Tuyen’s Blog

TechCrunch posted an article and the video below about a concept Google Tablet OS based on Chrome. My reaction? Eh...

To be honest, I haven't been very impressed with any of the products that Google has released besides the dominating trifecta of Search, Maps, and GMail. Pretty much every other product that Google has released is pretty ho-hum. I'm not counting services that Google has bought like YouTube, Picasa, Blogger, GrandCentral (Google Voice) etc. which are great products. To name a few in no particular order:

* Orkut
* Android
* Google Shopping
* Google Checkout
* Google Finance

The telling one here is Android. I have used an Android phone (not the new Nexus One, but the Droid) and found it to be supremely disappointing versus the iPhone. Supposedly, the Nexus One is supposed to be better but from all the online demos I've seen of the Nexus One, it's incrementally better than the Droid but not by leaps and bounds. Unlike Microsoft, I don't see Apple getting complacent about their product development and Google has a lot of ground to make up.

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Follow up to my post yesterday about the Google Chrome OS. First off, read the excellent Fake Steve Jobs post about the new OS and we agree on most points - he just presents in a much funnier, insightful, and entertaining manner.
 
Second, the rumblings are that Eric Schmidt needs to leave Apple's board because of potential competitive issues. He currently recuses himself from board meetings that deal with the iPhone due to Google competing Android product. Will he now recuse himself when there is talk of Mac OS? So pretty much he's just there to discuss iPods? Seems like a waste of space in my opinion. However, my prediction is that Schmidt does not leave Apple's board. This leads me to believe that the Google Chrome OS is not really going to be an OS in the traditional sense of the word which means it doesn't really compete with Mac OS and for that matter, Windows. Let's remember, it's basically Linux with the Chrome browser bolted on top. The real point of the Chrome OS is to push more Chrome installations and not to beat Windows. Believe me, it takes more than just having a superior OS to take significant market share away from Microsoft. Look at Mac OS and the ahead of its time BeOS. Both were better operating systems yet couldn't even make a dent in Windows. I hardly doubt ANOTHER Linux variant is going to fair any better.

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A nice follow-up to my Microsoft Bing.com post earlier. Slowly and surely, Google Maps has become the best online map service to date. When they first started out, they were no better than MapQuest, Yahoo Maps, or even Microsoft's MapPoint. But just like the turtle, they've made slow and steady progress. Their latest addition is the "pancake" feature of the Street View tool which makes navigating through Street View so much easier.
 
I don't "root" for Google. I have no vested interest in whether they do well or not. In fact, I've argued that the overall web ecosystem would benefit from them losing a little search market share and Yahoo/Microsoft gaining a little more. However, it's tough to argue when one company is churning out great products while the other two flounder or put out irrelevant commercials.

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What do Excite, Lycos, and Ask Jeeves have in common with the new Bing.com search engine? They all had flashy brand building commercials that tried to paint their search engines as more than just technology. They were supposed to be emotional, etherial, existential, plus any other "e" word you can think of. Remember Excite's "Have You Been Experienced" ads featuring Jimi Hendrix's song? Now what do Excite, Lyocs, and Ask Jeeves also have in common? As search engines, they're all garbage and except for Ask Jeeves, largely out of the search business (Ask Jeeves to follow shortly). How many television ads have you seen for Google? Maybe there's something to be said about concentrating your resources on building the best technology instead of hiring the best ad agency.
 
For those who don't know, Bing.com is Microsoft's newly launched search engine. I've tried it and it's not bad. It's not great, but it's far from the crappy search results that Live.com spit out. Plus they have some interesting features like the image search and video search. But Microsoft as of late seems to be all about the glitz and marketing as opposed to the real technology. With all the money at their disposal why not hire the best and the brightest engineers and have them build the best search engine possible? It makes me wonder whether all the money has made them complacent. It's always easier to throw money at an ad agency then to actually sit down and do the work.

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News has been swirling around the rumored Google-Twitter hook up. Seems like it's losing steam and may eventually just become a regular business/product development deal. I'd say the later makes more sense given that Twitter doesn't need to be bought and is just dipping its toes in the world of revenue generation. Google's got the advertisers, Twitter's got the inventory so it makes more sense for Twitter to remain independent and see if it can't make some of its own dough. They can always go back to testing the sell out waters in another year or so. Given their momentum and traffic growth, they won't be losing market value by waiting. Plus if they can rope Yahoo into acquisition discussions next year (when the stock should have hopefully gone up a little more), it could only help stir up the froth. Also, let's not forget that Microsoft might be interested at that point.

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A tradition like no other ... Internet April Fools jokes. This one from GMail is pretty good. It took me about 30 seconds to figure out it was a joke...
 
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/autopilot/index.html

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