We may not see Fios for awhile. Verizon is experiencing significant
difficulties in negotiating cable agreements with different cities.
So far Verizon has only signed 2 agreements for Fios cable service
rights (note:The story was in the WSJ on Thursday or Friday I belive.
The story is not on their website or on the web yet).  The main
reason for the delay is that the cities are demanding multi-million
dollar kickbacks to allow Verizon offer the cable service.

Did anyone catch Ballmers attempt to mislead people about Google at the Gartner symposisum: " But, if you say if the real question is, instead of the comparison just, hey, how are you guys going to get after this search opportunity, the answer is, the good old fashioned way, with innovation."

"Come on, let's do a little audience survey here, in general 50 percent of all searches do not lead to a desired outcome. I ask this audience, is there anybody in the room who believes that the search experience is not going to be dramatically different and better 10 years from now than it is today? No, people can't find what they're looking for, number one. Number two, is there anybody here who is going to deny the fact that it would be nice to get a level of integration between what happens searching inside the enterprise and outside the enterprise? I think not......"

Ballmer first states that 50% of all searches were unsatisfactory. Ballmer than asks if search will not improve in the next 10 years. huh...?? So from Ballmers perspective 50% of all Google users are unsatisfied. Now

87% of searchers say they have successful search experiences most of the time,

Pew Internet research studies indicate that (http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Searchengine_users.pdf )87% of all users have successful search results. Now with almost all things there is room for improvement, but trying to say 50% searches are unsucessful implies that 50% of all people are unhappy.

including some 17% of users who say they always find the information for which

they are looking.

87% of searchers say they have successful

etween the opportunity to innovate in general, the opportunity to innovate in a way that's meaningful not just to an end user, but an end user in business, we see plenty of opportunity and plenty of opportunity in things that, who knows, people may or may not do. I mean, if you read the newspapers today, other than curing cancer, Google will do everything. But, the truth of the matter is, we've got our heads down, we've got very, very smart people just working on innovation, innovation, innovation, and we think that gives us a great opportunity."