October 27, 2009, 10:34
The Washington Post interviewed Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt favors net neutrality, but only to a point: While the tech player wants to make sure that telecommunications giants don’t steer Internet traffic in a way that would favor some devices or services over others, he also believes that it would be a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet.
“It is possible for the government to screw the Internet up, big-time,” he said. Google is strong enough as a company to weather any possible outcome on the issue, he said. But what he worries about “is the next start-up.”
It is rather obvious that anyone wants competition or regulation that prevents complementors from extracting monopoly profits, or just limit their complementors’ strategic levers. Or, from another perspective, the openness of the Internet is good both for business and public welfare.
The openness of the Internet is about more than traffic management in the access network, and Google’s Data Liberation Front seems to be a good thing. Let’s hope that the recent TechCrunch story on Orkut is an one time incident.
October 26, 2009, 14:45
The New York times reports that big cellphone makers are shifting to Android. There are several reasons for this.
- Android is free, while Windows Mobile costs manufacturers $15 to $25 a phone.
- Android is intended for finger tapping, while WIndows Mobile is built for stylus use
- Developers get access to the Android source code
Windows Mobile market share is still way above Android, but the current trend indicates that the gap is getting smaller. Major US mobile operators offer Android phones, and an increasing number of manufacturers make Android devices. The main reason may not be license costs or access to open source:
“Windows Mobile is simply dated, and that hasn’t changed in this release,” said Avi Greengart, research director for consumer devices at Current Analysis.
Indeed, a J. D. Power & Associates survey found that Windows Mobile had the lowest satisfaction rating among customers of any smartphone operating system. The iPhone has by far the most satisfying software, the study found. Android is a distant second, followed closely by BlackBerry’s operating system.
It could just be that Windows Mobile phones do not offer the right user experience
(See New York Times, Big Cellphone Makers Shifting to Android System by Saul Hansell)
October 22, 2009, 08:48
Net Neutrality debate in the U.S. has at times been relatively intense. Today Verizon and Google published a joint statement on finding a common ground for an open Internet. I agree with the six points they make. They are relatively high level, and as always the devil lies in the details. Time will tell if they are able to share a common view as the details are being carved out.
October 16, 2009, 12:25
Paid Content reported yesterday on Google´s E-books store. Google Editions will be device agnostic. Basically, this means that you can read the titles on any device with a browser. They report that users will also be able to access the texts they have purchased when they’re not connected to the Internet via a cached version. This sounds like Google Editions will be a service using modern browser technology and Google Gears, and differ from the vertical structure of both Amazon´s Kindle and Apple iTunes.
It comes as no surprise that this in line with a recent post on Google Mobile Blog. The Google mobile team were asked which phones were their most favored. The answer: “Every Phone”. On the question web vs app they answered:
“At Google, we believe in the power of the web to give us the flexibility to build one app that can run in the browser on multiple phones, rather than developing a different app for every platform. With more capable mobile browsers and technologies like HTML5 and Gears, web apps deliver a great experience because they closely mirror the desktop web in overall look, feel and functionality. They also let us iterate fast and add lots of cool features quickly without having to build from scratch each feature for various devices and platforms. Of course in some cases, investing in native applications for multiple platforms make sense. [...] “
Microsoft´s fears from the late 1990s have become reality. Back then they feared Netscape browser with Sun Java to substitute Windows (see Finding of Facts from the US antitrust case, for example sections 397 and 398).
October 14, 2009, 10:30
Business Week Tech Beat has an interesting story “Will Moto Fracture the Android Market?“. It Motorola will introduce signature apps for it´s upcoming Android devices. The move seems reasonable from an end user experience and a differentiation strategy perspective. On the other hand, this move may lead to a Android as a fragmented platform if other vendors follow. According to Business Week:
“Well, now it appears that the Android movement is fracturing. And that might make it less attractive to end users and developers alike. Developers may have to tweak their Android apps for them to work well on various makers’ phones. Users may have to sift through the Android Market searching for apps tailored specifically to their devices. That’s certainly not the end of the world: Sites like Handango.com offer apps for various handset models successfully. But that adds complexity to the process, and, in many ways, this defeats the purpose behind Android.”
Microsoft achieved to make Windows the standard platform all Wintel PCs. It may seem that Google can´t copy that (but that was probably not their ambition).
(Via Tech Beat – BusinessWeek.)
