Entries for February 2008

Everybody's aware of the pain caused by a recession: Companies lay off workers, jobs become hard to find, and those who remain employed often have their wages and benefits frozen, or even cut. General anxiety leads millions of consumers to hunker down and stop spending, which slows the economy even more.

But recessions always end, and in most downturns, the majority of consumers actually fare OK. For people with secure jobs, ample savings, or a strong financial safety net, lean economic times can even represent an opportunity to snap up bargains and exploit newfound leverage in a buyer's market.

We know what the markets think of Microsoft's bid to purchase Yahoo!: Good for Yahoo! shareholders, not so much for Microsoft. But what do consumers think?

Apparently they favor Internet portals over the software giant. Polling data from online research firm Polimetrix show that immediately after Microsoft announced on February 1 that it intended to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion, consumers' impression of both companies shot up. But there's a wide gap between the two. A Polimetrix index of positive versus negative opinions shows that Yahoo!'s reputational score peaked February 1, when it hit 60 out of a possible 100. Microsoft's score peaked that day as well, but at a mere 42.

In between the football, Super Bowl watchers will encounter a supersize claim: that General Motors is suddenly a green car company. Along with hyping other vehicles, GM plans to tout the virtues of its new GMC Yukon hybrid, the first big SUV to run on a combination gas engine and electric motor.

Has the company that once derided hybrids as a fad and dismissed small cars as un-American suddenly found green religion? Sorta. GM appears to be reversing billions in losses and turning itself around, with healthy sales gains in January that bucked the economic downturn. But it's still in no position to spend money on do-gooder activities to save the planet.

Yahoo! is a consumer-friendly service provider that succeeds only to the extent it can give consumers what they want, as fast as possible. Its chipper home-page stories on pets, stupid human tricks, and quirky top 10s help Web surfers lighten their day.

Microsoft is a sharp-elbowed monopoly accustomed to forcing consumers to adopt whatever products it chooses, regardless of the frustration it causes. Among Microsoft's innovations: clicking on "Start" when you want to stop, new versions of software that are incompatible with the old, and "upgrades" that downgrade your ability to control your own computer.