Um; irony, much? Closed meeting on Google in China and opening AdSense revenue model

"Google told me today that they would consider giving more transparency about revenue splits in Adsense.

At a private meeting with a dozen and a half media people at Davos with CEO Eric Schmidt." Buzzmachine doesn't flag that as irony ;-)

Aside from some pointless though amusingly-phrased Microsoft-bashing and the acceptance of everything Google says without (reported) question, this has some interesting snippets.
On China
"When is Google going to do something? “It should happen soon,” Drummond said." Alan Rusbridger has a rather woollier response from Schmidt: But then the shutters came down. He was not going to talk about the schedules of any talks, or dates, or times, or indeed anything at all about them. Supposing they were happening. He restricted himself to the observation: "It's not clear that the book has ended yet. This may just be the first chapter. It's not a permanent outcome on the facts we've presented to you. Maybe it will change again. It's possible things change. Things change all the time."

Apple is a hardware company - with the best margins ever

Apple makes its money from the hardware - and it has margins the rest of the industry only dreams of. When Mac margins fell from 28 to 26%, Apple called an all-hands meeting, the iPhone 3GS margin might be as high as 60%; most PC manufacturers are down to single digit or in-the-teens margins. So Apple can promise more generous ebook deals (and while we're at it, can I predict that the latest Amazonfail will turn out to be cockup rather than anti-Macmillan conspiracy?) and make the money on the iPad. how much money? According to one analyst, 43% on Wi-Fi models and 52% or even 55% on 3G models. I've said for a while that Apple wouldn't touch the netbook market unless it could find a way to do it with much better margins, and margins don't come much better than this...