corporation, or business in the world… consecutively, year after year.

source: documentary “Fuel” by Josh Tickell (via Just A Car Guy)

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being found

SEO And The Long Tail – How Jon Hamm Keeps Bringing New Visitors To My Site

But what this does show is how the Long Tail works for search and SEO. While most people will concentrate on clear search terms and take the first results that Google delivers up to them, others will search with what makes sense to themselves alone. And because of that, they find themselves here. That means that those who optimize their search term for a vary narrow search are missing out. People are searching in the oddest ways and using their own ways of thinking and writing. The only way you’ll get to your desired audience would be to publish really good content as frequently as possible. Publish no less frequently than once a week and ideally, five days a week or more.

I’ve had similar discoveries on my site. The first of which was when I found how popular my Hand & Arrow Icons post was in Google Image searches for “hand cursor icon”. The post ended up achieving my intended goal which was great. Then it got picked up by some big design blogs almost a year after I posted it and I got a huge surge in traffic.
The internet is fun. Anything is possible.

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Always Ballmer. Always Awkward.

Just watch the whole 4 minutes and 45 seconds of it. You’re feel a lot better about yourself (I hope).

…wait for the 4:20 mark so you can once again see that the man running Microsoft has no fucking idea how any of the company’s technology works.

“GEE, some of ya even like technical stuff.”

What the hell does that even mean?

He’s talking to the computer science department of the University of Washington, of course they like the technical stuff!

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What computers can I drive?

In the world of automobiles, we have all sorts of choices:
Ferrari. Lamborghini, Porsche, Maserati, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Aston Martin…and that’s just the high end. There’s cars for ever price, speed, mileage and capacity.
What about consumer computers?
Apple OS X. Microsoft Windows. (Linux has had more the enough time to be consumer-friendly, their priority is obviously dominating the world’s servers).
When we get to mobile OS’s there are a few more to choose from, but not many:
Apple iOS. Google Android. RIM’s Blackberry OS. And, until recently, the wonderful (I thought) webOS by Palm. And soon, Windows Phone 7 (I’ll count Symbian like I count the Ford Pinto as a viable choice for a car in the late 70’s).
When we get down to it, RIM doesn’t understand consumer products (yet?), Android is just getting around to getting more user-friendly and webOS was doing well until they got derailed by HP’s acquisition of Palm. I’m interested to see how Windows Phone 7 does. The problem is Microsoft, like RIM, doesn’t understand consumer products. Windows Phone 7 looks interesting, but too progressive for the average consumer.
We have Apple as the only true contender for the easiest, most holistic consumer computers, computer operating system and mobile operating system.
Where are the other contenders?
Who else understands design?

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connecting with people

Ze Frank’s web playroom

On the web, a new “Friend” may be just a click away, but true connection is harder to find and express. Ze Frank presents a medley of zany Internet toys that require deep participation — and reward it with something more nourishing. You’re invited, if you promise you’ll share.

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The Game

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

-Honore de Balzac

mark_zuckerberg.jpg

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