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Remember that honorary degree in '96?

By CompiledTimes technology Staff

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Neelie Kroes, 63, said she gave Gates the degree in 1996 when she was head of the Nijenrode Business School in the Netherlands, according to Reuters.

When asked about it, she said, "Well, you are not giving an honorary degree if you are not thinking that he (Gates) at that time was doing a good job."

The past relationship could give rise to questions of whether Kroes has a conflict of interest as head of the EU's investigation into Microsoft's business practices.

Kroes told reporters she now has a different responsibility than when she led the business school.

Microsoft is appealing the EU's ruling against it with the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg.

Show us the money

Counting on searches On average, Internet users made 33 searches each in June, and each visit to a search engine resulted in 4.4 searches. Source: comScore Networks

Google's perfect storm of pre-IPO hype culminated in a fairly normal public offering last week, and Friday its share price closed at $108.31 after starting at $85 Wednesday. That puts the company's market value at $29.4 billion.

How does that compare with Puget Sound companies? Amazon.com's market value is $16 billion, Starbucks' is $18 billion, Costco's is $19.5 billion and Microsoft blows them all away with a market cap of $295 billion.

And for all the Googlemania, guess which one pulled in the fewest dollars last quarter? Google, with $700 million in revenue. That's about half the revenue of Starbucks and Amazon, one-thirteenth of Microsoft's and a fifteenth of Costco's.

The dot-com bubble isn't back yet, but Google's bubble is doing just fine.

Settling for a suit

Google managed to go public, but several other tech companies weren't so lucky. Lindows, the San Diego Linux developer that's about to change its name after Microsoft claimed it was a trademark violation, said last week it was postponing its IPO because of adverse market conditions.

"Lindows won't be forced into a cut-rate IPO by a fickle stock market," Chief Executive Michael Robertson said in a statement.

That's OK. The company can live on the $20 million payout it received from Microsoft to settle the trademark-infringement lawsuit over its name.

Virus of marketing

Imagine getting a text message on your mobile phone that reads: "Outbreak, I'm infecting you with t-virus."

Those words sent people into a panic who believed their phones had been hit with some sort of mobile-phone virus, according to The Register.

The messages are part of an ill-conceived marketing campaign to promote the latest "Resident Evil" video game.

The game's publisher, Capcom, was forced to put out a news release saying that the t-virus was "totally harmless and uses an innovative pyramid reward system to encourage those who are infected to infect as many others as they possibly can."

And that's supposed to make everyone feel better?

On the record

New products: Seattle-based WatchGuard has introduced Firebox X Edge security appliances for small and medium-sized businesses.

Partnerships: Intermec Technologies, the Everett developer of devices and other technology to help businesses collect data, has agreed to use Mobility XE software from Seattle-based NetMotion Wireless in Intermec 700 Color Series mobile computers.

Download, a column of news bits, observations and miscellany, is gathered by The Seattle Times technology staff. We can be reached at 206-464-2265 or biztech@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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