In my last post about the PS4, I discussed how the PS4 is a long term play and that over time the product will move away from playing directly on the PS4 towards utilizing servers to stream the game to the user. This was an argument to counter many PC gamer's disdain for the specs for the system. Sure, the specs aren't great, but they are a huge advancement over the PS3, which is still able to play, rather well, new games.
Most of the feedback I got on the article basically went "well that's great and all, but the infrastructure isn't there for this in the US." This is extremely valid feedback. AOL still records $500 Million in revenue from dial up connections. The US rates among the worst in developed world for internet speeds and penetration. Of course there's the argument that our country is so much larger, well, the EU as a whole tops us, it's not uniform across the EU, but that still makes it a valid comparison. The other thing to remember, the console won't just come out in the US. Many of these features will work better in Korea and Japan than in the US. Typically Sony has released different features by region and will likely experiment with the sharing features in Japan before rolling it out to the US, where Sony knows it will have infrastructure difficulties.
This discussion raises additional concerns though, infrastructure isn't just about the lines in the ground, but also the structure of the service providers that allow access. In the case of the US, not only does quality and speed of the connection vary wildly but we also have more restrictions on the amount of data we can download than other countries. For a typical family you end up buying the internet 2 or 3 times at the minimum (smart phone access per family member and then the main house connection). Each of these connections likely has a different maximum for downloading or uploading with fees for going over this.
This creates a lot of difficulties as we don't always know how much bits a specific file will use as we access it. In many cases, it likely drives consistent under utilization of the service do to excessive fees and user dissatisfaction for those hitting the cap. Americans are starting to cut the cord in record numbers, my wife and I don't have TV, just cable internet; I have a lot of options without Cable. This is going to start increasing the rate of frustration users have with caps. I typically watch live streaming video in 720p while my wife surfs the net and watches a show on Hulu.
I have absolutely no idea how much bandwidth is being consumed on a typical night. There is no easy way for me to measure this or plan for getting close to a cap. Furthermore, both my wife and I use our phones to access the internet, listen to music, watch videos, and play games on our phones. Again, all of these use bandwidth and likely push us against our cellular plan. Sure there's meters for these, but they are notoriously inaccurate.
This issue with be further exacerbated by the proliferation of cloud services like Drop Box, video sharing on YouTube, streaming new services all the time, and the eventual goal of offloading computing power to the cloud. The measurement of these services will be extremely difficult and planning for how much data these services will require will be absurdly difficult at best for the average user. It is likely that these services will push users over the usage caps on a monthly bases.
I think that we need to start looking for another solution. I think that Google Fiber is a start, it would make sense for Netflix, Amazon, Dishnetwork, Microsoft, Intel, and other content providers to join a consortium that will introduce a new service provider to attack the incumbents. I have heard that Dish is currently working on creating their own system with Google or some other company, I think that this could potentially shake up the industry and allow users more options. There are going to be a wealth of new services that require more and more bandwidth and higher speeds. If these content providers want users to be able to access and enjoy their services they need to challenge the status quo to enable their customers.
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Monday, February 25, 2013
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Free-market, Small Government and Regulations
The free-market has been used to argue against regulations and for small government for years. However, I believe that the major supporters of using the free-market argument are disingenuous in their application of the argument. In addition, the free-market is a flawed theory which needs to be revisited by neoclassical scholars and adjusted.
The free-market theory comes from the idea that there is an invisible hand that guides the market towards equilibrium between supply and demand. This assumes that once the equilibrium is hit it will stay at that point until there is some shock to the system which would find a new equilibrium. Each time that there is a shock, the invisible hand would push the market into a new equilibrium. This idea came as a side comment in the Wealth of Nations. This idea has become enshrined in the minds of neoclassical economics in a manner that Newtonian Physics was presumed to be accurate. In both cases the theory is incorrect. Relativistic Physics has replaced Newtonian, but in Economics the free-market is still the prevailing mechanism for policy creation. There has been no evidence for an invisible hand at all. In fact Metcalf created the theory of a networked economy which argues that the value of a good becomes more valuable as more people use it. I've mentioned this in the past. Essentially, this will prevent any equilibrium from every being found as the price can increase and people will still adopt the networked item because it's becoming more valuable to the user. Or the price can remain constant even when it should drop for other factors such as a reduction in cost of production. A perfect example is the iPhone. According to research Apple has a whopping 72% margins on the iPhone, even if production was moved to the US Apple would still make 42% margin on the iPhone. There also is an over production of the iPhone and strong competition, which would indicate that the iPhone should drop prices as they are capable with that large of a margin. This market has a great deal of competition and has a large number of companies producing, which indicates that it Apple should be under pressure to drop prices. However this isn't happening because of the networked value of the iPhone. There are a huge number of apps for the phone, the apps are high quality and the product works well with other iPhones. The market has had no impact on the cost of the iPhone.
However, free-market champions would look at any effort to change the labor practices of Apple as wrong headed and regulation that isn't required. The Market isn't demanding any change to labor practices because the market can bear the current prices and the demand indicates that people don't care about labor practices. However, it's well known that there are no alternatives to Apple's iPhone that are produced in an ethical manner. So voting with your money wouldn't actually work here. The problem arises because there is something of a monopoly in the manufacturing of the smart phones in FoxConn. In this case there is a market failure. Which is something that neoclassical theorists argue cannot occur. The market cannot send a signal to firms because there is no mechanism in which the market could send a signal. This is can be understood if you view this industry as a networked economy. Where you see the ties between manufacturers and handset companies, which would show a massive connection to FoxConn.
Efforts to regulate the manufacturing of devices have been argued as the reason for moving the manufacturing to other countries. However, this is not the case in the case of Apple, as they would still have huge margins. It's because the company is attempting to maximize profits, not reduce costs to be profitable. The same arguments have been used to argue for smaller government. Saying that since there are no market failures the government should not intervene in the industry.
The unfortunate thing is that these arguments immediately disappear when it comes to protecting the profits of record industries. The same free-market advocates then move to argue that intellectual property must be protected. Essentially, creating protection for a specific product through IP causes a market failure and prevents the market from operating at its most efficient because there are not other competitors in the market. Creating IP requires a huge regulatory framework from the mechanisms of registering, logging complaints and prosecuting actors that infringe on the IP.
This type of industrial policy is typically derided by the small government fans, as it is a type of regulation that selects a "winner" (IP owners) over "losers" (non IP owners). Which may be fine. However, whenever this selection pushes our government to select a winner (Music) over the fastest growing, possibly only growing, part of our economy (internet based companies) there is a serious risk to the future. As I've mentioned before these laws represent huge risks for innovation.
These laws are SOPA and PIPA, which I've discussed extensively. However, the next round of internet regulations come in the form of CISPA. This bill, whichrequires allows companies to share extensively with government agencies. This type of sharing of user data and information about the activities going on at the company would not go over very well from the the free-market advocates if this was a request for data about customer data for car dealerships or steel mills. Essentially, this is going to increase the cost of doing business in the US. This may prevent companies from working in the US and prevent innovation. If I was to create a company that dealt with social data I would not want to do so after the passing of this bill. It would be likely that I would be blackmailed into giving the government data about my users that I had no desire to give them.
The internet is the perfect example of a networked economy. Facebook's value comes from the fact that it has a huge user base. This is true for Google, Amazon and Instagram (List of companies that support CISPA). Without the users the services is literally worthless. With the users a company without any revenues can be worth $1 Billion (Instagram). The difference between this bill and other bills like SOPA and PIPA is that the agreement is bidirectional. The government will likely help Facebook and Google fight Chinese attacks and give information to each other about the activities of online hacktivist groups like Anonymous. It is likely that 4chan will end up giving over IP data and other information related to anonymous and Anonymous users.
This is regulation that the internet doesn't need and will stifle innovation. The government already has these powers, which maybe why the Obama administration is opposed to CISPA. It is also ironic that Obama plans on sanctioning countries that use Tech to abuse human rights specifically committing genocide. A whistle blower has recently announced that the NSA has intercepted 20 TRILLION emails and likely has copies of all of these stored somewhere. The passing of CISPA and any other law of similar persuasion would likely protect companies like AT&T from future lawsuits for being complicit with these activities.
For devotes of the Free-Market these laws create market distortions and will cause serious harm to innovation on the internet. For people that understand networked economies, this will greatly undermine the value of these networks as users will likely change their behavior to mitigate the amount of information the Government can compile on them. CISPA and its sister laws SOPA and PIPA represent big government actions attempting to control and regulate industries that do not need to be regulated. In this case there is no market failure that needs to be addressed. Privacy is something that the users have been pushing for and Facebook and Google have steadily improved on those accounts. Surprisingly industry is doing a decent job at regulating itself. Finally, regulations being pushed by advocates of small government and free-market smack of hypocrisy and a lack of understanding. These laws require a deep understanding of the internet and how the market of the internet works. Without this understanding terrible laws will be passed that will damage our privacy and freedoms. For the issues that this law would protect from there are other methods that could be employed to gain the desired results without passing laws.
Contact your congressional members to fight against this bill.
The free-market theory comes from the idea that there is an invisible hand that guides the market towards equilibrium between supply and demand. This assumes that once the equilibrium is hit it will stay at that point until there is some shock to the system which would find a new equilibrium. Each time that there is a shock, the invisible hand would push the market into a new equilibrium. This idea came as a side comment in the Wealth of Nations. This idea has become enshrined in the minds of neoclassical economics in a manner that Newtonian Physics was presumed to be accurate. In both cases the theory is incorrect. Relativistic Physics has replaced Newtonian, but in Economics the free-market is still the prevailing mechanism for policy creation. There has been no evidence for an invisible hand at all. In fact Metcalf created the theory of a networked economy which argues that the value of a good becomes more valuable as more people use it. I've mentioned this in the past. Essentially, this will prevent any equilibrium from every being found as the price can increase and people will still adopt the networked item because it's becoming more valuable to the user. Or the price can remain constant even when it should drop for other factors such as a reduction in cost of production. A perfect example is the iPhone. According to research Apple has a whopping 72% margins on the iPhone, even if production was moved to the US Apple would still make 42% margin on the iPhone. There also is an over production of the iPhone and strong competition, which would indicate that the iPhone should drop prices as they are capable with that large of a margin. This market has a great deal of competition and has a large number of companies producing, which indicates that it Apple should be under pressure to drop prices. However this isn't happening because of the networked value of the iPhone. There are a huge number of apps for the phone, the apps are high quality and the product works well with other iPhones. The market has had no impact on the cost of the iPhone.
However, free-market champions would look at any effort to change the labor practices of Apple as wrong headed and regulation that isn't required. The Market isn't demanding any change to labor practices because the market can bear the current prices and the demand indicates that people don't care about labor practices. However, it's well known that there are no alternatives to Apple's iPhone that are produced in an ethical manner. So voting with your money wouldn't actually work here. The problem arises because there is something of a monopoly in the manufacturing of the smart phones in FoxConn. In this case there is a market failure. Which is something that neoclassical theorists argue cannot occur. The market cannot send a signal to firms because there is no mechanism in which the market could send a signal. This is can be understood if you view this industry as a networked economy. Where you see the ties between manufacturers and handset companies, which would show a massive connection to FoxConn.
Efforts to regulate the manufacturing of devices have been argued as the reason for moving the manufacturing to other countries. However, this is not the case in the case of Apple, as they would still have huge margins. It's because the company is attempting to maximize profits, not reduce costs to be profitable. The same arguments have been used to argue for smaller government. Saying that since there are no market failures the government should not intervene in the industry.
The unfortunate thing is that these arguments immediately disappear when it comes to protecting the profits of record industries. The same free-market advocates then move to argue that intellectual property must be protected. Essentially, creating protection for a specific product through IP causes a market failure and prevents the market from operating at its most efficient because there are not other competitors in the market. Creating IP requires a huge regulatory framework from the mechanisms of registering, logging complaints and prosecuting actors that infringe on the IP.
This type of industrial policy is typically derided by the small government fans, as it is a type of regulation that selects a "winner" (IP owners) over "losers" (non IP owners). Which may be fine. However, whenever this selection pushes our government to select a winner (Music) over the fastest growing, possibly only growing, part of our economy (internet based companies) there is a serious risk to the future. As I've mentioned before these laws represent huge risks for innovation.
These laws are SOPA and PIPA, which I've discussed extensively. However, the next round of internet regulations come in the form of CISPA. This bill, which
The internet is the perfect example of a networked economy. Facebook's value comes from the fact that it has a huge user base. This is true for Google, Amazon and Instagram (List of companies that support CISPA). Without the users the services is literally worthless. With the users a company without any revenues can be worth $1 Billion (Instagram). The difference between this bill and other bills like SOPA and PIPA is that the agreement is bidirectional. The government will likely help Facebook and Google fight Chinese attacks and give information to each other about the activities of online hacktivist groups like Anonymous. It is likely that 4chan will end up giving over IP data and other information related to anonymous and Anonymous users.
This is regulation that the internet doesn't need and will stifle innovation. The government already has these powers, which maybe why the Obama administration is opposed to CISPA. It is also ironic that Obama plans on sanctioning countries that use Tech to abuse human rights specifically committing genocide. A whistle blower has recently announced that the NSA has intercepted 20 TRILLION emails and likely has copies of all of these stored somewhere. The passing of CISPA and any other law of similar persuasion would likely protect companies like AT&T from future lawsuits for being complicit with these activities.
For devotes of the Free-Market these laws create market distortions and will cause serious harm to innovation on the internet. For people that understand networked economies, this will greatly undermine the value of these networks as users will likely change their behavior to mitigate the amount of information the Government can compile on them. CISPA and its sister laws SOPA and PIPA represent big government actions attempting to control and regulate industries that do not need to be regulated. In this case there is no market failure that needs to be addressed. Privacy is something that the users have been pushing for and Facebook and Google have steadily improved on those accounts. Surprisingly industry is doing a decent job at regulating itself. Finally, regulations being pushed by advocates of small government and free-market smack of hypocrisy and a lack of understanding. These laws require a deep understanding of the internet and how the market of the internet works. Without this understanding terrible laws will be passed that will damage our privacy and freedoms. For the issues that this law would protect from there are other methods that could be employed to gain the desired results without passing laws.
Contact your congressional members to fight against this bill.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Crowd Source Legislation
Crowd sourcing, is a name for a group of people taking part in something from all over the place. One of the first initiatives like this is open source software, a more recent version is Crowd source funding for businesses. These started as initiatives to give micro loans in Africa and other developing countries. More recently, websites like Kickstarter have allowed everyday people to help get new ventures starting (I plan on writing more about this later).
So what's the deal with the legislation? Well, essentially, this is building upon the momentum Reddit and other websites generated during the SOPA/PIPA protests. Members have decided to create something like an internet bill of rights. The idea is the create a better balance between content holders, private companies, governments and users. In China there's a great deal of censorship and Google and Twitter have both announced censorship based on the location of the user. This type of censorship would have killed the Arab spring before it happened.
OK? but that's not going to effect me in the US. Well, we don't know that. Yes, we have provisions against free speech, but that's against governments censoring speech. It's difficult to know what a private company will censor when this speech is in a quasipublic/private space. Facebook routinely censors groups and speech on their site. Additionally, look at what's happening with MegaUpload.com and their users. There was legitimate use on the website and the Department of Justice doesn't care. The EFF and the hosting company are working to find the legitimate data held on the site.
One of the goals of the act would be to reduce the ability of sites to censor speech. It's clear that this is an important goal of the act. Additionally, there are programs, like TOR, that have been developed to allow people behind censorship to circumvent it (See my post about how TOR works). However, there could be penalties for people that use TOR in the US to help people circumvent the censorship. These types of ideas are what the goal of FIA is.
If you're interested in taking your anger at SOPA/PIPA into a new direction and potentially become more involved in our government check it out here: http://www.reddit.com/r/fia/
But that's US based stuff. Yes, sure it is. It seems like most of the users interested are from the US. Many of the users involved would like to see this become a treaty instead of just a law. In that case involvement from many different countries would be ideal and requested. Additionally, there is no reason why this type of legislation should be restricted to the US. These ideas are universal.
So what's the deal with the legislation? Well, essentially, this is building upon the momentum Reddit and other websites generated during the SOPA/PIPA protests. Members have decided to create something like an internet bill of rights. The idea is the create a better balance between content holders, private companies, governments and users. In China there's a great deal of censorship and Google and Twitter have both announced censorship based on the location of the user. This type of censorship would have killed the Arab spring before it happened.
OK? but that's not going to effect me in the US. Well, we don't know that. Yes, we have provisions against free speech, but that's against governments censoring speech. It's difficult to know what a private company will censor when this speech is in a quasipublic/private space. Facebook routinely censors groups and speech on their site. Additionally, look at what's happening with MegaUpload.com and their users. There was legitimate use on the website and the Department of Justice doesn't care. The EFF and the hosting company are working to find the legitimate data held on the site.
One of the goals of the act would be to reduce the ability of sites to censor speech. It's clear that this is an important goal of the act. Additionally, there are programs, like TOR, that have been developed to allow people behind censorship to circumvent it (See my post about how TOR works). However, there could be penalties for people that use TOR in the US to help people circumvent the censorship. These types of ideas are what the goal of FIA is.
If you're interested in taking your anger at SOPA/PIPA into a new direction and potentially become more involved in our government check it out here: http://www.reddit.com/r/fia/
But that's US based stuff. Yes, sure it is. It seems like most of the users interested are from the US. Many of the users involved would like to see this become a treaty instead of just a law. In that case involvement from many different countries would be ideal and requested. Additionally, there is no reason why this type of legislation should be restricted to the US. These ideas are universal.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Data protection, anonymity and copyright
I talk a great deal on this blog about data issues, privacy and ownership, anonymity and copyright, however is there a clear connection between them? Should we care about who has access to our data, who we are and control over our access to data?
I think that these issues are so connected that we need to do something about how they are managed at a federal level. Currently, it's rather easy for governments to request data from internet sites. Some times they require warrants or court orders other times the companies simply hand over the data. Savvy users understand how their data is collected and used by companies. I'll be the first to admit that I'm learning about this as I'm going. It's not easy because some times it's really inconvenient to really protect your data. The more sites that are connected together the more likely one of your accounts are to be hacked. Linking sites also creates other problems. Specifically Facebook and Google. Twitter isn't as bad, but it easily could be.
Why are Facebook and Google bad though? First Facebook is the worst by far. Both Zuckerbergs have made statements proclaiming privacy a bad thing.We can see this erosion with the creation of Facebook's OpenGraph and seamless information sharing. We've all see the increase in the amount of information that our friends are sharing. Such as Spotify and articles they've read. Which now no longer click through, but end up going to some app from that company. All of this information is being stored and sold to customers with your name on it. Effectively you've lost your ability to view websites freely without it being stored on multiple servers by multiple companies at the same time.
Google comes in a close second with their privacy problems. They aren't any better with Google+ as they require names at this time. We also don't know what Google does with the information that you give them when you link accounts together. By giving access to Google when you sign into another website Google is learning more about you which will likely be used to adjust your filter bubble.
Without anonymity or at least pseudonymity it's significantly more difficult to control access to your data. Putting a buffer between you and the people that are interested in learning about you as a person can protect you from a lot of bad people. However, whenever there are discussions about anonymity or pseudonyms some one almost always makes the argument that it will increase the safety for child molesters or terrorists.
The Copyright industry is one of the most vocal advocates of this tactic. In fact, this is one of the arguments being used for SOPA. They argue that if you don't have anything to hide then you have nothing to worry about. Well, I don't buy that argument. People have privacy fences for a reason around their yard. Why not do the same thing for your data? Being anonymous doesn't mean your bad, it just means your being safe.
Anonymity makes it more difficult for copyright holders to come after people who download movies without buying the movie. They want to know if your downloading it regardless of the fact that you might actually own the movie in some other physical medium and are using the digital copy as a back up. They also don't really care if you go out and buy the movie after watching it. In fact the Swiss government came out and said that buying a movie or song after downloading is extremely common.
Based on these three points, I believe that everyone should be pushing leaders to increase the ability for users to be anonymous on the internet. This will protect users data from identity theft, allow users better control over their data and decrease the impact of the filter bubble. We must accept the fact that people may use the freedom in unethical ways. However, this doesn't mean that it's unethical for people to be anonymous online and doesn't mean that they are unethical. It means that we need to define clear laws and procedures to deal with unethical or illegal activities in these systems. Without these guidelines we are likely to have no control over our data.
I think that these issues are so connected that we need to do something about how they are managed at a federal level. Currently, it's rather easy for governments to request data from internet sites. Some times they require warrants or court orders other times the companies simply hand over the data. Savvy users understand how their data is collected and used by companies. I'll be the first to admit that I'm learning about this as I'm going. It's not easy because some times it's really inconvenient to really protect your data. The more sites that are connected together the more likely one of your accounts are to be hacked. Linking sites also creates other problems. Specifically Facebook and Google. Twitter isn't as bad, but it easily could be.
Why are Facebook and Google bad though? First Facebook is the worst by far. Both Zuckerbergs have made statements proclaiming privacy a bad thing.We can see this erosion with the creation of Facebook's OpenGraph and seamless information sharing. We've all see the increase in the amount of information that our friends are sharing. Such as Spotify and articles they've read. Which now no longer click through, but end up going to some app from that company. All of this information is being stored and sold to customers with your name on it. Effectively you've lost your ability to view websites freely without it being stored on multiple servers by multiple companies at the same time.
Google comes in a close second with their privacy problems. They aren't any better with Google+ as they require names at this time. We also don't know what Google does with the information that you give them when you link accounts together. By giving access to Google when you sign into another website Google is learning more about you which will likely be used to adjust your filter bubble.
Without anonymity or at least pseudonymity it's significantly more difficult to control access to your data. Putting a buffer between you and the people that are interested in learning about you as a person can protect you from a lot of bad people. However, whenever there are discussions about anonymity or pseudonyms some one almost always makes the argument that it will increase the safety for child molesters or terrorists.
The Copyright industry is one of the most vocal advocates of this tactic. In fact, this is one of the arguments being used for SOPA. They argue that if you don't have anything to hide then you have nothing to worry about. Well, I don't buy that argument. People have privacy fences for a reason around their yard. Why not do the same thing for your data? Being anonymous doesn't mean your bad, it just means your being safe.
Anonymity makes it more difficult for copyright holders to come after people who download movies without buying the movie. They want to know if your downloading it regardless of the fact that you might actually own the movie in some other physical medium and are using the digital copy as a back up. They also don't really care if you go out and buy the movie after watching it. In fact the Swiss government came out and said that buying a movie or song after downloading is extremely common.
Based on these three points, I believe that everyone should be pushing leaders to increase the ability for users to be anonymous on the internet. This will protect users data from identity theft, allow users better control over their data and decrease the impact of the filter bubble. We must accept the fact that people may use the freedom in unethical ways. However, this doesn't mean that it's unethical for people to be anonymous online and doesn't mean that they are unethical. It means that we need to define clear laws and procedures to deal with unethical or illegal activities in these systems. Without these guidelines we are likely to have no control over our data.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The trouble with experts...
I wrote two blogs in September about technocrats and how as experts of science and technology they some times think they know what's best for the larger population. The problem becomes when these scientists start to venture outside there area of expertise. They start arguing about topics with a voice of authority on a topic they know little more than a lay person. The difference may be that they pick it up a little bit easier. However, they are also some what blinded by their own knowledge of other topics and not listen to a knowledgeable person.
I'm picking on scientists right now, but the truth of the matter is this happens all the time. There's a well known (in the US) and depressing example of this during a climate debate in the US congress. During a hearing Rep John Shimkus called a bishop to testify, where he read a passage from the bible where god said he would never flood the earth again, he then went on to say that god decides when the end of the earth will happen, so he's confident that global warming is a fraud (see youtube video). The scary thing is that this guy is the chairman of the subcommittee of environment and economy. The bottom line is that he feels he's an expert of the bible and of religious matters and is using this in a context that he's not an expert.
These are just two examples but they bring me to my main point. There's a greater difference between acknowledged experts and self appointed experts. Scientists have degrees and go through formal training to become experts. Congressmen also typically are well educated and are voted into an expert position by their constituents. If they are experts or not is clearly up for debate, but at least they have been accepted by at least one community as a whole.
Then there are the self-styled experts. I think the two most obvious ones are leadership gurus and social media experts. I follow a few of each on twitter and some of what they have to say is really frustrating. For example the leadership gurus typically have some trite quote from some one. Something along the lines of "When a window of opportunity opens don't pull down the shade" (literal quote not sure who it's from). First of all, this is an incredibly easy thing to say, but horribly difficult thing to do in practice. In the entrepreneur literature I've been reading one of the biggest indicators of entrepreneurial behavior is the ability to notice when there IS a window of opportunity. The second is having the means to take advantage of it before it closes. In the case of academic spin-offs this can be measured through the resources the university has on hand for an academic to start a firm. This is in terms of technology transfer offices, incubators, equity stake investments, licensing and venture capital. Sadly, the skills to identify these windows can't be taught at a seminar. They can only be taught by being surrounded by people that are already able to find them. The ability to exploit them comes from being in the right place. So, if you want to leverage your opportunity as best as you can then you need to figure out how to put yourself in the right position to take advantage of it. See how fun it is to be trite!! The fact is you can control that, it's not easy, but it's possible.
The second group, social media experts, are equally frustrating but for different reasons. The first is that their focus on social media blinds them to fact that in many cases it plays a very small role in day to day business operations. For example, many social media experts say that if a firm doesn't do social media then they are going to fail. That's insane. Many firms the end customer never deals with. There are tons of suppliers that don't need to care about social media at all. An example of this is a company that supplies chemicals to Intel to make semiconductor chips. Most likely a firm like this doesn't have social media, because it never deals with random people.. Now, if you are a firm that does deal with the end customer, we the consumers, then yes you should have some form of social media. That's not to say that some of these supplier companies don't have them because they need to deal with environmentalists or some other protest group.
The other problem with these social media experts is they very easily start to move into other aspects of business. If you keep within your social media bubble I have no problems with you at all. In fact, you're doing something that I am really bad at. You're what Malcolm Gladwell would call Mavens. You're connectors, you have a great deal of contacts that listen to what you say. In social network theory you'd have many structural holes. This is a good thing for you as a person. However, when you start to believe you're an expert in other topics that's when things get dangerous. I read two articles in the past two days that really irritated me. The first article discusses a five step plan to save Google from Google+, it really shows that this guy doesn't have any understanding of how Google itself works. He basically calls for splitting the company and firing the management group. Google made 9.2B in revenue with over 2B of that as profit. He says Google needs to innovate. Google is cutting bad unused apps and getting back to the core business with plans to work on innovation. While the author is an owner of a small start up, he doesn't really know how large companies work and bases his comments entirely on social media aspect of Google.
The second article was on an unofficial facebook blog which argues that Google is done because facebook came up with some algorithm that focuses on keyword correlation. The algorithm is an iterative process and gets better with time. Pretty innovative, but Google's been doing this a long time. Every time they've been challenged in terms of search Google has stepped up to the plate and kept it's dominance in results.
The final point I'd like to make is that social media experts clearly understand the importance of social capital. You can see this from the amount of retweets they send out, the thank yous and the use of Klout. All of these tools indicate an understanding of the need to scratch some one's back to have them do it back. However, they apparently aren't able to understand how to extend this to firms. I believe that Google has a great deal more social capital than Facebook. I would say that Google and Apple have about the same level of social capital where neither company can do wrong in the eyes of a large portion of the population. I'd argue that Facebook, on the other hand, has as much social capital as Microsoft in the late 90s and early 2000's. No one trusts them. They have had a virtual lock-in on the market since Myspace couldn't keep up with their innovations and borrowing of ideas. Now that there are new platforms opening up its obvious that Facebook has the most to lose. Google will make missteps as they develop Google+ into a different platform than Facebook. For a service that is as young as it is, I'm surprised it hasn't made more.
So, you ask, what gives me the right to comment on these people, are you an expert? I don't know if I'm an expert, but I've been trained to look critically at arguments like those presented by the social media experts. I understand business strategies and environments that allow people to create new firms. I would argue that Google+ is effectively a case of corporate venturing, where Google created an internal start-up that produced Google+. So, in the end, yes I think I have the proper insights to address these points.
I'm picking on scientists right now, but the truth of the matter is this happens all the time. There's a well known (in the US) and depressing example of this during a climate debate in the US congress. During a hearing Rep John Shimkus called a bishop to testify, where he read a passage from the bible where god said he would never flood the earth again, he then went on to say that god decides when the end of the earth will happen, so he's confident that global warming is a fraud (see youtube video). The scary thing is that this guy is the chairman of the subcommittee of environment and economy. The bottom line is that he feels he's an expert of the bible and of religious matters and is using this in a context that he's not an expert.
These are just two examples but they bring me to my main point. There's a greater difference between acknowledged experts and self appointed experts. Scientists have degrees and go through formal training to become experts. Congressmen also typically are well educated and are voted into an expert position by their constituents. If they are experts or not is clearly up for debate, but at least they have been accepted by at least one community as a whole.
Then there are the self-styled experts. I think the two most obvious ones are leadership gurus and social media experts. I follow a few of each on twitter and some of what they have to say is really frustrating. For example the leadership gurus typically have some trite quote from some one. Something along the lines of "When a window of opportunity opens don't pull down the shade" (literal quote not sure who it's from). First of all, this is an incredibly easy thing to say, but horribly difficult thing to do in practice. In the entrepreneur literature I've been reading one of the biggest indicators of entrepreneurial behavior is the ability to notice when there IS a window of opportunity. The second is having the means to take advantage of it before it closes. In the case of academic spin-offs this can be measured through the resources the university has on hand for an academic to start a firm. This is in terms of technology transfer offices, incubators, equity stake investments, licensing and venture capital. Sadly, the skills to identify these windows can't be taught at a seminar. They can only be taught by being surrounded by people that are already able to find them. The ability to exploit them comes from being in the right place. So, if you want to leverage your opportunity as best as you can then you need to figure out how to put yourself in the right position to take advantage of it. See how fun it is to be trite!! The fact is you can control that, it's not easy, but it's possible.
The second group, social media experts, are equally frustrating but for different reasons. The first is that their focus on social media blinds them to fact that in many cases it plays a very small role in day to day business operations. For example, many social media experts say that if a firm doesn't do social media then they are going to fail. That's insane. Many firms the end customer never deals with. There are tons of suppliers that don't need to care about social media at all. An example of this is a company that supplies chemicals to Intel to make semiconductor chips. Most likely a firm like this doesn't have social media, because it never deals with random people.. Now, if you are a firm that does deal with the end customer, we the consumers, then yes you should have some form of social media. That's not to say that some of these supplier companies don't have them because they need to deal with environmentalists or some other protest group.
The other problem with these social media experts is they very easily start to move into other aspects of business. If you keep within your social media bubble I have no problems with you at all. In fact, you're doing something that I am really bad at. You're what Malcolm Gladwell would call Mavens. You're connectors, you have a great deal of contacts that listen to what you say. In social network theory you'd have many structural holes. This is a good thing for you as a person. However, when you start to believe you're an expert in other topics that's when things get dangerous. I read two articles in the past two days that really irritated me. The first article discusses a five step plan to save Google from Google+, it really shows that this guy doesn't have any understanding of how Google itself works. He basically calls for splitting the company and firing the management group. Google made 9.2B in revenue with over 2B of that as profit. He says Google needs to innovate. Google is cutting bad unused apps and getting back to the core business with plans to work on innovation. While the author is an owner of a small start up, he doesn't really know how large companies work and bases his comments entirely on social media aspect of Google.
The second article was on an unofficial facebook blog which argues that Google is done because facebook came up with some algorithm that focuses on keyword correlation. The algorithm is an iterative process and gets better with time. Pretty innovative, but Google's been doing this a long time. Every time they've been challenged in terms of search Google has stepped up to the plate and kept it's dominance in results.
The final point I'd like to make is that social media experts clearly understand the importance of social capital. You can see this from the amount of retweets they send out, the thank yous and the use of Klout. All of these tools indicate an understanding of the need to scratch some one's back to have them do it back. However, they apparently aren't able to understand how to extend this to firms. I believe that Google has a great deal more social capital than Facebook. I would say that Google and Apple have about the same level of social capital where neither company can do wrong in the eyes of a large portion of the population. I'd argue that Facebook, on the other hand, has as much social capital as Microsoft in the late 90s and early 2000's. No one trusts them. They have had a virtual lock-in on the market since Myspace couldn't keep up with their innovations and borrowing of ideas. Now that there are new platforms opening up its obvious that Facebook has the most to lose. Google will make missteps as they develop Google+ into a different platform than Facebook. For a service that is as young as it is, I'm surprised it hasn't made more.
So, you ask, what gives me the right to comment on these people, are you an expert? I don't know if I'm an expert, but I've been trained to look critically at arguments like those presented by the social media experts. I understand business strategies and environments that allow people to create new firms. I would argue that Google+ is effectively a case of corporate venturing, where Google created an internal start-up that produced Google+. So, in the end, yes I think I have the proper insights to address these points.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Technological Convergences
Convergences happen in all different ways. They happen in books or book series, where a good author can plan to have plotlines converge in a specific time and place. In the case of the series I just finished, the Malazan Book of the Fallen, the author was able to get two totally unrelated characters meet in really unexpected ways. It happens in films too, Crash and 21 Grams are two great examples of this. This happens in technology as well. Most of the time, we as consumers never even see it happening. When we look back though we realize it was incredibly obvious that it would happen. Two great examples of this happened with cell phones.
MP3 players have been wildly popular since they came out in the late 90's. Napster and easy to rip CD's made them incredibly useful and provided hours of great listening. Around the same time cell phones were becoming smaller and more popular. No unexpectedly, phone manufacturers decided that it would be useful to put a music player onto the phone. These were clunky and really only used when people didn't have a better MP3 player. Apple had created a great MP3 player and realized, like the phone manufacturers that users only wanted to carry one of these devices. This is one of the reasons that drove them to make the iPhone. Great interface and good music experience. At this point they already had the music infrastructure and the loyal fan base to be sure of a high number of sales.
Around the same time as the MP3 boom businessmen were starting to use Portable Digital Assistants (PDA). This was a replacement to the calendar and phone book. It also provided a few applications that allowed some work on documents. It could also be used to schedule emails when the PDA was synced with the computer. It was obvious that this would be a great device to connect to some sort of network aside from plugging it in. Blackberry used to make two way pagers and figured out a way to send emails and other useful data over the pager network. This was one of the earliest smart phones. Eventually Microsoft and Palm got into the phone manufacturing game for the same reason. People didn't want to carry two device a PDA and a phone. If you put them both together you'd have a better product and would sell more.
These two technologies converged on a similar product, smart phones. Both types of phones had a very different set of users initially. However, since the iPhone there has been a further convergence of these phones into general purpose phones. Blackberry, while still catering to the business side, is shifting to compete directly with the iPhone because business users want the apps that the iPhone has. Palm has vanished from the market being unable to compete and Android has appeared as the first PC based OS. Android is a distribution of Linux, it doesn't run well on PCs but MS and Apple are moving in a direction of merging mobile OSes and PC OSes (sure it's a Mac, but it uses Intel so there's no different besides the OS).
If we look back at these convergences, aside from new competitors and firm failure, they appear to be pretty obvious. Why wouldn't these companies move into these market spaces? I'll discuss some of that in my next blog.
MP3 players have been wildly popular since they came out in the late 90's. Napster and easy to rip CD's made them incredibly useful and provided hours of great listening. Around the same time cell phones were becoming smaller and more popular. No unexpectedly, phone manufacturers decided that it would be useful to put a music player onto the phone. These were clunky and really only used when people didn't have a better MP3 player. Apple had created a great MP3 player and realized, like the phone manufacturers that users only wanted to carry one of these devices. This is one of the reasons that drove them to make the iPhone. Great interface and good music experience. At this point they already had the music infrastructure and the loyal fan base to be sure of a high number of sales.
Around the same time as the MP3 boom businessmen were starting to use Portable Digital Assistants (PDA). This was a replacement to the calendar and phone book. It also provided a few applications that allowed some work on documents. It could also be used to schedule emails when the PDA was synced with the computer. It was obvious that this would be a great device to connect to some sort of network aside from plugging it in. Blackberry used to make two way pagers and figured out a way to send emails and other useful data over the pager network. This was one of the earliest smart phones. Eventually Microsoft and Palm got into the phone manufacturing game for the same reason. People didn't want to carry two device a PDA and a phone. If you put them both together you'd have a better product and would sell more.
These two technologies converged on a similar product, smart phones. Both types of phones had a very different set of users initially. However, since the iPhone there has been a further convergence of these phones into general purpose phones. Blackberry, while still catering to the business side, is shifting to compete directly with the iPhone because business users want the apps that the iPhone has. Palm has vanished from the market being unable to compete and Android has appeared as the first PC based OS. Android is a distribution of Linux, it doesn't run well on PCs but MS and Apple are moving in a direction of merging mobile OSes and PC OSes (sure it's a Mac, but it uses Intel so there's no different besides the OS).
If we look back at these convergences, aside from new competitors and firm failure, they appear to be pretty obvious. Why wouldn't these companies move into these market spaces? I'll discuss some of that in my next blog.
Monday, September 26, 2011
On Being the Product
Today I've read and reposted a few articles (another) about users being the final product for several companies. These of course are facebook, twitter, google (in various forms including plus), yelp and the list goes on. Personally, I think that the claims that we are only the product is a bit of simplification. There is no doubt that we are the product, however, it's also a matter of to whom are we the product? For instance, my blog, which I post on facebook, twitter and Google Plus allows others to be consumers of my content. The people who are my friends, followers or in my circles are able to consume my content. We are not merely products to companies, but we are products for other people as well.
We consume what are friends put out there. We have habits an manners in which we'd like to be able to consume that information. However, we're running into a bidirectional problem. We're losing control over what information we're sharing and we're losing control over how we consume this information. In Tom Anderson's (of myspace fame) post about the changes in facebook, he mentions something called seamless sharing, where you have to do nothing and it's instantly shared. This, to me, raises all sorts of privacy concerns. In this TED talk the speaker addresses the problem of filtering algorithms in google and facebook.
I think it's very obvious that Facebook still realizes that we're consumers of the information. For without our work as the product, posting links, pictures and statuses, there'd be no facebook. However, without us as consumers reading various different posts and clicking related links there'd also be no facebook. The product we are to non-fellow consumers comes down to our network, what the people in our network are interested in and whatever information that is automatically shared with facebook through our web browser.
We need to be aware that this trend is going to continue. We as users and consumers need to fight to get control over our data and the right to control what we share when we share it. This gets back to my points in my earlier blog posts about pseudonyms and truly being anonymous on the web. If you are interested in knowing at least some of the information that you've shared on facebook over the years in some countries you are able to download a copy of your facebook history. I haven't done so yet, but I plan on it. If it is not available in your country, try to get the rights to your data.
While facebook is using you as a product, you still should have the right to demand the information they have on you and are selling to 3rd parties. Being the product isn't fun, however, it's nothing new. We've been the product for years and have never really complained. The difference now, is that the information about your personally has never been better and is only going to get better the more you give them. For free.
We consume what are friends put out there. We have habits an manners in which we'd like to be able to consume that information. However, we're running into a bidirectional problem. We're losing control over what information we're sharing and we're losing control over how we consume this information. In Tom Anderson's (of myspace fame) post about the changes in facebook, he mentions something called seamless sharing, where you have to do nothing and it's instantly shared. This, to me, raises all sorts of privacy concerns. In this TED talk the speaker addresses the problem of filtering algorithms in google and facebook.
I think it's very obvious that Facebook still realizes that we're consumers of the information. For without our work as the product, posting links, pictures and statuses, there'd be no facebook. However, without us as consumers reading various different posts and clicking related links there'd also be no facebook. The product we are to non-fellow consumers comes down to our network, what the people in our network are interested in and whatever information that is automatically shared with facebook through our web browser.
We need to be aware that this trend is going to continue. We as users and consumers need to fight to get control over our data and the right to control what we share when we share it. This gets back to my points in my earlier blog posts about pseudonyms and truly being anonymous on the web. If you are interested in knowing at least some of the information that you've shared on facebook over the years in some countries you are able to download a copy of your facebook history. I haven't done so yet, but I plan on it. If it is not available in your country, try to get the rights to your data.
While facebook is using you as a product, you still should have the right to demand the information they have on you and are selling to 3rd parties. Being the product isn't fun, however, it's nothing new. We've been the product for years and have never really complained. The difference now, is that the information about your personally has never been better and is only going to get better the more you give them. For free.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Technological Layers and Layer Ownership
This ars technica article outlines in extraordinary detail what is at risk in the smart phone wars. It discusses the various different layers involved with the smart phone industry. These layers are extremely important. Control of a layer allows you to move into another layer and can help you extract monopoly rents* from those layers as well. My friend Sean was complaining about bloatware** earlier today that comes a computer supplier. They are actually attempting to get into a different layer. If a PC company is able to provide support which can allow them to get money from a customer on a returning basis, monthly or yearly, they can help ensure return purchases on more expensive purchases as well as getting a lot more money out of first sale. Additionally, the manufacturer may also be using the bloat ware they install to subsidize the cost of the product you bought. If a third party asks to have software pre-installed the manufacturer could ask for money to put it on, which may be passed to you as a consumer, so you could get a computer at a slightly lower price.
Ars Technica, isn't the only group of people that views this phenomenon as a stack with different layers in it. This is actually an economic model as well. Which was used in the original Microsoft EU case explaining how these different layers can be leveraged to foreclose on a new market.
Another way of looking at this is in a traditional manufacturing sense. When you are making a car you have many different suppliers. You have paint, tires, batteries, steel, etc... There are several different ways to make it cheaper for you to produce a car. You can become vertically integrated, with a very high production level, where you make the steel, tires, paint and the full car. If you were extremely good at producing steel you would be able to get the steel at cost whereas traditionally you would have to pay a higher cost so the producer could earn a profit.
We can see this same sort of thing happen within IT. There is serious concern with corruption of content and content providers, like Comcast, purchasing a wide range of companies. If they control the material and access to the material they could control what people can access and impact society in a serious manner.
I don't think that Comcast is going to be able to significantly impact the smart phone layers as they have with TV. However, a company like Google or Apple definitely could. Google is actually attempting to get into every single layer in this market. They tried to purchase wireless spectrum (they are also installing a super fast network in Kansas City), they are going to purchase Motorola, they have an OS and they are an app provider.
I think that other technology companies are aware of this. This is part of the reason why Google is being attacked on all sides. While until Google gets a hold of Motorola, they will be mostly in the top most two layers, OS and Applications. Google is clearly trying to move into every layer possible. This will allow them to have the greatest likelihood of a customer going onto a website and click an ad to give them money.
To prevent this, almost everyone is suing Google or some aspect of their technologies. Google is trying to get around this. They want the control.
I'm going to be gone for a little while. My brother is coming into town and I'll be in Amsterdam for the next few days and then Munich this weekend. Hopefully I'll have a post up Thursday or early next week.
Further Reading: The New ICT Ecosystem by Martin Fransman
*monopoly rents means higher prices from controlling the market. It allows a manufacturer to sell a product for a higher price than they would be able to do under a competitive market. Microsoft is able to do this with Windows. However to protect themselves from other OS providers undercutting their prices, MS sells the same OS at lower price points. They give discounts to students and charge a lower price in poor countries. This allows them to increase their monopoly to new markets.
**excess software which slows down a computer or smart phone.
Ars Technica, isn't the only group of people that views this phenomenon as a stack with different layers in it. This is actually an economic model as well. Which was used in the original Microsoft EU case explaining how these different layers can be leveraged to foreclose on a new market.
Another way of looking at this is in a traditional manufacturing sense. When you are making a car you have many different suppliers. You have paint, tires, batteries, steel, etc... There are several different ways to make it cheaper for you to produce a car. You can become vertically integrated, with a very high production level, where you make the steel, tires, paint and the full car. If you were extremely good at producing steel you would be able to get the steel at cost whereas traditionally you would have to pay a higher cost so the producer could earn a profit.
We can see this same sort of thing happen within IT. There is serious concern with corruption of content and content providers, like Comcast, purchasing a wide range of companies. If they control the material and access to the material they could control what people can access and impact society in a serious manner.
I don't think that Comcast is going to be able to significantly impact the smart phone layers as they have with TV. However, a company like Google or Apple definitely could. Google is actually attempting to get into every single layer in this market. They tried to purchase wireless spectrum (they are also installing a super fast network in Kansas City), they are going to purchase Motorola, they have an OS and they are an app provider.
I think that other technology companies are aware of this. This is part of the reason why Google is being attacked on all sides. While until Google gets a hold of Motorola, they will be mostly in the top most two layers, OS and Applications. Google is clearly trying to move into every layer possible. This will allow them to have the greatest likelihood of a customer going onto a website and click an ad to give them money.
To prevent this, almost everyone is suing Google or some aspect of their technologies. Google is trying to get around this. They want the control.
I'm going to be gone for a little while. My brother is coming into town and I'll be in Amsterdam for the next few days and then Munich this weekend. Hopefully I'll have a post up Thursday or early next week.
Further Reading: The New ICT Ecosystem by Martin Fransman
*monopoly rents means higher prices from controlling the market. It allows a manufacturer to sell a product for a higher price than they would be able to do under a competitive market. Microsoft is able to do this with Windows. However to protect themselves from other OS providers undercutting their prices, MS sells the same OS at lower price points. They give discounts to students and charge a lower price in poor countries. This allows them to increase their monopoly to new markets.
**excess software which slows down a computer or smart phone.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Antitrust and Cell Phones
In my last three posts (one, two and three) I have been discussing the risks of antitrust for Google. With Android Google controls what applications are installed as the base as well as the search function. In South Korea apparently this is a big deal. Which took me the points of IE and WMP in my last post. Most people use the default programs on their computer or phones unless they have some external reasoning to use a different product. In the case of iTunes and WMP it was the iPod which drove the usage away from the default. However for many people that don't have an iPod there isn't much point is using anything else. Especially if you only play CDs on your computer or you have a very small MP3 collection.
There are, of course, other factors which may drive users to other products, such as seeking the ability to play lossless files instead of MP3s. On computers, in my opinion, it is much easier to take control over the device and install other applications or systems to replace the default. You just need to know how to find the program you want and install it. With phones this is much more difficult. I think that the Google Search functionality is going to be the first of many of these investigations.
For other applications that serve the same function as the search, it may be difficult to acquire a different app. At the app store for whatever phone you're using, there's a gate keeper (is there a confused keymaster too?). In the case of Apple they reject applications that duplicate a program which comes preinstalled on the phone. I'm fully expecting that these rejections will eventually become the target of some antitrust investigation. Google is better than Apple in this regard, however there is control over what goes into the app store. Interesting note there are at least 4 Bing search apps in the Android market place.
Google does allow third party app stores on Android. I think that this is a really smart move. This will actually prevent some future antitrust investigation that I think Apple will have to face. There will be a market of app market places that cater to different kinds of needs or may be phone company specific. For instance Samsung has their own app store on my Galaxy S. I would not be surprised if Steam, EA and other digital content providers are already planning on creating app stores for the phones. While some of the major game developers aren't creating games for phones yet, I believe that will change in the future. With Windows 8 going to be used for PCs, Tablets, and phones why wouldn't larger game developers created stripped down versions of their games to be played on phones?
However, I've wandered a bit from my initial point. While phones are different than computers in some pretty significant ways, they are small computers. They are more powerful than the computers I grew up with. Google will need to be aware of this and will need to evolve how it deals with the android system. The controls put on users in phones will eventually be forced out of existence by law suits and users demanding more freedom over their phones. Eventually, phones will require as much freedom as a PC, especially as we start to bridge between the two platforms.
There are, of course, other factors which may drive users to other products, such as seeking the ability to play lossless files instead of MP3s. On computers, in my opinion, it is much easier to take control over the device and install other applications or systems to replace the default. You just need to know how to find the program you want and install it. With phones this is much more difficult. I think that the Google Search functionality is going to be the first of many of these investigations.
For other applications that serve the same function as the search, it may be difficult to acquire a different app. At the app store for whatever phone you're using, there's a gate keeper (is there a confused keymaster too?). In the case of Apple they reject applications that duplicate a program which comes preinstalled on the phone. I'm fully expecting that these rejections will eventually become the target of some antitrust investigation. Google is better than Apple in this regard, however there is control over what goes into the app store. Interesting note there are at least 4 Bing search apps in the Android market place.
Google does allow third party app stores on Android. I think that this is a really smart move. This will actually prevent some future antitrust investigation that I think Apple will have to face. There will be a market of app market places that cater to different kinds of needs or may be phone company specific. For instance Samsung has their own app store on my Galaxy S. I would not be surprised if Steam, EA and other digital content providers are already planning on creating app stores for the phones. While some of the major game developers aren't creating games for phones yet, I believe that will change in the future. With Windows 8 going to be used for PCs, Tablets, and phones why wouldn't larger game developers created stripped down versions of their games to be played on phones?
However, I've wandered a bit from my initial point. While phones are different than computers in some pretty significant ways, they are small computers. They are more powerful than the computers I grew up with. Google will need to be aware of this and will need to evolve how it deals with the android system. The controls put on users in phones will eventually be forced out of existence by law suits and users demanding more freedom over their phones. Eventually, phones will require as much freedom as a PC, especially as we start to bridge between the two platforms.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Google's Anti-Trust problems III
In my last two posts (one and two), I've been discussing the current problems as well as potential problems that will be facing Google in the antitrust arena. Yesterday I mentioned I was going to discuss Windows Media Player (WMP) and how this pertains to Google. However, I realized I need to go one step back first. First, we need to look at what happened with Netscape and Internet Explorer (IE). Initially Netscape was THE internet browser. It was the browser to program websites to be displayed on, IE wasn't even really on the radar. Also, at this time with the web, these programs were being sent out by CD, it would take an extremely long time to down load this application. Why? because it was over a telephone line. A modem that was getting about a tenth or less of the download speed you have now with whatever your broadband connection is. That and your mom would probably pick up the phone to call some one while you were trying to download the software, or while playing War Craft 2 against a friend.
Since the medium of delivery for the browser was over CD it was a level playing field for both browsers to compete. You'd get one in the mail for whatever browser, Netscape, IE, AOL, etc. However, Microsoft realized the importance of this market. They figured out a way to leverage their desktop monopoly to foreclose on the browser market. They started installing IE onto all of their operating systems. Then went as far to integrate everything together to ensure market dominance. It worked because of slow connections and the fact that people are lazy. If something already works they will use it.
Flash forward about 5 years. MP3s have gotten popular through Napster and other digital Peer 2 Peer file transfer systems and the next big market is music players. Winamp was a major player at this time and WMP was not really any sort of competition for it either. In Windows XP WMP got a major over haul and was at least able to compete with Winamp. Microsoft decided to bundle the software in the same manner they had done with IE.
This is where the story changes though. The EU filed suite against this claiming this was anticompetitive. At this time the iPod had just come out and there was no reason to expect the product to come to the PC. It seemed like it was a long way from happening. Plus, even if the iPod was going to PC it was still going to be a niche market. So, the law suit. We all know now that because of the pace of technology and the fact that there were other factors involved with the selection of the music player it prevented market dominance of Microsoft. Without the requirement for iTunes with the iPod who knows what player would have won the market.
How does this relate to Google though? Well, looking at the search engine suit from Korea I mentioned yesterday, I think this has some pretty significant implications. Using a platform to control the method in which you use other functions can be shown to be anticompetitive. Google search engine is the first for mobile phones, however, I see no reason why it will be the last.
More on this topic in my next blog.
Since the medium of delivery for the browser was over CD it was a level playing field for both browsers to compete. You'd get one in the mail for whatever browser, Netscape, IE, AOL, etc. However, Microsoft realized the importance of this market. They figured out a way to leverage their desktop monopoly to foreclose on the browser market. They started installing IE onto all of their operating systems. Then went as far to integrate everything together to ensure market dominance. It worked because of slow connections and the fact that people are lazy. If something already works they will use it.
Flash forward about 5 years. MP3s have gotten popular through Napster and other digital Peer 2 Peer file transfer systems and the next big market is music players. Winamp was a major player at this time and WMP was not really any sort of competition for it either. In Windows XP WMP got a major over haul and was at least able to compete with Winamp. Microsoft decided to bundle the software in the same manner they had done with IE.
This is where the story changes though. The EU filed suite against this claiming this was anticompetitive. At this time the iPod had just come out and there was no reason to expect the product to come to the PC. It seemed like it was a long way from happening. Plus, even if the iPod was going to PC it was still going to be a niche market. So, the law suit. We all know now that because of the pace of technology and the fact that there were other factors involved with the selection of the music player it prevented market dominance of Microsoft. Without the requirement for iTunes with the iPod who knows what player would have won the market.
How does this relate to Google though? Well, looking at the search engine suit from Korea I mentioned yesterday, I think this has some pretty significant implications. Using a platform to control the method in which you use other functions can be shown to be anticompetitive. Google search engine is the first for mobile phones, however, I see no reason why it will be the last.
More on this topic in my next blog.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Google's Antitrust Problems II
I think that I started this discussion at just the right time. According to cnet, South Korean officials have raided a Google office over anti-competitive practices relating to Android. They claim that it's anti-competitive to force companies to use the Google search engine with Android if they want Google applications and the Google logo on the device. Personally, I'm not really sure how this is anti-competitive, or at least why Google is being singled out for this. Apple does the same thing, as does Nokia and Microsoft. When I still lived in the US, I remember Verizon forcing Bing on me and changed my default internet settings on my Blackberry (granted Korea couldn't go after that one) but the idea to me is bizarre.
However, this is a great way to discuss how Google, in a broader sense, is at risk for antitrust action from many national governments. In my last post I explained the idea of market foreclosure, which Microsoft used in an attempt to capture a monopoly in the server market as they had in the PC market. South Korea will most likely be arguing that Google is using a captive audience to force their search engine on their users. In the bigger picture, I think this sort of tactic will likely be used for other markets. For example, Google is using their large market share, and the social capital they've gain from being a trust worthy site, to build email products, then office suites, map and geolocation services (with recommendations), and of course blogging sites like the one you're currently reading. Since I have a google account, from way back when Gmail first was created, I've gotten all these additional features for free. i haven't had to do anything and they just appear as services that I can use.
Even if I'm not logged in to Google and I go to Google.com there's a huge selection of services that I can use without logging in. However, they become more powerful as soon as I log in. Google is using their monopoly of search engines to leverage users to use other products they've created. Let's say Yahoo! decided to try to create an office suit in the same manner as Google and basically try to emulate Google in every way with all of their products. I'm sure that some of the users there would take advantage of the free document services. However, I also believe that Yahoo! and Google cater to different portions of the market. Yahoo! has become the defacto home page to an older crowd than Google. Which could mean that the users of Yahoo! may not want the same products. I have a Yahoo! account, which I only use for Fantasy Hockey and Football. I never use it for email, I never search the web using Yahoo! I only use Google. Why? Because it gives me the results I want.
So, now that we understand that Google has been leveraging their search market share to move into other markets what kind of impact does that have? I think that it will actually prevent other people from using other services out there. However, I think that with internet systems there is no real reason to keep with one product family over another. It's a matter of trust. I think that people trust Google more than other companies, which is why they are willing to use them for other products. I couldn't imagine people using a Facebook Docs the same way that people use Google Docs.
In my next post I'll discuss more of these implications of these topics. I will also compare some of the Google products to Windows Media player and how something that seems like a big deal today, may not be a big deal in a year or two. Technology moves so fast.
However, this is a great way to discuss how Google, in a broader sense, is at risk for antitrust action from many national governments. In my last post I explained the idea of market foreclosure, which Microsoft used in an attempt to capture a monopoly in the server market as they had in the PC market. South Korea will most likely be arguing that Google is using a captive audience to force their search engine on their users. In the bigger picture, I think this sort of tactic will likely be used for other markets. For example, Google is using their large market share, and the social capital they've gain from being a trust worthy site, to build email products, then office suites, map and geolocation services (with recommendations), and of course blogging sites like the one you're currently reading. Since I have a google account, from way back when Gmail first was created, I've gotten all these additional features for free. i haven't had to do anything and they just appear as services that I can use.
Even if I'm not logged in to Google and I go to Google.com there's a huge selection of services that I can use without logging in. However, they become more powerful as soon as I log in. Google is using their monopoly of search engines to leverage users to use other products they've created. Let's say Yahoo! decided to try to create an office suit in the same manner as Google and basically try to emulate Google in every way with all of their products. I'm sure that some of the users there would take advantage of the free document services. However, I also believe that Yahoo! and Google cater to different portions of the market. Yahoo! has become the defacto home page to an older crowd than Google. Which could mean that the users of Yahoo! may not want the same products. I have a Yahoo! account, which I only use for Fantasy Hockey and Football. I never use it for email, I never search the web using Yahoo! I only use Google. Why? Because it gives me the results I want.
So, now that we understand that Google has been leveraging their search market share to move into other markets what kind of impact does that have? I think that it will actually prevent other people from using other services out there. However, I think that with internet systems there is no real reason to keep with one product family over another. It's a matter of trust. I think that people trust Google more than other companies, which is why they are willing to use them for other products. I couldn't imagine people using a Facebook Docs the same way that people use Google Docs.
In my next post I'll discuss more of these implications of these topics. I will also compare some of the Google products to Windows Media player and how something that seems like a big deal today, may not be a big deal in a year or two. Technology moves so fast.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Google's Anti-Trust problems
When Google announced the planned acquisition of Motorola Mobile investors weren't exactly thrilled (see here here and here). Most of those investors are concerned over a lot of the issues i discussed in my last few posts (here and here), patents and potential issues with Android's future. There are also discussions online about different types of antitrust and privacy probes that Google is being subjected to.
Some of these privacy probes are from the EU, such as the German probe into the Google Maps cars connecting to open networks and keeping records of these networks. Another recent issue comes from Google Ads itself. Where Google was advertising for illegal pharmacies. This one Google settled for $500 million, which may have been an effort to keep away antitrust investigators or at the very least prevent their attorneys from being distracted.
In the previous article it notes that European regulators are looking into Google's ad practices to see if they are being anti-competitive. This could be a legitimate concern. Google has been purchasing a large number of ad related companies recently. However, in the long run I don't think that purchasing of companies will make that much difference as it's very easy to get into the internet ad game. New companies will be springing up on a routine basis.
I think that the EU will eventually look at Google in the same manner they looked at Microsoft in 2004. They were using an economic analysis tool called foreclosure. It's a fairly simple manner of looking at markets and market share. Let's say you have a monopoly in some market like desktop operating systems. You also know that the desktop market isn't the only market out there, there's another market related to servers. What are servers? Well they serve different functions but some of them are webservers, so when you go to a website that has some animation or data to be pulled there's a webserver there that is connected to the website. This webserver pulls the required data to be displayed and in many cases actually creates the desired images. Other cases are for databases. The computer is extremely fast and can handle a massive amount of data processing at a time. Facebook for example uses a large number of them.
So, you already have control over the desktop market, and you want control over the server market. You can make it easier or harder for your desktop machines to connect to another machine. Basically you control the language in which that happens. You can make it easier for competing operating systems to decode your language. If you want to make it easy to connect a windows desktop to a linux server, you basically give the linux OS guys the lanugage and words to use to make the connection happen. If you don't want them to connect you make it very difficult so they have to create their own rosetta stone to figure out how to connect to your machines. (I know this isn't a very technical way to describe what's going on here, but not everyone is computer literate that reads my blog)
Through this leveraging of your monopoly on desktop computers you can push your way into another market. In some ways Google is doing exactly this. In my next blog I'll discuss a little bit more about what happened with Microsoft and how Google is attempting to foreclose on other markets using their search engine monopoly as a starting point.
Some of these privacy probes are from the EU, such as the German probe into the Google Maps cars connecting to open networks and keeping records of these networks. Another recent issue comes from Google Ads itself. Where Google was advertising for illegal pharmacies. This one Google settled for $500 million, which may have been an effort to keep away antitrust investigators or at the very least prevent their attorneys from being distracted.
In the previous article it notes that European regulators are looking into Google's ad practices to see if they are being anti-competitive. This could be a legitimate concern. Google has been purchasing a large number of ad related companies recently. However, in the long run I don't think that purchasing of companies will make that much difference as it's very easy to get into the internet ad game. New companies will be springing up on a routine basis.
I think that the EU will eventually look at Google in the same manner they looked at Microsoft in 2004. They were using an economic analysis tool called foreclosure. It's a fairly simple manner of looking at markets and market share. Let's say you have a monopoly in some market like desktop operating systems. You also know that the desktop market isn't the only market out there, there's another market related to servers. What are servers? Well they serve different functions but some of them are webservers, so when you go to a website that has some animation or data to be pulled there's a webserver there that is connected to the website. This webserver pulls the required data to be displayed and in many cases actually creates the desired images. Other cases are for databases. The computer is extremely fast and can handle a massive amount of data processing at a time. Facebook for example uses a large number of them.
So, you already have control over the desktop market, and you want control over the server market. You can make it easier or harder for your desktop machines to connect to another machine. Basically you control the language in which that happens. You can make it easier for competing operating systems to decode your language. If you want to make it easy to connect a windows desktop to a linux server, you basically give the linux OS guys the lanugage and words to use to make the connection happen. If you don't want them to connect you make it very difficult so they have to create their own rosetta stone to figure out how to connect to your machines. (I know this isn't a very technical way to describe what's going on here, but not everyone is computer literate that reads my blog)
Through this leveraging of your monopoly on desktop computers you can push your way into another market. In some ways Google is doing exactly this. In my next blog I'll discuss a little bit more about what happened with Microsoft and how Google is attempting to foreclose on other markets using their search engine monopoly as a starting point.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Google's Motorola Future
According to Eric Schmidt of Google the purchase of Motorola Mobile is also it's own foray into physical products. This is promising but it's also dangerous for Google. While 98% of Google's revenue comes from ads as of 2008, the majority of its revenue stream is free of a great deal of risk from patent infringements. This is double true because the majority of Google's patents are related to search and locating data. The products that it produces that people use on a regular basis have been designed around open standards which enables them to get around patenting and use licensing instead. If any of these technologies are accused of patent infringement Google can pull up the original source code, the version and the date. While this may be more expensive than the patent examiner finding this during the patent examining procedure, it still can save Google millions of dollars in patent suits. However, it hasn't prevented them from having to pay a good deal in licensing fees despite this as I mentioned in my previous post.
Why is this a risk for Google? Well, every one of those patent lawsuits that were targeted at Motorola is now directly targeted at Google. Google is sitting on a huge pile of cash. Enough cash to outright buy Motorola. Additionally, any lawsuit that is directed towards an application of Android on a Motorola phone that Google will eventually be selling, is going to be directed towards Google now. Previously, when there was something infringing in an application on Android most of the risk was shifted towards the manufactures of the phones and away from Google. Google does have to pay Lodsys/Intellectual Ventrues for one of their patents which allows things to be purchased through apps. Like using the Android Market place. Google also has one other lawsuit related to Android at this point, which is related to a Java Patent. This is kind of an ongoing lawsuit, which Oracle has had to remove a blog post from a former Sun employee praising the use of Java in Android.
There's got to be some sort of potential for payout for Google to take this risk though. Yes, I do think there is. Despite the fact that Google is going opening itself to direct lawsuit battles with Apple, it also allows its engineers another outlet for creativity now that Google has shuttered Google Labs. Engineers from the Motorola Mobile side will be able to have more freedom and the engineers that work in Google will be able to play more with Android to make a more superior product. Google will have direct control over their handset opposed to farming it out to HTC like they did with the Nexus One.
Are there any other risks besides the ones you've mentioned already? I think there's one big one. Anti-trust case. Google is already in the cross eyes for an investigation. In my next blog I'll discuss the case against Microsoft which the US and EU handled and then how the precedence could impact Google.
Why is this a risk for Google? Well, every one of those patent lawsuits that were targeted at Motorola is now directly targeted at Google. Google is sitting on a huge pile of cash. Enough cash to outright buy Motorola. Additionally, any lawsuit that is directed towards an application of Android on a Motorola phone that Google will eventually be selling, is going to be directed towards Google now. Previously, when there was something infringing in an application on Android most of the risk was shifted towards the manufactures of the phones and away from Google. Google does have to pay Lodsys/Intellectual Ventrues for one of their patents which allows things to be purchased through apps. Like using the Android Market place. Google also has one other lawsuit related to Android at this point, which is related to a Java Patent. This is kind of an ongoing lawsuit, which Oracle has had to remove a blog post from a former Sun employee praising the use of Java in Android.
There's got to be some sort of potential for payout for Google to take this risk though. Yes, I do think there is. Despite the fact that Google is going opening itself to direct lawsuit battles with Apple, it also allows its engineers another outlet for creativity now that Google has shuttered Google Labs. Engineers from the Motorola Mobile side will be able to have more freedom and the engineers that work in Google will be able to play more with Android to make a more superior product. Google will have direct control over their handset opposed to farming it out to HTC like they did with the Nexus One.
Are there any other risks besides the ones you've mentioned already? I think there's one big one. Anti-trust case. Google is already in the cross eyes for an investigation. In my next blog I'll discuss the case against Microsoft which the US and EU handled and then how the precedence could impact Google.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Google's misstep with Patents
Google has been in the news a lot recently related patents. Why? Well, I think they've managed their intellectual property in a naive way. Not an incorrect way. Just one that wasn't keeping up with the behavior of competitors and trolls in the market place. To date Google has 782 patents, for a company that has produced as many innovative products as it has, this is not very many. Google has been around for 13 years now, founding in 1998. Comparing Google to Apple, looking at patents filed after 1998, is not a good comparison. Apple has filed and received 2600 patents. Sure they've been busy working on products and had an established market already. The iPod had already come out by then. Regardless, this indicates that Google has made a major misstep in regard to patents.
I fully applaud Google's efforts to minimize the number of patents they own. It's clear from a glance at the patents, they have focused their patents on the ability to search for data as well as data management. They are sorely lacking when it comes to most software. This is most likely why Google has licensing agreements with companies like Intellectual Ventures. To combat the growing web of lawsuits surrounding it's handset manufacturers and developers Google has been on a spree of both purchasing patents (1,000 from IBM and 12,000 with the purchase of Motorola Mobile) and propaganda against software patents.
Motorola will give Google the patent expertise and experience at defending its patent claims as well as a huge number of patents it will need to defend. I believe this will create a great change in the way that Google deals with intellectual property in general. I'm not entirely sure this is a good thing either. Google may take the route of IBM which both patents things specifically so that other companies can't patent them and publishes technologies in obscure journals which can be later used to invalidate patents as a form of prior art. However, Google could easily take the route of Apple. This would be extremely bad in my opinion. The route where Google continues to invest in new technologies but patents everything and then makes it difficult for other companies to use that technology. Google has the innovative capabilities to become a huge patent troll.
I think the only good that would come out of that is if Google went after patent trolls.With open source technologies some of the problems with software patenting does go away. As anything with an open source license is technically released into the public and becomes part of the prior art. Unfortunately, that's also a huge problem with open source. It would be impossible for a patent examiner, who typically has 3 days to approve a patent, to actually find a given software technology which is already being used as open source.
Overall, I think Google is currently attempting to address its misstep with patents. I think that Google will push for patent reform for software patents. I think that with a large enough group of people, including billionaires like Mark Cuban, there could be a significant change in the manner in which software patents are issued. Gaming companies, search engines, and software developers need to work together to address this issue though.
I fully applaud Google's efforts to minimize the number of patents they own. It's clear from a glance at the patents, they have focused their patents on the ability to search for data as well as data management. They are sorely lacking when it comes to most software. This is most likely why Google has licensing agreements with companies like Intellectual Ventures. To combat the growing web of lawsuits surrounding it's handset manufacturers and developers Google has been on a spree of both purchasing patents (1,000 from IBM and 12,000 with the purchase of Motorola Mobile) and propaganda against software patents.
Motorola will give Google the patent expertise and experience at defending its patent claims as well as a huge number of patents it will need to defend. I believe this will create a great change in the way that Google deals with intellectual property in general. I'm not entirely sure this is a good thing either. Google may take the route of IBM which both patents things specifically so that other companies can't patent them and publishes technologies in obscure journals which can be later used to invalidate patents as a form of prior art. However, Google could easily take the route of Apple. This would be extremely bad in my opinion. The route where Google continues to invest in new technologies but patents everything and then makes it difficult for other companies to use that technology. Google has the innovative capabilities to become a huge patent troll.
I think the only good that would come out of that is if Google went after patent trolls.With open source technologies some of the problems with software patenting does go away. As anything with an open source license is technically released into the public and becomes part of the prior art. Unfortunately, that's also a huge problem with open source. It would be impossible for a patent examiner, who typically has 3 days to approve a patent, to actually find a given software technology which is already being used as open source.
Overall, I think Google is currently attempting to address its misstep with patents. I think that Google will push for patent reform for software patents. I think that with a large enough group of people, including billionaires like Mark Cuban, there could be a significant change in the manner in which software patents are issued. Gaming companies, search engines, and software developers need to work together to address this issue though.
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