Miguel de Icaza has a long post on Oracle’s patent lawsuit against Google that’s very much worth reading. He theorizes that the opportunity to sue Google (and potentially Android handset makers) was one of the reasons that Oracle acquired Sun in the first place. If that’s the case, I don’t see this going away without a lot of money changing hands.
I’ve been following Google’s announcements from Google I/O with interest. Google announced version 2.2 of Android and a new set-top box, GoogleTV. The main takeaway from today’s events is that the competition between Apple and Google is heating up.
I think all of this is fantastic. Google and Apple both build great stuff, espouse completely different philosophies, and are scary in different ways. And they’re going to be fighting tooth and nail in a number of still unclaimed markets for every dollar of profit that’s available. There is no underdog here. Both operate from positions of strength and both have huge war chests they can bring to bear. Apple has $41.7 billion in cash. Google has $26.5 billion in cash. Microsoft wants to be a player in these markets as well, and they have $39.7 billion as well. So they have plenty of money to hire developers, build data centers, and buy up companies that look interesting. Nobody has market leverage of the kind Microsoft did in the desktop computing market during the browser wars of the nineties.
So right now we’re looking at a contest where the main weapons are quality of experience and openness. It’s going to be fun, and the competition is going to be incredibly beneficial to users.
Here’s Tim Bray (now officially part of the loyal opposition) on the iPhone:
The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.
I hate it.
I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom’s not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient.
I love using the iPhone, but to a growing degree I’m starting to hate the fact that I love using the iPhone.
Everyone is blogging about Google’s big announcement about their Chinese operations today, but one day I’ll want to see this in the archive.
Cause:
In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.
Effect:
We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
It’s funny these days to watch Apple brag about the number of applications for the iPhone, and to see Android fans defensively argue that the number of applications for a platform doesn’t really matter, as long as it has the applications you want. Fifteen years ago, it was Windows advocates who derided the Mac because it had so few apps, and Mac users who were forced to respond with the argument that quality, not quantity mattered. That argument has died on the desktop, probably because what’s really important is the ability to access the Web, unless you have a very specific unmet requirement.
For what it’s worth, I think Android fans are right — the number of applications really doesn’t matter. Besides, eventually there will probably be more applications for Android than there are for the iPhone — Apple’s review process for iPhone applications almost assures that. In fact, I’m mainly writing this to put a stake in the ground so that I can go back and laugh at this argument later. Android phones are already sold by more carriers in the US than the iPhone, and Android is the open platform. If the application count for Android doesn’t continue to grow explosively, it will indicate that something has gone horribly wrong for the platform.
In the end, Android is going to be Windows and the iPhone is going to be the Mac, even if it may not seem that way because Apple got out of the gates so much earlier this time around. The problem Android faces is that they very well may never be able to offer as polished an experience as Apple does on the iPhone. There will be lots many different handsets, more expansive user interface standards, and a lot more carrier influence in terms of how the Android interface looks. Even if you buy an unlocked phone with “generic” Android, the lack of consistency that results from the fractured user base will affect the overall experience of using an Android handset. Plus, when it comes to creating truly functional designs, Google is not Apple.
There’s plenty of room in the market for both platforms, and in an ideal world, they’ll both be pushing each other on a number of fronts for years to come. As an iPhone user, that’s what makes me happiest about the high praise for the Nexus One. iPhone users need for it to be a worthy competitor to the iPhone as much as anyone.
Paul Kedrosky has a good post on the latest trend that lowers the value of the Web, content farming:
Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail. Identify some words that show up in profitable searches — from appliances, to mesothelioma suits, to kayak lessons — churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you’re done. On the web, no-one knows you’re a content-grinder.
Via Michael Sippey.
Update: John Battelle has a more optimistic take.
Everybody’s posting about this, but if you haven’t gotten a chance to play, definitely do so. Slate did some digging into what we can learn from Google’s search suggestions, and the results are fascinating. Via Marginal Revolution (among others).
John Resig says Google Groups is dead:
There is one area in which Google Groups continues to shine: Private, or restricted, mailing list discussions. However any attempts at using it for a public discussion medium are completely futile.
The primary problem with Google Groups boils down to a systemic failure to contain and manage spam. Only a bottom-up overhaul of the Google Groups system would be able to fix the problems that every Google Group faces.
Sad considering how well Gmail does at keeping spam under control.
Google has thrown their hat into the ring when it comes to dealing with the Internet Explorer 6 issue, creating an IE plugin that replaces the IE rendering engine with Chrome. I think it’s a pretty brilliant idea, but I’ll be curious to monitor the adoption rate. My guess is that people who are stuck using IE6 for whatever reason won’t install the plugin, given that they haven’t installed any of the other excellent, free options that currently exist. It does let Google take another step away from supporting Internet Explorer, though, since now they can demand that users install the plugin.
My initial reaction upon reading about Google Wave is that while it was catnip for geeks, it had a funny smell about it. I love the idea of code smells and I think the concept is applicable to just about everything. What I didn’t do was sit down and really think out why I was skeptical about it. Fortunately, Anil did. Go read his post.
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