November 24th, 2009

Chrome OS will rise or fall on the safety dance

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 6:37 am

Categories: Development, General, Google, Security

Tags: Developer, Google Inc., Web Browser, Linux, Web Browsers, Security, Operating Systems, Software, Internet, Dana Blankenhorn

Google has the chance to make desktop Linux secure.

By starting with a blank sheet of paper, and lessons learned while developing its browser, Google wants to build a lightweight OS for netbooks that avoids the weekly “security update” hassles of its big-time rival.

This means the processes Google is addressing with Chrome — system hardening, process isolation, secure auto-update, verified boot, intuitive account management, defenses in depth, and devices secure by default — have to be more than buzzwords.

But there is something even more important Chrome OS has to do in terms of security. That is it has to develop  an ecosystem of applications around itself that are themselves secure.

This is something it has yet to do with the underlying browser (and Google is clear that the browser is the technology under its operating system). Most Chrome add-ons are Google-written. Compare it to what Firefox offers — there is no comparison.

Google has to find a way to reach out to the creators of add-ons and plug-ins, as well as applications, and not only get them supporting the OS but supporting it in the same secure way Google supports it.

This will not be easy.

An alternative is to focus on the Linux application space rather than the browser space, even though, as Google says, all Chrome OS applications will run from the browser.

In this case Google must convince Linux application developers to emulate its secure process, promising massive distribution for apps that may not now be ready for prime time.

So it’s not just about what Google’s programmers do in terms of security that will drive Chrome OS. Google needs application developers to accept its security development framework as well. That means doing the kind of marketing to developers (developers, developers, developers, developers) Microsoft has been doing for decades.

And it’s not just about doing the Ballmer dance. It’s about getting those developers to do the safety dance.

November 23rd, 2009

Google goes all-in with an open source cloud

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 7:13 am

Categories: Cloud Computing, General, Google, Internet, telecom, values

Tags: Google Inc., Open Standard, Open Source, Dana Blankenhorn

Google quietly announced last week that its cloud will run nothing but open source software.

This is a big deal, but let’s first admit why Google did it.

As I have written many times, Google has a big cost advantage when it comes to delivering Internet resources.

It’s like America’s nuclear advantage during the Cold War. Anyone who sought to compete with America in terms like throw-weight would bankrupt themselves. President Reagan encouraged this competition and the Soviet Union bankrupted itself.

So as Google enters the cloud computing wars with outfits like Amazon and Salesforce.com, it is to its advantage that there be no proprietary software advantage. On a level playing field it dominates. They’re the New York Yankees without a salary cap.

Openness, represented by open source and Internet standards, are all to Google’s advantage. This is why opponents of open standards, like Scott Cleland, go to such rhetorical lengths to claim that open standards are, in fact, proprietary. If open standards are proprietary you can set closed standards without harm to the market.

But open standards set terms of competition that advantage the low-cost producer of bits and processing. The question for policymakers, both public and private, is what the terms of competition will be, not who wins.

Cleland and other Bell apologists want their clients to win. Thus they support regulation based on scarcity, under which the winner is the outfit that can hire the most apologists. I own no Google stock, and I make no money from Google. Never have. Probably never will. (If I do I’ll let you know.)

We should set terms of competition that advantage consumers, not particular producers, and that reward plenty rather than scarcity. By that standard Google’s dominance is a fair one, fairly obtained, and so long as it’s not abused it’s a good thing.

In making its cloud open source, Google shows it understands this.

November 23rd, 2009

Tim O'Reilly and the Cassandra act

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 6:38 am

Categories: Apple, General, Google, Internet, Microsoft, business models, content, mass market, telecom

Tags: ESPN, Web, Tim O'Reilly, Threat, News Corp., Mobile Telephony, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Internet, Channel Management, Marketing

Tim O’Reilly delivered a dire warning at his Web 2.0 Expo over the weekend.

The Web is under threat from closed applications, from Google and Apple to Microsoft and Amazon, and from content vendors like News Corp. building moats and raising high the drawbridges.

I felt great sympathy for Tim, reading his words. I issued similar warnings over the dot-boom, starting from when I launched A-Clue.Com as a weekly newsletter in 1997, having been laid off from CMP’s NetGuide.

Watch out, be wary, I wrote. This Internet commerce thing is just a bubble. It’s going to pop and all will be carnage.

Turns out there is little value in being Cassandra (right, from Wikipedia). When the dot-boom burst, which I date from AOL’s purchase by Time-Warner, it did me no good at all.

I went from having 17 writing gigs to zero. I had joked during the boom that I would gladly write for nothing — in 2002 and 2003 I did. Ha-ha.

The point is that, while I was right, I was powerless to do anything about it.

Tim O’Reilly is not powerless.

And the first thing he needs to do is get straight about the issues.

1. The “threat” from Google and Apple is a feature, not a bug. Mobile telephony has been wholly proprietary from its birth 25 years ago. There is not and never has been a mobile Internet, just whatever data carriers wished to let pass on their networks.
2. It has always been possible to erect paywalls and registration walls. The New England Journal of Medicine and many science journals hide much of their content behind registration. Publishers like England’s The Spectator are constantly trying to get paid.
3. Clouds like those of Amazon and Google may only support software their owners choose to support. Trying to make clouds vanilla discriminates against rocky road and tutti-frutti.

There have been proprietary threats to the Internet practically since the moment the Web was spun. That’s what the browser wars were about. Microsoft was going to add proprietary hooks to Internet Explorer and we’d all be gutted like fish on a line.

Since the Web was spun, there have also been elite audiences, narrow niches for whom payment and registration is a business advantage. Not everyone wants the hoi polloi coming in at all hours so they can spend the next day digging quarters out of the couches. Velvet ropes hold a business model.

So long as I’m not forced to buy News Corp. content, in other words, there is no threat from News Corp. hiding its face from me.

On the other hand, there are real threats O’Reilly didn’t mention. ESPN, for instance.

When ISPs are charged for content, and those ISPs have monopolistic control of their subscribers, that’s a real problem. ESPN has quietly engineered this. Don’t like sports but need a cable modem? You are buying ESPN360 whether you want to or not. Every month some of your ISP bill goes to Disney (ESPN’s owners).

I’m sure News Corp. and every other big content provider would like a taste of that gravy. And it would do little good for subscribers to try and disconnect Comcast en masse — where you gonna go?

It’s the proprietary control of the last mile, and the use of that control to force users into buying things they may not want, that is the big threat to the Internet. That’s a feature of the wireless world, but we can change it. It’s a product of the Bell-cable duopoly, but we can change that, too.

Focus on the real dangers, Tim. You have the power to make change if you focus on what’s real and use your influence.

Otherwise you’re like Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, or hundreds of other working journalists. It must be wonderful to always be right, she’s told.

No, she replies. It’s horrible.

And if you can’t do anything about it, it is.

November 19th, 2009

ChromeOS says tear down this network regulation wall

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 6:05 am

Categories: Cloud Computing, General, Google, Government, Internet, LANs and WANs, Legal, business models, mass market, politics

Tags: Software, Network, Chip, Wall, ChromeOS, Unleash Moore, Network Technology, Semiconductors, Networking, Hardware

An Australian friend wrote yesterday with a question:

I really can’t see the point of a cloud-based OS for the general user. The added cost in using it doesn’t seem worthwhile.

It would take me over 6 months to upload my data at my connection speed not to mention that ISPs here in Australia have now included uploads as part of your total usage which for me would be exceeded for those 6 months.

So can I ask - why choose ChromeOS ?

These are good questions. They have been vexing me ever since IBM and Ubuntu launched their Africa-only Linux, based heavily on network use, a few months ago.

It got me to thinking about the 1980s, the dawn of the Windows era.

Each new release of software pushed hardware beyond its limits. To get the latest new features, to review new software, I had to buy a new top-of-the-line PC every few years. Software sold hardware.

This helped make more than Bill Gates rich. It delivered fortunes to the entire semiconductor ecosystem — from box makers like Michael Dell to chip makers like Andy Grove of Intel to chip equipment makers like Jim Morgan of Applied Materials — everyone sold everything they could make at a fat profit.

All of today’s current trends — you can add clouds and the iPhone to this — are pushing demand for networking much as chip demand was pushed then.

What will meet that demand is just what met it then — Moore’s Law. Not Moore’s Law as Moore wrote it, but as it has been applied in networking technologies like optical fiber and radios.

Thanks to Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing, a single optical fiber today can carry many times the data it carried a decade ago. Thanks to Digital Signal Processors we can do the same thing with wireless data.

What is holding back network capacity is politics. We still think of it in terms of telephony, a regulated industry managed for scarcity. It’s not that way, and hasn’t been that way for a long time.

Throw out the old rule book and write a new one, based not on scarcity but abundance. Let the competition to serve more-and-more bits drive entrepreneurs to new fortunes around the world. Open more spectrum to unlicensed use, like WiFi is regulated, demand wholesaling of the last mile, and the bits you unleash will make us all rich again.

That’s what today’s software is telling us. That’s the message of ChromeOS. Unleash Moore’s Law in networks, unshackle competition to provide faster-and-faster data services, and watch the economy of the world take off again.

With ChromeOS Google is making the same call on networks Microsoft made on chips two decades ago. It’s a call that demands a response, not just from the market but from governments.

Deregulate. Free the bits. Here and around the world.

Or, as Ronald Reagan might say, Mr. Genachowski, tear down this wall.

November 18th, 2009

Google-Microsoft rivalry on with ChromeOS launch

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 6:04 am

Categories: General, Google, Internet, Linux, Linux Desktop OS, Linux Laptop, Microsoft, Strategy, marketing

Tags: Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Web Browser, ChromeOS, Chrome, Linux, Netbooks, Nettops & MIDs, Web Browsers, Operating Systems, UNIX

The daily competition between Google and Microsoft becomes ever-more direct this week, with Google hosting a demo of its ChromeOS tomorrow, right after Microsoft’s Professional Development conference.

ChromeOS is Google’s version of Linux for netbooks, much as Android is its Linux for handhelds. It is a version of Bill Gates’ nightmares from 15 years ago, as Netscape was rising, visions that led directly to the case of U.S. vs. Microsoft.

Microsoft got through that crisis unscathed in a corporate sense, but its image was transformed from that of a user-friendly upstart to that of “an implacable force for evil,” as one comedy show said recently, exemplified by the famous Boardwatch cover of Bill Gates as a member of the Borg, the Star Trek bad guys.

The fear, old programming hands will tell you, was that Netscape would turn its Mozilla browser into a full-fledged operating system that, because of its dominance of the browser space, could beat Windows in the market.

Chrome is a lot like that. It is centered on the browser, which abstracts the complexity of Linux from the user. And it’s designed to load fast, a real Achilles Heel for Windows on a netbook. An early version could be available for download next week.

When you’re paying $300 for your machine, you don’t want to wait 10 minutes for the thing to start, and you don’t want to be paying a lot for your software, either. ChromeOS is designed to fix both problems, so I am looking forward to it.

The hope is that the industry which supports ChromeOS will make up in services what it loses in up-front fees. And Google will be able to tie all its online services to ChromeOS, increasing its market share in areas like Mail where it is not yet dominant.

So, Mr. Bill, is resistance futile?

November 17th, 2009

Five ways Android could get into trouble

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 7:43 am

Categories: General, Google, Hardware, Linux, Linux Handheld, telecom, wireless

Tags: Apple iPhone, Google Inc., Android, Smart Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Dana Blankenhorn

On the surface these are happy days in Android-land.

Going into the key Christmas selling season, Android is eating Windows for lunch. New (non-Google) development centers are continuing to open, new manufacturers are coming on stream.

What could possibly go wrong?

Knowing that rising markets need a wall of worry to keep going up, here are some possibilities:

1. Momentum must be maintained. Once you start gobbling market share you have to keep doing it. Even a slowing of momentum can be read as failure.
2. Developers must be kept happy. Some are complaining they’re working full-time getting apps written for the Android operating system running on multiple phones.
3. The Android app store has some catching-up to do, especially in the user experience area.
4. When will Android get a “killer app” that the iPhone can’t match, or one it hasn’t already matched?
5. Can Google ride herd on its complex ecosystem? Everyone knows who the boss is with the iPhone. Not so with Android. (UPDATE: Rich Sands writes to say this article from his site is more to the point.)

We shouldn’t get too excited about Android’s early success. A 3.5% market share is still a gnat on Apple’s elephant. Early buzz does not make for victory — as President Howard Dean will tell you. (Or President Huckabee, if you prefer.)

Google has set itself a more complex task than that which faced Apple when it introduced the iPhone a few years ago. Google is using an open source approach, which means there are more hands on the steering wheel. And Google is trying to overcome an established leader, leading to charges of me-tooism.

A good start is not the race.

November 16th, 2009

Should search engines pay tribute to content?

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 2:43 pm

Categories: Google, Internet, business models, content, mass market

Tags: Google Inc., Search Engine, Rupert Murdoch, Journal, Internet, Search, Construction, Dana Blankenhorn

Tom Foremski, one of the good guys here at ZDNet, is out with a piece suggesting that Google fork over whatever Rupert Murdoch wants in order to keep indexing Fox News.

His argument is that losing access to regularly-updated content would be a big hole in Google’s business model, which is based on making everything out there available.

I have two problems with that:

1. If one publisher can force Google to pay for a link, so can every other publisher. Blackmail never ends.
2. Publishers have tried this before and failed. Including Murdoch.

I think the first point is more important. Foremski argues that newspapers get little traffic from Google. This is true, mainly because, as he notes, most still haven’t got a Clue when it comes to the Internet.

Google has already taken their wire service traffic away, signing side deals with major wire services like AP, posting those stories on Google pages, paying back the ad revenue. The only newspaper content left is local or beat-specific. Most traffic to those stories comes from the local area.

So if the traffic flow is modest, why should Google be paying? Just to protect its reputation?

There is no need to argue the point. We can run an experiment.

Let Bing or Yahoo pay Murdoch, and let Murdoch put robots.txt files on all his properties, keeping them away from Google’s crawlers. See what happens. If there’s real market share to be gained here, Google’s competitors will be happy to buy it.

On to the second point. Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have tried the paid model. The Journal maintains it, but offers links to the full-text of its stories, through Google. The Times gave up its Times Select program as a money-loser.

Yes, The Journal began its program before Google bought it. But I also remember a time, about a decade ago, when Fox site managers were transferring every link deep into their site to the home page. It was maddening. They stopped.

There’s some basic math at work here. The smaller your circulation base, the more specialized it is, the better off you’ll do with either a paid model or a registration model.

Lots and lots of journals allow only access to abstracts if you’re not a registered user. The New England Journal of Medicine is an example. And there are many publications only available to paying customers, who are notified of updates via e-mail.

The problem is that if you want a mass audience on the Internet, you have to make yourself available to a mass audience. Newspapers are mass circulation publications. Throwing up registration windows or pay walls hasn’t worked for them.

But, again, Murdoch (and every other publisher) is perfectly free to try. Just write a simple robots.txt file forbidding indexing. Poof, you’re invisible to the search engines’ spiders.

There’s no real controversy here, IMHO. Publishers are free to conduct what experiments they want with Google, either seeking to tweak it to get more audience, or block it to access a smaller, elite audience.

History says Murdoch is barking at the Moon. But he likes to write his own history. Let him try.

November 9th, 2009

Where should Mozilla go from here?

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 8:48 am

Categories: Distributions, General, Google, Infrastructure, Internet, Strategy

Tags: Google Inc., Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Corp., Web Browsers, Internet, Dana Blankenhorn

Five years into Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation’s plans seem mainly geared to an aggressive release schedule, so that the browser can compete with Google Chrome.

There is irony here, because the bulk of Mozilla’s income comes from Google, in the form of royalties on the Google search box which sits on the upper-right corner of the program’s interface.

Thus we have a browser created to stop the Microsoft monopoly pushing what some say is the next dangerous monopoly, that of Google.

Firefox is not Mozilla’s only project. There is the Thunderbird e-mail client, the Bugzilla bug tracking system, and SeaMonkey, which combines Firefox and Thunderbird with Web development tools and chat.

But Firefox is what Mozilla is known for, and most of its work, and that of its add-on makers, is devoted to Firefox and the technologies that emerged from it.

Firefox has transformed the Web, by creating real competition to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The question to ask today, however, is where does Mozilla go from here?

• Can Mozilla expand its funding sources to become truly independent of Google?
• Can Mozilla create real market share outside the browser?
• Should Mozilla be focused on browser share, or leave that to Google Chrome and concentrate instead on HTML-related technologies?
• What is Mozilla, in the end? What does the Foundation want to be?

These are the questions born of success. They are not attacks on Mozilla, but the most successful experiment always raises more questions than it answers. Mozilla is, as they say when a soccer team is attacking, “asking the questions.” Which questions should it be asking?

Where, then, does Mozilla go from here? Now that certainties have disappeared, how does its dreams survive? In an open source world, these are not just questions for the Foundation’s directors. They are also questions for you.

November 6th, 2009

Why Google released Closure Tools

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 8:00 am

Categories: Development, Distributions, General, Google, java

Tags: Google Inc., JavaScript, Tool, Scripting Languages, Software/Web Development, Web Development, Dana Blankenhorn

Javascript.

The release of Closure Tools by Google under an open source license is all about putting more muscle behind Javascript, whose underlying Java language is under a cloud due to the Oracle-Sun merger.

Web developers face a choice between using Javascript and the Microsoft AJAX Library, part of .Net, in developing Web applications. Google would rather you use tools it depends on, its AJAX Library, and its Web Toolkit.

As C}Net’s own Stephen Shankland notes today, Google has pushed Javascript to its limits in GMail and  Google Docs, and developed its Chrome browser in part so Javascript could run faster. Google likes Javascript like Cookie Monster (above, from yesterday’s Google home page) likes cookies.

Anything Google can do to make Javascript more valuable to you is in its best interests, and the tools described on its blog today are pretty marvelous.

• Closure Compiler is a Javascript optimizer that packs code tighter than your best friend’s jeans.
• Closure Library is a Javascript library with low-level utilities and high-level widgets that work on a wide variety of browsers and can be called on as-needed.
• Closure Templates are implemented for both Javascript and Java, so they can be called from clients or servers.

It is indeed, as one wag put it, a Javascript candy store. It wants to be your favorite candy store. It wants to be your only candy store. No Pepsi, Coke.

November 2nd, 2009

Blackboard embraces and extends into open source movement

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 6:09 am

Categories: Applications, General, Google, Implementations, Infrastructure, Strategy, business models, content, education, marketing

Tags: Open Source Movement, Open Source, Dana Blankenhorn

Anyone seeking a case study of how a proprietary software company can “embrace and extend” itself into the open source world should stop thinking Microsoft and start thinking Blackboard.

(Picture from the University of Alaska. Bonus points if you find a link to Russia from the site.)

Blackboard has a long-running feud with open source, ably chronicled by our own Christopher Dawson. Open source Learning Management Systems (LMSs) like Moodle, Sakai and OLAT have been seeking its market share for five years now.

Part of the solution was to open source tools for use with its proprietary suite. Blackboard may have been overly-aggressive in pushing this as a true open source solution but it wasn’t finished yet.

Phase Two involves signing alliances with educators and lining up scaled resources from within the open source ecosystem.

Today’s news brings an example.

It’s a deal with Northwestern University (Go Wildcats) to integrate its Blackboard Learn platform within Google Apps as a single sign-on. The Building Block itself is open source, Google Apps is based on open source, but here’s the imprimatur of a major University (and big customer) linking a proprietary LMS into it.

Earlier this year Blackboard signed a deal with Flat World Knowledge, the open source textbook publisher we’ve written of here, to integrate Flat World textbooks with Blackboard Learn.

Given Blackboard’s position as a market leader, and its open source Building Blocks for handling the integration, the move by Flat World is logical and justifiable.

The result, however, is that despite open source a proprietary LMS is more entrenched than ever within its marketplace.

October 26th, 2009

News Corp. prepares to destroy more online value

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 7:17 am

Categories: General, Google, Internet, business models, content, mass market, video

Tags: News Corp., OpenOffice, Social Networking, Open Source, Office Suites, Software, Online Communications, Marketing, Advertising & Promotion, Dana Blankenhorn

One thing I like about News Corp. is their utter online cluelessness.

One word. Myspace. When News Corp. paid $580 million for MySpace’s parent in 2005 it was the undisputed leader in social networking.  Now it’s an also ran.

News Corp.’s Photobucket once ruled online photo sharing. Now Flickr is catching up. Its Scout.com and Foxsports are being pushed hard by Rivals.Com and ESPN.

The main reason? News Corp. is impatient, it tries to monetize everything quickly, and thinks its unique content is worth paying for. No one’s unique content is worth paying for when there are ample alternatives.

So now News Corp. is pushing to ruin another potential online gold mine, Hulu. News Corp. owns 45% of Hulu, and is now screaming that it will make users pay for access, just as it will make them pay for access to everything else it owns.

The problem is this idea of make them. You can’t make people wear underpants online. When you charge people for something — anything — you cut your potential traffic by 90% or more. You become invisible to search engines, except for your main page, so you have to flog your own stuff.

Most of News Corp. is very bad at the whole competition thing anyway. Its whole schtick is to push a specific sensibility, to have a monopoly on that sensibility, but its online efforts don’t have that sensibility. They could monetize that sensibility if they wanted to play the niche, but instead they try to monetize what everyone else gives away.

If people really love Glenn Beck, in other words, you can make them pay for Glenn Beck. But you can’t make them pay for something they can get free down the street. Like news. Or sports. Or TV clips.

You can’t force the market. If you’re selling something others are giving away they won’t buy from you. The price you charge must be related to what everyone else charges. And if you try to make everyone else charge it’s called collusion.

What News Corp. is trying to do is like buying OpenOffice and sticking a $495 price tag on the box. Won’t work.

Why is News Corp. obsessed with charging people? Probably because their cost structure is out of line. YouTube, thanks to Google, has its costs under control. Until News Corp. can deliver costs close to that Hulu can’t compete.

So they blame you instead. Yes, you, greedy online consumer who expects something for nothing and chicks for free. It’s all your fault they can’t make money. But they’ll take it from you, force it out of you, make you pay.

Like I said, clueless.

October 26th, 2009

Why Android is beating Windows Mobile

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 5:48 am

Categories: Apple, General, Google, Hardware, Linux Handheld, Microsoft, business models, mass market, mobile

Tags: Google Inc., Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, Apple Inc., Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Corp., Games, Mobile Operating Systems, Advertising & Promotion, Smart Phones

Most analysts have it wrong. It’s not about a balance of power and it’s not about Google becoming what Sun promised to be and it’s certainly not about that dread word free.

It’s about the game that the two companies are playing. Google is playing, and Microsoft is not. (Here, one of the 16 “masterpieces” in the dogs playing poker series, from Wikipedia.)

With Google Android you see where all your competitors start from. You can innovate from there. You can differentiate your phone from other Android phones.

With Microsoft there is less wiggle room. The only people who see the code are Microsoft and (maybe) the manufacturer. You are betting that Microsoft can out-innovate Apple. (Stop laughing.)

No one in the mobile business throught Apple could out-innovate Apple back in the day. Remember when Apple was playing footsie with Motorola? No one in the mobile business thought Apple had what it took to be a “lead dog” — they all wanted it in harness with an unchanging view.

So Apple did its own phone, its own way, and Apple won.

Microsoft lacks the courage to do this. It won’t compete with its own ecosystem. It doesn’t understand that hardware is software. So it plays the game the way Symbian did five years ago, even though Symbian has abandoned that game, so there is no reason to fear Microsoft, and no “there” there.

The days of control are over, unless you’re willing to bet big. Apple did, and wound up playing Monopoly on its own design. What’s Microsoft playing, Blind Man’s Bluff?

By contrast, think of Google as dealing hands of poker.

All the players at the Android table can see one anothers’ cards. Not all the cards, but enough to get a feel for what’s happening. They can keep their aces in the hole, they can innovate or compete in some other way.

The dealer is patient, you can play all day, and guess who ends up with most of the chips at the end of play?

The dealer.

Google is betting that carriers and manufacturers will play enough hands with it that it can gain some market share. Right now that looks like a pretty good bet.

Microsoft is like a gambler with a fistful of dollars that can’t find the game.

October 19th, 2009

Motorola goes all-in for Google Android

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 10:10 am

Categories: General, Google, Hardware, Linux Handheld, Strategy, mobile

Tags: Google Inc., Google Android, Motorola Inc., TV Poker, Sales Strategy, Mobile Operating Systems, Smart Phones, Sales Force Management, Cellular Phones, Sales

What makes the World Series of Poker compelling is that it ends.

TV poker has specified stakes and players going “all-in.”

Business lacks such climaxes. You seldom see such a grand gesture. There’s always another quarter. It’s a grind.

That’s what makes Motorola’s gamble on the Google Android, and the grand gesture of its “Droid” launch, worth a second look. The company is going “all-in.” There is no backup plan. If the sales parachute does not open the company falls like a rock.

Failure might be embarrassing for Google, but it has other partners and many other opportunities. For Motorola this is do or die.

Even if the company itself doesn’t go under with a Droid failure, this is its last shot at cellphone glory. Its phone sales have been cut in half the last few years, its market share is a shadow of its former glory, and the vultures are circling.

Having followed Motorola off-and-on for over 30 years I find this a fascinating spectacle. The company has been around for over 80 years, producing its first cellphone back in 1973. Motorola’s corporate history claims it invented Six Sigma, and among its acquisitions over the years were General Instrument and Symbol Technologies.

Now Motorola is betting on Google to help make it a player in radios again, its original niche. The first pictures of the platform are out, and were enough to send the stock soaring. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

How do you think it will taste?

October 15th, 2009

Should Google spin Android into a foundation?

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 7:29 am

Categories: Development, General, Google, Hardware, Linux Handheld, Standards, management, support, telecom, wireless

Tags: Google Inc., Fork, Foundation, Eclipse, Linux Foundation, Forks, Linux, Java Development Tools, Open Source, Operating Systems

Google faces a conundrum.

How does it maintain control of Android and at the same time build a community of interests in which developers can seek profit?

The easy answer is to turn the Open Handset Alliance into the Android Foundation. (Fans of the late Isaac Asimov will recognize this fellow even in French.)

Critics love to claim that Eclipse is just an IBM front, but that’s a cheap shot, based on the fact that IBM gains huge benefits from Eclipse without having to pay all the bills there.

Foundations can be a great way to organize vendors who have a common purpose but divergent business plans. The Linux Foundation is a good example of this.

But there are risks in an Android Foundation, as Symbian’s David Wood said when they were going open source a year ago.

Forks are one.

Foundations lead naturally to forks. Every vendor who sells an “enhanced” version of Eclipse tools is pushing a proprietary fork. There are dozens of Linux distros, each of which forks the code in some way to provide added value.

How much Android forking can Google stand before the value starts dribbling through its fingers? Like to see some stuck-up Microsoft search engine sitting on an Android phone? (Make your blood boil? Well I should say.)

There is, of course, another risk in going the Foundation route. It doesn’t always work. Witness LiMo, which Motorola recently abandoned for Android. Witness Moblin, which Intel gave to the Linux Foundation. Witness Symbian itself for that matter.

The difference between the OHA and a conventional software foundation is that for Android to move forward it must first be expressed in phones, in hardware. The chicken-and-egg question here yields an easy answer. It’s the chicken. An egg, the software, is pretty meaningless if it’s just sitting on a server.

This fact reduces the threat of a fork. The value of any Android handset lies in its compatibility. Without that it might as well be a Windows Mobile set.

So long as Google is the biggest investor in Android, then, it’s probably doing the right thing by avoiding the foundation model. But at some point the rest of the ecosystem needs to grow up for Google to get its investment back.

So if Google does set up an Android Foundation some time down the road, know that it’s a sign of success, and that it no longer has to push this rock up the hill all by itself.

October 12th, 2009

Why the big Android bandwagon?

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 8:19 am

Categories: General, Google, Hardware, Linux Handheld, Strategy, business models, marketing, mass market, mobile, wireless

Tags: Google Inc., Android Bandwagon, Open Source, Dana Blankenhorn

We have had open source mobile platforms for years. Why has Android become a bandwagon, one big enough that people are wondering if it’s not growing too big for its britches.

One word: marketing.

Thanks to its low-cost structure, Google can subsidize the marketing of its products to a degree even experienced rivals can’t match. As I have said before there is a price lower than free, and Google is uniquely positioned to pay that price.

Why? Look at the ad above, for the HTC myTouch, from Vimeo. All those celebrities aren’t just selling T-Mobile, or HTC. They are also selling Google. Android gave Google an excuse to do TV ads, with others’ help. Even if it doesn’t sell phones it sells the Google brand, and Google benefits from that.

It’s all about the sharing. By spreading the development effort through open source, Google also spreads the marketing cost as various players vie for position. But Google’s size and budget are what make this a good deal for everyone else.

Symbian and RIM can’t pay this price to the degree Google can. Symbian was spun-out to become self-sustaining, and its developer outreach efforts may be all it can do. RIM has a proprietary background, and proprietary profits, so for it to grab open source may easily be seen as desperation.

Google has both the money and the reputation to push product through the channel that has its roots in open source. Its multiplicity of developers means all of them have an incentive to drive down the open source incline and the open source development incline.

Google may eventually seek to monetize all this with online services, but it is developing the market before showing its hand in that area. Meanwhile, the ad revenue from having Web pages appear on more mobile kit is all it really needs. (Yes, this means the iPhone is subsidizing Android.)

Google’s cost structure gives it the power to be patient, something no other market player has. The Android bandwagon is built on this patience.

To succeed, however, it will have to deliver products as good or better than the iPhone, at the same or less cost, with just as many apps. That risk to its reputation is all Google is laying on the line here, but since failure will also hurt open source that risk is also shared.

October 8th, 2009

Moore's Law of Software is the key to the cloud

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 6:33 am

Categories: Cloud Computing, Development, General, Google, Software as a Service

Tags: Software, Developer, Cloud, Moore, Urquhart, Tools & Techniques, Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Management, Hardware

In my new e-book on technology history, Moore’s Lore, I devote a special chapter to what I call Moore’s Law of Software.

Fact is there is no Moore’s Law of Software. Productivity has improved over the years, but arithmetically. Code is still being written, and tested, by hand. Software falls further behind hardware every year.

In his excellent Cloud Computing Rethink series over at C|Net, Cisco’s James Urquhart yesterday revealed a very important truth about the cloud that most executives and analysts have not fully understood.

This is all about programmer productivity.

Urquhart begins by describing what Forte Software tried to do with 4GL 15 years ago, offering it as a utopian past that cloud computing hopes to rediscover.

it starts this journey with an economic model that budgets can accommodate, and Urquhart then issues a call for better development tools. It’s the loyalty of software developers that must be won, and their shared endeavor can rebuild the 4GL utopia.

That shared endeavor is what connects cloud computing to open source. The same force that drives open source forward, developers sharing and improving tools, also drives the cloud, Urquhart writes.

It’s a brilliant insight.

That’s what the Amazon and Google brands bring to the party, software development environments that can be turned into profitable services quickly. As he explains:

How much more powerful is AWS with other developer-focused services, such as DevPay, Simple Queue Service, and Elastic Map Reduce? This attracts developers, which in turn attracts CPU/hrs and GB/hrs.

I keep thinking of one of these cloud guys doing the Ballmer dance. A Ballmer dance in the clouds?

October 8th, 2009

Google plays a hand of Ogre with Apple

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 5:58 am

Categories: Apple, General, Google, Hardware, Linux Handheld, Strategy, mass market, mobile, wireless

Tags: Google Inc., Google Android, Apple Inc., Ogre, Mobile Operating Systems, Games, Smart Phones, Personal Technology, Consumer Electronics, Dana Blankenhorn

Those of a certain age will remember an early Steve Jackson game called Ogre. It was a two-player game where one player had a single piece, a powerful piece called the Ogre. The other player had everything else.

This pretty much sums up Google’s Android strategy against the Apple iPhone. Apple in this case plays the Ogre. (Picture from Steve Jackson Games.)

The combination of Apple’s proprietary iPhone design and its exclusive deal with AT&T has proven financially powerful. Apple created a market no one thought existed for a data-driven mobile Internet client and everyone else is playing catch-up.

With Dell now agreeing to supply AT&T with its version of the Android, Google now has game pieces on all four major U.S. carriers, including the one Apple plays on. T-Mobile was the first carrier to carry Android kit, Verizon is being promised a bunch of it. Sprint and Samsung will be in on the game in a Moment.

Everybody gets to play the way they want. Carriers can get exclusives on designs, and negotiate any deal on the resulting data flow they wish. Both new and old manufacturers get to play in the phone game and try to innovate on the margins.

All this work feeds back into the Android ecosystem, and all content sales feed into the Android marketplace. Google just wants a place to advertise alongside the content.

It’s a fun game, whose knock-on effects are a direct challenge to Microsoft, Symbian, and the Blackberry folks. Google seems destined to be the market’s #2 player by early next year, #2 with a bullet.

But please note this. All Google’s pieces taken together don’t yet add up to the power of Apple’s iPhone. The Ogre still has the power. But Google has the dice.

October 6th, 2009

How Verizon might ruin Android

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 12:06 pm

Categories: General, Google, Linux Handheld, mass market, mobile, wireless

Tags: Verizon Communications Inc., Wi-Fi, Wireless And Mobility, Dana Blankenhorn

Verizon makes Apple look open.

But they are one-half the U.S. mobile phone duopoly (T-Mobile and Sprint are minor players) so the kids at the Googleplex are doubtless celebrating news that Verizon will be working on bringing Android phones to market.

Verizon has a ton of incentive to make this work. Apple’s iPhone is the 800-pound gorilla in the wireless room, and since it’s exclusive to AT&T Verizon has been hemorrhaging market share (especially on the high end) for many months now.

Both sides were saying the right things today, but Verizon Wireless has based its corporate identity on maintaining control of its wireless environment.

Old habits will be hard to break.

Top management at Verizon seems to have decided that in its pursuit of market share it will throw everything it can at the wall and hope something sticks.

But what if Verizon succeeds? What if it starts selling a lot of Android kit, and those users start making heavy use of apps for which Verizon isn’t getting its usual cut?

What happens when those in Verizon middle management, raised on the iron belief that Verizon must get a cut of every bit on its wireless network, see Google spreading its open source gospel on its network?

I think I know. And I don’t like it.

It will take more than a few words at a press conference to remove my suspicions. How about you?

September 29th, 2009

The Android-Cyanogen kerfluffle

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 6:10 am

Categories: Development, General, Google

Tags: Google Inc., Open Source, Dana Blankenhorn

What began as a story of evil Google seeking a monopoly on Android apps has become a kerfluffle.

The opening shot was a cease-and-desist letter issued by Google against Steve Kondik, aka Cyanogen, Kondik was producing a modified Android ROM that included proprietary Google applications.

While Android is open source, it does support proprietary extensions. Google has provided its services, like GMail, to Android in this form.

Reaction was immediate. Google wallops Android developer was typical. Has Google shot itself in the foot was a typical question.

Indeed I was all ready to write a screed against trying to turn open source proprietary before I did the research.

First, Google has a good reason for wanting to retain control over its own services. This lets it retain legal cause against malware aimed at its servers using its software.

Second, after some hemming-and-hawing, Kondik backed down. He said he would provide a work-around so his Cyanogenmod will still work with Google applications. A group of college kids called the Open Android Alliance offered to do a purely open source Android.

There was even some action inside Google itself, with one developer considering resigning but the thinking better of it. “Let’s try to move on and be constructive and talk about how we can make Android better for everyone,” he concluded.

So why is this a kerfluffle? Why isn’t it a scandal?

Because so far only one lawyer has made a dime off this, the Google lawyer who wrote the original letter. (And he or she is on salary — if they hadn’t written this they might have just played ping-pong on the Google dime.)

In the end this was an open source dispute, handled by open source developers in an open source way. Let’s find a workaround. Let’s find a way to get along. There ain’t no one here but us chickens.

September 15th, 2009

Can Fast Flip build a business model

Posted by Dana Blankenhorn @ 6:10 am

Categories: Applications, General, Google, Internet, business models, mass market

Tags: Google Inc., Google News, Publisher, FastFlip, Blogging, Benefits, Strategy, Internet, Human Resources, Management

Google News is much, much better, in many ways, than Google’s new FastFlip.

So why bother? Because, by giving publishers control over what content a user browses with the software, they can deliver Google a business model.

Google News has long been controversial with publishers for several reasons. The most important is that it uses a Google bot as its editor. All competing outlets are in the same vat of news, so you may end up seeing a second-hand iteration of the story, or a comment on it, before the actual reporting.

Google News has been around for several years, yet to this day there are no ads on its main page. It delivers revenue and links to publishers but no revenue to its maker. And the publishers still claim the site is “stealing” from them by adding lead paragraphs and thumbnail pictures.

In the past Google has sought to respond by doing deals with major news services like AFP and AP, hosting their stories on ad-soaked pages, passing along the bulk of the revenue. But this has cut the market for AP stories on partner Web sites. The solution just creates a new problem. Publishers scream louder.

FastFlip tries to solve this by limiting the number of outlets available. A page on politics culls just a dozen sources, each a scaled “professional” publishing organization willing to sign a business agreement.

Google hosts publisher pages on FastFlip, including ads, so there’s a defined business model and a benefit to publishers in faster page loads. Users can click through to “inside pages” so there’s a second publisher benefit, increased traffic.

The main benefit of FastFlip is that it keeps out the riffraff. Scaled, complete, “real” news sources, magazines, and publisher-owned sites only, please. If you’re not big enough to negotiate a contract with Google for your content, you’re not big enough to get on FastFlip.

By building a high barrier to entry against blogs and new entrants, and by having signed business agreements defining benefits and limiting Google’s interference with their product, FastFlip is a godsend to publishers.

And if you look at Google News itself, you’ll see a second bow to power. Click on a story claiming, say, 587 links and you’ll get an intermediate page highlighting the stories of “reputable” news services and publisher-owned blog sites.

By raising barriers to entry against individual blogs and open source news sites, Google hopes to get publishers off its back. But I doubt that will happen, because once the other side knows it can move you, it will keep moving you until you’re off the board.