Microsoft... Still Doesn't Get It

A Microsoft executive, Frank Shaw's, attempt to poke Apple has gained some attention,

Note: If you are the TL;DR type, let me cut to the chase. Surface and Surface 2 both include Office, the world’s most popular, most powerful productivity software for free and are priced below both the iPad 2 and iPad Air respectively. Making Apple’s decision to build the price of their less popular and less powerful iWork into their tablets not a very big (or very good) deal.

Since we launched the Surface line of tablets last year, one of the themes we’ve consistently used to talk about them is that they are a terrific blend of productivity and entertainment in one lightweight, affordable package. In fact, we’re confident that they offer the best combination of those capabilities available on the market today.

Wait a second... then why did Shaw just say this?

I have to say, I’m really excited for a 1080p Lumia with a third column on my start screen so I can keep a close eye on more people, more news, more stuff.

That is, if Microsoft's tablets are the best combination of productivity and entertainment on the market, why is Shaw excited about buying a Nokia, even if Microsoft is in the process of acquiring that company? Shaw leaves me with the impression that his blog post is less about touting his company's great product than it is an attempt to promote Windows tablets, generally, by taking digs at Apple. Microsoft was very late to recognize the market for the tablet computer, and continues to withhold Office from competing platforms as it has scrambled to develop its own tablets. On top of that, part of the reason that Microsoft's tablets are "affordable" is that they aren't selling, and as a result prices have been slashed... now twice. I don't want to diminish the Surface as a product, and I suspect that it would have been more successful had it been released two years earlier, but as with the Zune there's a significant price for coming late to market with a product that doesn't capture the imagination of your market.

What strike me most about the piece is how the Surface is, in essence, touted as a laptop. Microsoft, we're told, is the expert in how real people work. Real people want keyboards, trackpads, multiple windows open on their displays, a full version of Office. (Real people also apparently want an obnoxious, in-your-face tile interface shoved in their faces when they boot up a Windows 8 computer, and want touch screens on their portable computers.) And yet real people demonstrate Microsoft's skill in assessing their needs by buying Apple and Android tablets in huge numbers, while largely ignoring the Surface.

If you're typing or editing large documents, are creating spreadsheets, or working with other complex documents, you probably do want a keyboard and mouse or trackpad, but... you probably already have a desktop computer, a portable computer, or both upon which to perform those tasks. If you have a notebook computer that runs Windows, what's the advantage of toting around a Surface tablet with a keyboard cover when you can simply use your computer? The power of Surface has given Windows tablets about 5% of the market, which is enough to keep your toes in the water. Apple has about 5% of the global PC market, so in a sense Microsoft is in good company.

Shaw declares that by offering so much productivity Microsoft is leading the market (from behind)....

And so it’s not surprising that we see other folks now talking about how much “work” you can get done on their devices. Adding watered down productivity apps. Bolting on aftermarket input devices. All in an effort to convince people that their entertainment devices are really work machines.

In that spirit, Apple announced yesterday that they were dropping their fees on their “iWork” suite of apps. Now, since iWork has never gotten much traction, and was already priced like an afterthought, it’s hardly that surprising or significant a move. And it doesn’t change the fact that it’s much harder to get work done on a device that lacks precision input and a desktop for true side-by-side multitasking.

I think Shaw is onto something when he describes how Microsoft is in touch with what people want, if we define "people" as the population that is already predisposed to buy a Surface. The problem is, he is touting solutions that have absolutely nothing to do with how most people use tablet computers. The tablet is largely a product for consumption of media and entertainment, not for productivity. To the extent that you can add on productivity, about 90% of tablet users are going to find all of the power they need (and perhaps more) in the free apps that Apple is offering, and those apps will get better over time.

Perhaps what Shaw is displaying is discomfort at seeing his company's business model increasingly threatened by free software. Sure, the competing software may be less powerful than Office suite, but... free, and good enough for a significant majority of users. It's part of an expectation Microsoft helped create when it launched its browser war against Netscape, and even before that with its controversial bundling practices: the idea that you pay for your computer hardware, and that the software you need for basic functions (an ever-expanding category) should be free. Your Surface tablet runs Windows 8 and Office, but will upgrades to either be free? I doubt that's what Microsoft has in mind.

Apple seems to be taking the position that software is a commodity product that is best used to sell hardware, and by expanding the sphere of what its customers get for free - and how well its products play together - they want to keep customers in the Apple ecosystem. I can see merit in Microsoft's vision of the future, with people having full capacity to do whatever it is that they want to do on whatever device they have with them, but I'm not sure that the vision is compatible with Microsoft's business model - at least not in the mass market. If expensive software upgrades are required for any product running Windows, that cost will quickly undermine Microsoft's claim that its products are more affordable than those that offer free upgrades. Apple's vision of the future seems to be to allow users of its products to transition from one device to another, phone, tablet, computer, Apple TV, while having each device know exactly where you left off on the other. Continue your movie from where you paused, continue editing your document from where you stopped.... That vision seems to be more viable, and is unquestionably consistent with Apple's business model and - despite Mr. Shaw's claims - seems to be more consistent with how people in the mass market are using their devices.

So, when I see Apple drop the price of their struggling, lightweight productivity apps, I don’t see a shot across our bow, I see an attempt to play catch up.

Whereas I see Apple as obviating the need for 90+% of its customers to ever purchase "Office for IOS", should Microsoft ever muster enough courage to release such a product.

I think they, like others, are waking up to the fact that we’ve built a better solution for people everywhere, who are getting things done from anywhere, and who don’t have hard lines between their personal and professional lives. People who want a single, simple, affordable device with the power and flexibility to enhance and support their whole day. :)

I admit it. If I had to choose between doing my professional work, or even blogging, on a tablet or a notebook computer, I would pick the notebook computer as the "single, simple, affordable device with the power and flexibility to enhance and support their whole day". But I don't have to choose, and thus can use my smartphone or tablet for the functions they provides extremely well - basic communication, media consumption, web browsing, simple games, demonstrations, and online reference materials - and switch to my notebook computer (or go to my desk) for more complex tasks. To look at it another way, the fact that I have a Swiss Army knife and thus can sometimes avoid using a more specialized tool doesn't mean I'm going to throw away my saws, knives, screwdrivers and scissors. If your vision of a typical tablet user is somebody typing away on a keyboard using a fully featured windows OS, you're not looking at how people interact with their tablets.

Where We Could Really Use the "Next Steve Jobs"

A lot of people focus on the smartphone market, and complain with each new Apple product that... Steve Jobs would have done something different, or better, or both. Steve Jobs brought something unusual to Apple, specifically a willingness to make huge gambles on theoretical technology, and to release products that could turn out to be failures. Apple seems to have become exceedingly cautious, but I'm not sure that is so much the result of a change in the company's philosophy as it is a change in consumer expectations. The iPhone 4 antenna issue, and the Apple Maps brouhaha, suggest that consumers want nothing less than perfect and, rather than launching risky products that might inspire a mixed reaction or turn out to be the next Newton (or Zune), caution has spread across the industry.

The real story behind the focus on portable electronics is not so much that a life-changing innovation is just around the corner. It's much more that there is profit in the upper end of the market, the mass market having already been commoditized. Smartphone advances reflect the importance of competition as, even though Apple sees the rise and fall of Nokia as a cautionary tale, history suggests that product development in a commoditized market tends to be slow. Most companies see little to no point in spending hundreds of millions of dollars to marginally improve a product that will likely sell at the same price point as before. That's the sort of context in which a short-sighted CEO of a company like Hewlett-Packard might decide that it no longer makes sense to fund research that is not directly aimed at turning a profit, or why a similarly short-sighted company's products might go from excellent to "good enough" in order to increase margins by decreasing production costs. (Am I talking about the same company?)

One might argue that televisions have seen marked advances in technology despite being a largely commoditized market, but that has been driven in no small part by the introduction of HDTV and the money poured into the development of new displays for computer users and commercial settings. Even in that context, major players like Panasonic have a very difficult time turning a profit, and the pool of companies that produce television displays and sets is not expanding.

One area that has seen a surprising lack of innovation is the desktop computer market. That's in part because it's a tough nut to crack - computers do pretty much what we want them to do, there are no obvious ways to dramatically improve the user interface, and the technologies for interacting with computers other than through a mouse and keyboard tend to focus on niche users or turn out to be largely impractical. It may be that one day we'll have displays and "no touch" gesture controls as shown in the film, "Minority Report", but that's not on the horizon. Basically, the desktop computer market seems a lot like the television market. To the extent that incremental improvements are seen, they're in no small part the result of R&D in the mobile marketplace. The biggest "innovation" we've seen in a desktop operating system was Microsoft's annoying, clumsy interference with the user experience by putting a "smart tile" display between the computer user and the desktop - that is, they tried to make the desktop experience more like mobile, never mind whether that makes sense. Apple has made similar, albeit less in-your-face changes to its desktop operating system, with its Launchpad and App store, but they're really not part of the ordinary desktop experience.

Somebody commented to me recently that Apple seemed to be "giving up" on the competition for desktop computers. I responded that they're chasing money and market share, and that right now they can find both in the mobile space while there is little incentive to try to claw out a greater market share in the desktop market. The cost of significantly expanding their desktop presence would be significant, and there's really not much money to be made in that market. Were Apple to start producing $300 - $600 portable computers it might find a market, but it would have to make the quality cuts that are readily apparent in computers in that price range, potentially costing it brand loyalty over the long run in the same manner that the low quality Apple products of the Sculley era damaged Apple's reputation and competitiveness. Why mass produce low-cost computers that have to be sold at tiny margins and that would likely have an impaired user experience, when you can continue to sell $1000+ computers that people enjoy using, and sell millions of highly profitable iPads to the sub-$1,000 market?

Really, though, the desktop industry needs to be woken from its complacency, much in the manner that Google and Apple rebooted then-stagnant browser development with Chrome and Safari. The problem being, you either need a company that sees a long-term gain in developing new technology at a significant short-term cost, the way Xerox PARC laid the foundation for the computer mouse and windows-driven displays, or because they don't want to be indentured to a competitor's product. And if you take the HP Labs / Xerox PARC approach, you also need a visionary who can see how a new idea can be improved and put into widespread use - after all it was Apple, not Xerox, that turned the mouse and menu/windows-driven interface from an impractical lab-based demo to the desktop standard.

The manner in which the world, and Apple, has changed is perhaps best illustrated by today's quiet announcement that the iMac has been updated. You can go to the Apple Store and buy one today - but the new version isn't even flagged as "new". A secondary illustration comes from the Mac Pro, the high-end computer Apple develops for the professional market, which is soon to be released in an innovative new case. But that's innovation in the same sense as the Mac Mini was an innovation - great design and packaging, but nothing you couldn't have accomplished in a traditional mini tower case. Apple did promote the redesigned Mac Pro, some months back, but when will it actually come to market? Later this year. There's no sense of urgency, as there is in the highly competitive mobile marketplace.

An argument can be made that when a technology reaches a certain point of maturity, all new developments will be incremental. Perhaps the keyboard and mouse-driven desktop computer are pretty much it - and unless the entire concept is reinvented (much as the iPhone reinvented the smartphone market) this is it. People seem disappointed when the new "state of the art" smartphone looks like the old one - as if there's a great deal you can do to differentiate the hardware of a typical smartphone in ways that are obvious or exciting. Even in that market, unless a new, disruptive technology comes along the biggest future changes will come through software. In fifteen years, today's typical smartphone and tablet apps are likely to look about as sophisticated as Pong. But still, it would be nice to have a sense that somebody out there - somebody positioned to disrupt the market - was looking at "impractical, unworkable" new ideas from a different angle, and asking, "What if...."

Apple and the Decline of Microsoft

If the take-away is that big companies can sometimes lose track of how to compete effectively with smaller, nimbler, more innovative successors, there's nothing new to that story - it bears repeating, it's something companies should try to remember as they get big, and it's something most companies seem to forget given enough time, success, and/or an unfortunate choice of leadership. Paul Krugman argues that Apple could follow Microsoft into decline, and that it's situation could potentially be worse as it sells consumer products and thus isn't as insulated from market forces as Microsoft, which benefits from having lazy IT departments refuse to support Apple products. But that makes Apple more like Hewlett-Packard, a once great and innovative company that produced quality products, then lost its way under incompetent, bean-counting management that slashed its research budget and didn't care about quality. For that matter, you could compare the future theoretical decline of Apple to the past, actual decline of Apple, where bad decisions by Steve Jobs and his successor all-but-destroyed the company before Steve Jobs returned from NeXT with a much improved vision for the company. But for Apple's reinvention of itself, odds are that we wouldn't be fretting over whether the next iPhone will be only incrementally improved over the prior model and that Android would still be a Blackberry clone. Let's recall, Apple's big profits come not from software, but from hardware.

Krugman writes,

The story of how that state of affairs arose is tangled, but I don’t think it’s too unfair to say that Apple mistakenly believed that ordinary buyers would value its superior quality as much as its own people did. So it charged premium prices, and by the time it realized how many people were choosing cheaper machines that weren’t insanely great but did the job, Microsoft’s dominance was locked in.

On the contrary, I think Apple is painfully aware of the fact that many consumers, particularly those at the low end of the market, are choosing Android devices. Although Apple still suffers more than a bit from the Steve Jobs attitude of, "We know what you want better than you do" (an attitude Krugman notes in a blog entry on the subject) - and in fairness to Steve Jobs, at least during his second tenure at Apple he was often correct - they don't market their most profitable products in the manner that Krugman suggests. They're not trying to convince you to buy a $599 iPhone versus a bottom-of-the-market $100 Android phone. They're trying to get you to sign up for a two year contract with your phone carrier, with much of the purchase price being built into your service contract and your nominal purchase price being not much different from a low-end phone.

In terms of quality and pricing, for quite some time Apple's computers have stacked up quite well, feature-for-feature, with the diminishing pool of well-constructed PC's. But it has been my impression from the lack of development of their desktop market that they aren't interested in trying to make a huge - or even a modest - push for market share within that diminishing market. Not surprisingly, they like to manufacture products that are profitable, something that very few cell phone manufacturers do. They and Samsung presently sell cellular phones at a profit. Thanks to the increased quality of competing products, I suspect that Samsung will soon find itself facing a commoditized market for higher-end cell phones and Apple will be the last cell phone company that makes a significant profit from its hardware. Then, barring the unlikely event that we get something as disruptive to the industry as another iPhone, Apple will no longer be able to sell its cell phones for an appreciable premium over the commodity price - and the entire industry will have to glean its profits elsewhere. Apple is trying to establish a reliable ecosystem - hardware and software that work well together, allow most products that remain in service to be upgradable to the current operating system, and are easy and reliable platforms upon which third party software and hardware developers can manufacture apps and iOS-compatible products. Despite Android's quality, the fragmentation of its operating system and the fact that many phone manufacturers don't care if a two-year-old handset can be upgraded will impair its ability to offer the same opportunities. Apple intends to make money, even in a commoditized market, from app sales and licensing fees.

Krugman appears to be focusing on major disruption rather than modest innovation, even as he brings Yahoo! and Marisa Mayer into the discussion. If the resurgence of Yahoo! is a story to be believed... and I'm a skeptic... its resurgence will be the result of improvements at the margins. And that story would not be atypical. The biggest fortunes tend to be made not by the person who comes up with a concept or invents the early version, but with the person who comes up with an upgraded version of the product - something that ships better, something that's easier to manufacture, something that's easier to use. When Steve Jobs saw early versions of a window-based operating system and mouse at HP's then-famous labs, he saw the potential to transform them and turn them into products for a mass market. Jobs wasn't the inventor of the cell phone, display panel or touch screen - but he and his company came up with an innovative way to combine them.

Microsoft committed some odd, oversized errors over the past couple of decades that have contributed to its downward slide. As Krugman notes, they didn't see the potential of the iPhone, but more than that they didn't see the potential of the Internet. As Krugman noted, a lot of Microsoft's past success was built on its monopoly power, but its best and most profitable products were not major innovations. Windows built upon work that Microsoft performed for Apple, in developing the operating system for the Macintosh. It's office suite built upon software products that offered similar functionality, perhaps with modest improvement (but often without, or with 'innovative' features that you couldn't wait to turn off), and became dominant through bundling. Its browser became dominant through bundling, leading to the decline of Netscape, but it lost interest in developing a cutting edge browser pretty much the moment it no longer perceived Netscape as a threat.

Contrary to Krugman's inferences, having never been a user of Apple products, Apple did not always have a quality advantage over Microsoft or its associated hardware developers. Windows 95 incorporated some features that it took Apple years to emulate, and after Jobs left Apple's hardware quality plummeted. For that matter, for all of its innovative features, the early Macintosh suffered from having too few programs and too little RAM, as well as the odd design compromises that came from Steve Jobs' disdain for internal fans. Microsoft's present plight emerges from its failure to effectively enter new markets as the old ones faded - as operating systems became "good enough" that companies felt no need to upgrade every year or two, and as its Office suite became "good enough" that any changes it made from year-to-year were not likely to bring new sales, and as its customers tired of its game of modifying Word files such that you had to jump through hoops to save a document that would open on an older version of its software. In that sense we're back to the legitimate fear for Apple as a hardware company - that unless it comes up with a remarkable hardware innovation it's looking at a future where its products are commoditized and while, despite some people sticking with the company due to their library of iOS apps, many customers come to see little reason not to change platforms. Apple is trying to look beyond that day, and Google is struggling to convince Android developers to follow standards that will allow it to keep up.

Apple's biggest problems seem to come from copyright law, and entrenched monopolies and oligopolies. It is having difficulty coming up with a television product because of the difficulty of licensing content from media companies. Its products rely on Internet bandwidth, with many customers obtaining that bandwidth from cable monopolies. The iPhone demonstrated how you can create a breakthrough, profitable product in a tired, commoditized market, but without content there's no apparent room for a similar move in television. Also, most televisions these days would qualify as reasonably powerful computers, so it's not clear that Apple could offer a disruptive product that would not quickly be emulated, perhaps less artfully, by its competitors. People talk about an iWatch, and I think it is inevitable that Apple will produce a wearable device of some sort... although I don't think it is likely to be a watch in the sense that we have traditionally used that word, either in how it's worn or what it does, but all we can do at this point is speculate.

Google is, in a sense, playing Microsoft to Apple's iOS, offering a version of highly similar software for free, Microsoft Internet Exploder vs. Netscape's browser. I sometimes wonder if Google will continue to provide free operating system development for the world, or at least if it will be as quick to make its greatest innovations part of the core as opposed to part of a proprietary add-on, particularly as it attempts to spin Motorola up into a dominant manufacturer of Android phones. As with all of this stuff, time will tell.

When it Comes to Tablets, Microsoft is Overplaying its Hand

Perhaps inspired by a burning desire to do a "gotcha" over the historic "Mac vs. PC" ads, where a guy who needed a shave pokes fun at a pudgy guy in a suit, or perhaps inspired by the increasingly tiresome, "You have an iPhone? Let me show you this cool feature in my Samsung" ads, Microsoft is taking a potshot at the iPad:

The ad makes three basic criticisms of the iPad:

1. 1. It has a relatively bland, traditional desktop whereas Windows 8 uses "smart tiles" that continuously update;

2. 2. It does not multi-task; and

3. 3. Microsoft has dropped the ball when it comes to writing software for iOS.

It then presents an intentionally misleading price comparison between the iPad and an entry level Windows tablet (with a much lower resolution screen¹ and plastic case).

The first two issues are in no small part about power management. I can't tell you the degree to which Apple may incorporate multi-tasking or updating in the next version of iOS, which will include a significant revision of much of the user interface, but history suggests that Apple will continue to favor long battery life over power-draining features that have limited utility. Don't get me wrong - I would like Apple to allow users to have greater choice, even if it means that they will need to recharge their iPads more often. But it's highly misleading to suggest, "Our new mobile OS is really cool" without addressing how that coolness affects battery life and performance.

In terms of iOS not offering Microsoft Excel, well, yeah... Microsoft has delayed producing a version of Office for iOS to the degree that it's difficult to infer any motive but Microsoft's traditional, "Delay upgrading and offer inferior versions of Office for Apple products." Perhaps their next commercial will show some sort of Zune software running on the Windows tablet, with iTunes running on the iPad? My, how turnabout can sting.

Right now I'll admit to having more computers in my house than occupants. One is OS-X, two are Windows 7. And we also have a couple of tablets. The people who claim that tablets are mere toys, or are about to go the way of the Dodo, either haven't used one or aren't paying attention to how they're used. Games aside, a tablet is an incredibly useful tool for consuming online content - checking email, browsing the web, watching streamed or stored video, video conferencing and the like. Responding, "I can do all of that on my desktop or notebook" misses the point - the convenience and portability factor. A few years ago if you went to an airport you would see a lot of people working on notebook computers, trying to scrounge an outlet. These days you see an even larger number of people using tablets to read or otherwise entertain themselves, and notebook users have a lot less competition for those outlets.

But if I'm trying to type or edit a document, work on a spreadsheet, or do any sort of complex or multi-window task, I want to be at my desktop computer with a large monitor and keyboard. It may well be that I would be impressed with the touchscreen UI for Excel. I doubt it, given how unimpressed I am with the touchscreen UI for Windows 8, but Microsoft could surprise me. But what would I do if I actually needed to work on a spreadsheet? I would set down the tablet and use either one of our portable computers or my desktop computer - because they're better designed for that kind of work.

The Samsung ads, in my opinion, have devolved from being cute and funny to, more or less, showing Samsung owners wearing out their own arms by patting themselves on the back.² Oddly enough, Microsoft seems to understand this, even if they don't actually present a reason to buy a Windows phone other than "It's not an Apple or a Samsung".

The difference is this: If I weigh the pros and cons of the various smartphones available today, I can come up with valid reasons why I might prefer a Samsung over an Apple, or vice versa. If I put the two phones next to each other and run various tasks, I am going to see why I might prefer one over the other.

But if I were to recreate the comparison from Microsoft's commercial at an electronics store, putting the Asus tablet next to an iPad and running various apps, I would not have the experience depicted in the commercial. I would immediately see that the Samsung had an inferior build and display. And from the reviews I've read, I would see the Asus tablet slow down or become momentarily non-responsive when multi-tasking. I might notice that the battery has a significantly lower capacity than that of the iPad, and while crediting advances in CPU technology for its reasonably long battery life nonetheless recognize that the battery life is extended by the use of the much lower-resolution screen. Reviews indicate that I would find the cameras in the ASUS to be of good quality, but that I would likely be displeased by the camera software. And while the tablet might perform better if it weren't running a full version of Windows 8, without that you would have to drop the "And look how well it runs Microsoft software" part of the ad.

I'm reminded of the highly effective commercials Microsoft ran, touting the sub-$1,000 entry price for Windows notebook computers. I'm also reminded of how that series of commercials fizzled out when Apple started offering sub-$1,000 notebooks and Microsoft started touting lower price points - instead of comparing computers of reasonably comparable build and performance, getting into a quality of build and performance that no reasonable consumer would find to be a compelling point of comparison to the Apple product.

If Microsoft's goal is to get buzz, the victory goes to Microsoft - here I am talking about their products. But if its goal is to convince consumers to buy Windows tablets, the commercial seems to oversell the product, creating the potential for customer dissatisfaction at a time when Microsoft needs to build a significant user base for its tablets and risks increasing consumer skepticism of its marketing pitches.
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1. The Asus screen offers 1,366 x 768 pixels, for a pixel density of 155 ppi. The iPad offers 2048 x 1536-pixels, for a pixel density of 264 ppi.

2. Commercials I would like to see:

"Why are you and that other guy bumping your phones together?"
"My phone has this awesome feature that allows me to exchange data by bumping it into somebody else's phone, does your phone do that?"
"Um... my phone has email."

"Hey, you're using an iPhone. Wanna see this really cool feature my phone has that yours doesn't have yet? No? You said 'No?' What do you mean, you wouldn't use that feature? What do you mean, 'pro's and con's to every phone'?"

"You waited in line to buy your phone? I got a phone that nobody waits in line for. Wait, that didn't come out the way I wanted."

The End of Google Reader and the Future of Blogging

For those who use it, Google's announcement that it's killing off Google Reader is probably a bit of a surprise. After all, with the simplification of the Reader shortly after the introduction of Google Plus, it seemed like it was in a pretty easily supported maintenance mode. But... there's no profit, and no future, in maintenance mode products.

The actual announcement has resulted in some reactions that are, oh, perhaps a bit over-the-top. The idea that you won't use a new Google product because an older one you like is being phased out is superficially understandable, but the fact is that even products that are immensely profitable for a company can eventually become obsolete. There's nowhere you can go in the online world with certainty that the product you know and love won't be discontinued, in some form of maintenance mode, or suddenly and dramatically reinvented into something you barely recognize.

What Google's action says to me is that people are continuing to shift from using RSS feeds to follow blogs and news sources and toward other means of aggregating content or finding interesting links. Yes, the skeptics are likely correct that Google wants Reader users to shift over to Google Plus, even if it doesn't offer the same functionality. But I suspect that the biggest issue for Google is that people truly are shifting away from Reader, and although those of us who use Reader may find it extremely useful, we're a shrinking minority of Internet users.

My personal reaction to the news was two-fold. First, it's difficult to monetize RSS feeds, so people have been pretty passive about pushing them on the public. Second, people are shifting away from blogging, as such, and are switching over to more casual or less time-intensive means of sharing their thoughts or keeping in touch with friends. The push toward Google Plus is not just about use our new product, not our old one, it's consistent with a general shift away from blogging.

Although the numbers are approximate, blogger is shown by compete.com as being down by more than 2 million unique visitors per month over the course of a year, more than 40% of its traffic. Although the drop-off on blogspot (the URL that serves blogs hosted by Google) is less significant,

If the content is being created elsewhere, eventually the traffic will go there as well.

I am left wondering about the future of blogging. I've never seen blogs as much more than a simple CMS (content management system) that allows people to easily publish content, albeit in a somewhat constrained format. It's treated a bit differently than other content by search engines - on the whole, it appears to be treated as being of shorter-term interest so, although a page can generate authority by drawing in links or hitting a sweet spot for search terms, for the most part blog posts are lost to time. I haven't spent enough time browsing blogs in general to see whether blogs are becoming "more serious" - whether on the whole it's the lighter, more casual conduct is what's drifting off to other mediums. If it is, then perhaps blogging will ultimately evolve into something more serious. But if the trend is across-the-board, it's quite possible that conventional blogging platforms will go the way of livejournal - once an Internet phenomenon that remains significant, but... appears to have lost about half of its traffic over the past year.

One way or another, if public interest is plummeting and the future lies in another direction, major companies are going to shift their resources in the new direction - and eventually will discontinue their support for the dying platforms. If it worries you that because Google discontinues one product it might later discontinue another, you're right - it could happen. But unless you're content to limit yourself to what you save on your own hard drive, that's true of any company and product. If you are going to grouse, "I won't use Google Keep because Google is killing Reader", great... and are you switching your phone to Apple, a company that has at times killed products and services, Microsoft, a company that has also at times killed products and services, or RIM/Blackberry, a company that is in danger of being unable to support its proprietary mobile OS?

If you're posting your complaint on a blog, as I intimate above, you may be missing the forest for the trees.

An Initial Reaction to Windows 8 on a Desktop

I hate it.

Start up, log in, now there are the metro tiles. If you've ever purchased a Windows computer and found desktop links to a dozen or more promotional items you didn't want or need, welcome to Windows 8 - the nuisance is now a feature. Except unlike the old days, after you clear away the crud you still have the metro page between you and the desktop.

I expect that most non-technical users will simply deal with the start page in its default format rather than customizing it. That should make Microsoft happy, because by default it promotes their products and properties.

The missing "start" button. Sure, people used to make fun of it - "click 'start' to shut down?", the way some used to make fun of Macs "put a disk in the garbage to eject it?", but we got used to it. Now instead of clicking the "start" button to choose a shut down option you have a multi-step process that would involve unnecessary swiping and clicking even on a touch screen. (I was actually using a notebook computer with a touch screen, but I was setting it up as a gift so I didn't want to be the first to smear my fingerprints all over the display.) If you're not working on a tablet, it's an annoyance.

Somebody was touting a video a while back, with a three year old child pinning stuff to the Windows 8 start screen. Yes, once you know how to pin stuff it's easy - although it can be really annoying to manipulate tiles with a touchpad as opposed to a mouse or touch screen. But there's little to nothing that's intuitive about any number of the new functions. A lot of things are easy once you know how to do them - but a hallmark of good design is that they're mostly to entirely intuitive.

Adding back the equivalent of a start button... you can create a shortcut to the a line command to shut down, pin it to the start page, then drag it to the menu bar. You can learn (non-intuitive) keyboard shortcuts. Or you can use the cumbersome new graphic interface.

My net reaction: Although I can see its appeal on a tablet or phone, the new interface is an unnecessary impediment to the effective use of a standard computer. Somebody said that this was Windows doing what Apple didn't do - integrating its OS across platforms. To me it felt more like how I would react if Apple made you go through the launchpad after you logged into your desktop computer. Launchpad may be more simple than the new Windows 8 start page, but it's the same basic concept - and it's an optional feature, kept in the background where it belongs.

Windows 8 will be better for desktop users when all of the new stuff is easily switched off, and those who prefer can skip straight to the core operating system (which, unsurprisingly, isn't much different from Windows 7).

Do You Really Want a Touch-Screen Notebook Computer?

I'll admit it, one of my pet peeves is going to my portable computer, opening it up, and finding somebody's fingerprints all over my screen. I have at times found myself telling people, "Please point, don't touch", when they're drawing my attention to a detail displayed on my computer monitor. When I have to sit and stare at a screen, I want it to be nice and clean. And I'm far from a "neat freak".

The idea of touch screens on portable computers is interesting. I can see how some of the elements of the iPad interface would translate well to a portable computer, or even a desktop computer. But even with an iPad, sometimes you move to a new location, experience a shift in the lighting, or find that something is stuck to its surface and... it's cleaning time! I suspect that the few times I would want to use a touch-screen interface on a fully featured portable or desktop computer would be vastly outnumbered by the number of times I would find myself wishing for a clean screen, and that in most of those occasions I can do just fine with a mouse or trackpad.

Perhaps the concept will work better on a computer that's more of a tablet than a portable, an iPad-plus. Microsoft appears to believe so. But I'm presently leaning toward Steve Jobs-style skepticism that, once the novelty wears off, people will get much use out of touch screens on their regular computers.

Control Freaks vs. Commoditization

In relation to Microsoft's plan to become a manufacturer of tablet computers, Paul Krumgan observes,

[I]f you contract with other people to build equipment, they may be unwilling to invest in quality in the belief that you will use your sole-buyer status to extract the benefits.

And that, apparently, is exactly what has been going on with Microsoft; its reliance on other people to build computers using its software worked very well for a long time, but lately Apple’s control-freak approach has been winning out.

I agree with Krugman and his reference to Hart, but from my experiences in the hardware market I think Microsoft's primary difficulty emerges from the commoditization of personal computers, both desktop and notebook, and the reluctance of third party manufacturers to take a long-term, quality driven perspective through which they can profit from selling premium products.

I bumped into a friend recently and noted that he was using a MacBook Pro. I commented that he had traditionally used PC's. He responded that he is OS agnostic, and suggested that his principal motivation for switching was quality. I started to comment about the decline in the quality of the Dell notebooks I've owned and he cut me off, "Dell computers are crap!" So there he was, a guy with enough money to buy a premium computer of any brand, as long as it worked, and he was turning to Apple because, all else being roughly equal, its products are reliable.

The difficulty for Microsoft is that if it builds high-end products, sold alongside third party Windows tablets built to be sold as commodities, even if quality is accepted as a matter of faith it may have difficulty maintaining a premium price point. But perhaps Microsoft accepts that its move may alienate third party manufacturers, and that those third parties will compete more directly with Amazon and... it would appear Google as well, for the lower-end tablet market, while it focuses on a premium product that can compete with the iPad, or at least give Microsoft an opportunity to establish itself as a tablet manufacturer for enterprise customers while it fashions additional products that may have greater appeal to consumers.

Quality? If it wants to offer tablets that can truly be classified as premium, I don't think Microsoft has much choice but to make its own hardware. For any other company, such an approach would involve a significant risk with much of any eventual benefit flowing to Microsoft.

Microsoft Takes Tablets One Step Closer to Commoditization

One of the interesting things about Microsoft is that, for all of its talent at producing software, its biggest success as a hardware manufacturer has come by selling its hardware at a loss. In the video game console market that's part of how the game is played - you sell the console to lock players into your game system (and, ideally, also the successor).

Now, it seems, Microsoft is entering the tablet market as a manufacturer. You can call it smart, you can call it desperation, but it does appear that Microsoft has little chance of establishing a significant foothold in the tablet market without either making its own tablets or subsidizing third party manufacturers (directly, by giving them money, or indirectly, by creating a context in which they will profit through the sales of products and advertising on the units they manufacture). If it's impossible for third parties to turn a sufficient profit on Windows tablets, they'll drop Windows in favor of Android.

Microsoft has fallen far behind Google and Apple in the mobile OS market. I am not sure that becoming a manufacturer will be enough. But if Microsoft doesn't get its mobile platform into the hands of consumers, the number of consumers who are not invested in a competitor's platform - who either don't have a modern mobile device or are willing to dump their Apple or Android products, and all the apps that go along with them, in order to switch to Microsoft - will become vanishingly small.

I suspect that Microsoft, like Amazon, will ultimately make its tablets a loss leader for its sale of electronic media. Apple is enjoying its present profits, but it is aware that the long-term picture involves commoditization - little to no profit on the actual mobile device, with profits instead derived from the sale of software and media. Still, there's no guarantee that it will be an easy transition. Apple has two significant advantages over Microsoft - proven hardware, and a proven ability to sell apps and media. What a role reversal....

"You'll Get Used to It"

Microsoft's response to complaints about its tablet OS:

The company's answer to this kind of criticism can be found in a post from Jensen Harris, director of program management and formerly a key member of the Office 2007 Ribbon UI team - a project that also ran into user opposition.

Harris describes how every new version of Windows has had vocal opponents, but that users are won over in time. "Although some people had critical reactions and demanded changes to the user interface, Windows 7 quickly became the most-used OS in the world," he says. Clearly Microsoft believes that history will repeat; though Harris conveniently forgets the warm reception Windows 7 won even in preview.

On the other hand, in the world of cellular phones where consumers have had a choice between a clumsy Microsoft interface and a competitor's superior product, the competitors dominate. I wonder if Google is confusing its power as a monopoly ("We design what we want and our customers eventually get used to it") with a viable business model for markets in which they're presently an also-ran.

How Facebook Might (or Might Not) Life Up to the Hype

Once upon a time there was a company called AOL that had a proprietary platform, something of a walled garden, and had many thousands of paid subscribers. It took down the walls, introduced its subscribers to the larger Internet, went public, got an insanely high stock valuation, merged with Time Warner and... the rest is history.

Once upon a time there was a company called Facebook that created a walled garden, invited many thousands of free subscribers to join, played games with the height of its walls - low enough to get search engine traffic, high enough to keep members from exporting their data to use on competitors' sites - but was primarily interested in pulling its members away from the larger Internet in favor of devoting most or all of their attention to its proprietary platform, went public, got an insanely high stock valuation (and yes, despite it's being a "flop" that valuation remains insanely high) and....

Will history repeat itself?

Today, with his portrait on the opposite side of the electronic page from a box that encourages his readers to log into the site using Facebook, and which touts content that is popular on Facebook, Ross Douthat complains that Facebook is an "illusion". He makes some good points about Facebook and the illusion of online community, although he often does so in a way that's reminiscent of my personal feelings somebody who doesn't "get" the appeal of constantly reviewing a Facebook wall for updates. Douthat seems to have forgotten his own personal history as a blogger. The best inference is that Douthat understands the Internet as a vehicle for the exchange and discussion of ideas, and even for self-promotion (as long as there's a quid pro quo), but doesn't "get" the frivolous side.

Douthat focuses on companies that bring the old world into the electronic age,

It’s telling, in this regard, that the companies most often cited as digital-era successes, Apple and Amazon, both have business models that are firmly rooted in the production and delivery of nonvirtual goods. Apple’s core competency is building better and more beautiful appliances; Amazon’s is delivering everything from appliances to DVDs to diapers more swiftly and cheaply to your door.

He's derisive of companies, no matter how successful, that are largely or purely electronic:

Twitter is not the Ford Motor Company; Google is not General Electric. And except when he sells our eyeballs to advertisers for a pittance, we won’t all be working for Mark Zuckerberg someday.

Never mind that one of the companies that is most often cited as digital-era success is Google. Were Douthat to spend a bit of time wondering what it is that Amazon, Apple and Google have in common, and what Facebook hopes to achieve, a concept mentioned above, the platform, might come to mind. Google, Apple and Amazon are engaged in a pretty intense battle to capture the mobile and tablet market, to push their own interfaces for the rental and purchase of electronic entertainment, and to grab as much market share as they can. The goal is not to sell "our eyeballs to advertisers for a pittance" - it's to dominate the future market for the rental and sale of electronic information, entertainment and software, and to get a healthy cut from each sale.

Why does Amazon offer Prime content on its Kindle and not on its competitors' devices? Because it wants you to buy the Kindle. It wants to own the platform, not be an app on somebody else's platform. And that makes sense: why would you buy an app that you can only use through the interface of another app, when you can get the same app, optimized for the hardware you're using, for the same price through the OS-manufacturer's platform? When Facebook admits that it cannot get traction in the mobile market it's, in essence, admitting its failure (to date) as a platform. People will play Farmville, and the like, in their browsers and Facebook gets a cut of the virtual sales, but on a competitor's mobile device Facebook is "just an app" the use to check up on their friends.

A company that Douthat forgot to mention, once the giant of the computer world, is Microsoft. Another company that is struggling to capture a significant foothold in the mobile platform market, and pouring an incredible amount of money into entering that space. The "failed" IPO generated many billions of dollars for Facebook that can be used to help it try to better establish itself as a platform and to compete with the established platforms. But it's facing an incredibly tough environment in which its competitors have established products and track records, and in which despite many billions of dollars invested in software, search platforms, operating systems and the like, Microsoft continues to flounder.

War of the Platforms

How quickly we forget Microsoft (not that we should).... From an interview of Larry Page,

We are in an interesting place in tech where almost none of the big companies—Apple (AAPL), Facebook, Amazon.com (AMZN)—are working together. Why is that?

Big companies have always needed and cooperated in areas where it made sense. I don’t know that I believe there is some huge, strange change in that.

We were real interested in getting instant messaging to work across networks back in the day, and we worked really hard with AOL (AOL) to do that. You know, integration between Google Talk and AOL Instant Messaging. It ended up being a tremendous amount of technical effort. There were some user benefits generated by it, but I’m not sure it was ultimately worth the effort. I would say that my experience with these things is that they have been somewhat difficult.

As I interpret the first part of the answer, that's the important part: "We (Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google) don't see cooperation as being in our self-interest." The second part, about technical difficulties, is peripherally relevant - if you are trying to merge multiple platforms into a single interface you will encounter technical issues. But we're really talking VHS / Betamax here - the parties aren't interested in merging their platforms because they all want to win.

A number of years ago, Netscape created an Internet browser. After a sluggish start, Microsoft started listening to concerns that the browser might be the platform of the future, displacing or marginalizing the operating system, and used its massive market power to make Internet Explorer the dominant browser. Judging from their subsequent treatment of Explorer, they apparently then decided that they had killed the threat and went back to sleep.

Also, for pretty much as long as there has been an Internet, there have been efforts to bring the Internet to television. Microsoft was an early competitor for Internet TV, but between poor resolution, a poor interface and a difference in how people traditionally interact with their televisions as opposed to their computers, that didn't work out so well. Which isn't to say that Microsoft has given up - it is trying to turn the Xbox into an interface to television and movie programming.

There was a lot of hype a few months back about the possibility of an Apple television, with a lot of talk about interface. I would not be surprised if Apple is devoting considerable resources to researching television technology, how to improve displays, how to improve streaming, how to improve interface. But I'm increasingly skeptical that they are going to become so territorial about the television space that they attempt to enter the commoditized space of high definition televisions.

If television and movie producers were as eager to sign on to distribution through iTunes in the same manner as the music industry, perhaps there would be a greater opportunity for a premium-priced Apple branded television with an impeccable interface to their store, a brilliant screen, a wonderful interface, and packages of content that would allow owners to avoid subscribing to Cable (although they would have to get high speed Internet access somewhere). But the stars aren't aligning in that manner, so I expect Apple will continue to emphasize its products as an interface to Television. In friendly to not-so-friendly competition with Google, Microsoft and Netflix, with Amazon's recent Playstation deal suggesting that it, also, is entering the game.

Fundamentally, this appears to be a platform war. Microsoft is reportedly fashioning its next OS to integrate well with its relatively unsuccessful smartphone OS and its upcoming tablet OS. Amazon is happy to build its Kindle OS on Android, but strips out the parts of Android that most benefit Google. Google is pushing television integration and Google Play. Facebook is... I'm not sure, but as long as a huge percentage of social network traffic and gaming occurs through their platform, they're a possible contender. And all of them want you to buy entertainment products and software through their proprietary stores, taking a commission on the sale of each new song, TV show, movie or application you purchase.

The iPad has turned out to be an amazing platform. Although people talk about Facebook as a potential advertising company, it is only profitable by virtue of the commission it charges to third parties for the use of its platform. Microsoft understands that Windows for PC is eroding as a platform, and is hoping to reestablish itself through the Xbox and various Windows 8 products. Google is taking a gamble with Android as a platform, with Amazon demonstrating how a third party can take full advantage of its work in developing a fully featured, stable mobile operating system and swap in its own web store, but they'll keep pushing it as a platform and will probably try to come up with a revenue sharing model to keep other smartphone and tablet manufacturers from following Amazon's suit or switching to Windows.

And yes, those platform wars are going to creep into your living room. If you have a gaming system, Apple TV or iPad, arguably even a smart phone, they're already in your living room looking for opportunities to expand their reach. Huge numbers of TV viewers already have a second device running while they watch TV - how do you bring the two (or more) screens together? How do you make your smart device the default interface or control for the television and, from there, perhaps the default source for premium, purchased or rented video content? And as server-based games get more powerful, can even the promised exceptional graphics performance of the next generation of game stations continue to hold n advantage over app-based purchased, subscription or freemium gaming? Take your game from tablet to TV, back to tablet, to smartphone, to car, to friend's house, to friend's TV.... It's going to be interesting.

A Walled Garden, Yes, But....

A persistent criticism of Apple is that, with the iPhone and iPad, they have created a "walled garden", limiting what users can do on the devices and restricting which vendors can sell applications that will run on them. For example,

I have no plans to be captured by the Apple ecosystem. It is the height of control-freakery, with Apple telling app developers and even journalists whether what they sell through its storefront is acceptable. Apple wants customers to live in its gorgeous walled garden. No thanks, I prefer to make my own decisions.

It's a fair criticism to a point. Inherent to its business model, Apple does restrict what you can do with your iPhone and iPad. From the technological side, the restrictions keep malicious programs, viruses, worms and the like off of the devices, as well as avoiding technology that causes frequent crashes or drastically shortens battery life (sorry, Flash). Apple was savvy enough to recognize that users would blame it, not software companies, for crashes or for short battery life. Second, yes, by controlling the storefront Apple gets a cut from every product it sells. Apple has made some mistakes in excluding apps from its App Store, and imposes restrictions that keep certain apps out of its store, but pretty much all of that content can be accessed through the browser build right into the device.

The complaint reminds me of the early days of computers, with the introduction of the Mac and mouse. If you remember that era you may recall hearing from PC aficionados that a GUI was too limiting - that you were removed from the real power of the line command, a faster and more efficient means of controlling your machine. That's true to a degree, but even when they were forced to use line commands, most users learned little more than they needed to learn in order to run basic software packages. With improvements to GUIs, most computer users never even fire up a command prompt. Yes, probably 5 - 10% of computer users like and benefit from at least occasional use of a command prompt, most computer users were happy to see it go. The iPad and iPhone can be accused of continuing in that direction: making that same 5 - 10% of the potential user base grumble about it being difficult to program or customize iPads, the pros and cons of "jailbreaking" a device, etc., but producing an easy-to-use stable product that the other 90% of users enjoy.

But if you look at things from another perspective, the iPhone and iPad have, at least, made the cage a lot larger. Consider what was available on the market before the iPhone. If I wanted to develop a software product for the Blackberry or Palm, what was the mechanism through which I would have been able to push it out to the masses? What about a cell phone app - what if I wanted to produce software to run on Sprint's phones? What if I wanted (or want) to sell a VOIP app that will run on any cell phone and let people switch from their cellular minutes to making calls over an Internet connection at a coffee shop? Apple has produced beautiful devices that make us recognize that a cellular phone or tablet-type device is in fact a computer and is capable of doing more than its maker allows (unless you jailbreak the device) but while you're still in a cage, the cage is enormous as compared to what other handset manufacturers previously allowed (and in many cases what they presently allow).

I don't know if the author is a power user. I don't know if he's off writing apps for his Android phone, or if he considers it to be an exercise in freedom to watch Flash videos through a cell phone browser. I suspect that, as with most of the people who used to talk up the freedom and power of the PC's historic command line, it's an "I like to know that I could modify the OS and write my own Apps if I wanted to, and learned how, even though there's no realistic chance of either actually occurring." Let's say, however, that he wants to write and market an app for Android devices. Does he have a realistic option other than selling it through Google's app store or Amazon's app store? If he produces a product that competes with an add-on service from a cell phone carrier, can he be sure that his cellular service won't block or disable the app? That is, where in this market can I find the garden that is not walled - let alone one that has not been forced to expand in response to the iPhone?

As tablet computers become more powerful and capable, we may move into a future in which your cell phone can truly be your personal computer - use it on the go with it's built-in screen or use a wireless connection to have it power a monitor and keyboard for full computer functionality. If that's what the market wants, that's where Apple, Amazon, and the larger world of Android devices will go.

Innovation, Imitation, and Intellectual Property

Either the era of "cloud storage" is upon us, or it isn't. As you have likely heard, Amazon has announced cloud storage, directly inviting its customer base to upload their music collections and stream them to their mobile devices. For years, Apple has been rumored to be "about to release" a cloud storage product for your iTunes library, video rentals and purchases, etc., but apparently due to strong resistance from the entertainment industry those plans appear to be on indefinite hold. Google has danced around the edges of cloud storage, and you can already store incredible amounts of data on Google's servers for free (or purchase even more for a reasonable price), but having settled its YouTube lawsuits, struggled to settle its dispute with book publishers, and perhaps having concerns about various advertising and licensing contracts, has not offered the type of service announced by Amazon. I have no doubt that Amazon is aware of the risk it is taking in announcing this product under a philosophy of "It's better to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission," but has concluded that (as with YouTube) it's better to be first to market even if it potentially means paying tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits. Amazon's move could actually help Apple, Google, or any other company that wants to offer a similar product (Facebook?) by testing the legal waters for them and potentially creating a precedent for any necessary licensing deals.

Although for many years, large companies often seem to ignore each other's intellectual property rights until one or another sues, followed by either a huge settlement and licensing deal or a mutual settlement that allows the companies to use each other's technology without actually testing the viability of the underlying patents. Ever since the release of the iPhone, that seems to be the story of cellular phone software. Apple's also having to deal with the fact that although it remains difficult to innovate, imitation is easier and faster than ever. Android devices now have greater market share than iOS products, with Palm and Microsoft struggling to maintain their share.

An interesting blog post suggests that the creation, promotion, funding and distribution of quality, open source software is a big part of Google's strategy to protect its market. I expect that is Google's plan, but there's a serious side-effect to that approach: Google doesn't directly profit from the Android OS, and its store for Android Apps (awkward phrasing, but...) is nowhere near as profitable as Apple's App Store. Although companies making Android phones will customize the software and will offer a variety of phones at a variety of price points, the competition is increasingly seen as "Android vs. Apple" - the brand of the Android phone is marginalized and the value of an Android phone is commoditized.

Apple has been incredibly innovative at various points in its history, including in recent years, but under Steve Jobs it has excelled at producing premium products. In the recent iterations of the iPhone and in its production of the iPad, Apple has also leveraged its volume to produce highly profitable products at price points that, for its competitors, appear to be difficult to match. Yes, some will point to one Android device or another and argue that it's cheaper, has a higher resolution screen, has more memory, is more expandable, and may even be faster than the iPhone, but put one next to the other and you can immediately see why - plastic vs. aluminum case, bulkly vs. compact, etc. Such products highlight another reality: Apple is fully prepared to produce mobile products that will satisfy 90+% of consumers "out of the box" and to leave to others the production of products that can be easily expanded. Yes, Apple is also better at marketing, but that's a small part of the story.

The genius of Steve Jobs is sometimes overstated. Apple has managed to produce premium products within markets that are largely commoditized (cell phones) or to reinvent markets that others viewed as commoditized (portable music players). I don't want to understate Jobs' ability to spot trends in technology and culture, but (as with any computer product) there are aspects to Apple products that anticipate that people will use the product in a specific way and, should you want to do something else... tough. Some of that results from licensing deals. The easiest way to send text messages on an iPhone is through your contract with your cell phone carrier. (Just like GPS features are often expensive add-ons for smart phones.) You don't mess with the profit centers of companies you rely upon for the promotion and distribution of your products. iPods don't play well with computers other than the one you use to sync their libraries, and if you somehow crash the computer with your music library you'll need a third party product to recover your files from the iPod. OSX left Microsoft playing catch-up, but (IMHO) Windows has long offered a better finder. And we shouldn't overlook that Jobs' prognostications have involved attempts to bring technology to market too early, as well as some design innovations that did not attract consumers or introduced problems or complications. As with any strong, innovative company (seriously), Apple has released a lot of products that failed - and continues to introduce products and services that will fail. Google fails a lot as well. If a company bats 1,000, it's not taking chances.

As Apple profits from the tablet market, Microsoft correctly implies that tablets aren't different from any other computer hardware, and will eventually be commoditized. Or at least, that's how I interpret Craig Mundie's comments. But in their estimate of tablets as a potential flash-in-the-pan, Microsoft appears to be overlooking how tablets are much less an entity to themselves as much as they are part of a spectrum from tiny electronic devices to desktop computers, and that there are many contexts in which a tablet could prove valuable. The Hyundai Equus uses an iPad instead of a paper manual. There are increasing numbers of electronic and mechanical devices that can interface with iPads and iPhones (or similar devices) instead of standard remote control. And if you've seen a toddler with an iPad or iPhone you have a sense of how intuitive the interface is - and I expect that a generation that comes of age using touch screens and virtual keyboards is going to have a different perspective on traditional computers and keyboards than us "old folks". The commoditized touchpad screen is, I think, the interface of the future. (Microsoft suggests that the Kinect is the interface of the future - I guess it's more literally a game changer, but I expect that type of body tracking to remain specialized as opposed to ubiquitous.)

Let's assume, though, an era in which computer hardware is commoditized across-the-board. If you look at companies like Facebook (which has nothing to leverage that is not, or cannot be, replicated by others other than its large user base) and Apple, they are intent on creating a future in which they profit from any commercialization of their platforms. Google and Amazon perceive that future, as well, so they both offer apps for sale and Amazon is reportedly automatically placing copies of your digital media purchases into your cloud storage. I think that Apple has an advantage over Android, as with tight control over both the hardware and OS it will be much better able to assure content producers that it has effective DRM (digital rights management) and can quickly patch security holes that allow unauthorized copying or sharing. Google has no similar control over Android, and no control at all over the hardware that runs it. Amazon and Facebook can control things only at their end. Facebook doesn't have to deal with these issues (yet) because you have to connect to a social gaming network in order to participate in the online games that produce so much of its revenue. It's not clear what Amazon's plan is, to protect its cloud service from being abused - I saw somebody quip that you could have one Amazon cloud drive with 1,000,000 authorized users. So far, despite the slow and painful negotiating process that often seems to involve Steve Jobs giving a "Here's the deal, and it's not negotiable" offer to content providers, the long-term advantage seems to be Apple's. (Microsoft? It's only in the picture if you're talking about Xbox Live and, while I don't want to discount that service, it's self-limiting.)

Facebook Wants to Eat Everybody's Lunch... And Vice Versa

Apparently we're verging on a world in which everybody is on AOL and, as websites are difficult to make, everybody is making free pages on Geocities. Or something like that.

My nephew’s wife was frustrated. The “easy-to-use” site-builder software she was using to make the church camp website with was any but. To make matters worse, their “free” hosting service came with a price—banner ads that randomly appeared on the site....

So in desperation, she turned to her Facebook friends to ask if anyone knew of a free and easy-to-use website builder—one without ads. A well-meaning friend [suggested Facebook and] even offered to set the page up for her.

The author perceives a battle for the future between Facebook and Google, with Facebook trying to bring everybody onto its servers, using its platform and programs for most or all of their online needs, and that they will leverage the information they glean about their users to offer a network of targeted ads that will compete with Google's AdWords and AdSense.

Is Google nervous? You bet they are. And here’s why. When you search using Google, all they know about you is your IP address, so all Google can tell that website owner is: “The seven people who visited your website were from Ohio.”

But Facebook can say: “Here are the names of the people that ‘liked’ your content, how old they are, what college they went to, what music they listen to, what books they read, how many children they have, who their other friends are …” It’s a marketer’s dream! Think Google isn’t nervous? Think again.

In reality, Google has a lot more information than that to work with - thanks to cookies and web beacons in its ads, unless you've opted out, it knows many of the sites you've visited. If you use Gmail it knows your contacts (and is pretty capable at figuring out which are important). If you surf while logged into your Google account, it knows even more. Google's efforts at social networking have faltered, but they're not about to give up. If they can't find a way to take the traffic away from Facebook, expect them to focus on ways to take the profit out of Facebook. Seriously. And while Facebook has a lot of members, let's not pretend that it has current or meaningful information about the majority of them that would allow the type of granularity and accuracy in ad targeting that this type of article suggests.

And speaking of those profits, there are a couple of huge companies that deserve mention. The Gates Foundation is developing mini social networks for college communities - via a Facebook app that presumably will ultimately work on competitors' social networks, or perhaps as a stand-alone on your (Microsoft OS-powered) cell phone or tablet.

And while Apple's logo may have a bite out of it, don't get the wrong idea. It would just as soon reduce Facebook to app status - and take a 30% cut of any Facebook dollars you buy through the app. That may sound a lot like the 30% Facebook wants to take from companies that use its platform, and in many ways it is - except Apple is happy to let you pay in cash. You don't have to buy "Apple dollars" to get what you want through an App, although you can bank credit in your iTunes account, and can send your friends iTunes gift certificates. And with its push toward licensing software by the user instead of by the Machine, Apple is paving the way toward your being able to have your favorite app at your fingertips, no matter what device you're on, and if that app would benefit from having some files stored on your device that's easily (and invisibly) achieved. Facebook has lots of eyeballs, but if they can distribute it as widely Apple has a better platform. Apple also has lots of verified, individualized information about its customers, and already owns an ad platform and network.

Then, of course, there's "the next big thing". The company you presently underestimate or haven't yet heard of, or which may not even exist, that could be "the next big thing" a few years from now.

Yes, web apps are going to significantly transform the world wide web as we know it, and a lot of content that is presently available for free will be shifted into web apps. A lot of information that is presently difficult to monetize is also likely to end up incorporated into web apps with some form of fee or advertising attached. And you'll probably need a web app to determine what web apps you need - and that a handful of web apps become dominant, even if they're simply containers that help you manage and use other web apps. That won't kill off the web - it's likely to transform the web, and make some parts of it better and other parts of it worse (or should I say "less useful").

At this point I'm still not willing to jump on the "Facebook will rule the world" bandwagon, despite its potential (and the descriptions of various vaporware projects that could help it become dominant), nor am I willing to write off its potential. To the extent that Google is "nervous", it should be - and not just because of Facebook - but Google's a lot like Microsoft, and it can survive decades of (at this point imagined) bad business decisions, emergence of fierce competitors, and (again, imagined) decline.

Frankly, given how the Internet is transforming our lives and jobs, you and I should probably be a lot more nervous about the future than Google. There are lots of powerful interests that will be happy to eat our lunch, and individual people are not well-positioned to push back.

How Did This Get Published?

When you see a really silly editorial published in the New York Times you think... well, at least it's not the Post. But sometimes you really have to wonder about the agenda. By way of example, a guy who runs an insignificant company in England was given space to rant and rave about how his company is pretty much invisible to Google, speculate that it's because of a "penalty", and present absolute claptrap about how Google has no business advocating for network neutrality if his company can't outrank superior, vastly more popular websites.

Today, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s new Bing have become the Internet’s gatekeepers, and the crucial role they play in directing users to Web sites means they are now as essential a component of its infrastructure as the physical network itself. The F.C.C. needs to look beyond network neutrality and include “search neutrality”: the principle that search engines should have no editorial policies other than that their results be comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance.

The author's missive is directed at Google, not at Yahoo!, which seems odd given that Google is much more algorithm-driven than Yahoo!, is disinclined to "hand edit" even embarrassing search results (as compared to Yahoo!'s hand-editing, including to self-promote.

Moreover, in this quest for "neutrality", the author fails to specify what that concept means or how it could be measured. For example, one factor Google considers is whether people link to a site or its internal pages. If nobody's linking to the author's site, it's quite likely that the site isn't worthy of links - or that there are superior alternatives that get the links. Another big factor is unique content - sites like the author's, that rely almost exclusively on product feeds for their content, have virtually none. The author's site invites ratings, but I see no evidence that anybody has ever added a rating - theoretical unique content is not unique content. What do you get if you browse the site? Product listings, vendor information about the products, and affiliate links. Hardly a paradise for the consumer. And an overall site design and architecture that's not particularly search-engine friendly, relying heavily on iframes.

Reading the New York Times editorial you might be confused, and think that this is a big company that has invested in a serious innovation, yet cannot break through Google's iron wall. Hardly. This is a website founded by the author and his wife, with programming assistance from a family friend. It's the type of site a skilled programmer could knock off in an afternoon. It is no surprise to me that the site felt "punished" by Google, as a few years ago Google modified its algorithm to diminish the presence of sites just like the author's - sites that have essentially nothing to offer to the consumer beyond recycled information and affiliate links. Frankly, I personally think that too many site's like the author's still show up in Google's search results - and remain far too prevalent in Yahoo! Search and Bing. Unless and until it started to offer some real value, my ideal search engine wouldn't just relegate his site to the far reaches of the search results. My ideal search engine would exclude his site altogether.

Here's something I find odd. The author has been whining about problems with Google for years. The site was featured in a Guardian article several months ago. For all of the energy the author puts into complaining, it doesn't appear that he's expended any effort into improving his own website. Instead he whines in response to the suggestion that his site needs to present unique content that his site's replication of information easily found on other sources "is, in essence, all that Google itself does". Cute. Except Google tries to drive consumers to sites that match their search needs, rather than confining them to a set of affiliate merchants. And, unlike the author's company, Google does it well. And of course the author is begging the question - the issue is not that Google doesn't incorporate sites like his into the search results. The issue is that when there are tens, hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of sites with the same content, those that offer nothing more than replication of the third party content deserve to rank at the bottom.

Further, the author claims to be in the same business as Google - the search business - and then complains that Google favors its own shopping search engine results over his. With all due respect, isn't that what you would expect a business competitor to do? But really, his site isn't a competitor with Google. People go to Google looking for information on products, and he hopes that they will come to his site from Google, follow an affiliate link, and make him a commission. Few people come to his site first, and none of them are directed to Google. From a search engine standpoint, he's an unnecessary middle step between the person searching for a product and the desired product - cut him out of the middle and the search engine user experience improves.

But don't just take my word for it. After the Guardian ran its story, there was a significant upward spike in traffic to the author's website. Even coming into the Christmas buying season, that spike didn't translate into any subsequent increase in traffic. That is, for the most part people seem to have taken a look and asked themselves, "That's all they have to offer?", then forgotten about the site.

The author also blames Google for a loss of traffic to MapQuest. I used MapQuest, often through its partnership with Yahoo!, quite regularly before Google Maps came out with its innovative AJAX interface and blew MapQuest's socks off. Google maps was a vastly superior product. Yahoo! doesn't even partner with MapQuest any more - is that Google's fault as well? Now it may hurt to be running a company and have a competitor produce a far superior product and take away your market share, but that's the way the markets are supposed to work. The same goes for the author's complaint that the share price of TomTom has dropped now that Google is making available a free turn-by-turn navigation service - what duty does Google owe TomTom's shareholders? Should companies be forbidden from giving away a service if a (sort-of) competitor would prefer to charge for a similar service? Should TV Guide be allowed to forbid cable companies from providing their customers with on-screen channel guides?

The author also whines that Google acquires technology from other companies. So what? Mergers, acquisitions, and the purchase and licensing of intellectual property play a big role in how companies operate.

Beyond that, the author's back to complaining that Google's cutting out the middleman - promoting its own search products through Universal Search instead of directing people to a third party website that it does not control in the hope that the third party will responsibly direct the consumer to an appropriate destination. Don't get me wrong here - Google's ability to leverage its way into new markets is a subject for valid concern - but it's not surprising that they favor their own sites when they're striving to provide a consistent, quality user experience.

So how did the story cross the pond, with no mention by the Times that the author is writing about a tiny, U.K.-based website? In my opinion, because the story was picked up by the industry groups that oppose network neutrality, and who hope that this type of idiocy can cloud the picture. We even get a silly parallel term, "search neutrality".

Google was quick to recognize the threat to openness and innovation posed by the market power of Internet service providers, and has long been a leading proponent of net neutrality. But it now faces a difficult choice. Will it embrace search neutrality as the logical extension to net neutrality that truly protects equal access to the Internet? Or will it try to argue that discriminatory market power is somehow dangerous in the hands of a cable or telecommunications company but harmless in the hands of an overwhelmingly dominant search engine?

There is absolutely no parallel between network neutrality and this nebulous concept of "search neutrality". None. You will not be able to get two people in a room to agree as to how a given set of websites should be comparatively ranked, let alone "all of them." Search engines have good cause to keep the details of their algorithms secret - it prevents people from gaming the system and spamming search results. For all the complaints about "how more transparency would be nice," this article from 2002 still does a pretty good job of what you need to do to make your site succeed. Sure, it's easier to take the author's approach and spin up a program that creates a website automatically from content created by others, but no secret here: it's rare at best for that approach to bring about long-term success.

More than that, in his zeal to attack Google, the author flips the idea of network neutrality on its head. Without network neutrality, the companies that offer Internet bandwidth can charge people at either end of a digital "transaction" for the privilege of sending their data over its wires - and without payment they could slow the transmission of the data down to a crawl or cut it off entirely. (Of course they could - and would - allow their own competing products across their networks, unimpeded.) You could pay more as a consumer for broader bandwidth, but perhaps still have your service provider narrow or cut off the bandwidth to sites or services you want to use. The service provider could also pay a fee for increased bandwidth.

Nobody's going to pay an extra penny to get access to the author's website, and he doesn't have the money to pay in their stead. Network neutrality will cost Google money, as it pays for the bandwidth - but they have the money with which to pay. And that will serve to cement their position (and that of companies like Microsoft) at the top of the heap, while a new, prospective competitor to Google - the tiny company that grows based on word of mouth, just as Google did as it quickly gained acclaim and displaced former search leader AltaVista, is unlikely to even have a chance.

So will the New York Times tell us, what lobbyist or telecom industry insider convinced them to run the editorial? (I'm not holding my breath.)

A Pie Chart Worth 1,000 Words....

Or, perhaps, 1,000 corrections of "autocorrections" when you forget to turn unwanted features off.