Motoroogle: The long view

In the Harvard Business Review and a 50-minute podcast, a deep dive into what it means

Horace Dediu

Horace Dediu -- the Harvard-trained analyst who writes the influential Asymco blog -- was studying the mobile phone market for Nokia (NOK) in 2005 when Google (GOOG) bought Android, primarily as a defense against the perceived threat that Microsoft (MSFT) was about to do to cellular telephony what it did to desktop computing.

The MORE

Data is making the business case for Twitter

Yes, the social site is full of inane chatter. But that doesn't mean it can't be very useful for businesses -- as new data reveals.

FORTUNE -- Depending on where you go online and what you read, much of what you see about Twitter might be negative. "Who cares what some lonely guy had for lunch?" is one variation on a common refrain.

But Twitter, unlike many other forms of media including MORE

The Apple Store was down - and not in a good way

For reasons unclear, the online store was not responding Wednesday morning

[UPDATE: As of 11:10 a.m. EST the store seems to be functioning properly. No new products that I can see. Never did get an explanation from Apple PR.]

[UPDATE 2: As of noon EST, the site seems to be misbehaving again. Still no word out of Apple.]

[UPDATE 3: Reader Mehdi Daoudi of Catchpoint Systems reports that the site had fully recovered MORE

FYI: Steve Jobs' 'spaceship' is NOT bigger than the Pentagon

The Mac Observer's widely reposted comparison was a little off

Kudos to The Mac Observer's John Martellaro for dusting off his geometry and calculating the diameter of the circle that would circumscribe the Pentagon's five 921-foot sides. Answer: 1,566 feet.

But he went astray when he eyeballed the floor plans for Apple's (AAPL) proposed new headquarters -- made public last week by the Cupertino city council -- to estimate the diameter the MORE

Face it, Google. You're a portal.

Google built its success on a simple search box that disrupted that old-line business, the web portal. So why is it working so hard to become one itself?

By Kevin Kelleher, contributor

FORTUNE -- Google is becoming all things online. Its quest to organize all the world's information has pushed it beyond the search box. Google saw that people loved Yelp, so it aggregated reviews. It saw how we took to group-buying MORE

Today in Tech: Is HP's TouchPad a flop?

Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day. 

* Best Buy (BBY) is reportedly sitting on a large pile of unsold HP TouchPad tablets -- more than 225,000 -- and the retail chain isn't happy. (All Things D)

* Amazon (AMZN) signed popular self-help guru Timothy Ferriss as part of the company's new bid to publish books as MORE

A $50 Motoroogle Droid?

Google doesn't actually have to make money on its Motorola-brand smartphones

Click to enlarge. Source: Trefis

"A year from now, would you purchase an iPhone 6 for $200 if you could get a Google-Motorola Droid 5 smartphone for $50-100 with a 2-year plan from AT&T or Verizon?"

So begins an intriguing thought experiment conducted by the team at Trefis, the stock analysis firm that breaks down companies' stock prices based on the MORE

Facebook: Google+ has no users

Facebook executives have choice words for Google's efforts to bring casual games to its fledgling social network.

FORTUNE -- A little less than two months after Google launched its fledgling social network, Google+, Silicon Valley's latest rivalry is heating up.

Google+ (GOOG) launched in June with an innovative group video chat dubbed Hangout. One week later, Facebook announced a video chat feature of its own in cooperation with Microsoft's (MSFT) Skype. Last MORE

How Android came to dominate

Google's $12.5 billion bid to buy Motorola Mobility is likely to reshape the mobile industry. But a deal would have been unimaginable without the surging Android platform.

FORTUNE -- Google's proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of handset maker Motorola Mobility is a bid to protect itself from litigious competitors as well as to dramatically move its mobile business forward. But the search titan's biggest acquisition ever wouldn't even be imaginable if it MORE

Don't count out nuclear just yet

As harrowing as the Fukushima debacle has been, it hasn't dimmed the hopes of nuclear technologists, suppliers and manufacturers. In fact, it may even have helped them.

By Richard Martin, contributor

FORTUNE -- The summer meeting of the American Nuclear Society could have been a wake.

The exuberant "nuclear renaissance" of the past few years -- by 2009, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission had received applications for 20 new plants -- fizzled in MORE