Fire by Chris Espinosa

Amazon will capture and control every Web transaction performed by Fire users.  Every page they see, every link they follow, every click they make, every ad they see is going to be intermediated by one of the largest server farms on the planet.  People who cringe at the data-mining implications of the Facebook Timeline ought to be just floored by the magnitude of Amazon’s opportunity here.

Faster web browsing is a great sales pitch to consumers, but the real play here is targetted advertising.  Amazon will know what you like, and how frequently you search for it.  It's a privacy nightmare.

Google and Facebook will be green with envy.

Millions of people trust AVG Antivirus to protect their home computers.  I don't have any hard statistics, but given that the product is free, I'm guessing that it's one of the most widely used security programs in the world.

The fact that AVG is free does give it a bit of a stigma, however.  Companies like Norton, McAfee and ESET charge $40 or $50 per year for their AntiVirus programs.  Could a free program really be as good?

This stigma is particularly true in the business world, where server level antivirus software costs hundreds of dollars per year.  The question is, could a low-cost product from AVG really compete with the big boys?

I'm about to find out.

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