Why is Goggle "unnerved" by MicroHoo

April 3, 2008 By

Google’s Sergey Brin is freaked out by the proposed merger of Yahoo and Microsoft. Why?

Partly Google is trying to trough as much cold water as they can on the deal. Having two weak competitors hanging around instead of one possibly larger and stronger one is better for Google.

Google says the merger is bad for innovation on the Internet and bad for users. Partly this is driven by the fact that Yahoo is a an open standards based company and Microsoft is not. It is a legitimate fear that Microsoft will take what good Yahoo has done and turn it into a proprietary mess. But Yahoos impact on the net is not very strong right now, so that loss wouldn’t do much. Most of the innovation lately is coming from all the web 2.0 companies popping up like daisies. We would all morn the loss or degradation of Flickr and Delicious though.

It’s unusual to see Google show any fear lately which makes me thing there might actually be something to a Microsoft Yahoo combination. I still think most of the Yahoo talent will leave and the whole thing will crumble apart. What is left of Yahoo will be overwhelmed by the Microsoft dominant culture.

So Sergey, rest easy, there is nothing to fear. And the Internet, it will survive. That’s what it does best. Adapt and change.

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Yahoo – Fish on a Hook

February 9, 2008 By

Microsoft has been fishing for Yahoo for years now and finally they have snagged them. Yahoo is doing alot of flopping and trashing around, but they’re a fish on a hook at this point. Fighting is only going to make it harder.

It is sad to see though, because Yahoo was one of the Internet pioneers, one of the first websites many of us old timers ever went to. It was simple and useful and fun. Now Yahoo is a convoluted, complex mess. If Microsoft can do anything worthwhile with Yahoo is an open question. They will also have to deal with massive culture clash and most likely a big brain drain. But Microsoft is desperate to compete better with Google and this could be their best shot. Competition is a good thing in this market as Google could become as fat and lazy as Microsoft has with too much dominance.

Note to Yahoo: when it’s checkmate, there are no options.

Filed Under: Blog, Technology, Web 2.0 Tagged With: ,

Web Development in the iPhone'ed Mobile World

December 13, 2007 By

With great fanfare, Steve Jobs told the world the one of the biggest innovations of the iphone was bringing the “real” internet to a mobile device for the first time. No more junior, stripped down websites, with the iPhone you can view entire original websites as they were intended to be viewed.

Because the iPhone did not ship with the ability to run third party native applications, Jobs boldly told the development community they should build web 2.0 applications that would be just as good as native applications. Than Apple release development guidelines detailing how developers could build custom web applications formatted perfectly for the iPhone.

Thousands of web applications have sprung up for the iPhone, many of them very useful and well done. But these are custom applications that only run on the iPhone. What about the rest of the mobile market? What ever happened to the “real” internet? The point that you didn’t need to develop any kind of special or stripped down version of a site just to view it on a mobile phone? Apple has fallen into its own bear trap. I’m not complaining too much, being an iPhone user myself, but the rest of the mobile world is getting a little bit of a rip off with more development time being put into iphone specific web applications.

If you’re a business and you are looking to make some noise in the mobile market, should you create an iPhone custom web app? Probably, especially if you believe your target customer is likely to own an iPhone, but don’t forget about the rest of the mobile universe. It’s still a great deal bigger than the iPhone market, at least for now.

Filed Under: Blog, Mobile Computing, Technology, Web 2.0 Tagged With: , , ,

Facebook Fights Back

December 12, 2007 By

Punch and counter punch. As I have pointed out already, 2008 is going to be the battle of the social platforms. Google Open Social fired the first real shot toward Facebook and now Facebook fires back by making their API platform available to any other social network that wants to use it. Of course, this is a double whammy for Facebook because they are not only spreading their technology wider, but collecting a licensing fee as well. This all assumes other networks take them up on the offer. Bebo already has, being the first.

The Facebook advantage: Open Social is a dream, but the Facebook API is real and here now. Thousands of apps have already been created and by adopting the API, you gain access to them all instantly. That’s a powerful proposition.

Two smart, aggressive companies going at it toe to toe; This should be fun to watch. And once again, Microsoft is asleep at the wheel.

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Filed Under: Blog, Social Networks, Web 2.0

Social Networks to Social Platforms

December 12, 2007 By

The hot buzzword in 2008 will be social platform. Rising social network star Facebook got the ball rolling this year when they announced their open development platform which allowed software developers to create custom applications to run inside Facebook. This has turned out to be wildly popular and other social network sites are following the leader. Myspace has been working on a platform and more recently, news that LinkedIn, the popular social network for business professionals is also creating an application platform.

Social networks will become much more than networks in 2008 as more social platforms arrive, allowing users access to more features and marketers access to more of the so-called “social graph“.

Filed Under: Social Networks, Web 2.0

Twitterposter and Measuring Influence

November 28, 2007 By

A few weeks ago, an application called Twitterposter made a splash in the Twitter community. Twitterposter is an interesting Twitter API application that purports to display the relative influence of Twitter users. The problem is that it uses the number of followers as it’s measure of influence.

We need to stop getting caught up in raw numbers as the measure of anything significant. How many followers do you have on Twitter, how many friends on Facebook? Those numbers are not what really matters. It’s not how many people are following you, but more who is following you. What is the real influence power of those following you and are you even saying anything interesting or worthwhile?

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Filed Under: Blog, Citizen Media, Social Networks, Web 2.0

Brilliant Talk by Larry Lessig

November 6, 2007 By

This talk given by Larry Lessig at the 2007 TED is absolutely fantastic and right on. Brilliant stuff and a must watch.

Filed Under: Blog, Technology, Web 2.0

Adobe's Web Application Play

October 2, 2007 By

San Jose based Adobe Systems in a legend in Silicon Valley, most famous for their dominant Photoshop application. Adobe is also a leader in desktop publishing and has a strong competitor in online video editing as well. Now Adobe is stepping into a whole new world, the world of online Web 2.0 applications. Adobe has purchased Virtual Ubiquity and their online word processor Buzzword. This puts Adobe in direct competition with Google and Zoho for the online office productivity market.

Traditionally a master of the desktop, it shows a great deal of savvy and guts for Adobe to move into the online market. What makes this even more interesting in the Buzzword word processor is based on Adobe’s Flash technology. Adobe is playing up the benefits of Flash, saying it is more flexible and powerful than Ajax, which is the current favorite web 2.0 technology. Adobe’s AIR allows Flash applications to run offline or online, which will prove to be a critical factor as most web 2.0 apps do not work offline yet. The Zoho word processor does work offline but Google Docs does not.

A question everyone should be asking is, where is Microsoft in all this? As of yet, nowhere to be found. Microsoft clings to their venerable Office suite, continuing to bet on the desktop. It may be a long time before web 2.0 supplants the desktop application, but I am surprised to not see Microsoft at least put a toe into this water.

Filed Under: Blog, Web 2.0

Unexpected Consequences of Google Maps

September 27, 2007 By

Sometimes technology uncovers things we have never considered before or shows us things we have not noticed. Such is the case with this Navy building and it’s unfortunate shape, only discovered and disseminated widely because of Google Maps and blogging. Now the Navy will spend $600,000 to redesign the landscape and buildings to change it’s appearance from the air and on Internet mapping systems. Another related post details the various rooftop advertising around the country also now visible on Google Maps.

Filed Under: Technology, Web 2.0

Google To “Out Open” Facebook On November 5

September 27, 2007 By

Some interesting news out of Google as they address the growing popularity of Facebook. I’m not sure why Google would feel particularly threatened by Facebook, but they are planning to release some open API’s on November 5th that will allow third parties to access social graph data via Google’s Orkut service.

Orkut is really a non player in the social network world, so I’m unclear how valuable this really is. This is a first step in a larger strategy, however. Google may also be planning to encourage other social networks to allow access to their data via the same API’s, thus creating a completely open system. The Facebook platform has caused the rapid growth of that service, but if this Google initiative evolves into an open source development platform for social networks, it could level the playing field.

Maybe this is why Facebook is talking potential investment deals with Microsoft and others. If they’re going to go toe to toe with Google, they’re going to need some ammo. At this point, Google is like the old Microsoft. When they step into your playing field you should start shaking in your boots. This should be fun to watch.

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Filed Under: Social Networks, Technology, Web 2.0
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