Barney's Blog

Blog archive

Who's Cool?

Coolness is the eye of the beholder, and when it comes to computer companies, opinions vary more than tastes in clothing. I took a crack at determining who was cool and who wasn't and concluded that Google and Apple have lost a portion of their coolness (the former more than the latter),  and that Microsoft was regaining a semblance of coolness by virtue of Windows 7 and the Xbox 360.

One online poster took a more scientific approach and used Google Trends to see how often "cool" and the vendors' names were intermixed.

Turns out I was right about Apple -- it was low on the cool analytics, as was Redmond.

Google had been climbing the cool ladder, but is getting its head handed to it by Facebook -- a call I fortunately made.

Who is hot and not in your opinion? Share at [email protected].

Posted by Doug Barney on July 19, 2010


Featured

  • Microsoft Dismantles RedVDS Cybercrime Marketplace Linked to $40M in Phishing Fraud

    In a coordinated action spanning the United States and the United Kingdom, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) and international law enforcement collaborators have taken down RedVDS, a subscription based cybercrime platform tied to an estimated $40 million in fraud losses in the U.S. since March 2025.

  • Sound Wave Illustration

    CrowdStrike's Acquisition of SGNL Aims to Strengthen Identity Security

    CrowdStrike signs definitive agreement to purchase SGNL, an identity security specialist, in a deal valued at about $740 million.

  • Microsoft Acquires Osmos, Automating Data Engineering inside Fabric

    In a strategic move to reduce time-consuming manual data preparation, Microsoft has acquired Seattle-based startup Osmos, specializing in agentic AI for data engineering.

  • Linux Foundation Unites Major Tech Firms to Launch Agentic AI Foundation

    The Linux Foundation today announced the creation of a new collaborative initiative — the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) — bringing together major AI and cloud players such as Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and other major tech companies.