Google vs iPhone and Facebook
scripting.com
scripting.com
What? I admire Dave Winer’s idealism, but really?! Would anyone else enjoy using the full Mac OS X interface on the iPhone? (Ignoring the iPhone’s performance and power limitations, which negate this possibility.)
Does he really want a phone to run applications that were designed for much larger screens, with mice and keyboards?
If you know how to write a Mac app, it’s not a terrible leap to write an iPhone app. If you want compatibility with Mac apps, look for iPhone apps like OmniFocus, Things, &c. that have been retooled for a mobile use case. If anything, the iPad comes closest in this regard, with some of it’s near-desktop-class apps, e.g. iWork, OmniGraphSketcher, OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, &c.
An application's phone interface has to be different than the desktop one, and since there is no programmatic way to adapt the desktop interface to the phone, it has to be rethought and then reimplemented.
1) Why can't I delete ALL spam in GMail at once? 2) Why do the numbers for my Bookshelves in Google Books disappear? 3) Why bother to OCR tons of books if you have no intention of cleaning up all the errors?
Those are just three that hit me personally.
But it makes me wonder what a mess the long-delayed and ever-upcoming Google Editions will be like -- which independent bookstores all think will save them from being wiped out by eBooks.
What's wrong with using the "Delete all spam messages now" link?
And I can't believe anyone here would be snotty enough to downvote because I used the term "advanced." From what I remember, I am using GMail as it originally was because people complained about this at the time. I can Select All for delete spam in YahooMail. Adding this to GMail would be trivial. And this HTML mode is what people have to fall back to when the "standard" GMail is not working.
EDIT: I had to change the snaplink.
That's a great quote. It seems that once a company becomes undisputed champion of a particular area they redeploy their resources trying to find something else to dominate.
Eg Microsoft nailed the desktop, then went chasing the Internet and mobile. FAIL
Aol had a good grip on Internet access, then went to become a destination site, or content generator. FAIL
Google dominate search and advertising, now going for mobile, desktop (chrome), social. ONGOING
Facebook own social networking - where is their folly going to be? Fb credits?
Any other examples?
Or they realize that their domination is fragile.
Google worried about the mobile space because it was an area where they could be cut entirely out if one commercial interest dominated, even if their product was what users wanted, had the best features, whatever. With Android it's notable that it's intentionally a very "fragmented" ecosystem, and the reality is that any of the vendors have the full right to pull Google hooks right out of the product if they so desired.
One company dominating mobile is a threat to their search business in a way that could completely undermine their entire business model, especially as the mobile space continues to gain relevance. Note that Android did originally target the RIM ecosystem as the original indications were that RIM would dominate.
Google worries about social media in the same way: To a lot of people Facebook is, sadly, becoming "the net". Businesses, from big to small, advertise their Facebook page more than even their own websites. People email and message on Facebook, game, read and post reviews, and so on.
It is a serious threat to search, which of course means it's a threat to advertising: Google's model is built around a long-tail, very distributed web, and Facebook is completely turning that upside down.
I think Google has far less interest in dominating these areas than they want to simply shake things up to avoid anyone else dominating.
Likewise with Facebook - though the threat there is that more people sitting on Facebook = less people looking at Google ads.
I think there's a difference between a threat to existing dominance and a threat to future opportunity.
I imagine someone in the buggy whip industry said that when cars started to hit the road. A more adept business mind would have probably try to adapt their business for the obvious future.
Mobile devices are getting more powerful and more usable. Google is a hundred-plus-billion dollar company built around search. The landscape of how people search is changing. Of course they need to pay very close attention to it, not for today but for tomorrow. Voice search on mobile devices is brilliant, as an aside.
>I think there's a difference between a threat to existing dominance and a threat to future opportunity.
Indeed, when you're a small company that's the general thought process. Google is a very large, very successful company. They don't want to be AOL or MySpace or Excite@Home. They want to continue to be successful by adapting to the world, and ensuring that the world adapts with them. Their Android initiative has no hope of ever making them any more than rounding figures on their balance sheet, but it does ensure that they remain engaged in search and mobile advertising.
It's interesting that you mentioned Microsoft because almost everything Microsoft does can be tracked back to concern about Windows and/or Office. Microsoft got into gaming not because they saw it as a lucrative opportunity (they've been pissing away billions on it), but because gaming and convergence represented a beachhead that could upset their domination of the home. It goes on and on and on.
I wonder why people want MS windows to be Open Source. Actually, it's very flexible and customizable from top to bottom. I don't have an idea about Windows Mobile, but the fact that HTC has integrated their HTC sens in it, means that it has a great degree of flexibility.
I wonder why do you want Windows to be Open Source when you can pretty much customize anything.
This statement is absolutely crazy insane.
Of course Apple design their product strategies for market share. EVERYTHING about how the iPhone was delivered to the advertisement to the application model is built specifically for building market share, and locking it in, building a network effect where it replicates even against alternatives. While people like to conveniently pretend that the Apple/AT&T relationship is some sort of anchor around Apple's feet, in reality it is the reason the iPhone shot to dominance so quickly, AT&T going all in on the iPhone, putting tremendous muscle (and nationwide coverage) behind a single device in a manner never before seen. Even Verizon's laggardly response was nowhere near as committed.
The iPod, iTunes, the iPad -- it's all about marketshare and lock in, and it has served Apple quite well, making it the largest most valuable tech company in the world.
I'm finding many of these "of course Android was going to overtake the iPhone" articles extremely curious. 6 months ago there was no "of course". One year ago, a very large portion of the tech industry was singing a very, very different tune, chuckling publicly about the futile efforts of the awkward upstart. While I suppose you need to adapt with the changing reality though, please don't insult everyone by revising the past.
On the lock-in I'm with you, but I do think the whole iTunes store/Fairplay was a happy accident that the music companies forced Apple to do. The music companies inadvertently helped Apple lock consumers into the iP*d platform, Apple leveraged it for the app store that pundits/developers were demanding (remember when iPhone first came out and the outrage about having to use web apps?)
Microsoft blazed a trail of both incredible profit margins and dominant market shares. I have absolutely no doubt that Apple was dreaming of the same scenario.
I do think there is a bit of lost perspective in all of this. Just a mere six months ago when people discussed Android desperately clawing for a slice of marketshare, universally there were comments that everyone everybody knows owns an iPhone, and no one owns an Android device. Effectively there was a short period where the iPhone absolutely owned the smartphone arena (I simply ignore RIM phones as generally they're work provided, or they're purely used as messaging phones, neither of which really qualifies). Major organizations were turning significant focus on iPhone applications: If you didn't have an iPhone, you were simply a second class citizen. Case in point -- CIBC here in Canada that spend millions of dollars advertising their iPhone application, while their terrible mobile web site withered.
It's clear that some people think that Android vs Iphone is a team sport, and they've chosen up their side. The problem is no one agrees on how we score. Some people want it to be market share even though the real name of the game is profit.
It is incredibly well known that Apple can thrive with a limited market share. Would they love to have the dominant market share in phones? Of course. Will they try to maximize their market share? Of course. But, at the end of the day, they're not going to sacrifice their vision or profits in the name of winning that fool's game.
Comparing iPhone to Android isn't comparing apples to oranges. We're talking about one phone versus a host of phones on a host of carriers.
The dominant opinion was absolutely that Android wouldn't crack the iPhone's dominance. Of course it's all clear now though, and everyone has carefully adopted new positions.
>Some people want it to be market share even though the real name of the game is profit.
Wow, I care so incredibly little whether Motorola or HTC or Samsung makes boatloads of profit. In fact I think I would be a bit offended if they bragged about their great margins (who would clutch onto their copy of Windows and crow about how great a profit margin Microsoft made on it? That is just perverse). Profit margin, unless you're a material shareholder or have options, are irrelevant.
I care about the platform that I develop for, that I use, that empowers or limits us. That is what matters to me, and it's why I care. I don't care if Google doesn't meet their quarterly numbers.
>Comparing iPhone to Android isn't comparing apples to oranges. We're talking about one phone versus a host of phones on a host of carriers.
This is the new talking point, and it's a curious one. The strength of the iPhone all along has been paraded as the single vendor solution: It is consistent and high quality and you know who's behind it...what's with all this crazy Android fragmentation from who knows who?
That's been the line.
Now that's the weakness?
This is simply wrong. I don't know how you could have developed such a misreading of popular analysis, but the idea that 6 months ago most people didn't know Android would overtake iPhone is laughably false. Six months ago several of my coworkers already had Android powered phones and there were numerous reports of many more Android phones from multiple vendors on the way.
> Wow, I care so incredibly little whether Motorola or HTC or Samsung makes boatloads of profit. In fact... [snip]
> I care about the platform that I develop for, that I use, that empowers or limits us... [snip]
Well, then why are you so excited that Android has greater market share than iPhone? That's not relevant to how you're scoring. Lots of developers vastly prefer programming Linux or Macs over Windows, and it is often for intangible reasons as you suggest.
> Now that's the weakness?
No, that continues to be the strength insofar as it empowers entrepreneurial software developers. This is along the lines of your last point. Developers will choose the OS that helps them reach their goals, which in many cases is money.
It is a weakness with regards to market share since it is one phone on one carrier. How could this be any more obvious?
Revisionism is glorious.
>Well, then why are you so excited that Android has greater market share than iPhone?
Am I? How am I excited? What's exciting is that the iPhone is no longer in a position where it is dominating, or poised to dominate, the emerging smartphone ecosystem. THAT is exciting, for exactly the reasons I mentioned.
Apple had a personal computer OS before Microsoft did. Did they try to lock Microsoft out of the personal computer OS business? No.
Apple had a graphic operating system before Microsoft. That time they did try to lock them out, but it was half-hearted and didn't even begin to work (and that wasn't Jobs anyway).
Not sure what to call the iPhone, what category it is, but did they erect any barriers to keep Google out of it? When Google entered did they do anything to try to take the market Google was going after? (They would have had to license their OS to do that.) No. They didn't care. As long as they control their own platform they're happy.
You guys ought to think a little. When you hear something that strikes you as totally wrong, consider the possibility that you're not looking at it from the right angler, as you did in this case.
The "no developing apps with cross-platform toolkits" policy is pretty anti-competitive.
> As long as they control their own platform they're happy.
Then why the patent suit against HTC?
You purport that I didn't understand it, yet then you go on to state exactly what my interpretation of the statement was. I suggest that you choose your approach more consistently.
>Did they try to lock Microsoft out of the personal computer OS business? No.
Of course they tried, at least to the degree that is legally allowed, just as pretty much every company does.
>but did they erect any barriers to keep Google out of it? When Google entered did they do anything to try to take the market Google was going after?
At this point I have to think that you're writing satire or something.
Of course Apple tried very hard to keep competitors out. One by creating a compelling product and cross-marketing the symbiosis between it and their existing successful products in other markets (namely the iPod and iTunes). Two, and this is a very big one, by the app platform. Apple came very, very close to achieving the universal lock-in in the fact that an iPhone app almost became a pre-determined conclusion for most businesses, such that you were either with them, or you were living in a second tier world.
If you think Jobs et al weren't dreaming of a world where everyone had an iDevice, you are absolutely delusional. Of course that is what they want, and whenever anyone argues otherwise it just stinks of rhetoric.
Why did I read this article?