.log : The Great Game

Amazon’s cloud search will compete with Google’s site search– but from what we hear, it ups the ante significantly. Google’s site search is a revolutionary tool that allows companies to skip the time and expense of building their own search by plugging in a site crawler and a search box.

Amazon’s cloud search is different. It allows startups to pass their data through it and get any results they want.

мне интересно, что еще покажет Amazon? и против кого?

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^[1] — ну да, ну да.

источник дохода

13 January 2012 | Economics, Google, Microsoft, The Great Game | No Comments

немного статистики — и комментарий:

Holy shit, over 70% of the Android phones sold in the U.S. are now contributing money to Microsoft’s pockets. Microsoft, not Google.

Given the volume we’re talking about, Microsoft has to be making more from Android than from Windows Phone, right?

и точно, пусть роботы вкалывают.

“social, local, mobile”

8 December 2011 | Apple, Google, Software, The Great Game | 2 Comments

лунатики продолжают зажигать:

“Android is ahead of the iPhone now,” Schmidt declared to an audience of techies and aspiring entrepreneurs at the LeWeb conference here.

He made his statement to a room bursting at the seams with iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and the audience met his words with a moment of silence that implied some skepticism.

а дальше еще лучше:

“Whether you like Android or not, you will support that platform, and maybe you’ll even deliver it first.”

ну да, мечтать не вредно, как говорится. или это не мечты? Марко Армент абсолютно справедливо интересуется:

Is that a prediction or a threat?

Is he implying that Android is widely disliked, and it doesn’t matter to him?

именно, Шмидт вообще фантастический, ага^[1]. но на самом деле все проще, мне кажется:

Android is indeed a success in the market. But one big weakness compared with iOS was very visible at the conference: becoming the top priority for programmers. Note-taking specialist Evernote today announced a new app called Hello for keeping track of people–for iPhone only so far. And when news reader Flipboard announced its expansion from the iPad to the iPhone, Chief Executive Mike McCue refused to even say whether the company was working on an Android version.

“We’ve been focused on iPhone,” McCue said. And about Android, he said only, “We’ll see.”

во-первых, он недостаточно выгоден разработчикам, а во-вторых, его и в самом деле не любят — Джон Грубер, например, очень четко подметил разницу:

I think maybe the biggest reason iOS has such strong developer support is that developers like iOS. They use and prefer iPhones and iPads personally, they like Cocoa, and they like the App Store.

однако, если оставить ультиматумы разработчикам в стороне, то и кроме этого там полно интересного — вот, скажем:

One of the recurring Android criticisms is the idea that it’s an iOS knockoff–an idea that incensed late Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Schmidt wouldn’t comment on whether Android copied iOS features, but he did offer his stock refrain about the issue: “Android was founded before the iPhone was.”

ага-ага, мы помним, мы знаем.

или вот, о кардинально меняющихся целях:

“All the interesting new applications are going to be some combination of social, mobile, and local,” Schmidt said.

точно, пойдем или направо, или налево, или вверх, или вниз.

и не паяцы ли?

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^[1] — У Марко дальше прекрасное:

Why does Google let Eric Schmidt speak publicly? Has it ever turned out well?

трубка

28 November 2011 | Facebook, Google, The Great Game | 2 Comments

Жан-Луи Гассье абсолютно справедливо интересуется, почему все больше разговоров о Facebook-телефоне. и сам же отвечает:

Both Google and Zuckerberg’s company vie for the same advertising dollars. This makes Google Facebook’s biggest, most direct competitor. The Trojan Horse applications on Android-powered smartphones are a direct threat to Facebook’s advertising business. Just like Google, Facebook wants to maximize our exposure to ads that are finely-tuned using the personal data we provide as a payment for the service. For this, the company needs a well-controlled smartphone.

телефон сегодня — это новые персональные компьютеры былых девяностых; тот самый рубеж между нами, товаром, и рекламодателями, клиентами Google и Facebook (абсолютно, как раньше основные битвы шли за операционные системы и офисные программы, — забытый прилавок, благодрая которому богатела Microsoft).

и все же, самое интересное пока остается за кадром:

It boils down to a comparison. On the one hand, an Android-powered smartphone — a Samsung Galaxy device, perhaps — with one good Facebook application and all the Google applications, the “evil” Google+ insinuating itself everywhere. On the other, a Facebook smartphone, with the Facebook experience on top of everything, its own app store, a Facebook browser, and Facebook Cloud Services.

I can’t help but think that there’s more to this hypothetical Facebook phone than a play against today’s Google+ in defense of today’s Facebook money pump. There must be something else in Facebook’s future, a new revenue stream that it will eventually need to promote/protect. But what?

вот именно, что?

перепутье

29 October 2011 | Apple, Google, The Great Game | No Comments

вообще, если говорить о патентах и Apple-против-всех разбирательствах, то, с одной стороны, это хорошо, разумеется, — в конце концов, Samsung и другие явят хоть что-нибудь собственоручно, а разнообразие суть всегда хорошо.

так что тут все ясно^[1].

а вот с другой стороны дела обстоят не столь однозначно. во-первых, патетнтное законодательство само по себе (и, уж конечно, в области программного обеспечения) весьма и весьма далеко от идеала. а во-вторых, последствия могут как стимулировать инновации, так и наоборот:

The important question isn’t whether such “stealing” occurred, it’s whether we want to live in a world where it’s illegal. Do you want to live in a world where only Apple is allowed to make phones with pinch-to-zoom capability (and dozens of other features) until 2027? I sure don’t.

поэтому где-то тут, полагаю, и находится золотая середина — и сегодня она целиком в руках судей.

вообще, к слову сказать, другой неочевидный вопрос, часто поминаемый в этой связи, — это не проиграл ли Google в расчете на долгосрочную перспективу, выбрав для Android OS именно такой путь развития, путь соперничества с iOS (вот, каким был Android раньше, в pre-iPhone era): здесь и лицензионные отчисления, и патентные запреты, и львинная доля поисковых обращений с iOS-устройств (а Siri неизбежно приуменьшит этот источник дохода Google) — что, то есть, оказалось бы выгоднее, альянс с Apple или собственный путь? кто знает.

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^[1] — в конце концов, это война, где все средства хороши.

разница

16 June 2011 | Apple, Google, The Great Game | No Comments

Мерлин Манн абсолютно точно подметил неочевидное:

Google: Thanks for looking at 100s of ads you hate.
Apple: Thanks for buying 100s of dollars of stuff you love.

происхождение видов

10 April 2011 | Apple, Google, Literature, The Great Game | No Comments

замечтаельный Стивен Леви, о чьей первой книге^[1] я писал так часто, написал очередную — на этот раз про Google, где раскрывает небольшие секреты. например:

[Steven Levy] reveals that when founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were on the hunt for a chief executive they wanted Steve Jobs to take up the job.

The only problem was that Mr Jobs had a much better job at Apple – a much more superior company at the time.

He turned their offer down but because he saw the potential of Google he agreed to mentor Mr Page and Mr Brin, even sharing advisers.

а что случилось дальше, нам всем хорошо известно:

Problems came when Google bought and started work on the Android mobile phone system.

Apple saw it as a direct threat to iPhone and relationships broke down with Mr Jobs feeling betrayed by the pair.

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^[1] — доступна, кстати, и библиотеке Проекта Гутенберг.

атака клонов

5 April 2011 | Apple, Google, The Great Game | No Comments

вот, кстати, хорошее, прямо в яблочко:

Google is a cool company. They make and have made some cool things. Obviously, the top two are search and gmail. There never was a search engine like Google before it and now there isn’t a search engine that isn’t like Google. Same with gmail.

But you can’t say that about some of Google’s other products. They are the ones following Apple in smartphones, someplace they seem to really be putting their energies. They’re not really anywhere on tablets. Their TV product was an abortion. So was their attempt to get into social with Buzz, which, after the reputation hit it caused was a total mental net negative. They need to quit Xeroxing other people’s stuff!

между тем, есть и другой подход:

Apple saved itself from the memory hole by coming out with products that made everyone copy them. First, the iMac. After that, you better believe Dell, Compaq, and all the other box makers were coming up with candy color options. To geeks, it seemed frivolous. But this isn’t a chess club election. Consumer dollars matter. Apple followed that up with Mac OS X, whose smooth lines were promptly incorporated into Windows, the iPod (Zune), the iPhone (Android, various Blackberries, Windows Phone 7, etc.) and the iPad, all of which everyone else is trying to copy.

а на самом деле все ведь просто, не так ли?

[C]reate a solution that someone like me can’t even think of. Hell, until the iPod came along I thought burning my own CDs was all I needed.

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