The launch of Google Blog Search calls the business models of the other search engines in the blog search arena, such as Ice Rocket, Technorati and Blog Pulse into question. Various "meta blogs" (blogs about blogging) are offering some nice comparisons between the different search engines:

Search engine watch
News in a box
Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti
Scolbleizer
And, not surprisingly, Mark Cuban, who invested in icerocket, has his comments.
And there was a big thank-you to Google from Jason Calacanis's blog.

At Burnham's Beat, venture capitalist Bill Burnham writes about when to catch a falling knife. He's not talking about buying stocks that are falling, but when to support a VC investment that has fallen on hard times. He gives several criteria that can help navigate when to wind down a foundering investment or when to throw good money after bad.

As an aside, I started a VC firm in 2000. It was a hard time to start a tech-based VC firm, and Burnham's post rings true on several points.

Also on the VC front, but related to the recent eBay-Skype news, uberVC Steve Jurvetson of Draper, Fisher, Jurvetson continues to crack me up on The J Curve. I can never tell if his posts are serious or kidding: "On my flight to Estonia for a Skype board meeting, I was reading my usual geek fare, such as Matt Ridley's Nature Via Nurture, a wonderful synthesis of phylogenetic inertia, nested genetic promoter feedback loops, bisexual bonobo sisterhoods, and the arrested development of domesticated animals."

Just noted this post by Joe Kraus, one of the founders of Excite, on why it's better to be an entrepreneur now than in the mid-1990s.

The 10b-5 daily weighs in on the legal principles behind Ellison's $100 million settlement on insider trading.

Daily Dose of Optimism has a quote from a lecture Buffett gave where he points out how everyone involved in the American Motors offering of shares in 1969 has disappeared from Wall Street. Part of the quote:

I want to show you an ad that ran June 16, 1969, advertising the sale of 1,000,000 shares of American Motors. This is a reproduction from the Wall Street Journal that day. Now does anybody notice anything unusual about that ad? Everybody in that ad has disappeared. There are 37 investment bankers that sold that issue, plus American Motors, and they are all gone. Maybe that's why they call them "tombstone ads.

1 What would best describe your stance heading into the coming week of trading? Bullish Bearish Neutral 2 Which of these sectors do you think is set to move up in the coming week? --Choose One--Aerospace and DefenseAirlinesAutomobilesBeverages and Food ProductsBiotechnologyCommercial BanksComputers and PeripheralsConsumer NondurablesEnergy Equipment & ServicesHMOs and HospitalsHomebuildingInsuranceIntegrated OilInternet, Software ServicesInvestment Bankers and BrokersMediaMultiline RetailPharmaceuticalsPrecious MetalsSemis, Semi EquipmentTelecom EquipmentTobacco and AlcoholWireless CommunicationsUtilities 3 Which of these sectors do you think is set to move down in the coming week? --Choose One--Aerospace and DefenseAirlinesAutomobilesBeverages and Food ProductsBiotechnologyCommercial BanksComputers and PeripheralsConsumer NondurablesEnergy Equipment & ServicesHMOs and HospitalsHomebuildingInsuranceIntegrated OilInternet, Software ServicesInvestment Bankers and BrokersMediaMultiline RetailPharmaceuticalsPrecious MetalsSemis, Semi EquipmentTelecom EquipmentTobacco and AlcoholWireless CommunicationsUtilities View the results without voting