Stories by Larry Borsato

Nine lessons from the first Internet bubble

A decade ago I was working for Bay Networks in Santa Clara, California. Bay Networks was number two in the internetworking hardware market, with annual revenue of about US$2 billion. Bay was bought in 1999 for $9 billion by Nortel Networks, a telecom hardware manufacturer on an acquisition spree. Faced with a very different corporate culture, I chose in 2000 to accept the position of Director of Vertical Marketing at a small e-commerce startup named Enigma in Boston, Massachusetts.

What if Microsoft bought Facebook?

Microsoft has decided it doesn't want Yahoo anymore. It apparently just wants to make a deal for the profitable part -- search advertising. After all, they're desperate enough to increase their market share that they are going to pay people to use their Live Search. Of course that would still leave Google as the market leader.