Google Can't Be Trusted With Your Personal Information, Either

Now, we learn that Google can't be trusted with your private information, either. When you buy through Google Play, vendors get personal information with which to target you with attention you had no desire to invite. This is interesting in light of Google's prior explanation that of course it won't disappoint users with its privacy practices, or they'd refuse to use Google.

This seems to continue a negative trend.  Recently I wrote about Google apparently misusing my credit card info, then offering no way at all to ascertain why it was making charges to my credit card. Unable to get relief from Google, I had to tell my credit card company to deny all transactions from Google in the future.

So much for Don't Be Evil.

Mining Mobile Manufacturers for Prospects?

There's a new Jaded Consumer article at Seeking Alpha on mobile manufacturers, in three parts:
Mobile Manufacturers Part I: Killer Competition
Mobile Manufacturers Part II: Samsung Sells More Stuff
Mobile Manufacturers Part III: Apple Makes More Money

These hardware articles follow the immediately-previous platform articles:
Understanding Google's Position In The Platform War (Part 1)
Understanding Google's Position In The Platform War (Part 2)

Together, these illustrate my argument on the future of mobile platforms and hardware competition.

Chrome Share Grows, Helps Advance Use of Standards

Chrome, which Google launched as a crash-resistant WebKit-based internet browser on September 3, 2008, now appears to have a weekend internet traffic share exceeding Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which previously commanded virtually all of the browser traffic on the Web. Google's reluctant assault on Microsoft's dominance has included ChromeOS, but its main thrust has been in offering data using freely-available standards and offering APIs to allow third-parties to deliver data handled by Google. The result? Steve Ballmer's description of non-IE browsers as "a rounding error" is more laughable than ever. IE-only web crippling is in full retreat; most of the Internet now uses something other than IE.

The Chrome browser and its Google Gears component made certain that users on any platform could access Google's internet-based offerings. Chrome with Gears is, in effect, like iTunes after Apple launched music-purchase as a feature: it protected the company's prospective users from content lock-out that would have resulted from continued Microsoft dominance of the ecosystem. And like iTunes, Chrome has succeeded. Chrome has grown in use so that on the weekend – when users aren't forced by corporate overlords to use an inferior browser – it's the leading browser on Earth.

Adding together WebKit and Mozilla, it's clear that standards-dedicated HTML interpretation is now in fact the global standard, especially in the now-much-targeted mobile segment. Standards-noncompliance is now the minority position rather than the de-facto standard. Moreover, WebKit browsers (mostly Chrome and Safari) now exceed Microsoft's browsers on an ongoing basis, and not just on the weekend (and constitute about 2/3 of the mobile traffic).* Who would have imagined such success for WebKit when Apple announced it at the Worldwide Developer's Conference as a new derivative of KHTML? Now, lazy web site developers can't rely on ignoramous clients to tell their online customers to go get Internet Explorer: everyone must meet the standards supported by WebKit, which in turn supports legitimate standards.

The success of WebKit leads to more momentum behind improving its underlying performance, and the desirability of advancing new, more feature-rich web standards. Since standards mean something now that most of the web users have tools committed to standards, effort dedicated to the promulgation of new open standards is no longer at risk of being wasted: browsers compete for early standards conformance, and most of the world uses one of them. As standards-conformance becomes a sufficient test for content accessibility, developers become to code to known standards rather than troubleshoot accessibility on a whole hatful of competing browsers.

The web is becoming free of dominion by Microsoft, and it can't come too soon.

=============
*: Looking only at the desktop, Microsoft still ekes out a majority of browser share, giving open alternatives a next target. Overall browser share, however, is no longer Microsoft's, and mobile browser share seems well out of its grasp so far. Of course, there's WinMo 8 to come in the fall.

Apple Expects Huge iOS Growth in 2012

Daring Fireball drew attention to Asymco's economic analysis of Apple's projected expenses that suggests expectation of 100% growth in iOS devices over the next fiscal year.

100% growth may sound impressive ... but apparently dropping $1B on a datacenter is designed to make Apple's products better at helping people access data than is available using Google's tools. Can Apple beat Google at its own game? Will Apple develop a revenue model based on the data access to make this kind of investment pay for itself (as Google does), or will Apple rely on hardware profits Google doesn't reap?

This is interesting stuff. Apple's acquisitions in maps, voice, search, etc. have the potential to put Apple in a much more serious collision course with Google than was initially apparent as Google began shipping a mobile device OS. Apple seems set to try to take Google's lunch money. Would you buy a ticket to see that fight?

Finished: Google/Apple Board Overlap

Google's Schmidt having left Apple's board, the only remaining cross-pollination between the firms was Levinson, who resigned Google's board effective immediately.

Worries about the companies' cross-pollination seem done; the FTC's concerns have supposedly been satisfied by the resignations.

As previously discussed here, the Jaded Consumer take is that both companies offer each other significant help in avoiding a MSFT-dominated future, providing open-source code for projects of value to both, and fostering standards-compliance to enable competition on quality instead of losing customers to lock-in. Both companies are good for each other.

On Schmidt Leaving Apple

Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's Board of Directors. Some yahoo claims this is explained by serious and growing competition between the companies in browsers and operating systems and application sales.

When Apple took on Schmidt in 2006, the companies promised to offer significant synergy -- particularly in open standards for online communication and providing alternatives to the once-unavoidable products from the monolithic and anticompetitive Microsoft.

Browsers No Bother
At the time Schmidt joined Apple, Safari had been out for over three years. More critically, Safari's rendering engine had been open-sourced for over three years. The KHTML team, OmniWeb's developers at OmniGroup, Nokia , and other groups have been making products from the same code base for years, both before and after Schmidt joined Apple's BoD. The fact that WebKit gained the support of Google's browser developers, who included it in the Chrome browser, did nothing to undermine either the standards Apple hoped to foster or Apple's ability to deliver products based on solid, fast code. The fact that Nokia incorporated the rendering engine to make products directly competitive with Apple's own handhelds suggests that corporate competition need have little to do with the technology behind rendering engines.

Claiming that Apple and Google have some kind of irreconcilable conflict because each distributes a browser is frankly silly. "Entrench[ment] in the web browser game" is hardly reason to find the firms -- one, a premium hardware vendor with products distinguished by software; the other, an online services company hoping to reduce hardware costs to increase the addressable market for its services -- in some kind of conflict. Apple knew the world could use WebKit to build browsers. Had Apple not wanted the world to do so, Apple could have made its code improvements available in a less user-friendly format than an oven-ready Cocoa framework. Apple wanted WebKit to become popular so that the online experience would increasingly depend on verifiable standards -- that is, would cater to non-Microsoft browsers -- in order to make the world a better place for Apple customers. The fact that other non-Microsoft browser users would benefit from standards and consistency was in no way an injury to Apple's objective of avoiding being frozen out of the online world by MSFT-controlled secret protocols and other ancient evils common from the land of Redmond.

OS No Obstacle
Google's entry into general-purpose operating systems offers little problem for Apple. Schmidt recently approved Google's foray into general-purpose operating systems, but this isn't a threat. Why? Look at the market segments approached by each. Google seeks to make devices cheaper by creating a license-free OS -- so it can increase its addressable market. Google's threat is to Microsoft's business model, which is to increase devices' cost through operating system licensing fees. At the low end of the hardware market, the OS is a material charge that moves the needle on profitability. Consider commodity PC maker Dell, which suffers so badly from OS costs that it must earn advertising revenue by filling new machines' desktops with ad-ware. The low-end box is where Google's OS products will make a difference, not the high end where users have costly software investments that depend on Microsoft's desktop APIs.

Google's OS will free users from desktop APIs by leveraging the Google Gears technology it developed for delivering full-featured applications on desktops. Google will continue to be able to deliver these on desktops through browsers, meaning that Apple's' products will continue to be part of the addressable market for Google's products and services. Apple and Google aren't an an either/or proposition. Google simply makes ultra-low-end products possible -- and thereby access to third-world markets that don't yet exist, because devices are just not cheap enough there to be affordable.

At the high end, Apple already commands an enviable position. There's little suspicion that Google will soon compete in such a space.

Flap Over Google Apps
The author of the piece I lauch at seems to think Google's telephone application is a concern for Apple, and is behind inter-company friction. BS. What interest could Apple possibly have against Google making Apple's internet-connected devices more valuable through the offering of a voice application? The only party unhappy with this prospect would be a carrier company, who presumably wants to sell minutes instead of allowing users attached to a LAN to make calls through fast wireless networks. (If the application supports sufficient call quality to enable 3G wireless calls, carriers would really brim with irritation: they would support calls with unlimited data plans and lose minutes charges. Imagine.)

The friction here isn't about Apple and Google, it's about carriers fighting to keep competition from devices. As with DRM (which Apple seemed to champion, but only at labels' demand and only until they could negotiate their way out of it after the model had proven a failure), Apple's support of the minutes-billing-system and other carrier-caused crippleware (instant messages with a per-message fee? Why is SMS different in kind than AIM or other IM?) will eventually prove not to come from the heart at all.

Mobile Phones (and their applications)
To suggest that the phone rivalry is heating up is to ignore that there isn't a single Android device that competes head to head with any Apple product on features. Android is a tool to enable lowered OS licensing fees -- as on desktops, to enable increasing the size of the addressable market for Google's service offerings. I have yet to see evidence that Android is an iPhone OS competitor.

Indeed, Android's support for so many hardware variations will certainly make application development much less accessible to users (applications depending on features not present on specific phones, or that assume different key layouts or the like, will not offer much in the way of a user experience). Without the application base, Android will compete in niches in which a certain phone and its attendant applications make a compelling value argument. (The hardware variety issue, which Apple doesn't fear because it controls the hardware, is a real problem for Android: Google expects 18 models by year-end.) Apple's marketing approach is quite different. Apple doesn't care whether its competitors use Nokia or Google operating systems that offer users a WebKit-based Internet; Apple just cares that the Internet works great for mobile users with WebKit applications so that its customers like what they see. If MSFT's mobile offerings are obliterated in the process, so much the better.

Apple and Google share a strong interest in ensuring that Microsoft doesn't establish a position in mobile devices that precludes competition on the basis of product quality. Creating product classes that ensure the possibilty of pursuing corporate objectives by offering customers meaningful product choice works in favor of both companies. The fact that their offerings have no overlap is of no consequence, provided the choice is real: Google is offering software-only licensing to third party hardware vendors, and Apple is offering a soup-to-nuts integrated solution delivered through Apple-controlled retail channels. Google will take share from the market segment most impacted by licensing fees, and Apple will take share from the market segment most responsive to its (traditionally) high-cost premium products. Each will develop revenue entirely differently from the products (except that Google's mechanism will allow it to derive revenue even from Apple's products, though less revenue than Apple would derive). Provided competition can exist -- a condition both companies require, and a condition made more likely by widely-adopted standards-- both Apple and Google both benefit in Mobile space to a much greater degree than if the space were ceded to Microsoft or to vendors conspiring with carriers to lock users into a limited range of premium-fee applications and services.

Apple and Google aren't really competitors in the mobile space, or in mobile applications.

Conclusion
The article claiming that Apple and Google are now eating each other's lunches and that the departure of Schmidt was based on animosity and competition is simply bunk. The fact that Schmidt's company's products now appear in so many niches in which Apple products compete makes the threat of antitrust oversight more of a nuisance than either company wants to suffer, regardless that there's no merit in the worry (yet), and with Schmidt bowing out of strategic talks on operating systems, mobile platforms, online stores, developer relations, content contracts ... well, what's left Apple would want Schmidt to share his insight about?

The departure isn't made inevitable by growing competition, it's made reality by effort to ensure no anticompetitive concerns are colorably raised -- and formalizing it in Schmidt's withdrawal form Apple's board changes little. The places where Apple and Google best cooperate -- making good code that tends to free users from dependence on Microsoft products -- are alive and well (in the form of the companies' numerous open-source development programs and for-a-fee products and services), and in some places involve active cooperation, such as on WebKit, which powers both firms' broswers. Where active cooperation isn't present, the mere fact that Microsoft isn't ceded territory and must fight tooth and nail (and lose share on the way) protects the marketplace for users and their suppliers of hardware and software.

Google and Apple will continue to share a desire for standards and interoperability and cross-platform access -- and toward that end their valuable cooperation will continue at the operational level even if at the strategic level the need to have Schmidt on the Board is diminished. It's not like Schmidt and Jobs haven't got each other's number if something comes up.

Schmidt on Chrome

According to Electronista, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt resisted Chrome over concerns raised by his recollection of browser competition in the 1990s. After lobbying (and demos) by Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Schmidt agreed to produce Chrome -- while saying Google didn't intend preventing competition, and that MSFT was free to port its own browser to the OS platform.

The Jaded Consumer's assessment of Google's business view of Chrome (that it will enable more folks to access revenue opportunities for Google) looks to be spot-on:

Although Chrome will be free, Mr. Schmidt said it will still boost Google’s business. “We benefit when people spend more of their life online,” he said. “So for us it’s a very straightforward strategic initiative that ultimately results in more revenue.”
via WSJ

In particular, Schmidt commented that although Android and Chrome are separate projects, they both share some commonality and may more toward each other in the future.

On the Google-Microsoft Conflict

A recent New York Times editorial suggests the Google/Microsoft conflict is a sort of farce, with each company really uninterested in destroying the other because it would be bad for their own business. This is hogwash. Take a look at the author's reasoning:

The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Google’s real interest to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success.
Robert X. Cringely, July 13, 2009

This is classic Cringely: the wrong conclusion from wrong facts. Microsoft products haven't facilitated Google's success. Were the Internet a Microsoft product, everyone would be forced to participate in it using current versions of Microsoft servers and Microsoft clients. Instead, the genius of the Internet, and the reason Google thrives on it, derives from the free nature of Berkley-licensed TCP-IP network code, open standards, and the fact that Google can maintain all its internally-developed software and modifications free from snooping competitors -- because it all resides on Google's servers.

Google has noticed that a decent web-enabled handheld can have a much greater density of search use (and therefore exposure to Google's advertisements) than some of the junk that preceded it. Google naturally wants more highly-capable web devices in broad use -- and needs them to be as cheap as possible so as to maximize the user count -- because it is the breadth of the public that can use Google's revenue-generating services that drives Google's money-making. If Microsoft never sold another OS license, it would not be a day too soon for Google, whose business depends in no way on technology or licenses emanating from Redmond. Microsoft browsers -- ignoring standards, pressuring the world to use Microsoft development tools and devlopment APIs and deployment servers -- hold little particular benefit for Google, which would as soon see the world adopt Mozilla -- or Chrome.

Microsoft would like take Google's ad revenues, and has tried to take them by purchasing advertising competitors. The fact that Microsoft has failed isn't for lack of trying, it's just apparently not Microsoft's bag, as it were.

Let's face it: the Google/Microsoft battle isn't being fought with kid gloves as Cringely suggests. It's being fought as seriously as its participants know how, to choke the air out of opponents before they can return a killing blow. So Google works to offer a free OS for the masses, to eviscerate Microsoft. Microsoft, for its own part, keeps trying to build advertising infrastructure, drive the public to its own content, and otherwise deprive Google of any ad revenue Microsoft can glean from the Net. Google, though it has not had great success pushing server-based applications, might yet offer a combined Google Office and OS for a segment of the public uninterested in spending hundreds of dollars on Microsoft licenses and eager to buy low-end hardware to surf the web, write papers for school, and so on.

Whether either company will strike on a scheme to smother the other has yet to be seen. However, it's quite clear to those paying attention that the contest is no game.

Where Cringely misses the mark most, though, is in misunderstanding Google's core competency. Cringely believes Google is about searches and per-click revenue from advertisements. Searches and per-click revenue from advertisements Google places on various web pages around the world are both evidence of Google's real mission: to organize data for useful access. Have a look at Google's mission statement. Think about what Google offers. Maps? Directions? Links to phone numbers directly from mobile search pages so you can reach restaurants you hunt for? Google wants to be your interface for all the data you need in your life. Web search is just a facet of this in motion. Web browsers are just an interface feature of Google's information access service. Free operating systems and document creation tools will be more of the same, whether they supplant Microsoft in large market segments or only in tiny niches.

Understanding Google's mission helps one to understand its battle in a different light. Did you ever send someone a document made with a Microsoft product, only to find it couldn't be opened because someone had the wrong product version, or a Microsoft-unsupported operating system? Ever try to get onto a network to get information, only to be stymied by some tech flunkie explaining a Microsoft-only network policy?

Now ask yourself: what purpose has Microsoft got in this world other than to act as a toll collecter standing between you and the data you want to handle and transmit? If the answer is for you as I see it for others, Google can't help but to thwart Microsoft at every turn, even if by accident. (Microsoft's answer to music was DRM requiring fees to be paid to Microsoft regardless who made or sold or played the music; Microsoft's answer to servers was to create development platforms that required Microsoft-licensed development tools to make work; Microsoft's answer to document creation was an undocumented file format that hardly anything can read properly except an expensive Microsoft product; Microsoft's answer to legally mandating that government offices publish materials in a well-documented license-free file format to ensure permanent free access to government publications was to lobby for a patent-encumbered file format Microsoft can tax while working against free standards. Think of a time Microsoft helped anyone access their data.)

The battle is well joined. To the victor will, presumably, go the spoils.

Schmidt: No Good for Apple?

In an article arguing Schmidt should be removed from Apple's board due to ongoing, increasing direct competition with Apple (e.g., in browsers and mobile operating systems, and soon also desktop operating systems):

"Google is a company that does software, but it's not defined by it. So why does Google seem to be aping Apple's every move?"

I think this guy is smoking crack. Not defined by software? Since Google doesn't sell any hardware, the only things customers see from Google -- and have EVER seen from Google -- have been interfaces to Google software. Apple may be a company whose chief distinguishing characteristics involve software differentiation, but Google is a company that does nothing but offer software.

Incidentally, offering Chrome (the Google browser) as evidence of competition with Apple is disingenuous. Chrome's rendering engine is WebKit, which Apple deliberately open-sourced (if Apple wanted a closed-source alternative, it could have done one). There is a very strong reason Apple benefits from others using the WebKit rendering engine: the more people use it and other genuinely standards-compliant rendering engines, the more incentive web developers have to adhere to standards instead of coding to meet the expectations of nonstandard, closed-source, oddball renderers (like MSFT's) that tend to prevent free access to all comers on the web. Google's launch of a browser with both new innovations (separate processes for each tab for memory recapture and application stability) and battle-tested tech like WebKit help dislodge bad nonstandard competition as a plausible de facto standard. Apple benefits from Chrome.

To the extent Android poisons the well for MSFT in the mobile space, Apple also wins from Android. After all, Apple will not license MacOS to third party handset developers, so this battle for non-Apple handsets must be left to someone else. There will be non-Apple handsets, and Apple benefits if MSFT doesn't control them; MSFT control of an ecosystem has been proven to work against the entire free world, and is the enemy of profit outside MSFT. Apple benefits from Android.

Whether Schmidt should go depends what Apple intends to get from Schmidt's involvement with Apple. If Schmidt is (as the article indicates) recusing himself from discussions that involve conflicts, then Schmidt may still offer very valuable communication and insight (and cooperation). (There is an antitrust doctrine that a company cannot conspire with itself, and hearing from its Board cannot therefore be an antitrust violation by a company. However, interlocking Board membership can lead to antitrust concerns involving the two different companies. Some kinds of aid and information from an outsider might be considered evidence of a conspiracy to restrain trade, that is, a scheme to prevent MSFT from competing with Google and Apple, companies on whose Boards Eric Schmidt and Arthur Levinson both sit.)

Whether Schmidt's usefulness to Apple has come to a close is a strategic question that depends on the strategic purpose of his involvement on the Board, and not on whether both companies offer standards-compliant browsers, desktop APIs that don't involve Win32, or a mobile operating system that doesn't involve licensing fees to MSFT.

On The Supposed Doom of ChromeOS

Google announced it will enter the general-purpose desktop operating system market with the launch of an operating system it will call Chrome, and already it is being declared that "The Google OS Is Doomed".

A few comments on the points raised by the article:

"Linux is hard to love."
Let's face it, Unix is no picnic either, but look at MacOS X. Any argument that can be claimed in connection with barriers to Linux adoption were an order of magnitude worse a decade ago when Apple announced its next operating system was Unix it bought from NeXT. Apple doesn't even hide that its operating system is Unix: it's a selling point.

If Google's OS offers access to Linux and its common shells as readily as MacOS X offers access to BSD and its shells, Google will have both Linux converts and people who like having a huge existing application base of non-Google software that runs as-is. Like, say, OpenOffice. However, the genius of Chrome will not be that it is Linux any more than the genius of MacOS X was that it was Unix. The improvements of both operating systems will be enabling developers and users to do things easily and without the trouble often encuontered with some competing systems.

"We aren't ready to run everything on the Web."
And we're not expecting to with ChromeOS.

The existing Chrome browser allows offline work with intermittent updating. Having an OS that talks easily with Google's cloud but isn't dependent on it for its essential function will enable development of applications that satisfy users' need for stability and predictability while making things like backup and synchronization a snap. All you'll need, in all likelihood, is your GMail account. You can get your data anyplace you can reach Google, and in all likelihood your desktop and your applications as well. Turning any notebook you hold into an access point to all your data, rather than relying on one single notebook that can fail and create a choke point, might be valuable indeed.

Never experience lock-in again? Hallelujah!

"Microsoft is a formidable opponent."
Indeed. You can see how formidable Microsoft is in this space by noticing how swiftly (hee hee) the company can turn out improved new versions of its flagship operating system products and productivity suites, and noticing how Apple's share has eroded before Microsoft's unassailable monopoly, and how Microsoft has come to dominate music (heh) and has had such consistently profitable gaming business (snicker) that competitors have been frozen out of launching meaningful competitors, much less making any profit.

Let's face it, this argument was plausible a decade and a half ago, but the emperor's nakedness is at this late date not just yesterday's news, it's old news. Everybody knows Microsoft is a chump now, milking an installed base and the inertia of applications dependent on Microsoft's APIs. Microsoft will dutifully prolong its advantageous relationship with OEMs (who suffer serflike dependence, down to changing the back-ends of their web sites to mollify Redmond) and thereby prevent users from enjoying any choice in operating systems, which thereby draws ongoing third-party developer support. Microsoft will continue milking the cash cow for years. Microsoft isn't going to die, it's just going to stagnate, and it hasn't shown the kind of aptitude for success in new ventures that would make me think it poses a risk to a competitor whose air it cannot choke off at will.

"Google fails often."
This one is actually interesting. Google does have lots of projects that didn't really seem to change the world. (Microsoft Bob, anyone? MSN Music?) Google does have some projects that have changed the world, and unlike some companies I might mention, changed it for the better. Where is AltaVista, once the best and fastest search tool anyplace, and my first stop on the web? And think about Google Maps -- and the API that allows people to plot worldwide wherever underwater hockey is known (click for the map view if your connection speed causes the server to give you the text by default). Think about AdSense, and how a whole range of content vendors are now potentially free from ever having to market to advertisers ever again.

There's always the possibility that Google could release the equivalent of a Zune -- a niche product that functions, but doesn't really engage anyone in numbers meaningful to anyone's bottom line -- but the possibility also exists that Google will release something that is useful and attains by legitimate competition a market segment that will add value to Google's existing assets.

Conclusion
I'll not predict wild success off the bat -- the OS will first have to prove itself functional, for example, then gain acceptance in various market segments, each of which will require different strengths -- but to conclude Google's entry is doomed on the basis of the argument presented is the kind of trite dismissal that was once accepted any time someone confronted Microsoft in any market, but has become dated.

Microsoft can be defeated. Apple demonstrated this, entirely by accident I believe, when it launched its purchase-supporting version of iTunes. Remember when everybody knew that all music in the future was going to be released as WMA files and that Microsoft was going to collect a licensing fee for every track, and maybe even for play count? And yet, long after Microsoft had lined up supporting vendors and content providers, it was crushed by a Johnny-come-lately whom everybody knew didn't have a prayer entering an already-filled market. People are buying DRM-free again, and before that they were buying it with someone else's DRM (Apple's world's largest music store sold only Apple's DRM until the iTunes store went mostly DRM-free, and its top-selling music players -- over 70% of the market -- didn't do WMA at all). Let's face it: Microsoft has lost what it takes. The desktop APIs are less important than they were a decade ago, non-Win32 developers are much more plentiful (and credible as a business proposition) than they were then, Google Gears has been tested in practice for years for offline application support, and the OS market is open to whomever can build an adequately attractive mouse trap.

Long live the competition.

Google to Make General-Purpose OS

After introducing the Chrome browser and the Android mobile phone operating system, Google has announced it is next offering an operating system for general-purpose computing. Known as Chrome, the OS presumably leverages the APIs developed for browsers to run applications that leave users unconcerned what processing is done locally and what processing is done in the cloud.

My take: Google, by offering a whole productivity suite out of the box, can take share from the budget computer market as soon as it shows the thing works. The part of the computer shopping spectrum that includes Linux pre-installation will likely be a starting point for ChromeOS, but if the thing is reviewed as effective for general-purpose use by non-Unix geeks, the probability is that Google's cost-free OS will become a widely-available pre-install (for the benefit of commodity box makers' margins). This doesn't mean Google will steal MSFT's OS cash cow -- far from it. Google is as unlikely to sell OS licenses as it is unlikely to sell browser licenses.

Rather, it means that MSFT's cash cow stands in the crosshairs of a fee-for-service company that hasn't needed to sell a line of compiled code in its history -- and that's interesting in its own right.

UPDATE: CNN offers a look at the issue, and seems to agree the cloud and Google's general-purpose OS are an entry into Microsoft's turf, and not just a gimmick for folks who tinkered with desktop Linux.

Market Mechanics Trumps Reason

If you thought the prices of securities were determined with precision by the aggregate knowledge of market participants, and behaved as an invisible hand to lead shares to their proper values, NASDAQ has bad news for you. On September 30, 2008 the share price of Google (GOOG) did this number:

And the reason GOOG's chart plummeted below 225 and soared above 475 wasn't a sudden new series of understandings reaching the market ove the course of the day, it was another marketplace sending erroneous sell orders representing a large number of shares for sale on the NASDAQ trading platform. If reason and not market mechanics guided the immediate-term price of securities, these irrationally-priced trades would have not been undertaken. However, GOOG was so mispriced by the flood of shares seemingly on offer, and reacted with such abandon in the aftermath as it soared through the roof, that NASDAQ canceled all trades outside the range of $400.52 (the new close) and $425.29 during the period 3:57PM-4:02PM EDT. The whole range -- 225 to 475 -- was displayed from the price-rewriting point three minutes before four.

The ability of artificial for-sale share volume to induce both an immediate-term collapse in price and create frightening volatility for investor market participants is something the SEC needs to keep in mind as it continues its policy of non-enforcement of the most basic principle of markets -- that sellers must deliver what they purport to sell. So long as sellers are permitted in effect to print phantom shares without limitation, because they need not produce certificates so long as they close a position within three days of entering a trade, the markets cannot be counted on for anything like rational pricing. Given that artificial sale volumes can do to a wildly profitable and well-known international enterprise in three minutes, three days is an effective eternity for price manipulation.

But the point of this piece isn't that the SEC has its head stuffed into a dark orifice, but that markets do not display rational pricing all the time.

On Google's Birthday

Now that Google is ten years old, let's have a little look at what's happened. When I first learned about Google, it was offering a search tool that didn't have any of the obvious trappings of a "portal" -- that is, no articles, news, or other things designed to trap visitors on Google properties. Google also, at that time, had yet to develop advertisement revenue. My initial inclination was to imagine that Google, like other dot-bomb startups, had no discernible mechanism for creating money and was simply burning up cash while being cool.

By the time Google actually offered shares to the public in 2004, it had developed a revenue stream from advertisements -- and not by selling search rankings. Google seemed committed to providing "honest" search rankings, and identifying to customers any advertisements as such. Could honesty work?

About the time Google offered its shares, some dismissed them as overpriced. Allen Sloan wrote, after the IPO had occurred, that although he had declared the IPO overpriced based on a share price of $108 or higher, its actual IPO price of $85 had yielded a "good buy" for participants. However, he proclaimed that the post-IPO price was too rich:

But now that the price is above the original minimum price range, I'm not in doubt. So I'll repeat what I said three weeks ago. This price is insane. And anyone buying Google as a long-term investment at $109.40 will lose money. (If you're buying Google to trade, assuming a greater fool will pay more than you did, you may do just fine. But I wouldn't wait too long to sell.) This has nothing to do with Google as a company: It's nicely profitable; I love the product. It has to do with math and with limiting factors -- fancy language for the old truism that no tree grows to the sky.
Allen Sloan, "IPO's Success Doesn't Justify Google's Price", Aug. 24, 2004.

At what price did Sloan declare Google a terrible long-term investment? $109.50. Four years later, and hundreds of additional dollars per share later, the consistently-profitable Google has yielded a 306% gain. Annualized, that's 42% per year.

Why are analysts so wrong on the companies they cover? Sloan himself offers some insight, just before explaining that he was wrong about his call against GOOG, but only because it actually IPO'd at 85 instead of at 108:

One of the tongue-in-cheek rules that we column-writers have is, "Often wrong, never in doubt." Take a stand, don't duck and weave too much. But someone as opinionated as I am should not only have no doubt, but shouldn't be wrong too often. No one's perfect, though.
Allen Sloan, "IPO's Success Doesn't Justify Google's Price", Aug. 24, 2004.

The problem is that he was wrong at 108, too, because he didn't "get" the size of the fish Google had hooked. Heck, the fish isn't on the boat yet: it could be bigger still.

Google is, after all, fighting now not just for the online advertising revenue it seems to dominate, but for the platform on which future applications and services will be delivered. Whether Google's platform is adopted, or some open-source competitor delivering compatible equivalents, Google wins. Exactly how will proprietary vendors keep the web locked up? Microsoft can't knife the baby when it lacks adequate leverage, and Google isn't in as precarious a competitive or financial position as was Netscape, which apparently was having trouble upgrading and modernizing its browser while the war was afoot.

As Google turns ten, it's got a lot to celebrate -- and many accomplishments to its credit. As a shareholder, I for one wish Google ten more of the same.

Google Browser: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed ...

It's official: Google joins the fleet of browser vendors tomorrow.

Um ... why?

Funny you should ask! Google has commissioned a Scott McCloud instructional comic book to explain things.

The buzzword overview:

• Apple's open-source WebKit, having been recommended by Google's Android team, won the rendering spot for its leanness and speed
• JavaScript will be handled by the V8 virtual machine:

1. V8 interprets JavaScript not into an intermediate representation requiring delay for later interpretation, but directly into machine code for speed; the machine code is the internal representation, eliminating interpretation and enhancing speed.
2. V8 uses hidden class transitions, which allows V8 to assign a "class" to objects sharing the same characteristics, so they can share the same optimizations.
3. V8 uses a precise garbage collector to eliminate bloat and error caused by conservative garbage collection; it should be faster and allow quicker re-use of unused memory because un-pointed-to objects will be immediately detected and their memory deallocated.

• Vigourous multiprocessing slaughters browser bloat; closing tabs kills the processes (not just intra-process threads) handling the tab, so you are guaranteed memory reclamation as you close tabs and pages. Leaving the browser open all day won't mean the same processes stay running all day collecting garbage in them, so even bad leaks can be controlled. A look at which processes are eating system resources will identify which web pages are at fault, or whether the fault is in a plugin -- because all these will be on different processes. Slick, eh? You will actually know where to file a bug report!
  

Because each tab has its own process, jailing malware is trivial, and permissions more fine-grained. Only plugins -- which are not open source and which currently require higher-than-normal privileges -- create a high-profile attack vector. However, Google's browser's user base is likely large enough that plugin developers will re-write to require fewer privileges, and to be better netizens.

Google Chrome is a huge win for browser users, as it raises the bar on security and performance. Obviously, it's a huge win for Google, too: high-performance browsers means better access to rich web applications and more use of the web.

Just as Google benefited from the code lift of WebKit -- which presumably it's enhancing with bugfixes and optimizations -- other browsers may be able to leverage V8 to enhance performance of JavaScript. (Note that the next version of Safari includes a VM-based JavaScript engine supposedly several times times faster than its predecessor. Expect to see a Squirrelfish vs V8 bake-off.)

The only identifiable loser in sight is Microsoft, whose Win32 API becomes less valuable as other widely-known APIs become accessible to customers and developers. (Well, except to the extent that if Mozilla loses browser share, it'll lose referral revenue paid to it by Google for Google searches conducted in the Mozilla search box, but there's no reason that Mozilla can't take steps -- like adopting the winner of the Squirrelfish v. V8 bake-off, or offering superior responsiveness to feature requests -- to make its offerings attractive enough to maintain adequate share to sustain its economic requirements.)

I will look forward to using Chrome. The old idea of a browser, the new V8 engine, the borrowed WebKit, and the blue-toned graphic novel explaining it all seem to promise Chrome and its users a happy marriage.

Yeah, but ... why is Google offering Chrome? You never said!

Oh, yeah. Chrome will deliver Google Gears so that Google can make its own API widely available to users. Google is, you know, an applications developer. The fact that Google's primary revenue comes from advertisements confuses people, but the basic fact is that Google sells software and software services. Gears enables Google to deliver its software API to anyone with a browser. Gears is intended to allow Google to behave as a developer on a first-class API regardless whether your operating system was created by volunteers or rented to you by a software firm in Washington or delivered to you pre-installed on a computer designed in California. Chrome delivers Gears so that you can enjoy the applications Google wants you to run in place of your existing desktop applications.

Then, Google will try to sell you online multi-location collaboration support and other services. In the meantime, you get a bloat-resistant, leak-containing attack-hardened browser that stands a good chance of inviting plugin developers to do something at last about their lousy security.

So, enjoy that Chrome!

UPDATE: John Siracusa agrees this is Microsoft's worst nightmare, brought to life. Google's Chrome Team has a blog post on the fact Chrome is coming to an OS near you, Linux and MacOS users. Patience, patience.

Google Safe From Cuil

According to studious Brits, the new search engine Cuil.com (named after the mythical Finn MacCuil who, following a salmon cooking accident, had the ability to gain wisdom by sucking his thumb) hasn't got all its kinks ironed out. One review went so far as to suggest it wasn't ever intended to work as advertised, but merely to showcase some search tech components for some hypothetical buyer of crawling and indexing technology.

Entertainingly, I can't find this blog or any evidence of it on Cuil. I can usually use Google to search for posts I would like to link to. And it was sloooow.

As suggested by Daring Fireball, you can follow news about Cuil using Google News.

So, Google is safe. For now ....

Crazy Ads

After posting about some poor rhetoric found in the anti-evolutionary debate, and admitting the view that ID offers little of value to the science curriculum as is offers to cloud rather than to encourage exploration of natural forces that might be discovered to govern the physical world (and thus may be subject to manipulation to advance quality of life), I started noticing Google posting some interesting adverts on this site.

Google picks ads on the basis of content, but also on the basis of what amounts to an auction.  Guess who turned up as the high-bidders for the post discussing evolution?  Have a look:

I'm naturally curious who would bankroll adverts soliciting requests for free booklets touting Creationism.  Anyone with an interest in the subject can have a look at Genesis, free of charge, without waiting for a pamphlet in the mail.  Indeed, those hoping for spiritual enlightenment are likely much better looking at the . . . well, admittedly not the original, but one of the numerous, different, but well-intended translations of copies accessible to would-be translators.  Such translations have at least a colorable claim to derivation from originals, whereas pamphlets published originally by mortals hoping to sell specific explanations of how holy works are meant to be interpreted in light of presently-accepted facts about the natural history of the planet are frankly as suspect as can possibly be.  

Those guys are just selling something.

The above advertisement is an even more transparent effort to harmonize current views of the evidence with religious thought in ways that appear to discourage serious effort to view the world about one.  The thesis that the observed facts are consistent with divine will and not with the happenstance of nature, and that scientific efforts to discover physical laws by examining Creation are somehow undermining the dignity of the Creator, requires one to accept a number of interesting axioms regarding the Creator, Creation, and their relationship.

Consider for a moment the position of Henry David Thoreau, who seemingly believed escaping nature to spend the Sabbath indoors an affront to the work placed before Man for his enjoyment and study.  If there is a manual set forth by the divine to instruct human beings in the way in which to live their lives, why should that manual not be the very universe itself?  Where Genesis recounts the first divine instructions given humans, it is interesting that these early requirements did not include a command that each should abase one's self as beneath the contempt of the Creator, and to hide one's eyes from the world as it it, too, were beneath notice, and to accept learning only by memorizing texts distributed by a priesthood.  Genesis 2:19 seems to suggest very strongly that it was an approved project of our species to inspect and name everything that can be found.  How shall we undertake such lofty work if we fail to investigate what's been laid before us?

Someone should examine these pamphlets to see what they contain.  Google's rules prevent me from clicking the links.  I have some doubts about the depth of their theological analysis, and I suspect strongly that they represent an effort to preach religion as contrary to the study of the world in which we live.  Such a strange idea, that we should not learn from the world the rules laid out to govern those within it.  

Whatever else ought one to do?

The folks who view science as opposite to their religion must have a very weak grasp of their religion, or little power to reason.  The scientific method is nothing more (or less) than a system of rigorously subjecting hypotheses about the world (its contents and the rules that govern them) to tests intended to reveal flaws in the hypotheses.  Without the method we'd have little confidence in things like the charge on an electron, the gravitational constant of the universe, or the speed of light through vacuum.  The scientific method has allowed its practitioners, over time, to develop a considerable heap of hypotheses that have survived substantial abuse, to the point that (regardless their poor initial reception) they are regarded as if unbreakable laws.

Consider ideas like the universal theory of gravitation, and the principles of conservation.  For millennia, humans continued to observe that objects (a) tended, when not otherwise supported, to fall down, except birds, which somehow pushed the air, and (b) tended to come to a halt when no longer pushed.  Far from representing obvious truths, these ideas needed some experimental validation.  Objects dropped outside a gravity well don't fall to Earth.  Objects released under zero-resistance conditions don't come to a halt.  Programs to study other planets would hardly be plausible without understanding like this.  Programs to provide energy and food to a planet of finite resources will depend on proven principles in which careful people will be able to risk huge sums with confidence.

People who believe religion is contrary to experimental discovery of the principles that govern the behavior of the things found in the universe where they live have developed a shocking religion indeed.  The idea that people would expend scarce resources advertising to convince people to turn their backs on science as a religious requirement is curious and disturbing, but given the range of people on this world, entirely unsurprising.

AdSenseless

The first post on this blog was a lengthy assault on the quality of Mercedes' modern products, including the suggestion that the superiority of Japanese product reliability ratings is understated, because Mercedes survey respondents' experiences are so bad that they are unwilling to catalog the whole nightmare for survey-takers.

So ... WHY DOES GOOGLE PUT MERCEDES ADS ON THIS BLOG??

Given that Google is now willing to accept auction bids on trademarked terms, I'd have thought that ads for Lexus would be appearing where articles discussed (and dissed) the Benz. It's not like Google gets paid by advertisers for impressions; it gets paid for clicks. If my post on the recent Mercedes products has had any impact, it'd be to reduce clicks on Mercedes ads.

Incidentally, I've personally stopped four Mercedes sales by answering questions truthfully about my own experience with the car-of-the-month club operated by Greenway Mercedez-Benz. The salesfolks there get kinda testy when I ask whether the things I hate about the car have been fixed, suggesting strongly that they haven't. Deep down, I love Mercedes, which is why I'm so hard on them. Until they shape up, don't reward them.

Effective discipline requires consistency!