One Tax Down

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 05/26/06

Glad to see we've finally closed the books on the war - the Spanish American War, that is. The Treasury Department finally abolished the Telephone Excise Tax, started in 1898 to fund the aforementioned war. Expect political jokesters to make hay with jokes like "exit strategy applied to wrong war" and "only 108 years to Mission Accomplished and paid for" and who knows what else. The Daily Show should be interesting tonight (as it is almost every night).

Vista consumer launch could slip further says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. I'm beginning to think my estimates of Vista availability by mid-2007 are optimistic. Christmas 2007 stockings filled with Vista? Beats the coal I always get.

Google Knocks Microsoft Off Dell PCs is a bit misleading, because you still get your choice of Microsoft operating systems installed. However, Google Desktop applications will be front and center, including the Google searching and home page. I believe this is interesting for two reasons. First, Microsoft got into plenty of trouble in the 1990s for threatening to pull Windows completely from any PC company that dared change a single icon of the default Windows installation. No Windows meant No Sales, so companies (I specifically remember Compaq trying to put Netscape on the desktop) backed down quickly.

Second, Google has the cachet and cash to challenge Microsoft on a variety of fronts, and competition between them makes for better deals for us. I just hope Google doesn't push their "ads on every page" mantra down to our personal PCs without giving us a choice.

Not to be outdone, Yahoo and eBay made a deal to partner on ads and search. This may be a deal for PayPal as much as Yahoo, since eBay "will begin exclusively providing online payment services" for Yahoo merchants and publishers. PayPal greases small business commerce fairly well (although I know some have had problems), and I've started seeing other online merchants offer PayPal as a payment option.

Don't underestimate the power of eBay and PayPal to make you some serious dollars. Entrepreneur.com's Fast Forward newsletter just profiled 10 people who have generated millions of revenue dollars per year on eBay.

I'm going to the first ever QuickBooks Enterprise user conference next week in Phoenix, and one of the subjects I want to explore in depth is the PayPal-QuickBooks interaction I've seen mentioned on eBay. If you're using that already, let me know how much it's helped you and how much time it saves.

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