blue sky

Looking for a tech trade

2008-03-28T14:27:00.007+05:30

I am hoping that tech stocks will give an opportunity for a neat trade sometime in the next 3-6 months. Currently the big-4 (Infy, TCS, Wipro and Satyam) are trading between 13x-15x P/E, one year forward. I am hoping that if/when the US recession is confirmed these stocks will get cheaper. At that time, hopefully, I will hold my nerve and buy.

Three possible scenarios
1. The US recession is short lived and growth resumes after a 2 quarter lag – This is the base case and the ideal scenario. My expectation is that tech stocks will perform will be on three counts.

Growth expectation – Once the recession is confirmed, analyst estimates will face downgrades. These will be upgraded when the economy starts emerging from the recession.

Currency ($) appreciation – The weak $ trend may be reversed once the economy gets back on the growth track, providing further fillip to revenue growth of Indian IT companies.

P/E expansion – This will be the real kicker to stock price appreciation. I hope to buy Infy around 12x. When bad news dissipates I expect P/Es to revert to 16x-22x for the big-4.

2. The US recession lasts longer – This can have a nasty effect on tech stocks. First, growth will disappear for a while; Second, the dollar will probably not recover for longer. Add to that higher importance investors will pay to things like higher tax incidence on Indian IT companies from next year. The result can be underperformance for a long time.

3. US economy does not go into a recession – If this happens Indian IT stocks (and others as well) will start rallying pretty soon. I would have missed the opportunity.

How much do I expect tech stocks to rally in my base case?
P/E expansion will probably provide 50%-80% return. Effect of volume growth on profit (i.e. difference between analyst assumptions after downgrades and subsequent upgrades) will add about 10%-15%. Currency appreciation can add a further 5%.

Why I won't buy ULIPs

2008-02-06T22:06:00.002+05:30

~~90% (heresay number)~~ Around 95% of all insurance policies being sold in India are Unit Linked Insurance Plans (ULIPs), mainly due to distributors’ hard sell and the bull run in stock markets. The little realised fact is that ULIPs are nothing but a mutual fund and an insurance plan bundled together. Of course, the cost to the buyer is much greater than the unbundled product i.e. it is much cheaper to buy plain vanilla insurance and a mutual fund separately.

Insurance sellers say things like “for the long term ULIP is the best product”. Ask them what they mean by long term. Chances are they will say 5 years or more. Not true! ULIPs are cost effective only if held for more than 12-13 years. And for anything shorter than 10 years these are atrociously high priced products. Consider this…

From the first year premium ULIPs deduct anything between 12%-75% as premium allocation charge. In subsequent years (typically up to year 5) anything between 2-10% of your premium gets deducted. This is not all. There are mortality charges (which are used to fund the life insurance and also charged by vanilla policies), policy administration charges (flat rate of about Rs.50 pm), fund management charges (0.5% to 2.5%) etc. These are the mandatory charges. Of course there are many others too. The killer, though, is the surrender charge. This is levied if one wants to withdraw form the policy relatively early (typically within 5-6 years). This is not just another charge, after this one needs health insurance. Read this carefully - for early withdrawals the surrender charge can be as high as 30-75% of the accumulated fund in the investment account.

In my opinion it is better to buy plain vanilla insurance + a mutual fund separately, unless one is sure of staying invested for 15 years or more. If you still want to buy ULIPs, buy a plan from ICIC Pru. I have been told by a reliable source that, from a cost efficiency perspective I-Pru has the best plans. Of course, the return on the investment fund depends on the performance of the fund manager which one knows only with hindsight.

Disclaimer – I have no interest in how you put your money to work or any interest in promoting mutual funds or ICICI pru. Please consult your investment advisor before making any investment.

Plight of 24-hour news channels

2007-11-17T20:53:00.000+05:30

Television news reporters are a harried lot these days. As channels fight for higher TRPs and ‘need to’ report round the clock, content quality is steadily tending towards comic. A few instances

A few weeks ago my father was approached by a reporter/cameraman duo from a Bengali news channel at Calcutta airport.

Reporter – Aapni ki bangla boltey paren? (do you speak Bengali?)
Dad– Hain (Yes)
Reporter, pointing up – Airporter naam ta dekhun (Look at the name of the airport)
Dad– Looks at the name and then gives the chap a puzzled look
Reporter – Subhash* eir banan ta bhool achey; eta kal ker moddhe theek kora hobey (Subhash is spelt incorrectly; it will be corrected by tomorrow)
*Calcutta airport is called Netaji Subhash Chandra International Airport
Dad– Theek-i to achey (Looks correct to me)
Reporter – Netaji S-U-B-H-A-S likhten. Aamra jonotar interview niye sorkar kay force korbo banan ta theek korte (Netaji used to write S-U-B-H-A-S. We will report public reaction to this mistake and force the government to change the spelling)

Last I know, there has been no change. Maybe the reporter could not get anyone to agree with him, or maybe Netaji did end his name with an H after all.

Manoj Kumar feels hurt by a scene in Om Shanti Om. In walk all news channels worth their salt, showing Manoj Kumar narrating his despair and Farah/Shah Rukh Khan apologising profusely. That wasn’t all for one of the channels – they even got in Rajesh Khanna to comment on what he thought about the incident.

‘Breaking News’ is the most abused phrase in news channels these days. While the term should stand for an event whose importance warrants interruption of normal programming, in reality, every news channel ‘breaks’ some news every other hour. Aaj Tak’s classification of 'breaking news' attained sublime stupidity when it ‘broke’ the following ‘news’ - Aaj Tak wins best news channel award…

Then there is always the scene of celebrities going to jail – Get 15 seconds worth of footage and keep playing it ab-nauseum. And, of course call it breaking news. The grandest ‘breaking news’ was when the victorious Indian T20 cricket team was having its bus-ride through the streets of Bombay. Of course it kept being ‘broken’ for about 4 hours till the bus reached Wankhede stadium.

Predictability, missing spectators, retirements, tragedy and hilarity

2007-05-01T07:39:00.001+05:30

Cricket world cup 2007 was at best a step back and at worst, a lost cause. This has been the longest and most lackluster world cup yet. Too many matches went as predicted, the victory margins were huge and individual brilliance was missing, at least till Jayawardena and Gilchrist played brilliant knocks in the final stages. Only Bangladesh and Ireland provided some cheer (or anguish) by their giant killing acts.

Missing spectators – They just refused to come into the grounds, not that they are to blame. The administration apathy was summed up by the St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister - "Our residents have had some time to save", he said in defense of high ticket prices which started at $25 in a nation where the per capita income is $8,000!

Retirements – Lara and McGrath. One of modern day cricket’s most prolific batsmen and the one of best fast bowlers of recent times called it a day. One went out on a high, the other in not so ideal circumstances. Both were a joy to watch and will be hard to replace.

Tragedy – Bob Woolmer loved the game and paid for it with his life. The show moved on.

Hilarity – Australia won the final, celebrated, and then came back on and won it again. Scenes at the final take first place in the bad-judgement sweepstakes.

London sojourn

2007-01-02T07:05:00.000+05:30

I landed in London expecting to see a glassy city; instead here was an old fashioned modern city. Not unexpectedly, I ended up comparing London to NY. Each has its own charms, though for me, NY wins hand down – its got more variety, hustle, colour and energy. It also has the sun!

Architecture
London does NOT have tall buildings. Actually the majority of buildings are old low-rises. Even Buckingham Palace is much smaller than what it looks like in pictures. My theory is that London pays the price for becoming a large modern city much before any other place. Three centuries ago, these very buildings would have been considered huge but now they look puny compared to the ones in NY.
On to the business district - Canary Wharf resembles Singapore…or Newport – wider streets, a smattering of tall buildings, very neat
Tower Bridge was a surprise. Not because it is magnificent but because I always thought this structure was the London Bridge! It looks significant enough to be mentioned in a song – there’s one that goes “London Bridge is Falling Down…” the actual London Bridge on the other hand is plain ole bridge and not worth describing here.
Trafalgar Square does not have a parallel in NY. I especially liked the magnificent lions and the huge gates across the street. They are a little far to serve as an entrance but possibly were used long ago.

Your moolah won’t go a long way here
London is expensive. Period. Everything costs the same here as it would do in New York. Actually the number of pounds that you would pay for anything is the same as the number of dollars you would spend in New York, no consideration for the conversion rate, which, incidentally is 1₤ ~ $1.9. You pay ₤16 for a chakkar in the London Eye – you can get to the top of Empire State Building for $20. A day pass for the London subway costs ₤6.5 – a day pass for the NY subway costs $7. Street-side artists charge ₤5 to draw your portrait/caricature in London – they charge $5 in NY. Innumerable other examples abound.

Hustle-bustle…
…epitomises NY. The energy of the city is infectious. Its like being in a wave which pulls you along – you want to keep up, you have to keep up. I have not seen London on a normal work day, it is possible that it is different then, but on a holiday weekend it was definitely lacking in energy.

London is also a very quiet city. Or if you like, NY is very noisy. I fail to understand why the NY traffic has to be so noisy or maybe is it the wind-tunnel effect – wind blowing past tall buildings causing a perpetual din. Whatever it is, the quietness of London was refreshing for me.

Harrods Vs Macy’s
I select them for the simple reason that each is the largest shop of its city. The Macy’s on Herald Square in NY proudly proclaims itself to be the largest store in the world. Harrods, in one word is, grand. The Egyptian staircase/escalator is a work of art. And when opera singers are dropping their notes from one of the many balconies that overlook the escalator, you pretty much think you are at the opera, not in a department store. Harrods is definitely NOT designed to maximise convenience and efficiency for shoppers. Those virtues may be present but the central theme of Harrods is splendour, ambience, rich ambience. You just need to step inside the department that sells the antique (looking?) furniture to realize this. I for one am still not able to fathom a 2.5 foot wooden bench selling for ₤26,900. True, it had ferocious looking red tongued bears masquerading as the legs. But 27k for a bench is beyond my comprehension. Maybe it has some historical significance, but who cares, its not a Dali.

Speaking of Dali, the exhibition at the County Hall is magnificent. The highlight here is the Goya tribute. This is a series of Goya paintings with Dali’s interpretation alongside. Totally worth spending the ₤12 for a ticket. No doubt, the MOMA has The Persistence of Memory and The Little Theatre but this exhibition in all has about 500 pieces of Dali including a few sculptures. The MOMA, though, has more diversity/variety. And it has all of 275 sq ft of Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond.

Underground
The London subway or the Underground as it is called, is orderly and the signs are very well organised. Pay attention and you will not get lost easily. And it is extremely clean like the rest of the city. The new stations along the Jubilee Line are very well constructed. I particularly liked the Canary Wharf station. Evidently it is designed for a sea of humanity to pass through every morning and evening, Monday to Friday. On a Sunday evening though it was pretty desolate and the multiple escalators seemed redundant.

The NY subway is equally efficient and used by twice as many people (5mn per day). On average the stations are larger. It, however, does not compare to Underground’s cleanliness, in fact many stations in NY definitely stink. And, while the directions and signs are pretty orderly to a seasoned commuter, a newbie can easily feel lost in the labyrinth.

However my experience of the subway was spoilt by the Christmas closure. Yep, there is NO public transport in London on 25^th December. And since I had to catch a flight back, it cost be ₤55 for a ride from Kings Cross to Heathrow!

Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, SOHO, Oxford St. and Restaurants
Leicester square and Piccadilly Circus are where you would see the neon lights in London. But if its neon you want, nothing beats Times Square. Of course, they also stick real jeeps on hoardings here. But that’s a separate story.

Oxford Street is for high street shopping and has all brands that a well heeled shopper may crave for. So does 5^th Avenue. Which is grander? I think 5^th Avenue just for its sheer size and opulence.

SOHO is to London is what Village is to NY. Only cleaner and quieter. But this is one place that I wouldn’t want to be quiet. Imagine Village; now imagine quiet Village – doesn’t quite cut it.

Italian cuisine definitely seems to be the favourite in London. In the Leicester Square area, Italian restaurants outnumber all other cuisines put together by 9 to 1. I ate at the Chiquoto and it remains my most expensive Mexican dinner, ever. A minimal meal for two cost us ₤32. A similar dinner in NY would cost $30…with a fatter tip than in London.

Sun and Shimmer
Two cloudy days later it was time to head back. Finally I saw the sun...after the airplane rose above the cloud cover! I have passed through London about 8 times in the past one year and have never seen sunlight. That’s really the killer when it comes to choosing between the two cities. New York has these days – its between 55-65F, or 13-18° Celsius if you like, clear skies & hence bright sunshine and a light breeze – perfect days to just walk the streets or goof off in Central Park. No such luck for London residents.

What about shimmer? The women in NY are hotter. Period.

Movies - I

2006-12-21T07:15:00.000+05:30

I watched three movies over the weekend. On friday – The Pursuit of Happyness (yes, its spelt with a Y); on saturday – We are Marshall followed by Blood Diamond.

The Pursuit of Happyness is a story of human spirit and nicely portrays, what a man desperate enough, can achieve. It is heartwarming to watch Chris Gardner (Will Smith) besting the odds after struggling as a salesman trying to sell a 40 lb gizmo (this one’s a classic) to discerning doctors.

Chris Gardner has invested his savings in acquiring bone scanners which are supposed to be better than x-ray machines. He hopes to make a packet selling these to San Francisco hospitals. There’s only one problem – selling them is not easy. Chris’ wife is depressed with the state of affairs and moves to New York. He is soon rendered homeless, has a five-year old son to take care of and of course, his wonder gizmos remain a difficult sell.

In the midst of his troubles, Chris is inspired by the comforts of a stock broker he meets, and decides he must become one too. He gets into the internship program at Dean Witter after solving the Rubik’s Cube while the HR honcho looks on. The catch is that the six month internship is without salary! Chris must survive for that duration, look after his son and hope that he lands the job when the internship ends.

The screenplay is terrific – there’s an eclectic mixture of comedy (where on earth did the director dream of the bone scanner), tears (father and son spending the night inside the restroom of the subway) and happYness.

Will Smith does full justice to the role of Chris Gardner - his performance is being touted as worthy of the Oscar. Will Smith’s son plays Chris Gardner’s son in the movie and does a great job too – like father, like son. I would rate it as 4.5/5 stars

Offline !!!

2006-07-05T03:50:00.000+05:30

I recently realized, the hard way, that when at home I am well and truly addicted to my notebook. This is an account of the horror I felt when my notebook (and I) was left gasping for power.

I returned home from a R&K’s place (40 miles away from mine) and realized that my notebook adapter was left behind. “Never mind”, I thought. At low screen performance, I should have 5 hrs of power. Reality struck as soon as I powered on. Having used the battery power before, all I had was ONE hour!! Immediately the thoughts were gushing through. How would I

A. Keep the music on
Cannot compromise on this – HAVE TO keep it on as long as I am home and awake
No. of neighbours who have complained up to now: Just 1 - Had my windows open, volume was normal (:P) and ‘twas 11:15PM
B. Check mail
I press the refresh button on my mail 15 times/hr (even though the gmail page self-refreshes periodically)
C. Be online on messengers
What if someone sends a message and I miss it
D. Check orkut
Mebbe some pretty girl left a scrap. Not likely! But I can at least hope, cant I :)
E. Speculate¹
Regular visitor to two poker sites (mostly lose ²) and one black jack site (generally win here – luck helps…and of course Basic Strategy)
F. Be an armchair strategist (read play AoE)
I haven’t played against human players for the past 2 years so I am a bit rusty now. Andre would remember (though claim otherwise :D) his 6 consecutive losses against me. Nava was fair game (he would claim otherwise too :D), AP Singh was good, Pecky absolutely rocked (read decimated me). Never played against XL or Uncle but I reckon I could have beaten them
G. Read blogs
A few I visit – Kau, Nirav, Andy, Gokhale, Sarin , S Anand, Anand. There are others too but either I dont know them or they don’t write much
F. Download
Isn’t there always some music or movie
G. Shop
Love online shopping even tough I regularly buy useless things. Hate offline shopping
H. Do general surfing - yeah I do this too

Anyhow, I strategised (not the AoE variety). I had to do SOMETHING. Here what made sense

A. Watch VH1 instead of listening to music on comp
Verdict: Not so good - TV sound output is no match for my Bose speakers. Music is ok but cannot match the painstakingly built up collection on my comp. TV has advertisements!!
B. Finish of Grisham’s “The Broker”
Verdict: Non starter- Cannot bring myself to read fiction during the day. Restricted to the nights.
C. Start any of the 4 books that I recently spent $50 on
Verdict: No - Don’t want to start any before finishing The Broker. Starting anything else would mean that The Broker remains unfinished 'cause I am not really enjoying it
D. Get out, camera in tow and shoot stuff
Verdict: Too tired - Just travelled 40 miles
E. Sleep
Verdict: Escapist – Though that’s what I did. For 30 min. Cannot sleep in the afternoons.
F. Eat, drink
Verdict: After that what - Had a beer, then another…now what?
G. Go shopping
Verdict: Sucks – Physical shopping is an act to be committed in case of dire-necessity only. Never liked it, never will. Online shopping rocks but requires one to be connected.
But I did go shopping. Bought an “i GO universal charger” hoping I could charge the comp. The label said the pack was compatible with my IBM X40. Could not make it work with the power source at home and now I am saddled with a $60 piece of junk. I hope Radioshack has a return policy.

Excruciating pain hit me exactly a minute after my comp died. I decided enough was enough. It was time I regained control of my life. And I did just that. I made the 40 mile trek back to R&K’s home and got my adapter back.

¹ Note the choice of words here - speculate as opposed to gamble
² Hence, I think online poker tends to gambling

P.S. Another neighbour came calling that night. It was close to midnight and the volume was normal.

SFO Vs NYC - Tale of two cities

2006-06-10T10:12:00.000+05:30

Wating for my flight at San Francisco airport I cannot but help notice the lack of hustle here. La Guardia or JFK are much noisier; people rush around in all directions, bump into each other. At SFO patient folks engrossed in books or working their comps are everywhere.

The noise level is much lower too. Actually the only noise is the occasional announcement over the PA, its almost eerie. 500 people and silence!!

Naive in NY

2006-04-30T03:26:00.000+05:30

I ran into Naresh at Grand Central Station. He started by asking if there was an Indian temple close-by. That was the first sign. I was in a hurry and wanted to say that I didn’t care but he looked a “respectable” man. Then he asked if I was Indian. This was the second sign. Its very clear that I am, at least to other Indians. Are you from Gujarat? As if all Indians in US are from Gujarat! And did I have any friends in Jersey? He was visiting someone there and had dropped his wallet in the cab…with ninety dollars in it.

What do you want me to do? If you LOAN me some money I will return it tomorrow. Considering that he was living in Jersey and I north of NYC, it would be logistically difficult. But then the guy looked harried and I did “loan” him a twenty, left my name and number and walked on.

Of course there has been no call from Naresh. 10 seconds after giving him the money I knew he wouldn’t call. He wasn’t there when I looked back as I was walking away.

Rs. 200 crores

2006-04-25T07:04:00.000+05:30

Thats the cost of building a temporary township for housing the labourers who are going to be constructing Reliance's Jamnagar refinery !!

A month from now one lakh labourers will descend on what is going to be the largest construction site in India for the next two years. Work on setting up five sprawling labour colonies is going on in full swing,much before train-loads of workers from Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and other states arrive at the site. Besides, more than 3,000 apartments in Jamnagar have been cornered to house the armies of engineers that will descend shortly for speedy completion of the project within 2 years.

Around 250 acres of land has been acquired for developing five labour colonies near the new refinery site and the construction work is expected to be completed by July 2006. The colonies will also have primary health centres, schools and recreation facilities. Talk of scale!!
Source:Indiatimes.com

Even Google cant penetrate this firewall

2006-01-25T08:27:00.000+05:30

Tiananmen Square massacre, Dalai Lama, Taiwanese Independence, Falun Gong, Dongzhou - These are just some of the words or phrases that can trigger pages on google search to be blocked, if you are searching from inside China i.e.

Google becomes the latest in the list of high profile companies to bow before the great firewall of China; compromises on its corporate ethics in order to base its servers inside the mainland. Here is the article from Guardian.

Postscript: On Tuesday, Google stock closed 11% above its friday closing of $399.

Roll baby roll

2006-01-07T01:23:00.000+05:30

Will we see 13,000 on the Sensex by the end of 2006. My guess is we will. More on this later. I am on vacation, remember.

Vacation

2005-12-28T15:33:00.000+05:30

Am in India on vacation. Good to be nice and warm again !

Fund managers or day traders

2005-12-04T09:06:00.000+05:30

The Indian stock market is on a roll (as are many others around the world) but this post is not about virtues of Indian equities. Its about the useless (global) gyan that is regularly dished out by "experts" on television channels.

Sample this:
Anchor to "expert" - With the markets at 9,000 what would you advise investors to buy?
"Expert's" answer - The markets look expensive from a short term perspective but if one has a longer term view then one can buy if markets correct by around 300 points!!

Is a mere 300 point drop enough to make markets inexpensive? Just to put things in perspective, 300 points on the sensex closing of 8,951 is a mere 3.35%. If thats all that is needed to make the Indian market inexpensive then it must have very low volatility and low returns. Any person who even remotely follows Indian equities knows this is not true. Indian markets have more than tripled over the past 30 months and risen more than 35% over the course of this year. They have fallen or risen by 10% within a month more than once this year. Given this, a 3% correction should really be insignificant and definitely not enough to make the apparently expensive valuations cheap.

Either that or our "expert" must be a master at timing the market, of the order not seen in the world before. Else making statements about scalping 3%, from what he believes to be an expensive market, seems very adventurous and airing such views on a television channel (watched mostly by small time investors with limited resources), very inappropriate.

This "expert" is not alone in making cliched statements about the markets on television. But maybe, thats becase the real experts are busy trying to make money (without taking undue risk) and dont have time for regular visits to TV studios.
------
P.S. This is an observation on a show aired on CNBC. I had mentioned the name of the anchor and the "expert" in my original post but removed it as advised by a cool dude friend of mine

2005-11-25T20:43:00.000+05:30

The word predator has a new meaning. Watch an octopus devouring a shark . This one's from google videos.

CVC has taken a majority stake in Formula 1. It bought part of Bernie Ecclestone's 25 percent holding and the 48 percent stake of Bayerische Landesbank. The question is who will CVC sell to when they want to cash out, because the very nature of F1 (small number of powerful teams on which viewership and hence revenues depend) makes it an unattractive company to be listed on the public markets.

Li Ka-shing who was also in talks to buy out the stake can be a possible suitor, or someone like Richard Branson's Virgin. Just speculating.

2005-11-11T06:57:00.000+05:30

Red Herring reports that consumers in California have filed a class-action lawsuit against record company Sony BMG, charging their computers have been harmed by anti-piracy software on Sony BMG CDs. Get the story here

2005-11-07T09:40:00.000+05:30

In the past few years, some of the most revolutionary software emerged not from Silicon Valley startups or high-powered universities, but from a humble online chat room - Chat Room that built the world

2005-11-04T22:31:00.000+05:30

Mark Russinovich has discovered a bundle of info about the DRM that Sony installs on your PC with the new Van Zant CD. You can find the article here.

The nutshell is this: Sony releases the new Van Zant CD. On the computer, it only plays within its own executable, not via Windows Media Player or any other software. You are allowed to burn three copies of the CD, and then it's done with.Well, it appears that, to enforce this DRM, Sony are installing device drivers, DLLs and registry hacks, then running a Rootkit process to mask their installation. If you attempt to uninstall the playing software, the device drivers are left installed, and are left active. Trying to delete the drivers manually - providing you can even find them - can leave your PC crippled. The code is programmed so badly, you can be losing 1-2% of your CPU time even when the CD isn't in the drive, as the DRM software is searching your machine to check nothing is going on that it should know about.This technique of masking files and folders to prevent detection is commonly used by malware and spyware to prevent uninstallation. Only by using a RKT detector can you see the processes running and from there, it's an incredibly complicated process to break down the inbuilt protections in the software.

2005-11-04T00:32:00.000+05:30

If you happen to take the 1:53 AM train from Grand Central (NYC) to Southeast (NY) on a friday or saturday night, chances are you could be treated to comical fights between drunk guys and gals returning from NYC. I have done the trip 6 times and have been a witness twice.

The girls in the group sing (yes sing) songs abt small size of the guys. The guys keep asking girls to suck their _____. Its one-all as yet and I have watched sprited performance by both groups

One has to be there to understand how funny drunk people can be.

2005-11-03T09:37:00.000+05:30

There's a war brewing between bloggers and an Indian business school. This is an ad that the school took out to counter bloggers. I reckon this must be a first. Or does anyone know of any other school doing the same? Apparently the school has also sent "legal notices" to bloggers claiming sums as large as Rs. 1.75 bn ($45 mn) for tarnishing its reputation.

2005-10-26T06:00:00.000+05:30

Google Base - The mighty Goog is going to launch into e-commerce. Analysts say it might be striking at the heart of eBay. Find the story from redherring.com
here

2005-10-22T22:06:00.000+05:30

Here's Google's reaction to the lawsuit

2005-08-28T17:56:00.000+05:30

We didn't start the fire - Ye Li has added pics to match - http://home.uchicago.edu/~yli5/Flash/Fire.html the file can be downloaded from the "temporary internet files" folder once the once the video has played