I think I read somewhere that the number of miles driven in one single morning commute is something like 130 million miles. So, while 10 million miles is certainly impressive we aren't yet equivalent to 0.4% of a year's commuter driving (2 commutes per day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks per year). And, as previously pointed out, the Waymo miles are not driven in every set of road conditions in the US and are very controlled.
The real question we and they need to discuss is what is the amount of testing and user what conditions so that we as consumers can believe that this technology is well tested? Rain, snow, highways with bridges that ice before the roads do, heavy winds, dense fog, all need to be in the test conditions. Then add cities like NYC, where pedestrians don't yield the right of way and the many other edge conditions, like aggressive drivers doing stupid things.
If you want a great example of why the open source ecosystem is broken, look at how we value code versus documentation. We expect to get ten of thousands of lines of code - someone's labor - for free but will then pay O'Reilly $50 for the book explaining the software? So writing code has no value but writing a book about the code does? Yes, open source economics is broekn but it is really the value system of the programmers that has been warped.
I am an older tech guy. I remember reading a book in the 1970's that had a chapter addressing programmer productivity and studies that had been done. All showed that the best environment for programmers were small offices with doors that closed and phones that could be muted. Many, many studies since then have reconfirmed this but the trend for offices has been open space which is shown to reduce productivity. The reason for the office space trend is, of course cost. Later we came up with the rationale that these open offices helped collaboration. Studies over the last few years show that that isn't true either. Most folks in these environments have their headphones on and people talking are asked to go elsewhere. And, developers tend to collaborate over IM-type products as it allows sharing code and can be persistent so folks who were at some meeting can come back and pick up the thread.
It is like the idea you are more productive when you multi-task. Every single study shows this simply isn't true but folks want to believe it. Myths that make us feel good die hard.
Manufacturers are the root cause and economics are a big issue. If you sell a 40 or 100 dollar IoT device how frequently are you, the manufacturer, going to continue to provide updates and do so proactively? There is no ongoing revenue and only cost for doing that and the money/margins aren't there. Smartphones are not phones but computers that cost $600, yet we see manufacturers stop providing updates in 18-24 months (Apple excepted). Look at routers that are 2 years old or so rarely if ever do we see an update. On our PCs Microsoft provided updates to Windows XP for 7 years and so that is what consumers think is happening but it isn't. if we can't get smartphones updated after 2 years what hope is there of the $99 and $199 IoT devices.
Let's face it, getting manufacturers to provide updates for 5 or 7 years or more isn't going to happen. But it isnt just the device manufacturers. Devices now last a very long time and the economics of updates don't work for the makers. Cisco EOL'ed a perfectly fine firewall I had at our office. The hardware is just fine, I suspect the costs of building and testing new releases and updates for security issues was just too painful. Likely no one wanted to work on the old code, if there was even anyone who knew or understood it. I suspect programmers not wanting to do long term maintenance of old stuff and wanting to move on to the next new thing is part of the problem. Even there is it the device makers fault as well. promotions and high salaries go to the new stuff and maintenance is considered for the "dead enders", and those folks know they'll get laid off and their jobs off shored. So you have to move to the new projects and tech and leave a place that keeps you on maintenance.
And the regulatory/legal situation is also to blame. Read a shrink wrap license or any software license. They all say that the makers aren't responsible for the fact that its software and doesn't really work.
It needs to start with a legal framework gets rid of the shrink wrap licenses and denial of liability, forced arbitration and the like. But then we'd hear complaints about innovation being throttled and excess costs and the like.
But don't expect action from Congress as long as they can pass the buck to the FCC, FTC, CPSC, the companies, the Executive Branch, etc.
As tech people we tend to focus on the serious technical issues with electronic voting (OPM hack anyone???) when there is a bigger and real world issue - undue influence. When you go to the voting booth no one knows how you really voted. But if there is electronic voting, your boss or your union can set up a bank of systems and "encourage" employees to vote with official watching what they do. Do you want you boss / union boss watching over your shoulder? The real pressure and peer pressure are not to be discounted and is one of the reasons for the voting booths we have today. Political corruptions is easier when the voting process can be corrupted and this makes buying votes pretty easy.
- bettors look at the stats of the horse in previous races and against various competitors. Just like looking at stats for a QB, running back or wide receiver. - bettors look at the jockey and their results with different types of horses. similar to checking out the coach or how team mates impact results in football. - bettors look at the length of race and track conditions and how well a horse did in similar conditions. In football we look at weather, dome or not, on the road or at home.
Football games and results can be impacted by defense and horse races by how other horse block the path of a horse, or who rides the rail and which gate they get. Not perfect but all of the above show that fantasy sports betting and race betting are basically the same, with the fantasy guys doing a lot of marketing to try to create a new reality and promote their business as not being betting. But we all know better. In horse racing if we pick a trifecta based on all of these stats and past results it is *GAMBLING*. Fantasy sports is basically not different. It isn't a game of skill, but is as much a game of chance as horse race betting.
Since the mid 1970's every single study shows that the ideal work environment for programmers is a private office (even a very small one) where they can shut the door and mute a phone. Interruptions are the enemy of software productivity. Despite all the evidence, Silicon Valley pushes the open office concept. The rationale is that this improves collaboration, but studies have shown this is another myth and that collaboration isn't really improved by these office layouts.
We all know the reason for this is to save money on office space. But the real question to ask is given the talent shortage and the need to improve productivity is this a "penny wise pound foolish" approach.
If you have an Android phone or tablet and have plugged it into a large monitor you'll find that what you get is exactly what is on your screen magnified. The apps don't see that they can now display more items and things are just large. This is a fault of the Android UI system and not what you'd expect as a Linux or Windows user. Hopefully there is an Android update to fix this (was a problem at 5.0) or Samsung has some way to fix. It might need app changes in which case this device will be not just be huge but will also be hugely disappointing.
I saw this demo'ed at CES and Google made a serious mistake in capability. it turns out you can run only a small set of applications available on the market on Google TV 2.0. The reason for the limited selection is that Google TV 2.0 doesn't support touch/multi-touch. I asked the Google TV person why they weren't supporting multi-touch (at least 2 finger touch) from Bluetooth keyboards/keypads that could provide this capability and hence open up pretty much the full market to Google TV 2.0. he said the capability wasn't in the OS/libraries at all because some OEMs - he specifically mentioned Sony - couldn't support it in their devices. What an amazingly stupid decision. Build the capability into the OS and let the manufacturers with half a brain support it. Users will get most of the market apps and developers will have their lives made simpler as opposed to having yet another Android fragmentation issue to deal with. A truly stupid decision.
The key is that Microsoft is porting Windows to ARM. if you built you app with.Net and MS doesn't screw things up you should have an app that works on the ARM version of Windows 8. If that happens, then for MS and developers the entire.Net experience has been a HUGE win. MS will have a Win 8 ARM with a huge supply of apps and developers and developers will have access to the tablet market without having to do much new.
You are giving dropbox the rights to do whatever they want to with your content, according to this. All of thye examples are just that - examples. The terms give them the right to make the judgment on what they want to do. And, since they are free to change the privacy policy at will, just as they changed the TOS, you have no protections.
They can write this much more tightly to protect themselves and give you absolute control. The problem is that to do so it will be very long and "legalese" and not friendly/simple. They should protect their users and the users' intent in choosing the service and do whatever they have to do to deliver what you thought you were getting.
Another example of what "do no evil" really means: if Google benefits it isn't evil, right? Pretty amazing and inept theft of IP on Google's part and for being this inept and stealing so blatantly, Oracle will get billions. Shame that we Android users will have to pay for Google's theft.
The first rule of technology is that "If you don't canabalize your own business, someone else will do it for you". This is the classic tech product/company dilemna and we have lots of examples of dominant #1's who ignored this rule and are gone. Digital? Wang? Visicorp? Borland?
Just about every week we see another major security issue caused by a problem with Flash. Adobe isn't serious about security and doesn't know what to do to fix their products. For example, Javascript should be off by default in Reader, but it isn't. Last quarter something like 80% of serious attacks were through holes in Adobe products and the latest issue is with Downloader. Why allow a company and set of products that have shown themselves to be insecure onto the next generation of device where hackers can steal more personal data, run up changers and the like. Apple is trying to make our mobile devices more reliable and more secure than our PCs. It is time to dump Flash.
Amazing, the real world isn't like the lab. And, surprise, all of the theoretical results expected aren't going to be achieved in the real world. This is a great example of theory meeting the real world and should make us pause and reduce our expectations for benefits of going green. Yes, it is a good idea to reduce our energy consumption and carbon footprint. Bu no, we won't get the results in terms of energy savings, reduced emissions and job creation that the ardent proponents are telling us will be achieved and it will take longer than expected. Still worth doing, but don't believe the press releases and promises.
The best solution is not to use Google at all. They are indexing your email and will figure out who you are and who youtalk to about what. Use the calendar and they know where you are. Add the 6 months of browser history and you're screwed.
If you use this than Google has access to every single site or service you visit or use, even without the browser. For doing behavorial targetting of ads this is key. Most commercial behavior happens outside of the search engine and on a third party site. This gives them some of the ability to do what the folks at Nebuad wanted to achieve by doing deep packet inspection. If you use Google's DNS, they get to do tracking without having to get an ISP agreement and they'll say that your agreement to use implies consent to use the data "for their own use". SInce their use is to sell ads that can be finely targetted, they are in effect gainig the ability to offer an advertiser "for people who search for camera and have visited newegg or amazon..." or "for people who visit planned parenthood, put up this anti-abortion ad".
We used Symantec for years, but it just got too painful and I gave up on Symantec about a year ago. We used the Corporate version and it was slow and a resource hog. My kid's laptop had NAV and it was also a pig. I switched to Avast on the laptop and we're using Trend at work. Why should I give a vendor who for years gave me crappy software a second chance until I know that all of the alternative are worse. You have to earn and KEEP your customers respect and trust and not say "wait til next year". That only works for sports teams.
One of the issues with shortening URLs is that the search engines look at the URL and the words present in the URL to determine how to rank the URL. This works against the desire to shorten. For example having: "baseball/redsox/beckett" is important to get a higher ranking.
If you read Google's response, it is pretty clear that they are trying to obfuscate the issue. What they are talking about is paying to put servers and data inside the ISPs and so gain an advantage for their content. This is exactly the scheme that AT&T proposed and Google condemned. Their reply is a technical splitting of hairs and a diversion. Cache end servers, etc, is all just "we want our data to have higher access and priority and will pay for it". Admit it Google, you're busted.
What the Google reply really is, is an attempt to save face and avoid admitting that if they can gain business advantage, Google will dump "principle" for profit, just like every other corporation. They are afraid that this episode will expose their "do no evil" as merely a marketing slogan intended to fool folks. Busted.
Well, now that they've admitted that it all about money, maybe they can use the AdSense bidding system to help Governors automate the selling of Senate seats too!
There has been a lot of talk about "automating" our health care and records as part of a move to Universal health care. This example of employees improperly accessing phone records should be cautionary when we think about automating health care records. We need to have logs of all access to anyone's records. We need to have strong security models and patient notification of any and all access to records. And, we need to change the law so that the media *MUST* reveal the source of any information leaked from unauthorized records. I know the first amendment folks will cringe at any requirements of disclosure, but the press has no rights to access or publish this kind of information, especially when the government forces us to provide it.
I know Jerry and he is smart and insightful, but way too nice to be a CEO in an industry where he has to compete against SOBs like Ballmer and Schmidt. Jerry is polite and considerate. He is thoughtful and modest. The other guys are rude, arrogant, aggressive, nasty folk.
Jerry did a lot of useful changes, but what he didn't get that it is all about perception of being a leader and being on the path upward. A lot of the issue for the market is PR versus reality. And, let face it, search and search advertising are the things the market views as keys to future success and Yahoo has fallen further behind in this area. The decision to outsource search to Google by Yahoo may prove to be one of the top 5 greatest business mistakes of all time and Jerry has to share blame for that as well.
Jerry didn't move boldly enough, but his Board should have known that his base style wouldn't allow it. He should have reorg'ed immediately and publicly, giving folks ownership and accountability. You get the job but you get fired if you don't hit the goals. He let key services stagnate. Yahoo mail took too long to fix their UI to match Google and Yahoo still charges for POP access. Yahoo was the calendar leader, but Google launches a slightly better calendar and is viewed as the leader, even without a customer base. Yahoo Groups is a leader but is old and stale compared to something like Ning. There are lots of examples of how to upgrade their services out there for Yahoo and they seem to ignore them and let others steal mind share and leadership from them.
I fear that it is too late. Yahoo is the AOL of Web 2.0. It is only a matter of time.
Seems like Twitter would really get hammered by this. If they have to pay 3 cents per SMS, they are going to lose even more money. They had to stop offering UK service because of SMS charges. Since they have no business model or revenue, this could be serious.
Why would an advertiser bother with going to Yahoo to buy search ads, when they can go to Google and buy ads for both Yahoo and Google. This severs the relationship between Yahoo and the ad buyer and makes the buyer only go to Google. Soon, Yahoo is out of the search ad business entirely and it all goes through Google. What if Google changes rates, doesn't send the highest yielding ads to Yahoo, etc. Eventually Yahoo is at the mercy of Google, who promises to do "no evil", but perhaps "no evil" really means anything that hurts Google's revenue stream!
This deal is an admission of failure by Yahoo and says that they can't compete. Google has 70% of the market and is a monopoly. If search were PC software or cars, the government would be suing GOogle.
Apple seems to be doing a lot of pretty shoddy development and testing lately. The iPhone 3G had many, many well documented problems, the iTunes 8.0 update crashed Vista and now this. How can anyone release a WiFi product without testing WPA/WPA2? Amazing. Clearly they care more about glitz and PR than product quality.
Slashdot Mirror
I think I read somewhere that the number of miles driven in one single morning commute is something like 130 million miles. So, while 10 million miles is certainly impressive we aren't yet equivalent to 0.4% of a year's commuter driving (2 commutes per day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks per year). And, as previously pointed out, the Waymo miles are not driven in every set of road conditions in the US and are very controlled.
The real question we and they need to discuss is what is the amount of testing and user what conditions so that we as consumers can believe that this technology is well tested? Rain, snow, highways with bridges that ice before the roads do, heavy winds, dense fog, all need to be in the test conditions. Then add cities like NYC, where pedestrians don't yield the right of way and the many other edge conditions, like aggressive drivers doing stupid things.
We have a LONG way to go.
If you want a great example of why the open source ecosystem is broken, look at how we value code versus documentation. We expect to get ten of thousands of lines of code - someone's labor - for free but will then pay O'Reilly $50 for the book explaining the software? So writing code has no value but writing a book about the code does? Yes, open source economics is broekn but it is really the value system of the programmers that has been warped.
I am an older tech guy. I remember reading a book in the 1970's that had a chapter addressing programmer productivity and studies that had been done. All showed that the best environment for programmers were small offices with doors that closed and phones that could be muted. Many, many studies since then have reconfirmed this but the trend for offices has been open space which is shown to reduce productivity. The reason for the office space trend is, of course cost. Later we came up with the rationale that these open offices helped collaboration. Studies over the last few years show that that isn't true either. Most folks in these environments have their headphones on and people talking are asked to go elsewhere. And, developers tend to collaborate over IM-type products as it allows sharing code and can be persistent so folks who were at some meeting can come back and pick up the thread.
It is like the idea you are more productive when you multi-task. Every single study shows this simply isn't true but folks want to believe it. Myths that make us feel good die hard.
Manufacturers are the root cause and economics are a big issue. If you sell a 40 or 100 dollar IoT device how frequently are you, the manufacturer, going to continue to provide updates and do so proactively? There is no ongoing revenue and only cost for doing that and the money/margins aren't there. Smartphones are not phones but computers that cost $600, yet we see manufacturers stop providing updates in 18-24 months (Apple excepted). Look at routers that are 2 years old or so rarely if ever do we see an update. On our PCs Microsoft provided updates to Windows XP for 7 years and so that is what consumers think is happening but it isn't. if we can't get smartphones updated after 2 years what hope is there of the $99 and $199 IoT devices.
Let's face it, getting manufacturers to provide updates for 5 or 7 years or more isn't going to happen. But it isnt just the device manufacturers. Devices now last a very long time and the economics of updates don't work for the makers. Cisco EOL'ed a perfectly fine firewall I had at our office. The hardware is just fine, I suspect the costs of building and testing new releases and updates for security issues was just too painful. Likely no one wanted to work on the old code, if there was even anyone who knew or understood it. I suspect programmers not wanting to do long term maintenance of old stuff and wanting to move on to the next new thing is part of the problem. Even there is it the device makers fault as well. promotions and high salaries go to the new stuff and maintenance is considered for the "dead enders", and those folks know they'll get laid off and their jobs off shored. So you have to move to the new projects and tech and leave a place that keeps you on maintenance.
And the regulatory/legal situation is also to blame. Read a shrink wrap license or any software license. They all say that the makers aren't responsible for the fact that its software and doesn't really work.
It needs to start with a legal framework gets rid of the shrink wrap licenses and denial of liability, forced arbitration and the like. But then we'd hear complaints about innovation being throttled and excess costs and the like.
But don't expect action from Congress as long as they can pass the buck to the FCC, FTC, CPSC, the companies, the Executive Branch, etc.
As tech people we tend to focus on the serious technical issues with electronic voting (OPM hack anyone???) when there is a bigger and real world issue - undue influence. When you go to the voting booth no one knows how you really voted. But if there is electronic voting, your boss or your union can set up a bank of systems and "encourage" employees to vote with official watching what they do. Do you want you boss / union boss watching over your shoulder? The real pressure and peer pressure are not to be discounted and is one of the reasons for the voting booths we have today. Political corruptions is easier when the voting process can be corrupted and this makes buying votes pretty easy.
That is the key example. In horse race betting:
- bettors look at the stats of the horse in previous races and against various competitors. Just like looking at stats for a QB, running back or wide receiver.
- bettors look at the jockey and their results with different types of horses. similar to checking out the coach or how team mates impact results in football.
- bettors look at the length of race and track conditions and how well a horse did in similar conditions. In football we look at weather, dome or not, on the road or at home.
Football games and results can be impacted by defense and horse races by how other horse block the path of a horse, or who rides the rail and which gate they get. Not perfect but all of the above show that fantasy sports betting and race betting are basically the same, with the fantasy guys doing a lot of marketing to try to create a new reality and promote their business as not being betting. But we all know better. In horse racing if we pick a trifecta based on all of these stats and past results it is *GAMBLING*. Fantasy sports is basically not different. It isn't a game of skill, but is as much a game of chance as horse race betting.
Since the mid 1970's every single study shows that the ideal work environment for programmers is a private office (even a very small one) where they can shut the door and mute a phone. Interruptions are the enemy of software productivity. Despite all the evidence, Silicon Valley pushes the open office concept. The rationale is that this improves collaboration, but studies have shown this is another myth and that collaboration isn't really improved by these office layouts.
We all know the reason for this is to save money on office space. But the real question to ask is given the talent shortage and the need to improve productivity is this a "penny wise pound foolish" approach.
If you have an Android phone or tablet and have plugged it into a large monitor you'll find that what you get is exactly what is on your screen magnified. The apps don't see that they can now display more items and things are just large. This is a fault of the Android UI system and not what you'd expect as a Linux or Windows user. Hopefully there is an Android update to fix this (was a problem at 5.0) or Samsung has some way to fix. It might need app changes in which case this device will be not just be huge but will also be hugely disappointing.
I saw this demo'ed at CES and Google made a serious mistake in capability. it turns out you can run only a small set of applications available on the market on Google TV 2.0. The reason for the limited selection is that Google TV 2.0 doesn't support touch/multi-touch. I asked the Google TV person why they weren't supporting multi-touch (at least 2 finger touch) from Bluetooth keyboards/keypads that could provide this capability and hence open up pretty much the full market to Google TV 2.0. he said the capability wasn't in the OS/libraries at all because some OEMs - he specifically mentioned Sony - couldn't support it in their devices. What an amazingly stupid decision. Build the capability into the OS and let the manufacturers with half a brain support it. Users will get most of the market apps and developers will have their lives made simpler as opposed to having yet another Android fragmentation issue to deal with. A truly stupid decision.
The key is that Microsoft is porting Windows to ARM. if you built you app with .Net and MS doesn't screw things up you should have an app that works on the ARM version of Windows 8. If that happens, then for MS and developers the entire .Net experience has been a HUGE win. MS will have a Win 8 ARM with a huge supply of apps and developers and developers will have access to the tablet market without having to do much new.
You are giving dropbox the rights to do whatever they want to with your content, according to this. All of thye examples are just that - examples. The terms give them the right to make the judgment on what they want to do. And, since they are free to change the privacy policy at will, just as they changed the TOS, you have no protections.
They can write this much more tightly to protect themselves and give you absolute control. The problem is that to do so it will be very long and "legalese" and not friendly/simple. They should protect their users and the users' intent in choosing the service and do whatever they have to do to deliver what you thought you were getting.
Another example of what "do no evil" really means: if Google benefits it isn't evil, right? Pretty amazing and inept theft of IP on Google's part and for being this inept and stealing so blatantly, Oracle will get billions. Shame that we Android users will have to pay for Google's theft.
The first rule of technology is that "If you don't canabalize your own business, someone else will do it for you". This is the classic tech product/company dilemna and we have lots of examples of dominant #1's who ignored this rule and are gone. Digital? Wang? Visicorp? Borland?
Just about every week we see another major security issue caused by a problem with Flash. Adobe isn't serious about security and doesn't know what to do to fix their products. For example, Javascript should be off by default in Reader, but it isn't. Last quarter something like 80% of serious attacks were through holes in Adobe products and the latest issue is with Downloader. Why allow a company and set of products that have shown themselves to be insecure onto the next generation of device where hackers can steal more personal data, run up changers and the like. Apple is trying to make our mobile devices more reliable and more secure than our PCs. It is time to dump Flash.
Amazing, the real world isn't like the lab. And, surprise, all of the theoretical results expected aren't going to be achieved in the real world. This is a great example of theory meeting the real world and should make us pause and reduce our expectations for benefits of going green. Yes, it is a good idea to reduce our energy consumption and carbon footprint. Bu no, we won't get the results in terms of energy savings, reduced emissions and job creation that the ardent proponents are telling us will be achieved and it will take longer than expected. Still worth doing, but don't believe the press releases and promises.
The best solution is not to use Google at all. They are indexing your email and will figure out who you are and who youtalk to about what. Use the calendar and they know where you are. Add the 6 months of browser history and you're screwed.
If you use this than Google has access to every single site or service you visit or use, even without the browser. For doing behavorial targetting of ads this is key. Most commercial behavior happens outside of the search engine and on a third party site. This gives them some of the ability to do what the folks at Nebuad wanted to achieve by doing deep packet inspection. If you use Google's DNS, they get to do tracking without having to get an ISP agreement and they'll say that your agreement to use implies consent to use the data "for their own use". SInce their use is to sell ads that can be finely targetted, they are in effect gainig the ability to offer an advertiser "for people who search for camera and have visited newegg or amazon..." or "for people who visit planned parenthood, put up this anti-abortion ad".
We used Symantec for years, but it just got too painful and I gave up on Symantec about a year ago. We used the Corporate version and it was slow and a resource hog. My kid's laptop had NAV and it was also a pig. I switched to Avast on the laptop and we're using Trend at work. Why should I give a vendor who for years gave me crappy software a second chance until I know that all of the alternative are worse. You have to earn and KEEP your customers respect and trust and not say "wait til next year". That only works for sports teams.
One of the issues with shortening URLs is that the search engines look at the URL and the words present in the URL to determine how to rank the URL. This works against the desire to shorten. For example having: "baseball/redsox/beckett" is important to get a higher ranking.
If you read Google's response, it is pretty clear that they are trying to obfuscate the issue. What they are talking about is paying to put servers and data inside the ISPs and so gain an advantage for their content. This is exactly the scheme that AT&T proposed and Google condemned. Their reply is a technical splitting of hairs and a diversion. Cache end servers, etc, is all just "we want our data to have higher access and priority and will pay for it". Admit it Google, you're busted.
What the Google reply really is, is an attempt to save face and avoid admitting that if they can gain business advantage, Google will dump "principle" for profit, just like every other corporation. They are afraid that this episode will expose their "do no evil" as merely a marketing slogan intended to fool folks. Busted.
Well, now that they've admitted that it all about money, maybe they can use the AdSense bidding system to help Governors automate the selling of Senate seats too!
There has been a lot of talk about "automating" our health care and records as part of a move to Universal health care. This example of employees improperly accessing phone records should be cautionary when we think about automating health care records. We need to have logs of all access to anyone's records. We need to have strong security models and patient notification of any and all access to records. And, we need to change the law so that the media *MUST* reveal the source of any information leaked from unauthorized records. I know the first amendment folks will cringe at any requirements of disclosure, but the press has no rights to access or publish this kind of information, especially when the government forces us to provide it.
I know Jerry and he is smart and insightful, but way too nice to be a CEO in an industry where he has to compete against SOBs like Ballmer and Schmidt. Jerry is polite and considerate. He is thoughtful and modest. The other guys are rude, arrogant, aggressive, nasty folk.
Jerry did a lot of useful changes, but what he didn't get that it is all about perception of being a leader and being on the path upward. A lot of the issue for the market is PR versus reality. And, let face it, search and search advertising are the things the market views as keys to future success and Yahoo has fallen further behind in this area. The decision to outsource search to Google by Yahoo may prove to be one of the top 5 greatest business mistakes of all time and Jerry has to share blame for that as well.
Jerry didn't move boldly enough, but his Board should have known that his base style wouldn't allow it. He should have reorg'ed immediately and publicly, giving folks ownership and accountability. You get the job but you get fired if you don't hit the goals. He let key services stagnate. Yahoo mail took too long to fix their UI to match Google and Yahoo still charges for POP access. Yahoo was the calendar leader, but Google launches a slightly better calendar and is viewed as the leader, even without a customer base. Yahoo Groups is a leader but is old and stale compared to something like Ning. There are lots of examples of how to upgrade their services out there for Yahoo and they seem to ignore them and let others steal mind share and leadership from them.
I fear that it is too late. Yahoo is the AOL of Web 2.0. It is only a matter of time.
Seems like Twitter would really get hammered by this. If they have to pay 3 cents per SMS, they are going to lose even more money. They had to stop offering UK service because of SMS charges. Since they have no business model or revenue, this could be serious.
Why would an advertiser bother with going to Yahoo to buy search ads, when they can go to Google and buy ads for both Yahoo and Google. This severs the relationship between Yahoo and the ad buyer and makes the buyer only go to Google. Soon, Yahoo is out of the search ad business entirely and it all goes through Google. What if Google changes rates, doesn't send the highest yielding ads to Yahoo, etc. Eventually Yahoo is at the mercy of Google, who promises to do "no evil", but perhaps "no evil" really means anything that hurts Google's revenue stream!
This deal is an admission of failure by Yahoo and says that they can't compete. Google has 70% of the market and is a monopoly. If search were PC software or cars, the government would be suing GOogle.
Apple seems to be doing a lot of pretty shoddy development and testing lately. The iPhone 3G had many, many well documented problems, the iTunes 8.0 update crashed Vista and now this. How can anyone release a WiFi product without testing WPA/WPA2? Amazing. Clearly they care more about glitz and PR than product quality.