October 4th, 2005
Reading Between the Lines
Dan Farber, as usual, teases out the essence of the McNealy/Schmidt show. But Dan must be kidding when he points at Joe Wilcox’s warning to Microsoft to stop obsessing about Google. Redmond obsessed Netscape into the ground, but won’t be able to derail this express, particularly because it’s not just Google but everybody who wins in this reboot.
Similarly, I love Dana Gardner’s style but not his substance. This deal is not some mercy date, but rather a barter deal where Google trades airtime (advertising) for hardware, auto-update for synchronization across the RSS blood/brain barrier, and auto-save for the 2-way Web. Sun drives its strength with the carriers from cell phones to the AJAX desktop, not the other way around. Keep up that advice, Joe and Dana: Following it is just what Sun and Google need to pull this off.
