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Hmm, really?  I could have told you that.

Google believes $1B investment in AOL is crumbling - USATODAY.com

SAN FRANCISCO — In an assessment that could lead to a substantial charge against its future profits, Google (GOOG) believes its $1 billion investment in advertising partner AOL is souring.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company disclosed in a quarterly report filed late Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the 5% AOL stake that it bought in 2005 “may be impaired.” Impairment is an accounting term used to describe an acquisition or investment that has eroded.

Unless there is an about-face, the acquiring company eventually must absorb a charge on its books to account for the diminished value of its holdings.

Google acknowledged for the first time that it might have to recognize a loss on its 5% stake in AOL, whose struggles have made it a financial albatross for its owner, Time Warner (TWX).

“There can be no assurance that impairment charges will not be required in the future, and any such amounts may be material,” Google said of its AOL investment.

A Google spokesman declined further comment Thursday.

As the Internet’s most profitable company, Google could absorb a fairly large charge without too much pain. In the first half of this year, Google earned $2.55 billion.

Google bought its stake in AOL largely to prevent one of its largest advertising partners — AOL — from defecting to Microsoft. The bidding war helped drive up AOL’s implied market value to $20 billion, based on Google’s investment.

Some analysts have suggested AOL may be worth less than $10 billion now. Google didn’t estimate in its SEC filing what it believes its stake to be currently worth.

In all fairness, a lot has changed since 2005, including Google and the new paid search realm they dominate.  It probably looked like a great deal at the time but well, I guess not even 10,000 free hours could fix.

For about the past week, I’ve been in this nasty funk I just can’t kick.  It wasn’t till this weekend where I spent some time really thinking about everything I’m invested in and what it all adds up to when it hit me.  I’m not playing the web game as a game, I forgot about strategy.

Early this year I started my own business again and I can’t complain, things are going great.  But I realized tonight that the reason I can’t get excited about new projects and get back into things is because I havn’t had a win for a while.  Not just an “awesome, we launched the site” but a real win. I’ve got so many projects in between phases and on their way to that point that it’s just getting me frustrated and I forgot about why I’m doing it all in the first place.

I had a good talk with my friend/partner Jason tonight who helped me think through it and told me about a new post on Seth’s Blog that pretty much put me in line:

The secret of the web (hint: it’s a virtue)

Patience.

Google was a very good search engine for two years before you started using it.

The iPod was a dud.

I wrote Unleashing the Ideavirus 8 years ago. A few authors tried similar ideas but it didn’t work right away. So they gave up. Boingboing is one of the most popular blogs in the world because they never gave up.

The irony of the web is that the tactics work really quickly. You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.

But the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics.

I discovered a lucky secret the hard way about thirty years ago: you can outlast the other guys if you try. If you stick at stuff that bores them, it accrues. Drip, drip, drip you win.

It still takes ten years to become a success, web or no web. The frustrating part is that you see your tactics fail right away. The good news is that over time, you get the satisfaction of watching those tactics succeed right away.

The trap: Show up at a new social network, invest two hours, be really aggressive with people, make some noise and then leave in disgust.

The trap: Use all your money to build a fancy website and leave no money or patience for the hundred revisions you’ll need to do.

The trap: read the tech blogs and fall in love with the bleeding-edge hip sites and lose focus on the long-term players that deliver real value.

The trap: sprint all day and run out of energy before the marathon even starts.

The media wants overnight successes (so they have someone to tear down). Ignore them. Ignore the early adopter critics that never have enough to play with. Ignore your investors that want proven tactics and predictable instant results. Listen instead to your real customers, to your vision and make something for the long haul. Because that’s how long it’s going to take, guys.

With a combination of patience, dedication, and playing the game, things will change up for me soon and I really just needed a good weekend of thinking time to get me over that hump.  I plan on spending the rest of this week getting re-amped about what I have that I can continue to work on and how I can better manage my time to still enjoy what doesn’t need to pay the bills.. like my beautiful wife-to-be, my awesome family, my puppy who keeps me sane, my love for photography, and my hidden passion for video.

Up until a few hours ago, I really wasn’t sure what was going on in my mind.  Now I see that I was so caught up in getting to the next month that I forgot about next year.  I’m going to calm down on trying to keep up with cutting edge and practice more on the standards that will test the laws of time. If I loose a project because of that, well, the fact is it probably won’t pay off in the end anyhow so I probably saved myself a few months of pain.  AJAX is exciting, crazy design is sexy, and OpenSocial, Facebook & Myspace are still annoying, however focusing on everything I already know and pushing the limit just a bit more each time doing it with style will never fail me.  It’s time for a win, or at least a checkmate in this game.

UPDATE: Found another great post on mashable this morning.  The last line brings it all home.

Most of you know I’ve been underground in the lab up to my neck in code for the past month (literally) in hopes for an amazing launch of our new venture, the re-release of What’s Open.  Planning since February, strategic dates and delivery since March, and production since I got back from China on a custom API, crazy robust Database, slick new look, iPhone App & the hopes for launch today.  Well, thanks to a lovley screwup from Apple our whole plan got thrown out like those leftovers from thanksgiving you couldn’t stand to smell after 3 weeks of turkey.

The whole plan for success relied around many things, but primarily it was hitting deadlines and sticking to them.  Based on one we were guarenteed (or at least as much of that as you can assume on the web) certain press, exclusives, etc.  However our game plan was screwed when Apple pretty much lost our App submission and has failed to respond to us after every attempt to contact them imaginable.  If i wasn’t so busy trying to work damage control, I would seriously drive up to Cupertino at this point and at least yell at an overpaid secretary. May not fix anything but at least I would feel a little better.

I finally caught up on some sleep last night, but up untill yesterday you could count the number of hours I’d had this week on your two hands.  It was fun towards the beginning of the week, but after the awesome supprise that our plan was shot due to the early app store wed night, thats when the breakdown started.

I’m not looking for sympathy, I just want Apple to fix the problem.  Now with them selling out everywhere, services down, phones breaking, and still no delivery platform, it’s really getting fun.  Luckily I upgraded yesterday and avoided the mass confusion today, but it’s still annoying, and the problem hasn’t fixed itself yet.

Apple, if you read this, please, stop kissing babies and posting amazing articles on your website about how awesome you are and reach out to the people that are making your stock go up and keep you in business, the developers.  However from the look of it,  down 5points since this morning should tell you something.  Ouch, too soon?

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been getting down and dirty with code, and haven’t had the chance to post much of anything worthwhile on my site.  I have all kinds of links and saved items I’ve been trying to find the time to publish, but alas I tend to keep putting it off until they either are out of date or forgotten about all together.

 

We launch the new WhatsOpen.com July 11th, or possibly sooner. ..and with Apple’s blessing, you can download the app on your phone/touch the day you upgrade to the new firmware.  I’ve been working as hard as I can along with my team of Rockstar partners to be sure of that.  V1 is sort of a proof of concept that we’ve got our act together with more fun things soon to follow including quite a lot more features.

 

So, all that said, say goodbye to the frog, he’s being replaced by a newer, sexier version.  We’d like to thank him for his service but those days are long past.  I’ll be posting more about that for sure soon, and sort of an in-depth review of what we’re building to explain what’s been encompassing my life for the past few months.  Stay tuned!

Seriously, is this really necessary?  I love it tho, 96 today, 80 tomorrow.  Makes me glad I bought that little window airconditioner on openbox at BestBuy earlier this year.

Geek with an opinion

Geek to the political side

Geek on another level.  with beer.

Just got home a few hours ago from The Foo Fighters @ The Forum, man what a great show. They walked back to the middle of the stadium right in front of us and performed more than half the records. And seeing as I got as close to floor level seats as I could, it was like a custom show for us.

Merry Christmas Val, finally got to cash in that gift.