I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Google are starting to peel back the layers on their gPhone strategy with this article in the NY Times.
For Google, Advertising and Phones Go Together
Fascinating read. Here are some highlights.
Google is not creating a gadget to rival the iPhone, but rather creating software that will be an alternative to Windows Mobile from Microsoft and other operating systems, which are built into phones sold by many manufacturers. And unlike Microsoft, Google is not expected to charge phone makers a licensing fee for the software.
They will put it in the open-source world and take the economics out of the Windows Mobile business.
and ..
Google’s agenda is to disaggregate carriers
How about this howler from Arun Sarin who clearly does not get the power of software. In a similar vein to Thomas Watsons “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” …
Arun Sarin, the chief executive of Britain’s Vodafone Group, which offers the Google service on its phones, said it was not clear what compelling functions Google would offer that are not already available.
“What is it that is missing in life that they are going to fulfill?†Mr. Sarin said. “It is not a no-brainer. You can reach Google already through a number of devices. You don’t need a Google phone to do that.â€
Hope PaulB comments on that one :)
Googles intentions come through loud and clear. The battle lines are being drawn between carrier mentality and Internet mentality. With the ground softened by the iPhone launch.
This will be a riveting watch.
Never bet against software.
blog
Far be it from me to argue with either Arun or Google… ;-)
but this seems to me to be an OS play by Google to take on Microsoft in the next big market rather than Apple’s play, which appears to be aimed at taking on the network operators directly.
I’m still waiting for Google to launch the Google OS on the desktop (well, laptop these days) and I remember that fantastic screen shot mock up on Engadget a couple of years ago (a fake Google OS based on Firefox). Everyone I showed it to immediately screamed like a little girl and demanded one. Maybe this is Google’s way of taking on MS without declaring all out war?
Mind you, given Balmer’s comments on Google “reading your email” I’d have to say all out war is imminent. What do you reckon?
Cheers
Paul
(Speaking for no-one but himself today. It’s quite refreshing!)
I’m with Paul on this - the mobile OS strategy allows them to go head to head wih an OS competitor in a slightly softer area than the full on PC OS space.
I think the remark about it being a carrier vs internet battle is a little simplistic (forgive me Rod) - Google is making moves to become a carrier to a certain extent themselves - I think it’s more moving the business from a carrier-centric one to a solution-centric one while at the same time exploring the possibilities of doing some carrier-ing at a later stage.
What is interesting, outside of the carrier/internet discussion, is whether Google will indeed go down a dis-aggregation road and be happy providing the bulk of the services, of attempt to aggregate into their own device
Interesting times indeed
And moving it into the FOSS world leaves the OpenMoko in an interesting position…..
Mockups, screenshots and feather puffing are all well and good but the question we will end up asking is this: Does it suck?
Case in point: I have a Nokia N800. On paper this is vastly superior piece of kit to either an iPhone or an iPod touch. It has wireless, proper bluetooth (can use your phone as a gateway), a much higher resolution display and is the most extensible and generally hackable platform ever placed in one’s pocket. But it kinda sucks. It’s built on a reasonably generic Linux/OSS stack, including GTK, and as a result looks and performs much like desktop Linux from about three years ago. Lots of irritating usability problems. Lots of irritating performance problems. Lots of stuff that’s 95% there, but almost none of it 100% done.
To me the great marvel of the iPhone/iPod touch duo (and to a lesser extent OSX from about 10.3 onwards) is that it has shown that commercial software development /can/ produce much higher quality outputs than the OSS process purely because it’s OK for someone (i.e. Steve Jobs) to say “No, not good enough, come back when it’s perfect” without fear of offending someone or losing critical mindshare in the developer community. I’m finding it surprising that more vendors, particularly those that are clearly not short a bob or two, don’t also take this route.
Anyway. If it sucks, it won’t fly. If it doesn’t, it will. In this case I really do think that’s all there is to it.
Rod, I am not sure there is any relativity between Sarin’s comments and what Tom Watson said 60 or so years ago. I think he has a good point, “what will Google offer”. I would add “what do they offer in the applications market place that has been a rip roaring success?”. Sure Google search is the killer search engine, but have you tried Live Search in the last couple of weeks. I think they are catching up.
The Google phone may be out next August. If MS Mobile is their market space then they need to consider that MS will have sold (if sales projects work out and they seem to be) another 20 million Windows Mobile device licenses on 140 devices from over 125 mobile operators in 55 countries from 49 device makers.
Will you want to listen to ads on a free cell phone.
No doubt Google has hired thousands of smart people. I don’t think smart talent alone produces products that sell and get market share.
This is just my view.
Dermott said…
have you tried Live Search
Live Search is awesome. A bench-marking of the algorithm that Live Search is based on against Google was done a few years ago (2004), showed that Microsoft algorithm achieved higher document retrieval precision & recall (ie, how many documents that are being retrieved during search that are relevant in relation to the query out of the total relevant documents available in the database , eg - say that there are total of 80 documents that are relevant to the subject of Rod Drury at NZ Herald website, and a query for Rod Drury return say 60 documents, the NZ Herald’s search engine recall capability is 75%, ie, 60 out of 80). This bench-marking is described in this Microsoft publication : Block-level Link Analysis. This is a peer review paper and such claim is scrutinized by the community of international researchers and peers, since they will implement the algorithm described in ones paper and test the claim. I don’t think that the algorithm published in the above paper is the one developed into Live Search, since that would be giving away their commercial secrets. I believe that the one adopted for Live Search is an advanced version of the algorithm described in the paper above. I think both Google & Microsoft had moved on to a new level in researching and competing to find the fastest and higher retrieval capability search algorithm.
Long term, I believe that Microsoft will overtake Google and my belief is based purely on what I’ve seen in the number of high quality publications that is pouring out of Microsoft and accepted for publications in different international research journals. Also the number of who’s who top-notch researchers in the world from different fields that Microsoft had recruited from academics have jumped tremendously over recent years. I know a few (only in cyberspace) of the Microsoft R&D guys and they are very generous to answer any question from or to give help to anyone who wants to implement an algorithm that they have published, such as this guy, this guy, this guy and this guy.
Falafulu, interesting feedback. My view was based on a purely subjective relook at Live Search a couple of weeks ago and confirmed this week in a conversation with someone at MS who said that MS have improved it in the latest update.
I think Google now sometimes returns way too much information and I have found in the times I have used Live Search that was is returned is more relevant.
So thanks for the feedback.
Some of those comments sound very similar to ‘what will we do with all that bandwidth’.
You need to spend some time in Silicon Valley and see how people already use their iPhones which is much more of a walled garden than an open source phone operating system.
If you can innovate in an accounting system imagine what you can do on a phone.
http://www.xero.com/blog/2007/10/12/xero-wins-tuanz-awards
Rod, I read the original article and can see where Sarin is coming from. I am sure Vodafone knows a lot more about what is coming down the pike from suppliers like Nokia etc than any of the rest of us and as such his comments would reflect non public information.
In saying this I guess we will have to wait and see what the Googlephone ends up being. And if it is revolutionary.
As far as bandwidth, I would love more and Starsoft probably has a better connection than 99% of the country. But its not enough.
My concern is the SaaS model and the consummer equivalent, not sure what the acronym is for that market needs much bigger infrastructure in NZ. This is probably one of the reasons why to some degree we may all may have to develop here and then gain most of our revenue in markets where the underlying pipes are really hot.
Maybe when Telecom move to GSM it will provide better competition like in the UK.
What do you think?
The sea change evident with the release of the iPhone to prove that the days of old will soon be held in fond memory. Conversations such as “remember when my Motorola 9600xl could handle 99 number memory places with a cool LED screen?” will reflect how far we have come in the 15 short years in device manufacture however the users are becoming more savvy with the blurring of access / information / entertainment being offered by things like the iPhone.
I simply stage it like this because now, software rules the way forward and devices will simply be designed to cater for this. Manufacturers with any sense will build platforms with multi radio stacks and massive solid state memory with decent gimmicks like high quality cameras and multi-touch screens - all to cater for an OS that is useful to communicate with. The OpenMoko is a good start.
The GPhone OS idea will fly and could marginalise operators who don’t want to adapt to where the users are heading. Sadly, 3G isn’t the coolest game anymore and the business model promoted by AT&T / Apple means that smart operators who like to keep their customers will find a to embrace this changing environment.
I certainly appreciate that the comments from the Vodafone CEO are potentially dismissive - you can bet your bank full of Euro’s that those guys are working really hard with the likes of Google to make this idea fly.
On usability front, Rod and I saw the way iPhone users in Silicon Valley were starting to embrace this software approach to communication and the device truly became useful due to the ease of use and the network connectivity options.
When you see that “Voice” (aka phone) is just another application on this type of device, you truly start to appreciate that its all about the software.
The cartels of old will soon be relegated to history.