Tech Tales

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Investor Jitters a Factor in Failed Seagate Deal

Therese Poletti, Senior Columnist, MarketWatch, Tech Tales in News on December 2, 2010 at 1:22 pm PT

A few years ago, former Seagate Technology PLC Chief Executive Bill Watkins made an analogy comparing the hard-disk industry to Rodney Dangerfield. “I think it’s unfair not to respect a commodity,” Watkins told Newsweek in 2007. “There’s a tremendous amount of technology in this commodity.”

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Changes at HP Under Hurd's Hatchet Were Not All Great

Therese Poletti, Senior Columnist, MarketWatch, Tech Tales in News on August 19, 2010 at 3:00 pm PT

The drama and mystery surrounding Mark Hurd’s abrupt departure as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co. have shined an unflattering light on the company as we learn how he really changed H-P. Wall Street loved his obsession with cutting costs, but employees did not. He brought even more major changes to the company’s once paternalistic culture, much like his predecessor Carly Fiorina, who pretty much killed the old H-P Way. With Hurd at the helm, H-P became an even tougher place to work, with even less emphasis on innovating anything new.

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Can Meg Whitman Turn Around California?

Therese Polletti, Senior Columnist, MarketWatch, Tech Tales in News on September 25, 2008 at 6:37 am PT

Having been passed over as the running mate on the Republican presidential ticket, former eBay Inc. chief executive Meg Whitman seems to have now set her sights on the California state capitol. Call it Meg 2.0.

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Amazon's Unseen Bestseller Raises Questions

Therese Poletti, Senior Columnist, MarketWatch, Tech Tales in News on August 12, 2008 at 12:00 am PT

There was a certain irony Monday when Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney jacked up his sales forecast for the Kindle, the electronic book reader developed by Amazon.com Inc. Ironic because in Silicon Valley–the capital of early-technology adopters and the bleeding-edge users of all things geek–actual sightings of the device are quite rare.

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Apple CEO's Silence Says More Than His PR Team

Therese Poletti, Senior Columnist, MarketWatch, Tech Tales in News on July 31, 2008 at 2:17 am PT

Phew. Apple Inc.’s iconic Chief Executive Steve Jobs does not have a recurrence of the pancreatic cancer he successfully battled four years ago. At least that is what investors learned by reading the New York Times, in an odd culmination of events that started last week, after Apple (AAPL) reported its second-quarter earnings and an analyst gently asked about Jobs’ health on the conference call.

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Chief Yahoo Has Some Breathing Room–For Now

Therese Poletti, Senior Columnist, MarketWatch, Tech Tales in News on July 25, 2008 at 3:24 pm PT

Jerry Yang sounded downright confident on the company’s conference call with analysts earlier this week, despite the lackluster results for the Internet giant’s second quarter. He even cracked wise with investors, noting lightly at the onset of the call that Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) had “quite a disclaimer.”