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Has Google Peaked?
nile_list writes "Robert X. Cringely's latest column explores just what the heck Google could be doing. 'Google likes to play the Black Box game. What are they DOING in all those buildings with all those PhDs?' He concludes that it's likely Google has peaked as a company: 'What if everyone is mainly wrong? What if search and PageRank and AdSense are Google's corporate apex. Most companies would be content with that, but Google isn't supposed to be like most companies. But what if they are?' His conclusion is that 'Microsoft's clearest threat still comes from Apple, though not the way most people expect.' It's an interesting read."
I, Cringe writes "Robert X. Cringely's latest column explores just how inane and idiotic he can be.'I wilke to play the baseless speculation game. What can I THINK some company is doing based on my limited knowledge?' He concludes that it's likely he has peaked as a columnist: 'What if I am am mainly wrong? What if I, Cringely is my writing apex. Most writers would not be content with that, but I'm not like most writers. But so what if I'm not?' His conclusion is that 'My clearest threat still comes from people with brains, though not the way most people expect.' It's a boring read."
What if, what if, what if. This article could have been posted when Earth came out, or GMail, or even Desktop Search. There can always be speculation, why now?
Working. What are YOU doing, Cringely?
I dunno, the article sounds rather like pretty wild speculation to me. Not that speculation is wrong—the author admits it's speculation—but if any of this stuff comes to pass, I would chalk the author's correctness up more to luck than to keen insight.
Google has a lot of project in the works, including Gmail, Gtalk, Google Desktop, etc. These projects are anything but mainstream and have a LOT of room for growth. Hell, there's still even room for growth in their primary market, the search engine. Though they are huge, they are far from owning that market.
And Apple knocking off Microsoft? Maybe, but if they haven't done it yet, I don't have much reason to believe they'll do it anytime soon. I will admit that there was an interesting speculation in the article:
Wild speculation, but man, it would be fun to watch the resulting scramble.
As for me, I'm convinced that if anyone will ever knock off Microsoft, it will be an OS that gets game developers behind them. I've said for years that as weird as it sounds, gamers drive the market. Not many people use computers at home or school for productive uses, most people use them for playing games. The most popular "applications" on my own computer are probably Firefox and City of Heros. Firefox already runs on a zillion platforms. If City of Heroes ran on Linux, I would probably go ahead to switch to a Linux-only system, if for no other reason than it's free and I don't have to buy a new version every few years.
Once everyone is using an alternative OS (not necessarily Linux, but something other than Windows) at home for games, then they will all want to use it at work and school for productivity and educational applications, and that familiarity will drive more and more companies and schools to switch desktops.
But that's just my wild speculation...
Next question the does not involve endless futile /. speculation please.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Sure, you type in some stuff, and get something that LOOKS highly relevant. How do you know?
Google may be following the typical path, which is generally attributed to the growth of a company. The difference that I see between a company like google and Microsoft is that google generally does an awesome job on virtually everything they release(which, by the way, is all free.) G-mail is hands down the best e-mail service I've ever used, and although I haven't used the new IMing service, I hear that it's very streamlined. I like google. They give me what i need to surf the web efficiently. As long as they don't become bent on world domination like Microsoft, I don't see why them getting bigger would be a problem. In my eyes, it means more resources with which to provide us with better services.
You're old. LMBO
These articles are like monthly soap operas. What will happen next? Google gets pregnant? lame.
Google is is a tool in the sense that it is a content search. It has tried to branch out in many ways but is it after all, still a page search engine.
There are alternatives that we all know of. Of late it appears that google now want money for their splendid efforts of acurate page delivery. Which is fair enough. But we all rely on google.
It is my opinion that Google has not yet peaked, there are plenty more ideas that they can deliver.
Expect to see user targeted adverts more frequently.
Why UNIX?
I used to love Google, but not anymore. Don't ask why, but reading Google-related stories on slashdot every few hours is one of the reasons.
This has led me to come up with the seeds of a compelling plan that will bring down Google. It involves making search engines respect privacy and copyright, by law.
Search engines like Google enable people to compile information from different sources about the same thing. So while one website might not provide enough information about some John Smith, using search engines it is very easy to find out a lot more about that person. And without the consent of that person. This compiled information could be harmful to that person in various ways. CNET was recently shunned by Google because one of it's reporters "googled" Google's CEO and found out some stuff about him. Google didn't like that. I don't like it either when someone else is able to "google me". I'm sure you don't like that as well, after all, it could be a potential employer, spouse, scammer, stalker, etc. who could be "googling" you.
I am sure most people and entities (companies, government, etc.) would not like to be "googled" because of various reasons. It could be about national security, competitive reasons, personal well-being, etc. They should be able to "opt-out" of internet searches.
This is what a proposed "Do-Not-Search" law would look like: There would be a national do-not-search registry which the search engines would have to check against before returning the results of each search. All items in the do-not-search registry would have to be excluded from the search results. If the search engine doesn't do that, then there would be penalties associated with it.
A person or entity, upon presenting some valid credentials, could add some terms to the do-not-search registry. For example, John Smith can exclude himself from being searched. Only problem is, how to ensure other John Smiths are not excluded as well ? This is a 'bug', and will be sorted out soon.
This is a work in progress, and only began a couple of days ago when all the hoopla surrounding Google Talk reached its height. Your comments/opinions on this would be helpful as well.
Google needs to be tamed because it is a threat to many of us. I am sure some lawmaker in the US, Canada or Europe would grab on to this and then it will begin. The stock price would tank and the searches would become increasingly complex, time-consuming and irrelevant as the do-not-search registry grows. That would be the end of Google as we know it, and we would have saved slashdot and ourselves.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was thinking about what could possibly out-Google Google other than some other company making a better search engine.
Would it be possible to construct an OSS distributed search index, where anyone who participates would donate a portion of their disk to for indexing thus creating a super-distributed, free-Free, Google killer? The only downside I can see is that it might be painfully slow compared to Google, unless some genius out there came up with a clever algorithm to distribute the indices.
If it were OSS, couldn't it borrow heavily from PageRank[tm] as well?
Just a thought I thought I would throw out. The details and implementation are beyond me.
It's easy to see google is threatened. Adding all kinds of features in every possible direction. Where is the simple but extremely effective google i love?
http://slashdot.su/
May the flame wars begin ;)
Mr Spanky, the erotic goldfish
...I sincerely doubt it justifies an 83 P/E (as of Friday's close). Can we stop hyping them on Slashdot? Please? They're obviously getting enough hype already.
While I do think their search algorithm is slowly getting hacked and more link farms are popping up, it seems obvious the plays they are making:
personal location based services.
Repeat after me...
personal location based services.
Google Maps, the other purchases, google weather and tracking. All this stuff feeds into some sort of local play for the cell-phone/gps space. Maybe car nav systems as well. Ubiquity.
There is still a lot of things that can be done with information for management if they want to. They could create a directory system similar to Yahoo. They could let you further customize the news and other stuff you receive.
- As a webmaster, I don't want to rely on Google for 80% of my traffic. I'd like to be able to count on each of three search engines for about 30% of my traffic. Google has been known to throw sites out of their index accidentally.
- As a user, I feel that Google knows too much about me already. They have a ton of information about what I search for. With gmail, they have a list of who I know, with maps they have a list of places I go, with froogle they have a list of what I buy.
I would prefer that some of the other players in search got their act together and improved to the point to be able to challenge Google. I'd prefer if some of the other maps, email, and shopping sites got their act together and became as good as Google.Its hard to hate a company that usually has the far superior product, but Google is getting huge and a little scary.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
And he's missing one big point: CELL architecture is PowerPC (Apple) + 8 other cores (non PPC). Get the point ? Linux and OSX are easy to port (IBM has already done it), but far away from optimal utilization of the other 8 cores. And M$? As i understand, they just started to move to PPC a month or two ago... .NET they're fully on pseudo-assebler (MSIL), which IMHO is a good, if not excelent point to start from...
But don't underestimate M$, with
And their new concept wich doesn't require a file to hava a parent folder AT ALL and the interface for it aren't to be underestimated...
Im definitly on the linux side, but I expect much to come from M$.
He's just being contrarian.
But - jeeze - Google seems to be coming out with an amazing new product each month. I would hardy ask what's everyone going there - they seem to working their asses off.
That's a good article. Very well thought-out and analyzed. I do, however, think that Google does pose a decent threat to Microshaft, or else the Redmond Giant wouldn't be suing both the company and Kai-Fu Lee. However, Apple does have a serious opportunity to dominate the PC market. I'd love to get OS 10.4 or 10.5 on my PC hardware to run alongside linux. The computer already can recognize it as a drive when the system boots, so I think this would be a great solution. It would sure change the way we use PCs and memory altogether. No more Microshaft OS (and I use "OS" loosely)? Storage/OS you can keep with you all the time? Sounds good to me. Maybe even add some bluetooth or something. I'd be all for this. Maybe even get a small Rosetta port for the iPod processor to run some minimal system apps. Very interesting....
Self-important yutz with a worthless blog noone reads replies to self-important yutz with a worthless blog noone reads.
TAKE IT TO YOUR BLOGS, BLOGGERS.
He started out ok, made a few interesting at least observations about Google behaviour of late. But then with a lot of handwaving and not a lot of reasoning dismisses them as has beens so he can go on yet another tired rant about how Apple is going to rise from insignificance and crush it's enemies.
Didn't we all get tired of hearing this same song from the Amigans, how any day now _insert company who owns em today_ is going to come back with something wonderful and all the infidels on PCs and Macs will be wailing and gnashing their teeth?
Apple is a bit player now, will remain a bit player after Intel. In fact, after they perform this one last act for Mr. Gates (get TCPA into mainstream use, something Gates was rightly pilloried for trying under the Palladium name) I'd expect the coup de grace to finally be administered.
But leave off the last part of that collumn and it does raise an interesting question. Where does Google want to be in ten years?
Democrat delenda est
I would of put on the 1st page the news about Google giving away free blowjobs [I read it on Slashdot] instead of this article.
Apple is nice, but is faaaar from being a threat to Microsoft, they had their chance and blew it, I'm sure they will never get to be 1/10 of Microsoft.
Google still has the revolution in thier ballpark, if they will be able to offer grid applications to terminals [pc/pda/phone/whatnot] over a smart communication protocol [nomachine.com like]. I strongly believe that this will be the born of the new online based society, also it will the killer of Windows.
Finally, the writer becomes self aware. Wait and see!
You know, this guy who makes a living by getting his name in the press is completely, objectively correct. There's nothing Google can do with the FOUR BILLION dollars they raised in a (small) stock sale.
There's nothing left to invent in the world. There's nothing more we want from computing. There are no more improvements possible. Rampant spam, spyware, crummy messaging protocols like email and primitive IM are all that we want. We don't need access to more information in other dimensions of our lives, and all the Ph.D.s in the world are not going to find ways to improve our lives through computing.
Google, if you're listening, please understand: there are no more efficiencies possible in human society, at least through information management. The annual improvement of efficiencies of 4-10% per year noted by macro economists is all smoke screen. Stop making maps, phone-related lookup services, and archives of all the world's libraries. We simply don't want this information, or need it. Please stop trying. K THXS.
Sincerely, B. Gates
I have only one comment on this: BWA-HA-HA-HA!
But it'll never happen.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Seriously...can slashdot either rename itself to googledot.org or preferably STOP THE FUCKING GOOGLE SPECULATION STORIES!!!
Maybe Google has peaked, or maybe they're just in a bit of a valley right now (see the underwhelming debuts of GTalk and GDS 2). I can give that to Cringely. But Apple giving away copies of OS X?? Even old copies, especially old copies? That's insane. If they really wanted more market share Apple could just preload porn on all new video iPods.
I still remember when he conned a TV company into letting him build a plane and he made some huge mistakes. but the best part was when he almost hit the camera crew threw his own inner anger and no provication from them whatsoever. Clearly a bit unbalanced under stress and this is IT were stress and work go hand in hand.
Hence I think he is just jelous, simple as and sheeping it with oh lets slag {insert latest biggest name} as was the case with IBM then Microsoft and now he feels its googles turn. Seriously its sad when you cant be constructive and have to be deconstructive just to justify your existence.
Go back to being creative and constructive calmly Robert, you have potential without going down the tabloid sheep route.
Everybody is rooting for brilliant convergence, but Google is a such a mess nowadays, it's just not going to happen.
Google Video is a ratty service, even for a beta, I've regretted the time I spent uploading content. No way it's going to shine.
Google Talk is a callback to 1995.
Picasa and Hello are glued messily together, and posting from Hello is flaky.
There's a bushel of great services too, but the whole Google concept is just all over the place.
Now is the winter of our disco tent
...not until Sergey Brin and Larry Page jump over a shark tank on their motorcycles... After that there'll be a cute but irritating cousin who comes to live with them, and after that, they all move to LA and take up professional surfing and crimefighting.
THEN it's all over. Or at least has jumped the shark... Same thing.
Who did what now?
Last week (i believe) Google announced selling more than $4 *billion* in stock. From the company: "We anticipate that we will use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes, including working capital and capital expenditures"
General corporate purposes? Yeah right. Google is likely up to something big. And it isn't going to end with maps and im (my personal guess is an os). If goog hasn't peaked, they certainly are going to make a lot of noise falling.
This has to be a new low. "I don't know what Google are doing, so I'll write about how I don't know what Google are doing!"
I thought this "OS X on generic Intel boxes" thing had been done to death? How are Apple going to solve the driver problem? Giving away a free older version that doesn't work with half your hardware is going to make a negative impression, not a positive one.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I think they did a study of people who did sucessful start ups and found they didn't do much better than average on subsequent start ups. I don't think it would matter much if the subsequent start ups are done internally. Of course some people or companies can get lucky but you shouldn't confuse luck with genius.
That's why they're busily copying every "portal" feature from their superior competitor
They're pretty slow off the mark then. Yahoo had the "X-Cam Pop-Under ad" feature years back, and Google *still* haven't implemented it.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
to bring you a message of great importance:
It's not the tech, you armchair pundits. Microsoft has peaked, Google has peaked; it's all fluff and bullshit.
The ONLY lasting code Microsoft has ever produced, the ONLY code that has made them their billions, is the contracts that utterly bind people like Michael Dell to pre-loading Windows on every box they sell. It has never been about value or features or stability or security.
As long as Mr. Dell and the others in his position must load Windows on the machines they sell Apple and Linux are fucked.
The sooner you tech heads stop salivating for $500 video cards and SATA-150 drives and educate yourselves about Joe and Jane Blow and the others who buy 99% of the machines in this world the sooner you'll stop looking stupid. This is why Mr. Dell is Mr. Dell and you're not.
What if Google's plan is to actually deliver on the 1990s promise of a "Web Desktop", one app at a time? They're doing it 1990s "spiral development" style, rolling out one complete feature at a time. Amassing the best (or #2 behind Apple) brand in the world, with a "Google feel" of simplicity, immediacy, and nonintrusion. When they lay a layer of association across their related apps, so their Earth model is related not only to your searches (including history of clicks) but also to your contacts and purchases, presenting your online life to you seamlessly wherever you "hit the Web", they'll have endrun Microsoft and everyone else in the "computer business". All those other companies will be merely component suppliers, and the customer relationship will belong to Google. Which is where every seller wants to be - so all those other vendors will have to go through Google to get to the customer. Without all the "evil" baggage of Microsoft, or "complicated" baggage of AOL. Of course, Google won't be able to totally monopolize that relationship, nor hold it forever without challenge. But they will be in the catbird seat for long enough to have all the advantages of perpetuating their power that incumbent market dominators get. It remains to be seen just how benevolent, and benign, is their ruling of that roost - if they achieve it.
--
make install -not war
i don't know...but it looks like the Google Hype has finally peaked.
Maybe now I can stop hearing about how google is going to rock the world and get back to using google to find stuff on the web.
... because even the most virulent (ahem) MS-loathers have to be aware that they're sounding a little stale these days. The sheer drama of a once-romantic company like Google making the transition from dewey-cheeked lass to, well, a grown-up company will fuel slashdot rants for years. This is mostly due to the dislike, on the part of so many users here, of the realities of what it takes to be a large, publicly-held, growing tech company (i.e., make money for the people who invested so much cash, solidify the brand, beat or absorb competition, and show that you have what it will take to continue to grow indefinately). The real drama comes from Google's original "no evil" clause, coupled with the completely rudderless definition of "evil" as used by slashdotters. Thus will Google simply become a canvas on which to paint every argument about capitalism, openess, income disparity, regulation, monopolism, liberalism, conservatism, and operating system religions.
It's not so much the fun we'll have watching certain G-accolytes feeling betrayed. It's the fun we'll have watching so many people realize they've simply been projecting their own notions onto a company that's now so large and visible that the disconnect will be obvious, even to those addled enough to have thought that there could be something that big, "free," and still beyond the reach of normal economic realities. We're not seeing Google "peak," we're seeing the Google fanboy fantasy peak. I use their tools dozens of times every day. As a surfer, as a consultant, as a merchant, as a consumer, as a driver, as a communicator... but for some reason, as much as I'm impressed with pretty much everything they do, I've not ever quite heard the siren song that so many others seem to hear. I'm always impressed, but not so much seduced. Perhaps it's because I don't have the abiding hatred for Google's competition found in so many others - that makes the whole issue less emotional, I think.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I dunno, the article sounds rather like pretty wild speculation to me.
Consider the source...
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
hey fucktard, robots.txt
Dude, it's right here. That's the beauty of Google and why I like it so much. You only have to use the features you want to, no fuss and no muss.
And all of these weird features like e-mail and road maps that they're tossing out there all willy-nilly in obvious desperation are really, really cool. Really.
Yahoo also has e-mail, road maps, an IM service, and so on, and they're not exactly threatened as a company, at least not right now. And what about Microsoft? It's got all that, plus a highly complex operating system, a very high-level office productivity suite, development tools, etc. ad nauseum, but it's anything but struggling at the moment.
I liked this comment. I think it hit a lot of it on the head.
Do this, go to mycroft and install some other search engines. Teoma is good, ask jeeves is good, msn search is good, yahoo is good. Try them out, just for a few days. See how the net works for you. for me it's almost a revelation at times, you find different stuff. Google is nice but there are other good searches too and some of them might be better than google. Google is like a security blanket, it's always there, fast, it has street cred (they run GNU/Linux, it's ad lite, etc..) my fingers effortlessly type it on the URL prompt.
They need to not be too cocky, they need to do other things. Between yahoo and ms, I'd be worried if I was google. Not so worried I didn't take chances but definitely worried about letting my guard down or getting into some market I didn't know inside-out. The tides can turn fast. What on earth would make them a competitor to MS? Other than MSN Search and Hotmail? MS makes and sells software, operating systems, dev tools and applications, lot's of it. Google doesn't even have control over a browsing platform. The biz community wants another MS, badly, but google isn't it, not any time soon.
"but mooooommmmm, im peaking!"
It may just be the beginning. Didn't they try to hire one of the OS people from MS? Also google labs says:
....blablabla
Passionate about these topics? You should work at Google.
algorithms
artificial intelligence
operating systems
This does not give a definite answer to anything and it could imply lots of other things but it is a good clue. Everything they are doing shows that they are far far from done.
Interesting Read, if you're fond of raving. Like much of the "stories" and "articles" that abound on the 'net, radio, and TV; this is one person's completely misleading opinion backed by the sketchiest of facts.
Google is just getting warmed up. They did not create 'a brain drain in the industry' (too tired to link to more slashdot, go look), snatching up the most talented people with good wages, just to peak at this stage.
As any geek who's been watching and analyzing google for awhile (I'm sure there are plenty of us here!) knows intrisically, Google is just warming up.
Maybe we don't 'know' what they plan to do. However, if they keep developing these highly effective solutions, and tie them together, the masses will soon have a completely different view on what the computer can be used for.
They're already touted by a large % of geeks (read: tech-savvy-users). As all their 'developing projects' evolve, we will see some decisive corporate actions. As for the 'black box' ... well, If I planned to knock microsuck from their throne of power, I wouldn't let the cat out of the bag, either.
I mean, shit, to many of us slashdotters, 'microsoft' and 'evil' are interchangable words.... so it certainly fits in with "do no evil" :^p
A couple fans told me that my last journal entry was mint; give it a shot. Hope you like.
I really don't give a shit.
Much like Digital they only employ people who "get it" when it comes to technology and real innovation. Theire chosen back end OS? Linux. Wise choice especially on the technical end. Unfortunately, there are some people who think that technology should exist for business and that's when things go sour. That's what happened to Digital. They were run by some of the most brilliant engineers, but they hhad to compete against other companies run by suits who only care about making money and not advancing technology or society. Most of the time techs can't beat suits at business. Let's hope this isn't the case with Google. I really like seeing companies that are more focussed on moving technology forward and less focussed on insane profit. (Yeah, I know they make a lot of money from ads, but they apparently aren't totally focussed on it because they've been coming out with the most innovative stuff due to their sole focus on the advancement and innovation with technology.)
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
What if Cringely came to work one day and couldn't think of a single bit of unfounded speculation, or a single word of bizarre Apple cheerleading? So far there are no signs of this happening, but what if it did?
Cringely is such an ass.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
has the amount of Google stories posted on Slashdot peaked? Insiders say no and also point out dupes, inflammatory stories and Zonk blogs are also on the rise. CmdrTaco was unavailable for comment. CowboyNeal was quoted as saying, "[CmdrTaco] is laughing all the way to the bank".
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
God damn, the company is just a few years old. It's like watching a nervous parent with a baby: "OMG he just cried! is he hungry? is he STARVING?!!?" (baby sneezes) "OMG! is he sick? is he DYING?!?!?" Fucking A, give'em a couple years, OK?
Has journalism always been like this? Were there articles 95 years ago asking stupid questions like "Does Ford's lack of a steam vehicle spell the death of this company?"
If anything, the success of MS has shown us that you don't even need smart people and good products to maintain a lead. (No offense to the many bright people at MS.) Even if Google has peaked (which I really, really doubt; I think they're just warming up) they can coast along profitably for decades and if they survive that long, it will have a lot more to do with marketing and general business acumen than whether the quality of their products is improving, declining, or staying the same.
Look around your neighborhood. See all those restaurants? See how some close in 2 years and some stay open for 20? It has little to do with the quality of the food. I'm sure everyone has a restaurant they thought was great that is gone. (Me, I miss Darby Dan's in SSF. Unbelievably good sandwiches.) It has to do with luck, skill, circumstances, and a million other things. As long as the food doesn't make people sick, you've got that base covered. Everything else depends on these other things.
And, even if google has peaked, so fucking what? I think everyone on this board agrees that their search engine alone makes the Internet 100x more useful than it was 5 years ago. And as long as they have enough brainpower to keep pumping out nifty things like google maps, I'm happy.
(Note that I say all this as a big fan of Cringely in general. Here's one of many reasons.)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The question of what those 600+ PhDs are doing is quite a natural one. It seems that it takes that much brain power to keep the system running smoothly. Can you imagine how difficult is to mine the daily amount of data that is produced? or intelligent ways to foil google spammers? or to distinguish what is dark web garbage from what is dark web gold?
Microsoft history's shows that a company can grow tremendously big on the basis of a single insight that is never replicated (the single insight of M$ is "software is where the money is, not hardware").
Google's hasn't even had a single unique insight. The Page ranking algorithm (which is quite clever), was more or less independently co-discovered by Altavista. The rest has been good execution over an Inktomi-style platform. But the point is, that this is all Google might ever need. Good execution and rather incremental hidden improvements.
Followed by some defensive fudging to link the "hardcore search" mantra with the current portalization of google. Interesting note at the page bottom:
What the recent NCSA study showed, contrary to the slashdot interpretation, is that Google remains very vulnerable to keyword spammers, while Yahoo is quite good at muting them.
Google is no longer a clear-cut leader in search, and they are branching out to the full spectrum of portal services. And it's not clear that they will succeed in these new areas.
I'm very grateful to Google for increasing the demand for engineers, pressuring other companies to ramp up engineering and prioritize innovation, and teaching the world that giant flashing gifs and paid placement listings were not the way to go. And Google Maps shows that Google is still capable of giant leaps forward.
I'm puzzled, however, by the level of Google fanboyism on slashdot. I guess a lot of you were "imprinted" by Google back in the Dark Ages of search when nothing else worked right, and cannot see them objectively.
What if search and PageRank and AdSense are Google's corporate apex.
That's probably true, but it's completely irrelevant. There are still countless areas in which they can APPLY PageRank and AdSense.
In our company it's Linux that's killing Microsoft, not Apple.
And it appears that we are not alone: according to our web site stats Linux desktop is used by 8% of the users, Apple - about 2%. Somehow I doubt that Apple's recent architecture change will help increase Apple's user base, more likely the opposite will happen.
As for iPod... I think Archos 20GB Gmini is a better option (tiny and under $170).
The other reason the Intel move hurts Microsoft is less subtle. By switching to Intel, Apple hurts development on the new Xbox360. Right now development is done on Apple G5s probably because of the similiarity in chip architectures. By moving away from PowerPC, Apple makes it harder for game companies to develop. Sure developers could probably use something else like Intel emulating PowerPC or an IBM PowerPC machine. But the later is very expensive ($5K a piece) and the former doesn't provide for real-world simulations.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
is gonna hurt microsoft???!!
i mean how?? All ppl are going to do is play music and video files from within the OS. So how is it that consumers will be exposed to the rest of the supposedly great features of OS 10.4. Why would they even bother?? Unless the IPOD's plan is to morph into a PDA, there is no reason for people to do anything else other than multimedia.
Even if this works out, all this will do is sell more IPODS nothing else.
Sig Under Construction
I hope Google makes it to the top. With a name like that, even Babies can pronounce it! With all jokes aside, Google has turned from being a decent search engine, to what a standard of search engines should be for all the others. I personally have Desktop 2 beta, Stayed up all night and pressed refresh on google.com/talk till I could download it, and I use google maps on a daily basis (I freak out my friends that are computer illiterate that I can watch them with google satellite maps).
Just me
"Every one of those iPods is a bootable drive. What if Apple introduces OS 10.5, its next super-duper operating system release, and at the same time starts loading FOR FREE the current operating system version -- OS 10.4 -- on every new iPod in a version that runs on generic Intel boxes? What if they also make 10.4 a free download through the iTunes Music Store?"
An operating system without programs is pointless. Linux already offers a good (in some ways superior) os with all the programs you will ever need. The uptake on the desktop has been glacial. What makes Cringely think people would download and use an Apple os any more readily than they already download Linux?
He may be right about one thing. Usually people are lucky if they get one good idea in a lifetime. Look an Einstein. A couple of good papers and then he spun his wheels for the rest of his life. Google could well be the same. I sure wouldn't bet money that they will have many more groundshaking innovations.
Cringely is underestimating the value of the human resource. Google now has a ton of very very smart people working for it, and it gives them a lot of freedom with which operate. Past experience with Bell Labs and Xerox PARC shows that such an environment can produce big innovation that results in huge corporate value. Xerox failed to capitalize on their innovations, but that was a management problem. Google is smarter--they throw their innovations into the marketplace ASAP to see what sticks.
Long-term, the most important aspect of a company's value is its people. Good people can innovate their way around industry crashes and dead-ends. Look at IBM and Microsoft for examples in the computing industry. Google has great people.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Cringely probably has a secret working relationship with Apple, or is still friends with Steve Jobs and wants to downplay the significance of Google to the market.
His column sounds more like wishful thinking on his part than anything of predictive value. Mark wants Apple to defeat Microsoft and become king of the hill - not Google. He's dreaming. Google is poised to become the next Microsoft.
There are a few obvious wrongs in this article:
You don't just do that unless you have some sort of a plan. It may be long term (rather than short term, which is all analysts in the US tend to care about... unlike their european or asian counterparts)... but it's unlikely there is no plan.
I'd suggest it's infrastructure. The "google grid" everyone talks about. They were interested in Fiber, have interest in open source... use massive amounts of bandwidth and disk space like it costs nothing... hey guess what: they are building a network unlike any other. By having this massive network they have the brute force necessary to outdo any competition. If MSN decides to offer 10GB email accounts or online storage... Google can easily outdo them. It's having the means to do anything they want.
Um... no. Blogger, Keyhole, Picasa, DejaNews, ZipDash, Where2, Urchin, Dodgeball, Applied Semantics... yea, they buy quite a bit.
I think they will buy more as well. Skype, Technorati, My Way, even Napster is a potential target (music integration via subscription), or Real.
They are building a platform. It's never been done on this scale before. Not an OS, but a Platform. A web based, grid or services and utilities that can easily be tapped to store, retrieve, process, and analyze information.
That's what Google is up to.
The big draw of OS X, and one of the big reasons why it rocks and Windows sucks, is compatibility. Getting device drivers to work, and to work well with each other, is the biggest nightmare to stability and ease of use ever invented.
I can't imagine that these people who continually suggest that Apple get OS X working on commodity Intel boxes have ever really used Macs. Apple doesn't sell a computer--they sell a user experience. Seriously. From the moment you plug the computer in, you're in a little Apple dream world, full of eye candy and "everything works" and stuff that's easy to use. Do you think replicating that experience on commodity Intel boxes is easy, much less even possible? Do you think that Apple would want to risk their image on such an outrageous gamble? Not a chance.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
...really all about?
in comparison to a few other computer industry companies, google still ain't very big. In fact they are rather small.
What was Bill Gates last estimated personal worth? 30 Billion or so?
And this 4 billion company stock... compairs to that how?
And lets not forget the oil business... don't forget the price of oil is rising as the US free up a country rich in oil and we all know its money going to terrorist who want to kill us...(rolls eyes)
Get a perspective people, I'm sure those blowing this google grain of sand into a mountain are really just trying to suppress competition before it really become competition in their ballpark.
Maybe there should be a more genuine measure of why this is happening. Such that might just expose googles support for open source to be a reason for such an attack by proprietary forces...
I can easily think of half a dozen things Google could be up to that would really and genuinely threaten the half ass sudo programmer and "how to deceive the public to spoon feed tech" industry....
Considering MS is a marketing company first and formost, second a legal research "what can we get away with or pay small fines compaired to what we gain" market backing and a innovation buyer (not an innovator)...is it really that hard to be better than that?
IS being better than that something for that to fear?
Sure!
So where is this attack on google really comming from?
...a once-romantic company like Google making the transition from dewey-cheeked lass to, well, a grown-up company...
:-)
It's not so much the fun we'll have watching certain G-accolytes feeling betrayed....
I find it humorously appropriate that as I read through this post of yours, my iTunes random playlist switched to one of the sadder, more tragic tracks from the "Revenge of the Sith" soundtrack.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
first stage (2006-2007):
.net dev tools on mac.
Mac on X86 comes out. a lot of mac users buy the new systems.
the mac X86s cost about the same as dell machines (since apple does not pay OS tax to MS and other third party software vendors like dell does) a lot of linux users buy macs to run linux.
power windows geeks buy these macs to run mac and win via dual boot.
second stage (2007):
virtualization software like vmware or wine are ported to osx on mac - windows users start to buy these systems and use win on top of mac osX. many ipod users that hav'nt made the switch now do.
high optimization type application developers who have not developed for mac befor now have no reason not too (games, video, cad) and cross develop for macs.
third stage (this might happen early or it might happen too late)- microsoft wakes up - makes a virtual PC+vista version that is targeted twards X86 mac systems running osX. if MS doesn't do this in an elegant way, wine supercides windoes and locks MS out of that game.
fourth stage (2010) by this time there is no reason not to run a mac rather then windows since 99%+ of the applications are nativly coded for mac osX, those that don't (legacy apps) run via virtualization - people use WIN virtualization apps less and less.
now apple systems cost LESS then PC systems since apple buys such a large ammount of chips from intel that they can get a much lower price for componants then all the pc companies, including dell (don't laugh, look at the mp3 market, same thing - apple gets better prices for flash componant) at this point dell starts to lose money - unless they do something drastic. ms gets most of it's revenue from selling mac software.. and ported
steve jobs leave the CEO and remains chairman - runs for california GOV, and wins. a week later he declars war on washington state.
at this point apple sells more computers then dell and all the other companies combined. apple becomes a bigger company then MS. infact apple becomes larger then any other company in history.
stage five: the DOJ hits apple with a second monopoly charge (they'll hit apple with an ipod monopoly charge sometime in the next two years..).
(though by the time this happens steve is alwredy US president, changes the US political system and becomes dictator)
stage six: ummm.. donno the crystal ball is pretty hazy now.
cringely seems to be pretty proud of himself for predicting apples shift to intel, so if this prediction is just as accurate, it seems that (1.) cringely is going to speculate googles peaking yearly from now on until (2.) google finally peaks in 2025 in which point cringely can publish "i told you so"-article.
Yeah, maybe.
But how about YAHOO?
Jesus, you NEVER hear anything bad about Yahoo.
It's the same news media pundits, yet they are so utterly softball in their critiques of Yahoo, and then engage in relentlessly NEGATIVE speculation about Google.
Hmmm...
Weird.
Funny how your disdain for "the most virulent (ahem) MS-loathers" sounds like, well, their own disdain. Indeed, you spew out the tired old /. over-mind crap as freely as those you are whining on about. Sounds like a little projection of your own there, chap.
No, I'm not being facetious, I know about Cedega but really hadn't really considered it before. A quick browse of their database shows that City of Heros does indeed run on it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to try it out. Thanks, man, and I'm glad to see that someone modded you up, though I would have gone with Informative... :-)
I think it's clear that Google Labs will be what Bell Labs was 30 years ago. Trust me, we haven't even seen a fraction of what they are currently working on. You can doubt what they are doing all you like, it doesn't change the fact that they are packed with talent. Perhaps they will not be as hugely profitable as they have been with AdSense, Bell Labs never made great profits, but I have no doubt they will be the most innovative place on the planet for the next 10 years.
Last I heard, Google was working on an improved way of doing machine translation. If they manage to get it to the point where it can translate from one language to another as well as a moderately competent human translator can... the breakthrough would be as powerful as Google itself (i.e., the search engine) was.
Of course, some people would say that such a powerful machine translator cannot exist a priori, but I guess time will tell :-)
>|<*:=
Robert X. Cringely confirms: Google is dying!
You can't handle the truth.
The saying "games drive the market" really is about the rapid upgrade cycle of the home user. Its a great way for intel, nvidia, and the rest to say "See, thats why you need this new chip. You cant play this game!" Its the old keeping up with the jonses strategy and it works.
Back in the day, Apple thought it could get OS dominance by giving away machines to schools and selling pricey GUI driven machines to business. Well, it ends up that its very convienent for people to buy a computer that runs some of the stuff they run at work to do work at home. MS had a good start in the business world and it just translated into the home market.
Not to mention the x86 architecture was much more hacker friendly than Apple's offerings at the time. That's still true today.
Lastly, the game companies are developing in DirectX anyway so they seem to have drunk the kool-aid with the rest of the industry.
Certainly not on Slashdot ... judging by the number of stories were subjected to on a daily basis.
Or better, are they the same person? Has anyone seen them in the same place at the same time (and survived with enough sanity intact to report the fact? I didn't think so). But both of them seem to subsist on pompously worded pointless "conventional wisdom challeging."
Is "T" actually a vowel? What if paper money was edible? Is it already? Dispite what most city dwellers think, most of the worlds buildings are still only one story tall! And made-up words--are they really neologisms, or is everyone just crumulous?
Is this tabloid journalism for the neo-technoploobi, or something...more sinister.
Inquiring minds want it to STOP.
--MarkusQ
Why? Because he hates Microsoft and loves Apple. Both MS and Google have a shitload of money to invest and both have tons of stuff they can do with their money. But if Google really wants to take on both MS and Apple, and even Intel, I think I got an excellent suggestion for them.
In my opinion, Intel and the rest of the big processor vendors can only come up with so many incremental improvements before they bore the market to death. Microsoft is mired in buggy code that they'll never be able to fix. Apple is playing second fiddle in the market. So what comes next?
I suggest that Google starts working on the biggest problem facing the computer industry today: unreliable software. It's costing us billions of dollars and even human lives. Consider that the basic architecture of the processor has not changed in more than 150 years, when a guy named Babbage and his girlfriend Ada built their mechanical computer around the "table of instructions". All processor architectures have been based on and optimized for the algorithm ever since.
A truly innovative architecture would abandon the algorithmic model altogether and embrace a non-algorithmic, signal-based synchronous software model. It would not only revolutionize the computer industry, it would solve its nastiest problem: software unreliability.
But can we really expect the big guys (Intel, AMD, IBM, etc...) to be truly innovative at this stage of the game? Their approach is evolutionary, not revolutionary; and they are doing just fine as it is. They have no great incentive to change. Hopefully, a bright upstart will get the message and make a killing while the behemoths are busy fighting each other for market share. They won't know what hit them until it's too late. The message is simple: There is a solution to the software reliability crisis. The disadvantage is that it will require a radical change in both processor architecture and software construction methodology. The advantage is too good to ignore: 100% software reliability! Guaranteed!
This is the stuff that revolutions and great companies are made of. After a century and a half, I think it's time for a change. He who has an ear (and the venture capital) let him hear!
What are they DOING in all those buildings with all those PhDs?
Apparently not thinking much about Linux.
In fact, I don't think most of those supposed smart people working for Google even understand Linux. Alot of hype, that's all it is.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Think of all the information in publishing house catalogs that can't be easily accessed (by easily; I mean instantly, not free).
Print.google, when it was up for the beta, had the promise of offering instant access to books.
Images.google works, and works well. News.google.
Google is just getting started; there's soo much information out there and no really great way to access it all on a whim - except, that is, google. Making the world's knowledge available instantly is what google is about, and they're doing a great job. Nobody else has even come close.
Nobody likes you when you're mopping the floor with everybody else, but that's exactly what google is doing.
..don't panic
The problem with Google is that they are not diversified enough. They only have ONE revenue stream from Adsense. Google Search and to a lesser extent, Gmail, are the vehicles driving it.
Now what? Desktop Search, Google News, Gtalk, Picasso, Gmaps, GEarth are all interesting apps/services, however, they...don't...make...money.
Microsoft has like 10 different revenue streams, some completely separate from Windows (e.g. Xbox), so does Apple and so do most companies who are smart. Even Yahoo has diversified, offering paid services, making deals with cable providers. Google is very very dependant on search.
'Nuff Said.
The point is - It's not only you putting your own name on websites YOU control, it's everyone else who mentions your name on their website - Employers, friends, enemies, yellow or white pages, clubs and organizations you may belong to, forums, chatrooms, IRC logs, blogs, blog comments, guestbooks... The point is that restricting others' access to information about you is only possible to a certain degree. The best way to control it isn't to give your real name out on the internet if you don't have to and be aware of where your name is. Certain organizations publish member lists; if your name appears on a web-accessible membership list and you don't want it there the best way is to notify the webmaster of that site.
Ever since it was Exposed that Mr. Cringely blatantly lied about having a PhD and being Stanford professor, I don't think anybody cares about his opinion anymore.
Once a google fanboy, ALWAYS a google fanboy
Personally, I don't think it's the hatred of other companies that drives Google fanboyism (I'm a fanboy myself, I'll admit it).
What makes it exciting for me is that they are the one company, at this point in time, that seems to have that innovative drive along with the resources to fund those ideas. I don't have Microsoft or Yahoo... they just appear to have lost their drive. They improve their products, but they always seem to be in lockstep behind Google. (Some examples: Yahoo releases Search. Google releases search plus Page Rank. Now Yahoo does their own version of Page Rank.)
What makes us nerds excited is true innovation. What makes us more excited is innovation that WORKS. Google seems to be committed to this vision. Who knows? Maybe they'll go the way of Yahoo when it transitioned from innovator to large, corporate company.
On a final note, I don't think people here are blindly devoted to Google. I think it's that western sort of competition that drives us to like the innovator, the little guy, the people who make it and keep it exciting. If Google becomes stale, if they become a more settled company with little innovation, then we will be looking for The Next Big Thing.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Red Hat's secondary offering was successful, and they are still enjoying the cash reserve move than 5 years later.
...has the number of Google stories per day on Slashdot reached its peak?
Google can't find out anything about you if they can't track you with a cookie.
You don't NEED cookies to do most things with Google. (Unlike some other web sites which either fail to function or give you a page saying that you need to turn on cookies.)
You can use Firefox's "allow for session" option if you need to set language, turn off safe filtering, etc.
Of course, you need to avoid using any Google services (such as Gmail) that require a login.
I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of OS X sales are to current Mac users who are upgrading; this has to be paying for the development of OS X. If they start giving it away, the R&D money will dry up or have to be taken from iPod sales and I doubt that's a financial position Apple wants to be in.
The drive/support issue has also been brought up by others here; why would Apple want to have to support all the weird mongrel hardware that might exist in any random PC?
Finally, some technical issues: the iPod's little hard drive simply wasn't built for continuous use and would probably diie fairly quickly if you tried running your OS off it. The PC would have to have be able to boot from USB and new ones all seem to be able to do that, there are many, many PCs just a few years old that are powerful enough to run OS X well, but whose BIOS's don't suppoort USB booting.
Trying to tie OS X to the iPos would just be silly; it'd take no time at all for someone to make an DVD ISO image of it and out it on all the toorrent sites.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
I wonder what kind of qualifications it is exactly that one needs to be one of their "Blog Reporters"...
Oh, and the google talk backend is Jabber, as I'm sure you're aware. Jabber can act as an intermediary with other protocols, including the ones used by AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc. If they are smart, they will make use of these features and advertise single sign-on for all services...this has the potential to be a lot less cludgy than gaim.
once you go slack, you never go back
He believes Microsoft's greatest threat may come from Apple, in that case I believe he may be living in the past, thinking companies of the past may pose the largest threats. What if people like him are wrong, and Google's mission and their web services is the model for many future IT companies, and the actual hardware you buy will start playing less of a role than it once used to? Even today, I notice myself buying brand new computer systems far less than before. Not even the games (and yes, it's modern games) require a new computer as often as they used to. More often than not, it's just about a new graphics card if anything at all, not about upgrading your 8 MB ram to 16 MB like you used to. You can often keep running with the 512 MB you bought four years ago.
And when it's about web services, it's their hardware that matters, not Apple's. It seems like the author is putting an awful lot of trust in that hardware markets will decide everything, in an age when web services become more and more complex.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Has Google peaked? What!? Who dared violate the Eleventh Commandment? Google is on its way to free WiFi for like, everyone, and taking over the freakin' world! Of course it hasn't peaked! Of course...it has now, thanks to t3h slashd0t effect.
perhaps i'm alone in feeling this way, but no company has a soul. none. any corporation in our capitalist economy has one goal: create a return for investors (or, make money).
what does this have to do with google? simple. a company like google saying 'do no evil' is the most banal meaningless and baseless statement ever, unless you've seen the shell ads talking about 'human power' and 'alternative fuels'. there's absolutely no reason for google to 'do no evil', there's no market share that's based on the ability for a company to be 'evil free'.
where does that leave us? my feeling, and i feel very strongly this way, is that google (although they won't admit it) collects and aggregates marketing data, hoards of marketing data. because of their policy towards 'do no evil', they fail to recycle most of this data, other than for their own adsense network. once this stock plateaus, whenever that happens, they'll annonce that they're releasing their marketing data, lay off all their phd's, and the board/heads of the company will be instant billionares (as if they weren't already, but that's the way it works, the collection of capital, more capital.)
to break it down:
1) collect marketing data
2) ipo
3) plateau
4) release marketing data
5) $
Greg Albrecht (gba@undef.net) * -0700 GMT/UTC
http://undef.net
Peaked? What kind of drugs is Google on?
What problems have they solved for you personally and other Slashdot readers?
Did you actively think not having a 1 GB e-mail account was a problem before GMail came along? Did you not manage to get any maps off the net? Did you not have other IM clients? Did you have a shortage adverts to put on your site (if you had/have one) to generate revenue?
They exploit niches. None of their 'products' are profound, but they've reawoken long forgotten tools (XMLHTTPRequest), and used existing ones like Javascript to their potential (circa Google Javascript was seen by most as dirty and evil and no good except for form validation). They've made adverts less intrusive, (although alot of sites don't place adsense very smartly). Everything they do is elegant, and clean - not excellent, innovative or terribly wonderful. I think that appeals to geeks more than anyone else.
I'm not anti-Google, I love what and how Google do things and use alot of their stuff. The way they create more buzz by disclosing less than most companies do with a marketing fanfare, that is genius.
Ok, is it just me or does Apple and Microsoft have anything to do with Google peaking as a company? That does not logically follow at all.
M.T.
"Support Bacteria - Its the only culture some people have" - Circa 1985
Come on guys. The guys at Google with fresh PhD's from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley are very very bright. But they're no more than that. WIth a few exceptions, there aren't any William Shockley's et al there.
Was waiting since early morning for an article on Google on /.!
Has there been a day without post on Google in the recent past?!!!!
i for one welcome our new peeked overlords
i have this hunch myself, that the mistery of what they are building in there isn't what's driving bill gates crazy. he already knows what google can do and that wakes him up at night sweating cold.
and what is that? you ask. well, my guess is simple: they're building google office (gOffice for shorts).
and what is that? it's a free service, accesible through the internet with the functional equivalents of word, excel, outlook and powerpoint. totally built on web standards so you can use it from any device with any operative system. e.g. good night bill
gOffice backs up the theory of a titanic datacenter. of course it will not come out next year but that is my guess and i'm very sure that in maybe less than a decade you all will be linking to this very post saying 'this has been predicted before'
what do you think?Next stop Google OS. Baset on? Not linux i hope. Something new and innovative... And BRILANT that will run on PS3? =) Who cares!
Then perhaps "peaked" is the wrong word to toss around here.
The porn market, eh? Now THAT'S an industry in which Google has the potential to experience large growth, but the road ahead would be long and hard. Any thoughts at this point would be premature, don't you think?
But if they do manage to penetrate that market, they should give themselves a hand--job well done!
I likewise feel that Google has peaked. Their search rocks, period, and lately they have been building their portfolio. Some are pretty impressive (Earth) and some are lackluster (Gmail, Talk).. I feel it's time for a little decline in the stock price.
Sounds like a little projection of your own there, chap.
I can see how it might have come across that way... except that you can't swing a dead cat around Slashdot without hitting someone who refers to "M$", curses the evil Bill Gates, actually burns up sig space with their personal MS-bashing jihad, etc. Of particular note, I'm seeing more and more people here actually bitch and joke when they see nerd news about Google - a sign that I think I'm on to something, and am not the only person noticing it.
It's just a matter of time before we see people spelling Google like "GOOG£E" (since you used "chap" I thought I'd go Brit there for a second - hope the symbol displays correctly on your browser so I don't look, to you, like even more of an ass!).
Anyhow, my "disdain" is really just more of a simple observation. If you pay attention to those comments, they're pretty much self-disdaining, if you know what I mean.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Well, at least he is jealous of Steve Jobs. Have you noticed how each new Windows release really just tries to copy the last Apple release? XP followed the Mac "Aqua" look. Pretty, see-through windows will only be the next example. Expect Windows to have a built in "dashboard" of little applets also. (They've been in Linux, but that didn't drive the Bill crazy.)
Remember Gates and Jobs go way back and I think, despite the money that Gates has gotten, mostly coincidentally, he still feels inferior to Jobs. Steve has run more than one successful company, and, more importantly, he is loved by the public! The ipod is just icing on the cake.
Google will solve the payment problem. It will allow us to make secure payments over the internet. Amazon and iTunes are already on board... Skype didn't want in, they wanted to be bought, hence Google Talk...
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Rumours have it that Slashdot has peaked as a news site and will succumb further and further into dupes and meaningless yellow tidbits.
Microsoft has a very vivid face representing it. This face is Bill Gates. As evil as many people believe Gates is, everyone can agree on one thing. .. this is that we recognize him more then any other geek representing a tech company. Is it not true that as human beings we enjoy familiarity and consistent activities? Don't we love to hate Bill Gates? I think that this love hate relationship has build a substantial amount of trust over the years. Changing this evil face or adding another will just bring more fear to our *cough* *cough* happy little western lives.
Every, and I mean every tech company is hitting the media networks for new business. It's pretty ridiculous seeing all those salesmen from the 90's boom, again. And that's why goggle is saving the cash ($4bil), cause the media/entertainment industry has a high step in cost if you want to deal. Just ask any exec from Microsoft, Yahoo, and Apple, they are all going all out as we speak to grab this industry.
Over the past few years I've watched as Microsoft challenging products and technologies have emerged and how a segment of the press reacts to put it down often using talking-points (where DID that phrase come from really?) that seem orchestrated in a way that just reeks of Microsoft PR.
When Dr Dobbs was a pulp you'd see Gates quoted in some profound way and then, a year or so later, you'd find out that behind the scenes Gates had wrapped up the results well in advance so of COURSE he looked knowledgeable because he already knew what was going to happen.
Now I see the nay-saying whispering campaign coming down and have to wonder if the same whispering campaign is at work.
It sure worked for Rove! Why not for Microsoft?
Google was not first to the search engine game, either. The field was already dominated by AltaVista, Lycos, and a few others. Google simply introduced algorithims that produced more relevant results.
GMail rocks, if for no other reason than the fact that they aren't constantly bombarding you with email offers and newsletter sign-ups. With Hotmail and Yahoo, you have to wade through several pages of offers that you don't want between signing up and actually seeing your inbox for the first time, and then they allow you to filter out every one else's spam but theirs. Google's advertising in GMail is very discreet.
Your complaint about Desktop Search is similar to the complaint I have about GMail Notifier... you have to install it for ALL users, regardless of whether you're the only user on the computer who has GMail. Well, that and the fact that they didn't simulataneously release a Mac version of Notifier. Ah well....
So what's the half that I, Croak-it overlooked? He seems to have forgotten what a pestiferous lot of mangy, obstreperous, and just-plain shitful hardware the harmless-sounding phrase generic Intel boxes encompasses. Making that work well would cost Apple more than Crinkle-cut imagines (more, no doubt, than he can imagine); not making that effort would leave OSX on Intel a bad taste in so many mouths that it would indeed hurt the overall marketing push. The free version crashed a lot, and he expects me to buy his overpriced hardware and promises it will be better? Next you're going to tell me that Windows has a release schedule, right?
Sorry, Chumply. You have to engage your brain before you start typing... if you can.
try gentoo, and compile CVS wine with +lcms, for the little colour managment system. This does the CYMK stuff needed by PS.
so its just a myth that PS doesnt run under linux.
I would like to see more web sites adopt meta-data labelling standards and their presence be a factor in the ranking of the page. If more sensible pages had been indexed, Library-Of-Congress style (or whichever standard is adopted) then we would get many more relevant hits.
We would also get many people hacking the index by putting popular but irelevant meta-data into their pages... I haven't figured this one out yet. Perhaps if the meta-data is combined with some sort of AI that can read the page and judge if the tags are for-real, or just to seed the search engine... no this is far-out-future inovation stuff.
“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with nuclear bombs. We have a protractor.” — Neal Stepnenso
The PhD's Google hires will continue to be smart no matter what Google ends up doing. And Cringely? Well, he'll keep being Cringely, no matter what anyone does. I know which I'd bet on...
That is all.
If I've got to pick between a few evil companies then I'm going to pick the best one. If it's Google, then it's Google. For a while it was Microsoft, but they have lost steam, peaked, whatever. It kinda reminds me of a song that will torture me forever:
You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The facts of life, the facts of life.
There's a time you got to go and show
You're growin' now you know about the facts of life,
The facts of life.
When the world never seems to be livin up to your dreams
And suddenly you're finding out
The facts of life are all about you, you.
It takes a lot to get 'em right
When you're learning the facts of life. (learning the facts of life)
Learning the facts of life (learning the facts of life)
Learning the facts of life.
Get your Unix fortune now!
- Google's services are free
- The advertisements are not intrusive
- The search engine is very useful to me
- Gmail is simple to use and generous in terms of space
- The list goes on...
I don't care if their motto is "do no evil" or not. As long as I see and perceive no evil *AND* I like the service I'm getting, I see no reason to hate them.I'm not going to blindly follow some faceless comment or story telling me to think Google is evil *or* good. I make up my own damn mind!
If you can't mod them join them.
Here it is, we can start the official Google death watch, and we have our first entry. This is modeled after the Apple death watch which is over 40 failed predictions so far of Apple's demise. So here is our first prediction entered in the log.
http://goototal.blogspot.com/
NO
Then you are in the hands of overpriced authorized technicians.
WIth Linux and to some extent Windows, at least you can have a go and find the best and/or cheapest solution to a rpbolem.
With Apple you are stuck with one solution, the Apple, way, or you void your gurantee.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Are you sying that the only way to grow a company is by violating the law, being unethical and overhanded?
And do you want people not to hate that?
Who are you, Bill Gates?
Bill, you are a moron. Enjoy your billions but for pete's sakes don't even pretend that they were gained honestly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I don't remember the name of the company, but Google bought them out as well.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
MS is watching both Apple _and_ Google (as possible threaths), i thought that was pretty obvious.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
No, the point was that the world needs a google specific law to curb their upcoming evil. Bitch.
That one was a little sarcastic