Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

It seems like the folder icons for bloglines have all been updated and blue’d:

I wonder if this is sign of more interface improvements to come…

Although profit doubled in q4, they still missed their projected earnings by a large margin. Maybe now the share price will start to reflect actual worth of the company, instead of VC wet dreams…

There is a good discussion going on over at Digg, where Anon writes:

I’m trademarking the term “Google Bubble” right now. Maybe Wall Street is finally seeing that the only thing they’ve done is a sparce set of average (or less) quality releases. I can’t believe this didn’t happen sooner, like when they unveiled the amazing “Google Pack” lol

Another digg’er is making some money short selling the stock:

I shorted this at $439 earlier today, before the earnings. Shorted right into that nice runup we saw before Greenspan spoke. I would be VERY careful about buying this in the morning. Although there is a chance this stock will rebound some, this is a “dead cat bounce” as we call it. There is a lot more to come off the share price, and I am not convering my short at this point. I love this company, but their market valuation is way out of whack.

Seagate just bought Maxtor for 1.9B. In their press release, they write:

“Seagate is excited about the opportunity to achieve greater scale, reduce supply chain costs, and leverage combined R&D efforts across a broader product set. With the increased scale of the combined company, we can reduce overall product costs and provide more innovative products at more competitive prices,” said Bill Watkins, Seagate CEO. “We believe this is a strategic combination that will provide value for our shareholders as well as benefits for our customers.”

Personally, the merger is a good thing, although the relative quality of their products may cause future problems in integrating the two. Seagate, for example, offers typically 5 year warranties with an excellent high-end reputation on its disks, while Maxtor hard drives usually are insured for a single year and have a “may break” commodity reputation.

Seagate stock (STX) is up about 2% at time of writing, Maxtor (MXO) is up 51%.