Chinese and Indian Entrepreneurs Are Eating America's Lunch By BY VIVEK WADHWA
Watch out, Silicon Valley: China and India aren't just graduating bad engineers and stealing intellectual property anymore. They're fostering innovations that will shake the world... India has built a $73 billion-per-year information technology service business and has been offering IT services of steadily increasing sophistication. Its engineering R&D industry is now a $10 billion business9 -- a three-fold increase in four years. It develops sophisticated products for Western firms in the aerospace and automotive industries, and in telecommunications, semiconductors, consumer electronics, and medical devices. And most significantly, there are thousands of new startups that are building web technologies, clean-tech products like low-power lighting, and mobile 8 applications... The first generations of Indian startups focused on selling IT services, and the Chinese developed copycat web technologies such as Baidu, China's Google rival, and Sina, its Twitter clone. But they are going beyond that now. They are gaining the knowledge -- and developing the confidence -- to create innovative products, not only for domestic markets, but also for global ones...

  136

21st century, hi-tech India: the smartest country on the planet. By Angela Saini.
From rocket science to DNA research, India is ridding itself of its poor country image... People in the driving seat. KIRAN MAZUMDAR-SHAW: Biotech queen ... NR NARAYANA MURTHY: "India's Bill Gates" ... NANDAN NILEKANI: Socially conscious tech guru ... G MADHAVAN NAIR: Space-race heavyweight... MANISH GUPTA: Spoken Web prophet ... AZIM PREMJI: Modest IT billionaire.   135

Europe Is Searching For Its Silicon Valley. By Erick Schonfeld.
... Europe is still a mosaic of employment law, tax regulations, and cultural habits that can influence where it makes the most sense to locate different parts of a business. One Dutch CEO, for instance, told me that it costs you need a minimum of 18,000 Euros in starting capital just to incorporate in the Netherlands. And that is just the government's fee. hen I asked which region was most likely to emerge as Europe's Silicon Valley, the answers were all over the map: London, Munich, Berlin, Zurich, Geneva, even Barcelona. The money is in London, cheap office space is in Berlin, the mobile expertise is in Helsinki, the weather's nice in Barcelona, and the inexpensive engineers are in Estonia (which may not even consider itself part of Europe, but is close enough to manage from Berlin or Amsterdam). As Europe searches for its Silicon Valley, it may turn up as a state of mind rather than a specific place. The truth is that Europe may not need a single Silicon Valley because business is becoming so distributed. While some Silicon-Valley chauvinists may disagree, the idea of concentrating all the talent and capital in one region seems so last century to many.../  More Europe's High-Tech News  134

Chile: South America's Silicon Valley?  By SHEILA RILEY
Chile is staking entrepreneurs in an effort to create a Silicon Valley-like tech center south of the equator... Startups chosen for the government-sponsored program get $40,000, free office space and a network of connections. Called Start-Up Chile, the Santiago-based program completed a pilot project with 23 participants in 2010. The online application process for the 2011 program began Feb. 15, at startupchile.org. "Start-Up Chile offers a platform for the country to attract entrepreneurial talent from all over the world," ... Chile hopes to attract 300 new startups in 2011, and to have 1,000 entrepreneurs in residence by 2014 ... Soon after arrival, entrepreneurs can be off and running with a one-year working visa and identification number that allows them to get a bank account and cell phone. "Within a week, they are fully capable of working,"  ...Spanish isn't a requirement because everyone on the program's Chilean side is bilingual... / See also:  Start-Up Chile   133

Has Silicon Valley Lost Its Edge? by Tony D'Altorio
U.S. technology innovation has relied on venture capital dollars for the last 50 years. That relationship resulted in it - and Silicon Valley - becoming the ones to beat. Yet last year, only $12.3 billion of new money found its way into venture capital funds, less than half of that in 2008. As private equity amounts retreat, many American start-up financiers see a historic contraction ahead for the industry. Part of that blame falls on U.S. venture capitalists, who now hunt elsewhere for big ideas. Many of them have their eyes on China for clean technology and other new platforms... Some venture capital firms chose that route because of the legislative environment at home. It's simply not as conducive to backing local companies as it used to be. But that's hardly the only reason why they're taking their business elsewhere...  132

Apple iPad 2: why tablets are the future of computing  By Shane Richmond
Announcing the iPad 2 last night, Steve Jobs talked  by  about it as a "post-PC" device. It's clear Apple considers theses devices to be the future and it's a theme that Jobs has spoken about before. At a conference in June last year, Jobs said: "I'm trying to think of a good analogy. When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. / More about "Silicon Valley News"  131

Can You Really Build a Great Tech Firm Outside Silicon Valley? by Mark Suster
Last year I was on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley meeting with one of the most prominent venture capital firms in the country... The VC partner, somebody I greatly respect said, '... I'm just not sure you can build a great technology firm outside of Bay Area.' And this Silicon Valley bias isn't limited to any single meeting - it has been a recurring theme in my time as a VC....

  130

US Venture Capital  investments by Region / Q4 2010

  129

Google explains what is going on  ...
... we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking-a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries-and we wanted to let people know what's going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites-sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites-sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on... Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that's exactly what this change does.  It's worth noting that this update does not rely on the feedback we've received from the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension, which we launched last week. However, we did compare the Blocklist data we gathered with the sites identified by our algorithm, and we were very pleased that the preferences our users expressed by using the extension are well represented. If you take the top several dozen or so most-blocked domains from the Chrome extension, then this algorithmic change addresses 84% of them, which is strong independent confirmation of the user benefits. Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, and Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer

  128

In its search for quality, Google might find more than it bargained for.  By Levi Sumagaysay
Google made the [recent] change [ search algorithm ] because the quality of its searches has been under attack, with numerous reports detailing how companies have gamed its system to boost their rankings in search results. A couple of weeks ago, for example, the New York Times wrote about [it] ... [Google] has said in the past that its search results are objective, governed solely by algorithms. But those algorithms are tweaked and tinkered with by human beings who work at Google. Like in so many other instances in life, objectivity is a myth... High quality vs. low quality is subjective, and because the company probably won't disclose how it makes those determinations, controversy is sure to follow.  127

Google Revamps to Fight Cheaters By AMIR EFRATI
Google's power over the fortunes of so many other companies has made it a target of competitor complaints. It has also faced government investigations, including scrutiny by regulators in the U.S. and Europe. The Silicon Valley company built its business on the strength of algorithms that yield speedy results. The company constantly refines those formulas, and sometimes takes manual action to penalize companies that it believes use tricks to artificially rise in search rankings. In recent weeks, it has cracked down on retailers J.C. Penney Co. and Overstock.com Inc. ... About 12% of U.S.-based queries would be affected by the change, Google said, and the changes would expand to non-U.S. users in the near future.  126

The Dirty Little Secrets of Search By DAVID SEGAL
Advertising Age obtained a Google document that listed some of its largest advertisers, including AT&T, eBay and yes, J. C. Penney. The company, this document said, spent $2.46 million a month on paid Google search ads - the kind you see next to organic results. Add to PortfolioIs it possible that Google was willing to countenance an extensive black-hat campaign because it helped one of its larger advertisers? It's the sort of question that European Union officials are now studying in an investigation of possible antitrust abuses by Google. Investigators have been asking advertisers in Europe questions like this: 'Please explain whether and, if yes, to what extent your advertising spending with Google has ever had an influence on your ranking in Google's natural search.' And: 'Has Google ever mentioned to you that increasing your advertising spending could improve your ranking in Google's natural search?'   125

... doesn't think there's a dot-com style tech bubble right now ...
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz launched in 2009, and its been having a great run at a time when other VC firms are failing. It announced a new $650 million fund in November and has investments in all five of the consumer Internet companies expected to do big IPOs in the next two years: Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Zynga, and Skype... John O' Farrell, who joined the firm as its third general partner last June ... told ...: He doesn't think there's a dot-com style tech bubble right now -- the companies getting big valuations have real customers, revenue, and growth potential, unlike a lot of companies that emerged from 1998 through 2000. Twitter is already having a huge cultural effect around the world, and is a natural global business, so the money will inevitably follow...
What's It Like Being A Partner At Silicon Valley's Most Powerful VC Firm?  By Matt Rosoff

  124

McNealy on the decline of Silicon Valley    By Jnan Dash
Scott Mcnealy, ex-CEO of Sun was quite pessimistic about Silicon valley and future of the tech economy in general. He said he is asking his kids to learn Mandarin... / See also:  'Silicon Valley News'

China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S. by Shiho Fukada 
For years, many of China's best and brightest left for the United States, where high-tech industry was more cutting-edge ... Mr. Pinto is the first Chief Technology Officer of a major American tech company to move to China. The company, Applied Materials, is one of Silicon Valley's most prominent firms. It supplied equipment used to perfect the first computer chips. Today, it is the world's biggest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays. In addition to moving Mr. Pinto and his family to Beijing in January, Applied Materials, whose headquarters are in Santa Clara, Calif., has just built its newest and largest research labs here. Last week, it even held its annual shareholders' meeting in Xi'an. It is hardly alone. Companies - and their engineers - are being drawn here more and more as China develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States. A few American companies are even making deals with Chinese companies to license Chinese technology...'Of course, China will lead everything.'

  123

First 15 Years of the Browsers Wars:

See also:  Birth of the World Wide Web, Browser Wars, ...

  122

Google Offers Staff Engineer $3.5 Million To Turn Down Facebook Offer by Michael Arrington

... a staff engineer at Google being heavily romanced by Facebook was offered a jaw dropping $3.5 million in restricted stock by Google ... He quite wisely accepted Google's counter offer. Facebook lost this one. / See also: ... a massive talent war for software engineers going on in Silicon Valley and it is spilling over into other regions

  121

  [US] e-commerce retail sales totaled $44 billion in the fourth quarter last year,
 up from $38 billion a year earlier. E-commerce sales now account for 4.3% of total retail sales (which include lots of things that don't get bought online, like new cars, gasoline and restaurant meals), up from 1% a decade ago. For the year, e-commerce sales totaled $165 billion.

  120

Israeli High Tech ...
(CBS/ AP)...The laundry list of Israeli achievements is surprising for a country of just 7.6 million. The country helped give the  world instant messaging, voicemail, and Internet telephony. Its <b>nanotechnology has enabled great advances in medicine</b>. It boasts more companies on the technology-focused Nasdaq exchange than any place outside North America, and houses research and development centers for multinational giants like Microsoft and Intel. All this has fueled economic growth and given the Jewish state, for all its troubles with the Arab world around it, a first-world standard of living. Technology now accounts for an eighth of Israel's economy and has pushed the per capita output up to a respectable $30,000 - more than many countries in Europe, and just under Japan, at about $32,000... For now, Israelis continue to be a magnet for the venture capital that has helped the tech industry grow... According to Dow Jones VentureSource, which tracks the global venture market, venture capitalists from around the world invested nearly $904 million in Israeli startups in the first nine months of 2010. Chinese companies drew a little more than $2 billion in that same period and Indian companies drew $710 million, the VentureSource figures show... many Israeli tech companies are outsourcing programming to India. Giza maintains an Asia office in Singapore. Ness Technologies, an Israeli computer services outfit, has offices across India. Clean technology is another key area: Better Place, the brainchild of Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi, hopes to revolutionize the global automobile industry by laying down the world's first electric car grids next year / More Israeli High Tech News

  119

  118

India's Silicon Valley or Silicon Valley's India?

... referring to Bangalore as Silicon Valley's India is more appropriate, as it struggles to transform itself from a region that develops software for global markets to one that defines new products and technologies. Driving the growth of the Indian software industry is the export of labour-intensive services, while the relatively small and slow-growing domestic market has limited the nurturing of original ideas...

  117

Steven Blank: 'A start-up is a temporary organization designed to discover a profitable,
scalable business model'.

  116

Silicon Valley Expats Spur Innovation in India By Sean Randolph
By 1998, as the tech boom neared its peak, 774 of the 11,443 tech firms started since 1980 had Indian CEOs. From 1995 to 2005, 15 percent of Silicon Valley startups were launched by Indians- the largest number for any immigrant group.  Today about half of California's 475,000 Indian immigrants live in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second largest community in the country after New York. Its profile is unique: median income is $107,000, 75 percent of adults have at least a bachelor's degree, and 70 percent are in management or professional positions...  India's Silicon Valley diaspora is proving a key resource for both countries, recycling to India much of the energy, creativity and experience that made the Valley a global technology icon / More India's IT News.   115

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says company is 'very proud' of ...
the company executive who helped organize the 18 days of protests in Egypt ... Schmidt... said ... that collaborative technologies such as Facebook 'change the power dynamics between governments and citizens.' [See also JEFFREY SOLARI's   ironic version of the Transcript of Obama tech meeting in Silicon Valley February 17, 2011 -  Mark Zuckerberg:  Look, Barack, ... Tunisia and Egypt were just beta for us at Facebook. We can overthrow your government in a few days. All I have to do is push a button and I've got 5 million people protesting on the Mall by Saturday.]    114
 

Why did Baidu's CEO Fly to Silicon Valley to Meet with Mark Zuckerberg? By: Doug Herman
.. Robin Li, the CEO of Baidu.com, Inc. China's leading search engine, had flown to Silicon Valley to meet with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Baidu has declined to comment on the rumor... Zuckerberg visited Baidu on December 20 for a lunch with Li and a tour of his company's offices... Zuckerberg also made visits to Sina, Taobao (part of the Alibaba Group), and China Mobile... Prior .http://www.digitaleastasia.com/2011/02/19/why-did-baidus-ceo-fly-to-silicon-valley-to-meet-with-mark-zuckerberg/.. comments all of Zuckerberg's visits were placed in the context of his great affection for China. The whole trip was described as personal as he was accompanied by his long time girlfriend:

  113

Should Stanford Begin to Franchise?
San Jose Mercury News writer By Lisa M. Krieger provides some food for thoughts: Stanford asked to consider an engineering campus in New York City  ... Hoping to replicate our [San Francisco Bay Area] Apple [Apple Inc.] in The Big Apple, New York City has invited Stanford University to consider creating an engineering school in the city that would confer a Silicon Valley degree in the global center of culture and commerce. 'Stanford has served as an intellectual incubator for the emergence of Silicon Valley and has the potential to do so again,' said Stanford president John Hennessy, announcing the news at Thursday's Academic Senate meeting... New York does not have a top-ranked applied science research and graduate school, despite its 630,000 students. Without that, it has fallen behind the Bay Area, Boston and other regions in its efforts to attract new high-tech companies -- and the jobs they create. For Stanford, 'the advantages are several,' said Hennessy. '... this is a chance for the university to create a center of innovation and vibrancy that offers the kind of economic growth that exists in Silicon Valley.' [The last phrase sounds a bit sarcastic because the Silicon Valley's unemployment rate was 9.8% in December, above the national rate of 9.1%]  112

Contributions by Silicon Valley tech leaders to the Dems & Republicans  by Ron Callari
Here is a chart of all present at the dinner [see below '$Trillion scale of dinner'] and how much they have contributed to the ...

  111

$Trillion scale of dinner
Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Stanford President John Hennessy, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Westly Group founder Steve Westly, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Genentech chairman Art Levinson, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

In Silicon Valley, it's all about who you know - and who you're sitting next to.  Barack Obama joins a toast with Technology Business Leaders at a dinner in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011.  Apple CEO Steve Jobs is sitting to Obama's left with his back to the camera and  Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is sitting to the right of Obama.  (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Valuation
($billions)    
Facebook   50
Apple 	  326.5
Google 	  202.6
Yahoo 	   23.1
Oracle 	  168.7
NetFlix    12.4
Twitter     3.7
Genentech  46.8 (acquired by Roche) 	
Cisco 	  104.9
_______________
Total:    938.7 + 'Westly Group' [$ ???] + Stanford [ priceless ]