Tech Companies Trapped in the Nightmare, too

Kevin Maney writes: Tech news is like a house of horrors these days. Everywhere you turn, you see something else frightening.

Like this morning. You could be trying to digest the outlook from Intel, which late yesterday slashed its revenue forecast for the fourth quarter from $10 billion or so to $9 billion. The company says there is "significantly weaker" demand for PCs in every part of the globe. While absolutely nothing is wrong with Intel as a business -- it still supplies chips for 80% of the world's PCs -- its stock is at a 12-year low.

Scared, you turn toward the usually-comforting Google, and find that its stock has dropped below $300 a share for the first time since 2005. Mark Mahaney, who follows Google for Citigroup, dropped his price target for Google from $590 to $450.

Where else are you going to turn? H-P, Dell, Cisco -- their stocks are all down and their forecasts look bleak. Even high-flying Apple has seen its stock drop by half from a year ago.

And to think tech is in better shape than a lot of American industries. Yikes.

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