By David Zeiler

Cloud-based computing is shaping up to be a major battleground in the U.S. high-tech sector for the rest of this year, as companies compete to deliver such services as music streaming to consumer-based mobile devices.

And it figures to be a true clash of titans, with such high-tech heavyweights as Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) serving among the major combatants.

And music is just the beginning.

Video streaming will follow quickly, joining such already-common "cloud" applications as file storage and sharing and online photo albums.

For instance, Amazon made an aggressive move right near the end of the first quarter, when it launched its Cloud Drive service. Users can store 5 gigabytes of music and files for free, with additional storage available for a fee - $20 a year

By Leena Rao

AT&T (T) has suddenly realized the power of mobile commerce, most recently partnering with with Placecast to deliver special offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones when they are near a participating store or brand. Today, the telecommunications company is announcing a new service, powered by mobile commerce software platform Digby, which helps retailers design, deploy and manage mobile commerce web sites and rich applications optimized for smartphones.

Digby Mobile Commerce from AT&T helps retailers create mobile websites that display rich product images and live catalogs, expands the ways they can buy from merchants and more. Digby also allows retailer to create native applications, and tap into both its mobile barcode service and the ShopAlerts service to

BIDU is on one gargantuan roll. Its stock has soared over 11 fold in less than two years, and its earnings are expected to grow 64% in 2011 (from $1.53 to $2.51) (forward P/E of 57) and 47% in 2012 (from $2.51 to $3.69). Obviously, its growth rate has to slow (it is slated to decrease 1700 basis points in 2012) due to the law of larger numbers, but has this fact been accurately discounted in the current share price?

Probably not, because if you calculate BIDU’s PEG (price earnings to growth) it computes to a lackluster 1.57, using its current trailing P/E of 92 and a very optimistic five year growth rate of 58.47%. Does this growth rate consider the possibilities of Google (GOOG) getting back into the Chinese search fight, an “earth shaking” political event in China, or even something as basic as a misstep in execution?

A

Although I don’t have a position in Netflix (NFLX), I have been watching how the options have been trading in advance of the company’s next earnings announcement on April 25.

First, here’s a look at the implied volatility (IV) for options on NFLX just before previous earnings announcements based on data from ivolatility.com.

The pink lines show IV for the options closest to expiration with the other lines representing IV for longer-term options. The blue arrows correspond to the earnings announcement date.

As you can see, volatility for options with around 30 days to expiration began to carry a much higher relative premium than options with a longer shelf life as the announcement date grew closer and closer.

After earnings, IV generally fell – especially for those shorter-term options. This is not an unusual pattern, but it can offer opportunities to use options to establish a position while limiting risk.

"There are no limits under this agreement as to what the company can do in travel search"

-- Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich.

On Friday, the U.S. Dept of Injustice “allowed” Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to proceed with their $700 million purchase of ITA Software for its travel reservation capability. This event marks a key turning point for companies competing in the online reservations niche.

With Google’s vast resources, the competitive forces it unleashes in the online reservation sector should ultimately help decrease the cost of online reservations -- not increase them -- as is often the concern among those fond of wielding the antitrust laws.

Why is it that the entrenched incumbents including Expedia, Kayak, and Microsoft are the first to complain that the Google/ITA hookup will result in less competition, when, in fact, a Google entrance into the niche adds competition for them? Could it be they simply don’t want

"Someday we'll look back on this and it will all seem funny..."

-Bruce Springsteen, Rosalita

We're not only living through a paradigm shift vis-a-vis how we consume and share "content," we're observing strange days indeed at Netflix (NFLX). Walk through a brief overview of recent developments before we get to the latest news.

• Spending spree Netflix adds cushion to yet another content provider's bottom line, as it continues to execute its seemingly unsustainable business model.
• Google (GOOG) prepares to show off its firepower via YouTube by taking Netflix on headfirst. Hopefully, Google's (GOOG) earnings report this week will shed some light on its strategy.
• Netflix refuses to comment on the departure of its longtime VP of Investor Relations, the woman who might actually be the brainchild of the company's faux earnings calls.

Given Netflix's less-than-stellar history of communicating with investors, it comes as no surprise that we have yet to

Though Priceline (NASDAQ:PCLN) is one of the few names people think for online travel services along with competitors Expedia (NASDAQ;EXPE), Travelocity, and Orbitz (NASDAQ:OWW), air travel bookings make up less than 2% of our $479 Trefis price estimate of Priceline’s stock. The real gem here is hotel bookings which constitutes a dominant 91% of its value.

Priceline is the second largest online travel agency in the world after Expedia in terms of booking volumes. Through its online travel portals such as Priceline.com, booking.com, agoda.com, rentalcars.com, breezenet.com and lowestfares.com, Priceline provides consumers with travel services that include bookings for hotel stays, airline tickets, vacation packages, car rentals and cruises.

Priceline makes money by charging a percentage of the dollar value for bookings. Hence, the factors that drive this division are average airfares (value of bookings), Priceline’s commission (%) on air ticket bookings and the expected future air ticket bookings. Overall air

By Alexia Tsotsis

TripAdvisor, which will include the domestic and international operations associated with the TripAdvisor(R) Media Group, which includes its flagship brand as well as 18 other travel media and advertising brands.

By Robin Wauters

Google’s (GOOG) online video giant YouTube this morning announced that it is getting into the live streaming business, a move that has long been rumored but hasn’t become a reality up until today.

In a blog post, the company says it is currently registering 2 billion views on a daily basis, and that they’re looking to complement the offering with live videos.

On

In 2009, many of my most successful trades as well as my top pick from the stock picks competition were Chinese tech stocks and after a difficult 2010 year for most of the Chinese market, I think it might be a good time to consider opening a new trade. What would that be? Quite simply betting on China’s Internet leaders and going short on the U.S. ones. The reality is that I do think U.S. tech stocks like Google (GOOG) will do very well over time but I do expect Chinese competitors to do even better.

Why Chinese stocks?

As I’ve said, this is not so much about being negative about U.S. stocks, very far from it but rather about these companies being in a very specific and favorable climate. Here are the main reasons.…

Internet population

No doubt, as the largest population in the world with over 1 billion

When Larry Page accepted the resignation of senior VP of product Jonathan Rosenberg on Monday, that was just the beginning of a shakeup in the top ranks of Google (GOOG). Page is ending his first week back as CEO by naming the senior team who each will run a different part of Google and report directly to him.

If you want to know what Page’s priorities will be for Google, just look at this team and the products they run: search, ads, YouTube, mobile, Chrome and social. Team Larry consists of six key people at Google: Andy Rubin (Senior Vice President of Mobile), Salar Kamangar (Senior Vice President of YouTube and Video), Vic Gundotra (Senior Vice President of Social), Sundar Pichai (Senior Vice President of Chrome) Alan Eustace (Senior Vice President of Search), and Susan Wojcicki (Senior Vice President of Ads). Each will run their respective parts of Google independently,

By Brenon Daly

Announcing the largest e-discovery deal in some three-and-a-half years, Epiq Systems (EPIQ) said earlier this week that it will borrow $100m to acquire Encore Discovery Solutions, a service provider for law firms. (My colleague Nick Patience has the full details on the acquisition.) The rationale is fairly straightforward: Epiq wanted to shore up its presence in the western US, so it reached for Phoenix-based Encore. That sort of geographic consolidation happens all the time – but it rarely happens at the kind of valuation that Epiq is paying in its services play.

Encore

By Leena Rao

Travel search and booking giant Expedia (EXPE) is spinning off trip reviews site TripAdvisor as a public company. In a release, Expedia said that its Board of Directors has preliminarily approved the plan to separate Expedia into two publicly traded companies.

Expedia/IAC (IACI) must feel that spinning off TripAdvisor as a public company could be a financially lucrative move. TripAdvisor, which was founded in 2000, was originally bought by IAC for $212 million in 2004. IAC spun off Expedia, which included TripAdvisor

Although Yahoo (YHOO) has not been able to catch up with the overall online advertising growth, this has not deterred the company from experimenting with growth areas. In the online advertising market, local marketing is one of the upcoming trends and has attracted players like Google (GOOG), AOL (AOL) and Facebook in addition to Yahoo. Here we will analyze the growth prospects of this trend and how it could benefit Yahoo in particular. We currently maintain $17.88 price estimate for Yahoo stock, which is about 6% above market price.

Local Marketing Trend Heating Up

Local marketing allows users look for the best local deals, news and events in their area. Yahoo announced the launch of Local Offers program recently and is partnering with websites like Groupon, LivingSocial, Gilt City, and others to provide a wide selection of local deals and coupons from nearby restaurants and other local retailers. This is

To call Acme Packet's (APKT) 25 fold rise the last two years parabolic would be an understatement. It's been more like a vertical lift-off starting at $3/share in early 2009 and hitting $77 on 3/4/11. The stock ricocheted off the top of its all time high last month, and you could have scooped it up for $67 on April 1st, but it has since bounced back to the $75 range. The digerati like this company and it comes as advertised. Its signature technology is the science of our time.

Back in the late 1990s George Gilder used to evangelize about the telecosm (infinite bandwidth) and how increased use of broadband would engulf us and dictate consumer and business behavior. Well that time has come. Acme Packet is serving notice that it is an elite class of technology company and is building a global franchise. The company seemed to be locked

The updated numbers Pandora provided this week in its latest SEC filing should impress even the Internet radio leader's most ardent naysayers. While Pandora's financial position will likely trigger even greater interest in its upcoming IPO, I wonder how sustainable this growth is, particularly in the face of formidable competition from satellite radio provider Sirius/XM (SIRI), emerging streaming threat Clear Channel (CCMO.PK), the force of Apple (AAPL), and other players.

Before getting into how I expect Pandora's main competitors to position themselves, I review key data from the latest S-1:

• Revenue skyrocketed from $55,189,000 in FY2010 to $137,764,000 in FY2011.
• Advertising revenue rose from $50,147,000 in FY2010 to $119,333,000 in FY2011.
• Subscription and "other" revenue increased from $5,042,000 in FY2010 to $18,431,000 in FY2011.
• Despite rising content acquisition costs (up from $32,946,000 to $69,357,000 between FY2010 and 2011), Pandora's loss narrowed from $15,549,000 in FY2010 to $321,000 in FY2011.

The

Now judge judge I had debts no honest man could pay
The bank was holdin' my mortgage and they was takin' my house away
Now I ain't sayin' that makes me an innocent man
But it was more 'n all this that put that gun in my hand

-Bruce Springsteen, Johnny 99

In a previous article about new and old media, I reintroduced the world (or an incredibly tiny sliver of it) to George Costanza's worlds theory. It appears that Netflix (NFLX) executives don't feel the need to pay attention. While I don't have a large enough ego to think that a man of Reed Hasting's stature should pay attention to me (or Larry David's theory), I do hope he realizes that worlds are about to collide.

There's a perfect storm brewing. As I discussed in another article, when spending-spree Netflix further encroaches on revenue-generating Netflix's territory, things will get