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Google's Chrome OS: Will you give up desktop apps?
Google revealed a bevy of noteworthy developments for its Chrome OS. However, the success or failure of the Chrome OS will ride on whether users will give up desktop applications.... Continued »
Category: Google
November 20th, 2009
Mozilla: Still too dependent on Google for revenue; Can it diversify?
Mozilla reported its 2008 audited financials and the organization behind the Firefox browser delivered consolidated revenue of $78.6 million, up 5 percent from 2007. And the revenue picture looks even better if you exclude the $7.8 million loss in Mozilla’s investment portfolio. The worry: Google, now a competitor, is still bankrolling Mozilla.
Mitchell Baker, chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, outlined the financial picture on her blog. There’s a lot of good stuff in there.
To wit:
- Mozilla funds 200 people working full or part-time on Mozilla.
- The company has outposts across the globe and Firefox comes in 70 languages.
- Mozilla is launching messaging software.
- And Firefox has 110 million daily users as of November.
The worry for me as a Mozilla fan: The foundation’s financial stability depends on Google. Baker noted that Mozilla is diversifying its revenue base somewhat, but not enough in my view. She notes on her blog the majority of Mozilla’s revenue “is generated from the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox from organizations such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and others.”
A trip to the actual audited PDF of Mozilla’s financial results and a note on “concentrations of risk” reveals:
Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties which expires in November 2011. The contract was recently amended and extended to November 2011. Approximately 91% and 94% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2008 and 2007, respectively, was derived from this contract. The receivable from this search engine provider represented 80% and 86% of the December 31, 2008 and 207 outstanding receivables, respectively.
Obviously that search provider is Google. Simply put, Mozilla needs to diversify that revenue base from Google, which funds the foundation, but is increasingly a competitor. Having a rival fund your operations isn’t comfortable for any organization. Mozilla’s current situation is like Oracle accounting for the bulk SAP’s revenue. Or Microsoft providing most of Red Hat’s revenue. Or MySpace accounting for the majority of Facebook revenue. You get the idea.
Baker notes in her blog:
The past few years have seen an explosion of innovation and competition in web browsers, demonstrating their critical importance to the Internet experience and marking the success of our mission. In 2008 not only did Microsoft and Apple continue developing their web browsing products, but Google announced and released a web browser of its own. Competition, while uncomfortable, has benefited Mozilla, pushing us to work harder. Mozilla and Firefox continue to prosper, and to reflect our core values. We expect these competitive trends to continue, benefiting the entire Web.
Can Mozilla realistically diversify its revenue base away from Google? That’s unclear on many fronts. Google has the dominant market share in search. Yahoo is a non-factor. And Microsoft has the Bing search engine, but isn’t likely to support Firefox, a browser that competes (and often wins) against the software giant’s Internet Explorer.
Given that landscape Mozilla needs to get creative about that lucrative search box. Of Mozilla’s revenue generating partners only Amazon and eBay have the heft to really help diversify the foundation away from Google. Instead of a search box, perhaps Firefox needs a commerce box that would allow eBay and Amazon to pick up some of the revenue slack.
How do you think Mozilla can diversify away from Google?
November 19th, 2009
Google's Chrome OS: Will you give up desktop apps?
Google on Thursday revealed a bevy of noteworthy developments for its Chrome OS. The company released the Chrome OS to the open source community, laid out its security vision and promised to deliver a simple operating system. However, the success or failure of the Chrome OS will ride on whether users will give up desktop applications.
Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management, outlined the Chrome OS, noted that “there’s a paradigm shift in computing” presumably to netbooks and noted:
“Every application is a Web application. There are no conventional desktop applications.”
And there’s the rub.
November 19th, 2009
Live from Googleplex: Chrome OS details revealed
I’m here at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley where the company has summoned the tech press for a briefing about Google Chrome OS. It’s always great coming to events at Google - very relaxed atmosphere, plenty of bright colors and, in this room, some cool tunes playing (I even heard some metal. It’s certainly not a Microsoft event.)
I’ll be offering a play-by-play of today’s news, so stick with me as I update this blog during the briefing.
10:00 am: We’ll be starting soon. Some attendees stuck in traffic. (The 101 Freeway in Mountain View was pretty solid considering we’re at the tail end of the morning commute.)
10:05 a.m.: Contrary to reports in blogosphere, Google VP Sundar Pichai says there will be no products today. No beta version. They’re a yeart away from release. Primary reason for here today is to announce open source of project. Code is open.
November 19th, 2009
Do we need a 'beautiful mess' in operating systems? Yup
Should PC makers and other hardware players each cook up their own operating systems in an effort to emulate Apple’s success? The short answer: Yes. The more operating systems the merrier we’ll be.
John Gruber at Daring Fireball makes the argument for a land of multiple operating systems and the idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Gruber recaps a post where he argued that there should be multiple operating systems to choose from and then addresses the feedback. The biggest argument for having 35 operating systems instead of three big ones (Windows, Mac and Linux) is the incompatibility argument.
The argument goes like this: It was a mess when there were a bunch of operating systems. Gruber’s reply:
First, it may have been a mess, but it was a beautiful mess. It was glorious. It was fun. The Apple II, the IBM PC and DOS, Commodore, Atari, Acorn. The TI-99/4A.
Gruber argues that we need a beautiful mess again in the PC market. I agree. After all, it’s been fun watching the smartphone industry, which is arguably an operating system mess. There’s Android, iPhone, Research in Motion, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. There’s no clear winner yet—and it’s fun. The OS scrum in the mobile industry is a beautiful mess.
Gruber’s argument to counter all the hand-wringing over a world with a bunch of operating systems: The Web is the glue that will bridge these operating systems. Many of the incompatibility root causes—file formats, various CPUs and storage set-ups—have been solved. Simply put, the industry is better equipped to allow 1,000 operating systems to bloom.
He’s right. And the multiple OS argument is something to keep in mind today as Google dishes out a little more information about the Chrome OS.
November 18th, 2009
Salesforce kicks off Dreamforce, announces Chatter
These days, two of the biggest buzzwords in online business tools are collaboration and social.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has just taken the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to kick off the Dreamforce conference and is expected to introduce Salesforce Chatter, a new tool that brings collaboration and social together. (Techmeme)
Other coverage: Michael Krigsman: Dreamforce: Quick first impressions
The company, in a statement, says Chatter will “revolutionize the workplace” by leveraging social networking models that have become popular among the mainstream, notably Facebook, and bringing them to a secure and private cloud where people, content and applications will have profiles feeds and groups.
As you can probably imagine, Chatter incorporates things like status updates (I’m on a conference call now or maybe in a meeting), groups (which helps a project team stay updated), sharing (which allows users to determine who sees what) and, of course, Twitter, with the most relevant tweets being filtered into Chatter.
The Salesforce announcement comes on the heels of Cisco’s own unveiling of collaboration tools earlier this month and builds on some of the buzz created by Google when it introduced a preview version of Wave, an online collaboration platform.
The Salesforce model goes beyond just collaboration tools. This is a platform and Salesforce is opening it to developers as a platform so they can build their own social enterprise applications of their own. Likewise, the 135,000 native apps on Force.com will also become social, the company said.
Increasingly, as workers are mobile, companies are global - or virtual - and meetings are conducted over a video conference just as often as they’re held in a conference room, employees no longer can rely on walking over to a colleague’s cubicle to discuss a presentation.
Chatter is scheduled for release in early 2010 - though Benioff wouldn’t offer any specific date, noting that delays can happen. It will be included in all paid editions of Salesforce CRM and Force.com but there will also be a new Chatter Edition for $50 per user per month and will include Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content and Force.com. (See YouTube video below)
The company also offered a peek at a new user interface, scheduled for release next year, that looks cleaner and simpler but has some familiarity to the old UI, easing in the users who tend to not like change.
Back at the Dreamforce keynote, Benioff - joined by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom - spent some time talking about the work that the Salesforce Foundation is funding locally. He also spent time looking back at previous announcements made by the company.
Interestingly enough, Benioff and team spent the first half of his keynote looking backward, talking about previously-announced services that were relatively unknown to those in the audience, based on the number of hands that went up when Benioff asked who’d heard of them. (So, it seems it may have been a good idea to review them.)
Specifically, he talked about the four clouds: Sales Cloud 2 and Service Cloud 2, which were introduced earlier this year. (Video) He also mentioned Custom Cloud 2, which he said will be the focus of discussions at Dreamforce tomorrow. He also teased to an unknown cloud that would be revealed at the end of the keynote, which ended up being Chatter.
He called it “Our biggest breakthrough ever,” describing it as Facebook and Twitter in the enterprise. Unfortunately, he didn’t get big rounds of applause for Chatter - largely, I suspect, because it took him at least 15 minutes of talking about his own experiences with Twitter and Facebook to finally get to the announcement.
As a side note, Chatter is a cool announcement but a long-winded keynote seemed to be forcing the audience to remain engaged. The news itself was buried into the final minutes of the speech. And company executives - especially Benioff - seem to be trying to inject some excitement into this keynote, including some bizarre Bruce Springsteen-like introductions for anyone who steps on stage. (”Ladies and Gentleman, please welcome to the stage… JOE SMITH!!!!).
The audience is clearly engaged already. Some 19,000 people are attending Dreamforce and many of them are already fans of the technology, so why the need to splash some “Hollywood” into it and try to sell them on the idea of cloud computing? They’re already sold. At Oracle Open World this year, there were cameo appearances by The Who’s Roger Daltrey and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the biggest celebrity on stage at Dreamforce was San Francisco’s mayor.
Maybe it’s me but it all seemed like showboating overkill, especially given that the keynote started 30 minutes and then still went over the 90-minute time frame, There were plenty of places where the keynote could have been trimmed to put things back on schedule. And, given that people started to stream out of the auditorium as the Chatter demo continued (and went on and on and on) and tweets reflected that attendees were not as engaged as they could have been, the company really sort of botched this keynote.
November 18th, 2009
Yahoo's dwindling search share: Time to panic?
Microsoft’s Bing search engine continues to grab market share from Yahoo in a perverse dance before these two companies partner in an attempt to conquer Google.
The latest comScore stats tell the tale. Simply put, Microsoft has nearly garnered 10 percent market share as Yahoo gives ground monthly. Google continues to gain share.
Now compare this to the picture at the end of 2008:
The twisted part: Microsoft and Yahoo are future partners on search (assuming regulators play along). 
The companies announced in late July that Yahoo would outsource search to Microsoft. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz looked like long lost college pals.
Since then, Microsoft has systematically grabbed share from Yahoo. It appears that Microsoft will grab its search share with or without Yahoo. And if Microsoft acquires Ask.com, which may be on the block, the software giant picks up more share. Bottom line: Microsoft
has played the Bing marketing game well. By portraying Bing as a rival to Google it has crowded out the No. 2 player—Yahoo.
Is it time for Yahoo to hit the panic button? Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay addresses the issue in a research note Wednesday.
At a high-level Lindsay reckons:
- Since the Yahoo-Microsoft deal was negotiated Microsoft has grabbed 130 basis points of U.S. search queries.
- 18 percent market share for Yahoo is an unprecedented low.
- Each 100 basis points of share loss equals a penny of earnings per share.
- Yahoo’s 18 percent market share in search is worth $6 per share to investors.
- Yahoo’s search share could fall nearly 4 points before the deal closes.
Lindsay writes:
The deal structure gives Microsoft a perverse incentive to try and gain search share from Yahoo! rather than Google. As Microsoft cranks up its marketing engine to promote trial of Bing, the player it seems to be hurting most is Yahoo! followed at some distance by AOL. Whether this is a deliberate tactic by Microsoft (which we think unlikely) or not, the 130 bps of search share lost by Yahoo! to Bing we estimate has already cost Yahoo! shareholders $0.40/per share.
Even with all of those moving parts, Lindsay says that the financial impact isn’t as severe as some folks fear. Yahoo’s owned and operated sites carry the day. Simply put, Yahoo is more destination than search player.
Nevertheless, Yahoo is in a dangerous limbo here. Yahoo’s search team is more likely to be focused on sending resumes than advancing the ball. Advertisers are holding out for the deal to close before picking sides and they’re likely to go to the alpha male in the Microhoo deal—Microsoft.
And the biggest problem: Google isn’t standing still. Google is ramping up its mobile features and adding features and functionality at a rapid clip.
Also: Yahoo, Microsoft extend negotiations for search pact
- Yahoo: Major businesses have stabilized; update on Microsoft deal
- Yahoo pays its ‘technical debt’ with IT overhaul
- Yahoo’s search strategy: We’re not fighting “the megawatt war”
- Yahoo-Microsoft deal: Details from the SEC filing
- Ballmer on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal: ‘Nobody gets it’
- Microsoft-Yahoo: Gauging the IT integration risks
- It’s official: Microsoft-Yahoo ink 10-year search pact; Regulator scrum begins
November 17th, 2009
Google to demo Chrome OS; Detail launch plans
Google on Thursday will give a technical update on its Chrome OS.
The company is holding an event at its Mountain View campus. The event will be “a technical announcement,” but Google will be showing a few demos as well as detailing its launch plans for next year.
The Chrome OS is in its infancy, but there has been a lot of buzz around a potential launch. At the event, Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management, and Matthew Papakipos, Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS, will be talking up reporters.
Garett Rogers has wondered if launching a bare bones preview of the Chrome OS is a concern. He noted:
The initial release of Chrome OS will likely be very bare-bones, bordering on useless — but depending on what kind of feedback they get, it may grow rapidly. The “release early and often” mantra adopted by many software companies that use agile practices can be extremely dangerous, however.
Also: Chrome OS: 3 reasons it matters, 4 reasons it’s irrelevant
November 17th, 2009
Apple's app approval revolt: Will it matter? Maybe
There’s a revolt of sorts that’s starting to put a dark cloud over Apple’s App Store approval process. And while Apple - known for its my-way-or-the-highway sort of attitude - is unlikely to hear the moans of frustration coming from the developer community, there may be a bigger storm brewing behind the scenes.
A while back I noted that Apple, by signing a multi-year exclusive deal with AT&T for the iPhone, did more than just alienate the non-AT&T customers from using the device. It actually created a demand for an iPhone-like experience on other devices and gave companies like Google a reason - and the time - to develop something like Android, its own mobile OS.
Fast forward to today and Android is grabbing plenty of headlines about future growth. Motorola is placing its bets on Android with a lineup of products in the works, including the newly released Droid for Verizon Wireless. There are multiple carriers now carrying Android devices and multiple device manufacturers who are getting into the Android game, as well.
Also see: Verizon-Google changes mobile landscape; Customers have real options again
And, of course, the app developers are also starting to build that catalog of mobile apps for Android - and it’s growing fast.
In recent weeks, Apple has been taking a lashing over its don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you app approval process, which has left developers in limbo, unsure of whether the app is on track for approval or if there’s an issue that needs to be addressed before it can go into the app store. This morning, the Read Write Web blog posted an entry about an online petition by developers who are tired of the months-long process to get an approval - or at least some feedback - from Apple. (Techmeme)
November 14th, 2009
Google Book Settlement revised; Open Book Alliance pans it as mere 'nip and tuck'
Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have modified their digital book agreement in an effort to placate the Justice Department and critics of the deal.
Among the key items in the revised settlement, detailed on Google’s public policy blog (PDF summary):
- The deal only covers books registered with the U.S. Copyright Office or published in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Among the key items:
- The new agreement addresses orphan works, which have unknown rights holders and limits what can be done with revenue garnered from these books.
- An independent fiduciary will look out for the rights holders of these orphan works.
- Google’s algorithm for creating competitive pricing in the book market was clarified.
It’s unclear whether the deal will mollify critics and regulators. Google’s book settlement gave the search giant permission to scan books and sell access to them for revenue sharing and a $125 million fee.
Critics, including regulators, Amazon.com and other groups, say the Google deal is anticompetitive and cover authors and publishers not covered by the Author’s Guild and Association of American Publishers.
The Open Book Alliance, which opposes the Google Books Settlement, already panned the deal. In a blog post, Open Book Alliance co-chair Peter Brantley noted:
“Our initial review of the new proposal tells us that Google and its partners are performing a sleight of hand; fundamentally, this settlement remains a set-piece designed to serve the private commercial interests of Google and its partners. None of the proposed changes appear to address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest.
The Open Book Alliance called the latest Google book settlement merely a “nip and tuck.”
Related: Google’s book settlement: Here comes the DOJ and likely deal tweaks
- Sniping over Google Books Settlement intensifies
- Amazon knocks Google Book Settlement; Opposition (and some support) lines up
- A spirited defense of the Google Book Search settlement
- Thanks to Google, writers’ lives may be even more thankless, unless….
- Google’s book settlement site
- The Open Book Alliance
November 13th, 2009
Google increases potential of Google Voice with Gizmo5 acquisition
With very little fanfare, Google - wearing its Google Voice hat - this week acquired Gizmo5, which it defined as a “company that provides Internet-based calling software for mobile phones and computers.”
You know where this is going, right? With the technology of Gizmo5 - which was very much a Skype rival - Google has bought itself some technology that would allow Google Voice to become a softphone service, meaning it could place and receive calls using a Google Voice number. Currently, Google Voice is dependent on mobile or landline phones to place or receive calls.
That’s the obvious use of Gizmo5 - but Google isn’t saying that that’s what it has plans to do. In fact, Google is saying much of anything. A post on the Google Voice blog essentially puts the company on record as having made the acquisition but doesn’t reveal much more. The company writes:
While we don’t have any specific features to announce right now, Gizmo5’s engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience. Current Gizmo5 users will still be able to use the service, though we will be suspending new signups for the time being, and existing users will no longer be able to sign up for a call-in number.
The obvious integration is Google Voice - but where? Google already has an IM chat service, called GoogleTalk, built into GMail and that’s already empowering users to make video or voice calls. Surely, that service would be better with the ability to place and receive “phone calls” directly from the Gmail interface. And, with GMail gaining a bigger presence in both mobile settings and corporate settings - via the Go Google campaigns - there are some pretty cool “potentials” that could be explored.
I’m trying to think bigger than Gmail, though. Personally, I like what Google Wave is shaping up to be - a one-stop shop for collaborative communications. At some point, when Wave becomes a virtual meeting center, it will need the integration of voice services. Using Gizmo5 and Google Voice, I’m sure the engineers behind Wave will find a way to do that.
For now, though, we can only imagine.
November 13th, 2009
Android army keeps growing as Dell enlists; Will the mobile OS war follow PC history?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that “Android adoption is literally about to explode” and it’s hard to argue with that assessment given the troops that are amassing behind the mobile operating system. Dell is the latest to enlist with an Android smartphone and Motorola’s Droid is the highest profile device, but it’s the total sum of converts that’ll make 
the difference.
Android is beginning to swamp the mobile market and it’s going to be very interesting to see if other operating systems—namely Apple’s iPhone OS and RIM’s BlackBerry OS—can hold or gain market share as Google’s OS infiltrates multiple devices. In many respects, the Android strategy to be on every device is similar to the early days of the Windows-Mac war. Microsoft enlisted multiple PC partners to swamp Apple to make Windows the dominant operating system. Will there be a mobile replay here with Android? Operating systems that are tethered to one device are going to be swamped from all sides by Android’s army. It’s hard to envision 2010 and not call it the year of the Android device.
“You have all the necessary conditions. You have the vendors, you have the distribution, and so forth,” said Schmidt on Google’s third quarter earnings conference call last month. Simply put, Android is amassing all the ingredients that Microsoft used with Windows way back when.
Meanwhile, the Android army is beginning to advance. To wit: Dell (right), Motorola, Garmin, Verizon, HTC, Barnes & Noble, LG and Samsung are just a sampling of companies making bets on Android. As these companies roll out what is likely to become hundreds of devices over the next few years at least a few of them will be hits. Motorola is expected to ship 1.3 million Droid devices in the fourth quarter, according to Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt.
Special report: DROID takes on iPhone
- With Motorola Droid, Verizon puts doubts about Google Android platform to rest
- FAQ: Android 2.0 and Droid
What’s also notable is how Android is playing overseas. For instance, Dell isn’t playing ball in the U.S. It’s going right to where the growth is: Asia and Brazil. Perhaps Dell will flop as a smartphone provider, but it won’t go down without advancing Android’s cause somewhat.
All of these troops make big predictions for Android market share entirely plausible. Gartner said that Android only had 1.6 percent of smartphone platform market share in the first quarter. However, the picture in 2012 will look dramatically different.
Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney noted at the research firm’s IT Symposium last month:
Expected improvements in the Android environment backed by the power of not only Google’s search engine, but from their other up and coming consumer (for example, maps) and enterprise products should make this a dominant platform. Potentially the integrative, open environment of Google could easily top that of the singular Apple.
By 2015, Gartner predicts there will be three dominant platforms and several niche players. Given the army that Android is amassing it’s realistic to predict that the open source mobile OS will make the cut.
Also: Android opens doors for Google’s next-gen search, ads and tools
November 12th, 2009
Can Google make the Web SPDYer? Maybe, with your help
A team of software engineers at Google who are working on a project known as SPDY - and pronounced Speedy - are reaching out for some input from engineering types. The early-stage research project, which has only been tested in labs so far, is working to speed up the Web.
This project is way deeper into the weeds of technology than I am, so I leave it to the engineering types to explain it. From the blog post:
SPDY is at its core an application-layer protocol for transporting content over the web. It is designed specifically for minimizing latency through features such as multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression. We started working on SPDY while exploring ways to optimize the way browsers and servers communicate. Today, web clients and servers speak HTTP. HTTP is an elegantly simple protocol that emerged as a web standard in 1996 after a series of experiments. HTTP has served the web incredibly well. We want to continue building on the web’s tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers.
The team says the initial results are encouraging as they’ve seen a “significant improvement in performance,” with web pages loading 55 percent faster over a simulated home network connection. Still, the team acknowledges that it still has a lot of work to do to evaluate SPDY in real-world conditions.
The company says it’s at a point where it can benefit from feedback and assistance from the Web community. Those interested are encouraged to review the early stage documentation, look at the current code and offer your two cents through the Chromium Google Group.
November 12th, 2009
Other governments are "Going Google," too - not just L.A.
For Google, Los Angeles was the big catch - the second largest city in the nation chose to Go Google and transition some 30,000 employees to Google’s cloud-based e-mail system.
But L.A. isn’t the only local government agency going Google. Earlier today, the company hosted a live Webcast on ZDNet’s Sister site, TechRepublic, that featured the CIO of the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office talking about his decision to move 120 attorneys and 200 full-time employees to Google Apps.
In a blog post earlier this week, Google also noted that the city of Canton, Georgia has moved its 165 employees to Google Apps and that the school district in Palm Beach County, Florida is moving its 200,000 students, staff and other users, as well. Finally, the city of Orlando, Florida is also on board. From the Google blog post:
Conrad Cross, the CIO for the City of Orlando… is leading the migration of all 3,000 city employees from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps, including the Police and Fire departments. Facing software license renewals, major upgrade costs, and a 12% reduction in staff, it was the right time for the City to consider other options. For half the cost of the alternative, Orlando is jumping onto Google’s innovation curve and freeing up IT resources to focus on more important efforts. “The time was right,” said Cross. “I’m delivering a better service with less resources, and that gets me ahead of the game.”
It appears that these decisions were already in the works by the time the Los Angeles City Council approved a $7.25 million contract with Google. But for many large cities, Los Angeles is the one they’re watching. There’s a lot on the line for L.A., Google and the cloud, in general, as others are waiting to see if the Google move turns out to be a nightmare or a seamless transition that ends up offerings some real cost savings to the city.
November 12th, 2009
Eric Schmidt on whether Google is getting evil
Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks about whether the company ever regrets its “do no evil” policy, and how the definition of “evil” changes as Google grows.
November 11th, 2009
Google's storage price cuts and a big missed backup opportunity
Google cut its pricing for extra storage for its Gmail and Picasa services and in a nutshell you can buy 20 GB of storage for a mere $5 a year. That’s great news and a huge missed opportunity.
Why? I’d love to back up my entire home PC for $5 a year. Instead, Google is only giving me storage for Gmail and photos (Google blog, Techmeme).
Toybox: Google offers 20GB online storage for price of a latte
How big of a missed opportunity is this? It’s potentially huge. With this mythical GDrive idea—just give me a light client that backs up everything to the cloud—Google could convince plenty of users to also become storage subscribers. But as ReadWriteWeb notes, Google is missing the mark.
Consider the following math:
- I pay $4.95 a month to Mozy, a unit of EMC via Decho, to back up my hard drive.
- That’s almost $60 a year. And there’s roughly 14 GB backed up.
- I could eradicate Mozy, a service I’m happy with for $5 a year and Google.
So what’s the hold up? Google will allow you to back up 1 TB of data for $256 a year, but can’t figure out a lightweight desktop client that would back up your entire computer. It just doesn’t make sense.
Google is willing to back up all the Gmail and photos you have lying around. Would it kill the company to back up my Word docs and other loose ends too? Thanks for the cheap storage Google, but you may want to think a little bigger.
November 10th, 2009
Google: Is there anyone who doesn't have an opinion?
Google is evil. It’s not evil. Perhaps it’s the George Washington of the Internet. Or maybe it’s just one huge dominant company trying to stay out of antitrust trouble.
Ask a person about Google and you’re going to get a bunch of opinions. Why? People love Google and hate it at the same time.
Is Google sometimes creepy? You bet. The search giant clearly knows too much about people. Is it helpful? Sure. What remains to be seen is where the pendulum swings. For now, it’s probably Google as helpful. Let’s survey some notable quotes on Google.
TechRepublic’s Jason Hiner riffs:
After George Washington led the fledgling little U.S. nation to victory in the Revolutionary War, he turned down the opportunity to be crowned king of America. The idea was distasteful to Washington because it went against everything he and his troops had fought for: the promise of a better kind of country based on freedom and democracy.
When England’s King George III heard about Washington preparing to turn down the monarchy and return to his Virginia farm, he said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
It was, in fact, Washington’s greatest maneuver of all, because of its complete genuineness. It endowed him with an air of incorruptibility. And, because of that, six years later when he was elected the first U.S. President he was able to succeed in uniting all of the fractious elements of the country for one reason - they all trusted him.
The same is true with Google.
Wow. I never thought to put the Washington’s wig on Eric Schmidt.
And then there’s Kevin Depew at Minyanville. Depew takes aim at everything from the Google snack bar. Those annoying patio umbrellas and other Google perks. He appears to be kidding somewhat—I think. But I’m in Depew’s camp. Some days Google annoys the hell out of me. Do no evil? Give me a break. Here’s Depew:
Patio-table umbrellas? Seriously? God, I hate that they have brightly-colored patio table umbrellas.
But wait, I’m just getting started. There’s plenty more to hate about Google. In fact, the company’s “About our offices” page helpfully lists them all. Here are a few things you might see in a Google workspace:
“Local expressions of each location, from a mural in Buenos Aires to ski gondolas in Zurich, showcasing each office’s region and personality.”
Ski gondolas. I hate ski gondolas.
“Bicycles or scooters for efficient travel between meetings…”
Unless you are a bicycle messenger or Lance Armstrong you shouldn’t ride a bicycle to office meetings.
Minyanville’s Mike Schuster says Google is handling power responsibly. He should hang out with Jason Hiner.
It never quite ends with Google. Google dazzles us yet absorbs more of our data. It gives us helpful ads. It’s dominant. Some kids can’t imagine life without Google. Where do I stand? It depends on the day.
Google freaks me out sometimes, but I’ll buy a Droid with a bunch of Google apps. It strikes me odd to run an enterprise on Google, but then I hear Schmidt rap to CIOs and buy in a little bit. My opinion of Google may change hourly if you really tracked me closely.
At some point our zero sum reaction toward Google will land in one corner. In the meantime, prepare for more bipolar Google reactions.
November 9th, 2009
Google picks up AdMob for $750 million; Targets mobile display ads
Google said Monday that it will acquire mobile advertising company AdMob in a deal valued at $750 million in stock.
The search giant said the purchase will “enhance Google’s existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising.” See Google blog and statement.
With the move, Google is making a big bet on mobile display advertising. Google, which already occupies the market for mobile text ads, appears to be purchasing AdMob in an acquisition akin to its DoubleClick purchase. The message: Google wants to be a big display ad player on the Internet and mobile.
With AdMob, Google acquires a suite of mobile tools including an ad marketplace, analytics and metric tracking.
In a statement, Google Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management, said AdMob has made “exceptional progress” in a short time in mobile advertising.
November 8th, 2009
Cisco unveils collaboration, e-mail and social tools for the enterprise
Cisco is placing bets on the future adoption of collaboration tools for businesses by unveiling later today a enhanced suite of offerings, including a new social networking software designed for a corporate setting and a new cloud-based e-mail hosting service, as well as video and voice integration into the collaboration platform. (Statement)
The company said that the idea behind the new collaboration platform is to be less “document-centric” and more “people-centric” by working with voice, IM and video to create business-to-business communications - and meetings - more efficient. In part, that includes the ability to bring Facebook-like tools into the mix, but secure them in a way that meets the needs of a company. The company explains its social video system, called Show and Share, like this:
Cisco Show and Share is a social video system that helps organizations create and manage highly secure video communities to share ideas and expertise, optimize global video collaboration, and personalize the connection between customers, employees, and students with user-generated content. It allows organizations to record, edit and share video with comments, ratings,. tagging and RSS feeds, ans speech-to-text transcripts can be uploaded for easy video search and viewing.
The other announcement - Cisco WebEx Mail - stems from the company’s acquisition of PostPath and offers a cloud-based system that also has Outlook interoperability. Through its acquisition of Jabber, the company also said it has integrated the XMPP standard to give it a secure but widely available presence in the collaboration tools.
In some ways, Cisco - which has been competing with companies such as IBM, HP and Dell in the data center - is now adding Microsoft, which recently dropped the price of its hosted versions of Exchange, Sharepoint, and Office Communications Server, and Google to its lineup of competitors with these new services. For some time, Google has been pushing its cloud-based apps for businesses and even scored a major deal with city of Los Angeles recently to manage its email system. And now, it’s previewing Google Wave, a Web-based, real-time collaboration tool that allows users across the Web to communicate with each other in e-mail like message thread or instant chats and share documents, videos, images, charts and more.
Under the Google Wave approach, users can open the collaboration projects, or “Waves,” to anyone over the Internet, allowing collaboration with anyone via the Web. Cisco’s new offering also breaks down the walls of the traditional network, allowing users to work with customers, vendors and others who normally might have been locked out of the collaboration process
Cisco said that, upon rollout, its mail offerings - priced “somewhere south of $8 per mailbox per month” but still being finalized - will be cloud-based only while the collaboration platform will reside on-premise. Eventually, the company will offer the ability to split data between the two worlds - on-site and in the cloud - but still sees companies being more comfortable with e-mail in the cloud than they are with collaborative documents and correspondence in the cloud.
The company has been vocal about its visions for the future, notably its belief that video will be “the center of everything” in future communications. With this push into collaboration software, the company is subscribing to the idea that e-mail is losing some of its luster as a tool for conducting business. Anyone who’s ever exchanged two dozen emails with a half-dozen people just to set up a meeting knows how ineffective e-mail can be when working with teams.
Cisco has been transforming itself during the economic downturn to be more than just a networking company by the time the economy started to recover. As part of the movement, it’s been beefing up its offerings, largely through acquisitions. In October alone, it made three acquisition announcements - $3 billion for Tandberg, a video conferencing equipment maker, $2.9 billion for Starent, a provider of mobile Internet Protocol gear, and $183 million for ScanSafe, an Internet security company.
Last week, it presented Wall Street with better-than-expected first quarter results and said - several times - that it was seeing signs of the beginning of an economic recovery.
November 6th, 2009
Google classic homepage sports Motorola Droid ad
Notice anything different about Google’s classic homepage? You know, the one that’s patented?
Yep — Google’s using the most recognizable website on the planet to push the Motorola Droid smartphone, which runs on the corporate giant’s Android operating system.
November 6th, 2009
Skype's legal drama finally ends; Time to start innovating
The on-going legal drama that has left a dark cloud over online voice and video communications company Skype has finally been settled. In the end, the co-founders get a 14 percent ownership of a new Skype, eBay maintains a 30 percent stake in the new company and consortium of private investors score the remaining 56 percent.
More importantly, though, the new company will finally be in a position to innovate and prosper - instead of being scrutinized under the quarterly earnings microscope of eBay to generate quarterly revenue growth. All of the previous disputes over core technologies and so on has been settled. The parties expect the deal to close by the end of the year.
Marc Andreessen, partner of Andreessen Horowitz, which is one of the investors, told VentureBeat that the company can now focus on building for the future. The company does have a lot of potential to become a powerhouse in markets that are just starting to realize their potential. Consider these forces that are changing the market for Skype:
- Smartphones, which have the ability to run Skype, are growing in popularity among consumers and businesses, opening a market for people interested in low-rate international calling from a device, instead of just a PC.
- Google Voice has hit the stage as a competitor in this space, notably on the international calling front, and has generated a number of headlines - and grabbed a lot of attention - because of Apple’s supposed rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone and AT&T asking the FCC to regulate Google Voice as a telecommunications service, instead of a Web service.
- Video conferencing is grabbing the attention of the cost-concerned enterprise. Cisco, for example, has made a big splash into enterprise-grade telepresence video conferencing, highlighting the money - and time - that can be saved by holding meetings by telepresence, instead of putting executives on airplanes.
I’ve long been a Skype user but must admit that my interaction with it has pretty much been limited to the occasional (more like rare) video chat. I’ve also been a long-time fan of innovation (what can I say? I’m a Silicon Valley native) so I’m happy to see the company fall back into the hands of the founders and investors who want to see the service grow and prosper.
Now, Skype execs can quit worrying about how they’re going to appear on eBay’s financial statements and can get back to work on making the service better, landing new partners and holding on to its brand cachet before a newcomer (Google?) comes along and unseats a pioneer.
Also see:
Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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