Silicon Valley

Does Silicon Valley have a chemistry problem?

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:12:00 PDT

The comments on the "Don't Blame the Feds if Silicon Valley Falls Behind" are, by and large, excellent.

Don't blame the feds if Silicon Valley falls behind

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:09:00 PDT

Silicon Valley fears being overtaken by the rest of the world in the race to dominate "green energy," reports Reuters' Laura Isensee from the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit, held in San Francisco this week.

Why Microsoft's bid for Yahoo is an act of surrender

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:06:00 PST

In the technoculture wars between Silicon Valley and Redmond, Wash., a hostile merger bid by Microsoft for Yahoo is more than just a skirmish. It's more like Germany invading Russia, or the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. It's a big -- $44 billion big -- deal.

Betrayal: A Silicon Valley way of life

Andrew Leonard — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:10:00 PST

In the arsenal of semiconductor company tactics, a lawsuit is often as popular as a way-new bleeding-edge technological breakthrough when the goal is gaining an edge in the marketplace. So the suit alleging "misappropriation" of trade secrets filed in October by Santa Clara's Applied Materials against Shanghai's Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) is, on one level, no more than business as usual. Similar intellectual-property-related lawsuits are filed almost every day in the chip business.

The richest immigrants in Silicon Valley

Andrew Leonard — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:25:00 PST

"Indians Most Affluent, Educated, in Silicon Valley" reads the headline on ExpressIndia.com.

3Com: I think I'm turning Chinese

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:07:00 PDT

We really knew the whole Internet thing was getting out of hand when, in 1996, Candlestick Park, the home of the San Francisco Giants and 49ers, was renamed 3Com Park at Candlestick Point.

Bangalore offshores to Silicon Valley

Andrew Leonard — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:11:00 PDT

Top software engineers in Bangalore are getting too expensive, complained Like.com CEO Munjal Shah in his personal blog in late April. Shah was explaining why he had decided to relocate his company's engineering staff from India back to Silicon Valley, a gambit dubbed "reverse offshoring" by the Financial Times.

All aboard "the Bangalore Express"

Andrew Leonard — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 08:54:00 PST

I have become accustomed to getting my tips on what to read in the San Jose Mercury News from Kamla Bhatt, a writer and podcaster who splits her time between Silicon Valley and India. Today she references an article about "the Bangalore Express," a Lufthansa flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt to Bangalore that is reportedly the fastest, most convenient way to get from here to there, or there to here.

Keeping pace with the Bengaluru Joneses

Andrew Leonard — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 09:19:00 PST

This is my world: An Indian blogger points me to a San Jose Mercury News article reporting how Silicon Valley residents, inspired (or driven mad with envy) by a Hindustan Times article boasting about Bangalore's (or should I say Bengaluru's?) state-of-the-art municipal wireless network, are reinvigorating their own efforts to push ahead with a regional wireless broadband network.

Imperial conference calls

Andrew Leonard — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 08:15:00 PST

"6 a.m. Pacific is the best time for a global conference call."

Sayonara, Bangalore

Andrew Leonard — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 07:54:00 PST

As of Nov. 1, Bangalore becomes Bengaluru, the latest in a series of Indian name changes that delight semioticians and frustrate mapmakers the world over. Bombay begat Mumbai, Madras begat Chennai, Calcutta begat Kolkata, and so it goes.

Chasing tail

Farhad Manjoo — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 04:05:00 PDT

Almost two years ago, Chris Anderson, who is the editor of Wired magazine, published an article describing the intriguing features of markets -- such as that for books, CDs and DVDs -- in which scarcity is giving way to abundance. Anderson argued that unlimited selection -- the 3.7 million books on Amazon.com versus the 100,000 available at your local Borders, to take one example -- has occasioned a shift in the culture away from big hits and toward smaller niches. Anyone who has ever purchased media online knows this intuitively; which Netflix user hasn't burst into frenzied delight at the possibility of renting every Preston Sturges feature instead of just the latest thing Will Ferrell's starring in? But Anderson was the first to put a picture and a name to the phenomenon of unlimited selection, and he was greeted as a prophet of the new.

Toy- brick globalization

Andrew Leonard — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:01:00 PDT

In a move that simply begs for wild metaphor-slinging, Lego announced yesterday that it is outsourcing toy-brick production to Singapore-based Flextronics, one of the world's largest contract manufacturers. This will entail layoffs of workers in the U.S. and Denmark, as production is moved to Flextronics facilities in the Czech Republic and Mexico.

Out of work? Go to grad school.

Andrew Leonard — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 15:50:00 PST

Nothing gets engineers in Silicon Valley more riled than the prospect of losing their jobs to cheaper competition abroad. It is the hot-button issue, especially in the semiconductor industry, once the crown jewel of the Valley. So it's no big surprise that the topic of globalization was inescapable at last week's DesignCon conference in Santa Clara, Calif.

Silicon Valley is the best place ever in the whole world

Farhad Manjoo — Thu, 27 May 2004 12:30:00 PDT

One day in the not-too-distant future, Google will finally begin selling its stock to the public, and several hundred of the firm's Silicon Valley employees will find themselves instantly weighed down by loads and loads of newfound cash. In the past, such a story would not have been very remarkable here; this region, you'll remember, was once prized for the ease with which it transformed ordinary, slightly geeky mortals into unspeakably wealthy hipsters.

Death of a cheerleader

Om Malik — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 12:30:00 PDT

On Feb. 28, Red Herring magazine, a flag-bearer for all things Silicon Valley, breathed its last. And so did the technology boom of the 1990s. Some dismissed the magazine as a new economy rag. Others saw it as "inside baseball" for venture capitalists. They were all wrong.

Bring back the new economy!

Suneel Ratan — Mon, 18 Nov 2002 05:35:00 PST

The Democrats' Election 2002 script was supposed to go something like this: Swallow misgivings about President Bush's Iraq plans; go along with a moderated war-powers resolution; turn the discussion to the economy and how it, well, sucks. There is now a raft of explanations for why that didn't work. Much of the country remains preoccupied with security and terrorism. People like the president personally and rallied around him. Polls indicate that people don't blame Bush for the economy or think Washington can't do much about it. But here's one explanation that seems to ring most true: The Democrats didn't have any bright ideas on how to turn the economy around. And the American people figured that out.

How greedy was my Valley?

Andrew Leonard — Wed, 18 Sep 2002 12:30:00 PDT

Like an ebb tide that leaves little behind save rotting seaweed and dead fish, the national obsession with all things Silicon Valley has drained away, replaced by a grim fixation on Enronitis and Jack Welch's divorce. But for those of us who live in or around its environs, or are still caught up in quaint techno-fascination, the quest to understand the Valley continues. Never mind that the exercise now sometimes seems more like picking a scab than uncovering the ineluctable Future of Capitalism. The itch must be scratched; the Valley is still there, even if Excite and Webvan are not.

"0wnz0red"

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 28 Aug 2002 12:30:00 PDT

Ten years in the Valley, and all Murray Swain had to show for it was a spare tire, a bald patch, and a life that was friendless and empty and maggoty-rotten. His only ever California friend, Liam, had dwindled from a tubbaguts programmer-shaped potato to a living skeleton on his death-bed the year before, herpes blooms run riot over his skin and bones in the absence of any immunoresponse. The memorial service featured a framed photo of Liam at his graduation; his body was donated for medical science.

Losing the HP Way

Jeff Goodell — Fri, 22 Mar 2002 12:30:00 PST

So the proxy battle of the century appears to be over. Carly Fiorina won. Walter Hewlett lost. The jazzy, boardroom-smart CEO of Hewlett-Packard will get her wish, and the hoary old Silicon Valley legend will gobble up Compaq, forming a $20 billion monster that will do battle with Dell and IBM. It will be years before anyone can judge whether this is a brilliant move or just a mindless "What the hell else are we gonna do?" attempt to boost HP's sagging stock price. I tend to think it'll be the latter, but then, I'm not an investment banker or HP executive who stands to make millions off the deal if it goes through.