Rupert Goodwins' Diary -- Guaranteed MS Free!
Thursday 25/10/01
You might know that ZDNet is owned by American company CNET: well, today was the day our enlightened and generous Yankee masters got us all on the blower for a conference call to discuss how things are going, and what happens next.
On the face of it, things are rum. We just announced our third quarter results, during which we announced a loss of $1.4bn. To me, that's an unimaginable sum: it's around $600,000 per employee. If I'd lost $600, 000, I'm sure I'd notice -- so my share must still be around somewhere. I was going to ask for it, so I could lose it with style and prevent any embarrassing bookkeeping discrepancies, but it turned out they weren't real dollars after all: some sort of post-dot-com-boom accountancy adjustment.
Alas, I can't disclose the details of what was after all an internal company conference, but it turns out that things are looking up. As a media Web site devoted to technology, we've attracted the worst opprobrium from the financial markets; as they realise that life online isn't just a matter of half-baked business plans and impossible promises, we should be the first to benefit. And away from the madness of the NASDAQ, people seem to be buying and selling things rather more than you might think.
Oh, some operating system was launched today, called Eggpie or similar. Probably not important.