there are a couple of things that are interesting here:
a. google is not invincible - with google stock hitting $500 and hype that just continues to build it is easy to see google taking over the universe. but this failure i think brings a lot of hope to small start-ups, entrepreneurs and product managers in yahoo, msn, aol… google can be beaten.
i can already see the above chart appearing in the powerpoints of entrepreneurs looking to raise money or answer the inevitable questions from investors "but what if google decides to do it?", or "google already does something quite similar".
google has become the microsoft of the 90s in that regard. back then the questions were the same, just the big invincible company was microsoft.
b. yahoo! can still put out a good product - i am not a fan of yahoo! answers, or any other answers service for that matter (i am usually looking for instant gratification when searching, and don't want to wait for a human to come up with an answer). but i did try out yahoo! answers when it launched, and saw how it could be successful and hit a nerve for some people.
it is encouraging to see yahoo! being able to be aggressive and innovate. i'd like to nominate the product manager/head of business unit for a fat bonus
c. google is mature enough to shutdown failing products - deciding to shutdown a business unit requires some level of maturity. and it is nice to see that google can admit failure. still i think they are probably a couple of years away from a "peanut butter manifesto"
in the skype 3.0 beta that i am using they added a bunch of features. one of them is a new button in the chat window offering the user to “do more”. this is currently used for games, but seems like a type of a place to throw in junk.
following on my previous post on what makes me switch between online services i’d like to extend a small piece of advice to skype/ebay: do less.
there is also an additional tab on the main window for joining “live conversations”. doesn’t seem like a mass market feature to me.
they should look at what happened to icq, aim, yahoo and msn. too many features are hurting the user experience. their challenge is how to promote new capabilities to the user, but whatever the new feature is, it does not worth messing up the user experience.
their core business is free (or cheap) calls made simple, and getting people to buy skype credits (mostly for skypeout and skypein). this is where they should focus.
so i decided not to buy the zune (apparently like many others..).
two main reasons why i will not buy zune:
it is a brick. heavier than the iPod with the 80GB.. i will not want to carry it in my pocket or on my neck (where my current iPod nano is most of the time)
the microsoft capitulation to the media companies. the wifi sharing features were supposed to be the key differentiation from the iPod, but the way it is implemented makes it useless. the DRM is implemented in such a way that if i share an MP3 file with a friend, the friend will only be able to listen for it 3 times or for 3 days, even if there is no protection on it.
i think microsoft made a big mistake with the way they implemented the sharing. unlike the weight which is a design mistake that can (and will) be corrected in v2.0 the DRM decision is a philosophical one.
until they will not change their approach i will not be buying it.
i experience the war between these titans personally as i make decisions on which services to use online.
following are the key services i am using online, and a bit of rationale behind the decisions that got me there.
email: gmail has taken over as my primary personal email from yahoo. my first personal email was hotmail. i moved to yahoo because it had a better user experience.
i moved to gmail a few months ago, because i thought the yahoo user interface became too clattered and slow. they also did a poor job in filtering spam.
instant messaging: skype and gtalk are the only IM services i am using now. i stopped using MSN and Yahoo! messenger.
i started to use IM with ICQ. when it became too much off a bloatware i moved to Yahoo and MSN (and Odigo too, but this is a different story). i settled on skype and gtalk because of their simplicity and voice quality.
photo sharing: after a long affair with imagestation from sony, i moved to flickr (bought by yahoo). what got me to move to flickr was the richness of the features to edit and organize, with what i think (but my wife and other disagree) is a simple interface for viewing the pictures.
search: i use google. and i haven’t tried microsoft or yahoo search engines recently. i guess they’ll have to do something really different and innovative to get me to switch (or google could do something to hurt the user experience).
reading blogs: i used to get my fix through my yahoo!, but last week i officially switched to google reader. i wanted a better way to manage my feeds, and i thought google reader is a better choice (even though it can use a lot of improvement).
i hated the fact that i had to find a trick in order to get my OPML file from my yahoo, so i can import it into google reader.
finance: one of the last things i still use yahoo! for. google finance is playing catch up and is not there, yet.
maps: started like everyone else with mapquest, moved to yahoo. and now am an avid google maps fan. especially after i found out they have a mobile client for my blackberry.
blogging: i use wordpress to power my blog, and windows live writer to publish posts. i guess this the only online related microsoft tool i am using. which also happens to be a downloadable client rather than a web service… i guess that says a lot about microsoft’s internet play so far
so to summarize:
it is seems that there is a clear trend that more than new services win me over, it is services that i currently use that cause me to switch and look for alternatives. this happens when they “upgrade” and “improve” their product to a point where i no longer find it useful.
google is currently winning the war for my personal online usage. yahoo is on a steep decline, and microsoft are showing some signs that they may still have a play.
interestingly enough this same phenomenon can be traced in the stock price of these companies. i guess the common wisdom that you should buy (stock) of companies that make stuff you use and like, is a common wisdom that i should actually follow.
Nokia announced today the Nokia 6300. it’s way-too-late foray into the thin phones category. which is still much thicker than competing models from Motorola and Samsung.
the picture above is of Nokia N93. i saw it on the wall street journal. below the picture it had the standard copyright reference “Nokia Corp.”, i accidentally read it as “Nokia Crap”… a little freudian slip, but one that truly reflects what i think of this device.
The film focuses on an evangelical Christian camp of rare devotion. Twelve-year-old Levi, who was "saved" when he was five, is a shy boy except when he is filled with the Holy Spirit. Nine-year-old Rachael is outspoken in her love for the Lord. They are home-schooled by their Christian parents and interact with their peers at church and church events. In the summer they travel to Becky Fischer's "Kids on Fire" summer camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota, to intensify their devotion to the Lord.
it's very clear that the makers of this movie wanted to scare the secular liberals about the dangers of fundamentalist evangelicals. i think they are doing a good job of showing that these guys are nut cases brain washing kids with ignorance, division, blind obedience and more.
some highlights:
becky fischer's (a minister focused on brainwashing kids) explaining her rational for pumping these kids with christian dogma is that our enemies (the muslims) are doing it, so we better do it to especially that our religion is the true one..
home-schooling parent explaining to her kid why science is a ridiculous concept and how to argue on behalf of creationism
becky talking in tongues and blessing the conference room in the camp against satan. she blesses the chairs, the audio system, microsoft powerpoint… in her world the "blue screen of death" is the devil's work, rather than bill gates's bugs
ted haggard preaching against gay acts (this scene was shot before he was outed by a drug-dealing male prostitute who had sex with haggard for the past 3 years…) and waving at the camera telling viewers he knows what they did last night, and that if they'll send him $1,000 he will not tell their wives..
watching this movie strengthen my view that
(a) religion's negative sides are far greater than any benefits it may have (if any)
(b) these christian brainwashed kids and adults are not much different from the muslim fanatics sending their children to become martyrs, and that given the opportunity will fit very easily into a nazi-like regime.
the movie is not very engaging and its agenda is way too clear, but worth viewing for the shock value.
the guardian reports (saw the story first on slashdot) about a new museum in ohio that will promote creationism.
it is being built with an investment of $25M (all but $3M already raised from donations), and should open over the next few months.
this is quite an investment to promote ignorance.
the museum claim to show both sides of the argument (i.e. evil evolution vs. enlightend creationism) in a fair and balanced way (very much like fox is fair and balanced), but employees are required to sign that they believe earth was created in 7 days..
will be interesting to visit, will probably be more freakish than visiting the mormon temple in utah.
over the past few days i had the opportunity to hear executives from at&t, verizon, sprint, t-mobile, virgin, helio and amp’d talk about their business and their thoughts about the future.
these guys just don’t get it.
they are still locked in the mindset of walled gardens. they talk about openness, but they think that “open” means letting users open a browser and download ringtones off-deck.
the reality is that carriers are holding back the mobile industry from realizing its potential. they are a bottleneck for innovation, and are frustrating entrepreneurs. until the mobile environment will not be as open as the internet it will not be able to create the value created by the internet.
today developers that would like to innovate beyond creating a simple mobile website (very limited in functionality), must go through the carrier’s certification process in the good case, or beg them to open certain APIs in many other cases (e.g. to access the address book, device storage, UI, etc.). and once you get your app running say bye-bye to 30%-50% of the revenue (the fee you have to pay to the gatekeeper).
the handset vendors are also somewhat to blame. they develop phones that are not friendly for developers.
imagine that this was the case for the internet. several major ISPs controlling what users can access, what can run on your PC, and any application developer should give the ISP a major portion of his revenues. do you think amazon, netscape, google, ebay, skype, myspace, yahoo would have happened? do you think all the entrepreneurs would have spent their time trying to build internet companies?
the answer to all these questions is of course “No”. the internet would have been nothing like what we know today.
but unfortunately this is the reality in mobile. an oligarchy that controls the value chain and stifles progress. hearing these executives speak made it clear that change is not going to come voluntarily (they still think their role should be one that polices the industry, putting more barriers and taking more control over what gets to the hands of the consumers. they explain it under the cover of “assuring the quality of the user experience”…).
the good news is that sooner or later (a matter of several years) the walls will fall. they can’t fight technology forever. the move to IP, WiFi, WiMax, advances in handset OS, entry of new players, will eventually lead for the environment to be as open as the internet.
the weather was great. mid 70s every day. in the mornings the ocean was filled with surfers (also in the middle of the day and the afternoons..)
a bunch of us east-coasters were gathering every time we could to enjoy the view and bask in the sun, envying the good life. so we were coming with excuses why it is better to live in the east-coast.
one of the guys made a comment that he doesn’t understand how people get any work done here when it’s so nice outside. so someone said that this is a clear advantage of living in the east-coast - that during the winter you have nothing to do, but work.. so at least we could get something done in our “productive winters”.
