Reading the combative words of @LukeJohnsonRCP in the Sunday Times (paywall) today, I was struck by the juxtaposition of a free market capitalist championing some sort of nationalist government intervention to throttle enterprise and innovation. He writes, “We have a huge and successful creative industry, which is being gradually eviscerated by the depredations of parasites such as […]
Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google make up the five horsemen of the internet. I’ve written before about how they are both dominating their own and crossing each others’ fields at the same time. The media constantly frames a theory that all five are at war, each wanting to be the only tech company standing. […]
Microsoft is plagued by Google’s Android dominance in the mobile internet market so much so, that they’re leading a coalition of 17 companies called FairSearch who have launched a complaint to the European Competition Commission. Microsoft have also launched their third advert that tells users that Google is sharing some personal info when buying applications […]
Google search is trying to become ever better. Their standard 10 blue links are a thing of the past. Now it’s a more ‘augmented’ affair as they constantly try to improve the quality of their results. They genuinely want you to find what you want rather than becoming disenfranchised and switch to Bing. So obsessed […]
Reuters has called Starbucks out on their accounting tactic that sees them report a loss to the taxman while boasting healthy cashflows to investors. From the article, “Over the past three years, Starbucks has reported no profit, and paid no income tax, on sales of 1.2 billion pounds in the UK.” Of course, our coffee […]
Tech’s Big 4 want to own your digital life and this land grab has developed in recent years away from digesting lines of code (by browsing on Amazon, searching on Google etc) to a physical tie up via hardware. The old days were ruled by Gateway and Dell with their desktops and laptops. Now it’s […]
Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and other tech giants will have to reply to Google’s Glass project, but I shudder to think about the court cases over patents that’ll follow. The only folks wealthier than the company board members will be the lawyers that represent them. These glasses (and their many successors) won’t be for the nerds, […]
Google’s free websites are great for the micro business out there who’s not online at all. They’re going to hurt those digital firms who’ve built a consultancy around helping getting such SMEs online. Well, putting a positive spin on it, perhaps it’ll just put more fish in the digital pond and those newbies may get […]
The modern business model from Silicon Valley is build. Don’t just make a computer, make digital products (as Steve Jobs said by launching a music player, then a music store, then a phone). Build and build again is what the dominant players are showing us to be the winning formula. Google was just a search […]
Answers.com sold this week for $127m. This coupled with the growing buzz around Quora, highlights the fact that Q&A sites are the poster-boy targets on the web. Added to that firestorm is Mahalo giving up on human powered search and pivoting to answers. Although it looks like they’re going for ‘how to’ queries more than […]
Go out with a group of friends and notice how many times Facebook crops up. Did you see it on Facebook… don’t put that on Facebook… I read about your holiday on Facebook… are you on Facebook (instead of the hassle of swapping mobile numbers). It really is becoming ubiquitous with socialising. Where there are […]
How many Microsoft Office users really exhaust the package, employing it as its designers dreamt they would? Not very many. How many stretch the package to more than even 25% of its functional capacity? I’d be very surprised if it’s more than one in twenty. It’s probably about the same ratio as 4×4 owners who’ve […]
I have been using more and more of Bing lately because: a) Microsoft c0-sponsor Jason Calacanis’s TWiST show (gotta thank the sponsors, right?) and, B) they’re doing some great, underrated stuff. Check out this video from TED presented by Blaise Aguera. I know it’s about maps not search but it’s a good barometer of how […]
I posted previously about how I saw the web unfolding in 2010. One of my pointers was about on-site search and how bad it is in general. I recommended that the big players team up with the search engines to get it right. Well, Google beat me to the deadline and launched its Google Commerce […]
On the right – Prevent search engines from indexing news content and have readers pay through a variety of subscriptions to recoup lost earnings from physical news sales. People have no right to free journalism and aggregator sites (especially Google News) are to news, what Pirate Bay is to music. On the left – If […]
A lot has been made of Eric Schmidt resigning from Apple’s board. The short version: he’s also CEO of Google and these two tech giants are really starting to cross swords. While Google are undoubtedly an increasing ‘problem’ for Apple, I think most reports are in danger of missing the elephant in the room: Nokia. […]
A while ago, I had the pleasure of listening to Google’s Robert Swerling talk saliently about site design. The brief version of his presentation: Velocity – give it fast and let them get on with other things Visibility – don’t surprise consumers Value – provide real value Variation – never come out of beta (love […]
Well, that’s my prediction. They’ll stop burning dollars acquiring paper mills and fork out $750+ million for Twitter. Twitter is the most popular and certainly the most talked about social media tool of the moment, yet there’s no clear indication on how they’ll monetise the whole shebang. They raised another $35 million in venture capital […]
Google launched some really innovative services in November. Here’s a quick video round up: 1. Search Wiki: I’m not sure I’m ‘feeling this’ but its going to be interesting to see how the long tail affects results. What if 1,000 people voted your site to #1 when searching ‘4 star restaurant London’? Equally, what happens […]
Jason Calacanis shares a number of attributes, along with the initials, of Jeremy Clarkson. Both are tall, gregarious and outrageously outspoken in their quest for PR. (According to .net magazine, Calacanis called SEO ‘bullshit’ and a ‘wasted industry’ while speaking at a search engine conference, and said anyone from PayPerPost should kill themselves.) But, unlike Clarkson, […]
Web 2.0 and the new media aren’t about spamming the system to promote your goods and services. Okay, it’s exactly that for too many shysters out there. But I’d argue that if your clients are online, surely it’s logical for you to consider engaging them there. This is where authentic use of Web 2.0 tools […]
Think back to your old TV and of the static between TV channels. Well, three-quarters of those radio airwaves, or ‘white space’ spectrum, are completely unused. With the US switching off the analogue TV signal in Feb 2009 Google wants to blow open that wireless spectrum, effectively for a new and more powerful generation of […]
Michael Arrington says Google launching their Chrome web browser is yet further indication that our favourite search engine is going after Microsoft’s lunch. If Mr A is right (I wouldn’t ever bet against he with the knowledge) in predicting Google’s strategy then it’s more than ironic that Microsoft themselves had a similar browser project called […]
We all know history shows us nothing lasts. The Roman Empire, the Warsaw Pact, the telegram, the Two Ronnies… whatever. You name it and time will show itself to have moved swiftly on. Google had another record month in June performing 7.1 billion searches, but I predict, with a prize-fighter’s confidence, that Google cannot remain […]