Google enchanted by MTV’s sweet music!

If Shakespeare was to describe the meaning of his statement, ‘If music be the food of love, play on,’ he would perhaps cite Google’s attraction to MTV’s music as an illustration, albeit in the corporate sense. The two giants have entered into an advertisement revenue sharing deal that allows MTV to share its videos with Google and in return share the revenues that come from advertisements. Also, the website owners and bloggers would be allowed to post the MTV videos and will get a share of the revenue every time a person clicks to watch the videos. Through this deal, MTV would be able to expand its online audience and Google, on the other hand would benefit through increase in flow of traffic to its website.

This move is largely appropriate as this would provide a clear edge to the search engine giant as its competition with many other search engines (like Yahoo, MSN and AOL) gets more intense by the day, and will position it better to fight competition in the online video market. But Google still withholds the information regarding the number of websites that will be allowed to host the MTV videos. Taking a broader perspective, the revenue sharing model between Google and MTV is poised to become popular because apart from benefiting the two entities, the new model also provides revenues to small website owners who will post the MTV videos. So if you are a Google maniac, its time to check out some video compilations as well. And if the doctor has prescribed a strict adherence to MTV music, and if you cannot carry your TV set around, don’t you worry – just walk into an internet cafe and watch the videos on Google!

A...Hutchooooo! Essar stays away...

The wedding season seems long over with the bells ringing for none – and this strictly includes Hutchison Telecom International Ltd. (the Hong-Kong based parent of Hutchison) and Essar Group, both of whom have finalised their divorce agreement. The Essar Group has terminated the BPL Mobile Mumbai circle share purchase agreement and the subsequent merger of BPL Mobile with Hutchison Essar. Hurt by the behaviour shown by its partner Essar, Hutch has knocked the doors of the Bombay High Court seeking for justice. According to Hutchison, the BPL Mumbai vendors are certainly under a legal obligation to complete the share purchase contract and can in no way mull over terminating the contract, legally speaking.

Fed’s relentless printing of paper money sans asset-backing has landed the dollar in a precarious situation

How about a sneak peak from Pirates of the Caribbean part III? It features Federal Reserve officials as the protagonist pirates, sailing on a battered ship, led by a one-eyed captain, who embark on a serious treasure hunt... a hunt for gold! It may sound like a bad gag, but this could well be what the Feds might be forced to undertake very soon in the near future.

Times, if not changing, are definitely going against the dollar. An increasing number of countries are now cleaning up the greenback from their forex vaults and stuffing it with alternative currencies and assets. Syria recently ended its dollar peg and shift ed its reserves to euro. Similarly, the United Arab Emirates also decided to reallocate its reserves from dollar to euro by as much as 10% of its total reserves. In fact, a summary B&E survey ending July 27th, 2006, considering the share of dollar in the total allocated foreign exchange reserves of all countries, shows that the greenback is now being hastily replaced predominantly by the euro. Since the first quarter of 1999, the total share of dollar has de-escalated from 71.09% to 66.32% by the end of the first quarter of 2006 (preliminary figures). During the same time, the share of euro has increased from 18.13% to 24.79%. Even a comparison of exchange rates (2000 to 2006) shows that the euro has appreciated by a staggering 24% against the dollar.

Crisis leadership – not for the chicken-hearted

Succession plans would be crucial during a pandemic. Some organizations may want to name co-CEOs or co-presidents. And every CEO will want to build a team of top-notch people to share responsibility for solving the novel, complex problems that will inevitably arise. This team will be better equipped to solve problems, and will provide bench strength, in case the leader becomes ill.

Abraham Lincoln is the great American model for this collaborative approach to crisis leadership. As Doris Kearns Goodwin describes in her biography “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” (October 2005), Lincoln draft ed a wartime brain trust of former political rivals. He knew that Edwin M. Stanton had dismissed him as a country bumpkin, but he also believed that Stanton was the secretary of war the nation needed.

Rape/Kill @ $1600!

For the US administration, it has always made a politico-economic sense to bomb nations, but ironically, it has never made sense to them when it comes to duly compensate them. Their rationality, emanating from geo-politics & neo-con economics, has reduced them to a gang of charlatans, thoroughly obsessed to seek a rent out of every bomb bombed under the guise of restoring peace. And this has had far reaching effects not only on the innocent victims of US war crimes, but also on their own soldiers (those yet not killed in the war).

To measure the magnitude of US administration’s rent seeking appetite, one just needs to view the compensation paid by them to civilians killed in Iraq; and the figures are crying. While the death benefit granted to the family of American soldiers killed in any combat zone is $500,000, the amount paid to innocent civilian war-victims are chicken feed in comparison. In Iraq, the Associated Press, after surveying Iraqi hospitals, contended that in one month of their survey period, the total Iraqi-confirmed civilian deaths were 3,420, which even to them was an extremely conservative estimate. Comparable figures of around 43,000 are reported by the alternate media; but even these figures were not enough to make a blip on the screen of the US administration, as the maximum compensation that has ever been assigned to any Iraqi has been a measly $11,000 (given to an eight month pregnant woman whose husband and three children were gunned down in Baghdad).