Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
My First Australian Rules Football Game
It was fantastic!! Very fast and exciting...[[posterous-content:pid___0]]
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Feel bad about your broadband? Canada has it worse. — Broadband News and Analysis
Updated: Shaw, a Canadian ISP that has a broadband cap of
250 GB per month750 GB for its fastest tier, said this week that its online video service would be exempt from data caps. It also offers an unlimited plan as well.Update: Shaw clarified its position on this, releasing a statement that said customers streaming the content over their set-top boxes would not have their content count against caps, but those using tablets or getting the content via the web would see the content count against its data caps. (Ed. note: original story follows)Such a move places Shaw’s upcoming Movie Club service at an advantage to a competitive movie streaming service such as Netflix which is already having to downgrade its default service in Canada because of bandwidth caps.
The move would be akin to Comcast exempting customers of its Xfinity service from its data cap (it doesn’t), something that would raise the ire of regulators and consumers here, much as Shaw’s move could do in Canada. Shaw’s plans came out in a two-week long hearing of Canada’s Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) decision to let wholesale broadband providers charge their customers new rates. We covered some of the fallout from that decision, and the hearings themselves are providing pages of transcripts providing a critical look at how download limits and anticompetitive tactics from ISPs can hurt consumers and innovation. Maybe we could get those going here in the U.S.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Rick Harris.
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Wow.....I am so proud to be a Shaw customer......hello Telus.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Lego Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet with working PDK is unreal — Autoblog
Video: Lego Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet with working PDK is unreal
by Zach Bowman (RSS feed) on Jul 8th 2011 at 2:58PM
Lego Porsche 911 RC Car - Click above to watch video after the jump
We've grown a little callous when it comes to Lego creations. We blame the internet. After all, with the world 's Lego builders itching to show off their latest Technic and basic block constructions, the bar is set continuously higher.These days, our eyebrows don't arch at anything less than Lego perfection, which is why we're head over heels for the 911 Turbo Cabriolet PDK in the video after the jump. It's pure mechanical obsession in the best way possible. Everything works, from the retractable hard top to hood release. The car even boasts the same steering rack ratio as the real deal.
All told, there are over 3,500 parts wrapped up in the vehicle, including eight electric motors, three remote controls and around 21 feet of wire. Even more impressive is the fact that this is no static model. The transmission actually functions and puts power through an all-wheel drive system. Consider our minds effectively blown. This guy actually built a fully-functioning RC car from scratch out of Lego components. Hit the jump to see it for yourself.
[Source: YouTube]Filed under: Etc., Videos, Porsche, Toys/Games
Tags: 911, 911 turbo, lego, lego 911, lego porsche, lego porsche 911, lego+porche, legoporche, porsche, porsche 911 turbo, porsche 911 turbo cabriolet
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You have to watch the video...it is unbelievable the amount of effort and detail that went into this....
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Marc Andreessen on the Dot-Com 'Bubble'
Contrary to all the recent hype about a bubble, you’ve said that tech companies are actually undervalued. So in true 1999 fashion, should I take my life savings out of mutual funds and toss it into tech stocks?
I’m certainly not an investment adviser, but on a 30-year basis, these things are cheap. If you compare how big industrial companies like G.E. are valued compared with big tech companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Apple, tech stocks have never been valued more poorly in comparison. So not only is there no bubble — these prices are reflective of the fact that the market still hates tech. This bubble talk is about everybody being unbelievably psychologically scarred from 10 years ago.
Your venture-capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, is heavily invested in Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. You’re hardly an unbiased observer.
True, but the counterargument is I put my money where my mouth is.
The nearly $3 billion I.P.O. of Netscape, a company you helped found, has been cited as the beginning of the 1990s tech bubble. Do you recall a moment back then that felt like the last days of the Roman Empire?
There was a point in the late ’90s where all the graduating M.B.A.’s wanted to start companies in Silicon Valley, and for the most part they were not actually qualified to do it. They brought the whole sideshow of the hype and parties and all that crap. M.B.A. graduating classes are actually a reliable contrary indicator: if they all want to go into investment banking, there’s going to be a financial crisis. If they want to go into tech, that means a bubble is forming.
How has the M.B.A. migration been lately?
It’s heating up again, but it’s still not anything near like it was in ’99. And even though people love to badmouth ’99 and 2000, you also have to remember that’s when Google got built.
After hearing a story about Foursquare’s co-founder, Dennis Crowley, walking into a press event in athletic wear and eating a banana, I developed a theory that bubbles might be predicted by fashion: when tech founders can’t be bothered to appear businesslike, the power has shifted too much in their favor.
Believe it or not, this goes deep into the interior mentality of the engineer, which is very truth-oriented. When you’re dealing with machines or anything that you build, it either works or it doesn’t, no matter how good of a salesman you are. So engineers not only don’t care about the surface appearance, but they view attempts to kind of be fake on the surface as fundamentally dishonest.
That reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg’s criticism of ‘‘The Social Network.’’ He said that ‘‘filmmakers can’t get their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.’’
Aaron Sorkin was completely unable to understand the actual psychology of Mark or of Facebook. He can’t conceive of a world where social status or getting laid or, for that matter, doing drugs, is not the most important thing.
People view you as an oracle in the valley. I was hoping you’d blow my mind with something you see in the future. Gordon Bell at Microsoft is working on wearable computing, where it literally records everything around you all the time — video, your conversations. He wants to get to where it’s like a pendant around your neck. We also have a company called Jawbone that makes peripherals for smart phones and tablets. Today, they sell Bluetooth headsets and speakers, but soon they will sell all kinds of wearable computing devices.
Will we soon be dealing with antigaming laws so that drivers can’t play wearable video games while driving down the highway?
That assumes they’re driving. Google is working on self-driving cars, and they seem to work. People are so bad at driving cars that computers don’t have to be that good to be much better. Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you’re like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers. Ten to 20 years out, driving your car will be viewed as equivalently immoral as smoking cigarettes around other people is today.
INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.
Friday, July 08, 2011
The Grand Rapids LipDub (NEW WORLD RECORD) | quietube
Who new Grand Rapids had such a beautiful downtown?
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
EXCLUSIVE: Google To Retire Blogger & Picasa Brands in Google+ Push
Say goodbye to the Picasa and Blogger names: Google intends to retire several non-Google name brands and rename them as Google products, Mashable has learned.
The move is part of a larger effort to unify its brand for the public launch of Google+, the search giant’s social initiative.
Blogger and Picasa aren’t going away, of course — they’re two of Google’s most popular products. Instead, according to two sources familiar with the matter, Google intends to rename Picasa “Google Photos” and Blogger will become “Google Blogs.” Several other Google brands are likely to be affected, though our sources made it clear that YouTube would not be rebranded. The technology giant shut down Google Video, its failed web video service, in May.
The move isn’t without precedent; Google acquired JotSpot in 2006 and rebranded it as Google Sites in 2008. In 2007, Google acquired VOIP platform GrandCentral and relaunched it as Google Voice in 2009.
SEE ALSO: REVIEW | PHOTOS | VIDEOS | POLL | PROS & CONS Picasa and Blogger were also Google acquisitions, although both companies have been part of the Google empire for far longer. Picasa was acquired in 2004 and Blogger (co-founded by Evan Williams of Twitter) was acquired in 2003 and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world. Although the rebranding could upset some existing customers, it also gives Google the ability to completely integrate both services into Google+.
Rebranding Coming in Next Six Weeks
The transition from Picasa and Blogger to Google Photos and Google Blogs will occur “in a month to a month and a half,” we’ve been told. The date aligns with the likely public launch of Google+. Mashable has been told to expect the public debut of Google+ on or before July 31. The date is important because it’s the day all private Google Profiles will be deleted.
We believe Google doesn’t want to have private profiles after the public Google+ launch. Instead, the company is likely to encourage users who want more privacy to use Circles to curate their friend groups.
The brand unification effort will be the largest in company history — it’s never renamed a property as large as Blogger. The popular blog creation service has been receiving a lot of extra love recently. In March, Google announced that Blogger would receive a major overhaul. We doubt many people expected that the overhaul would include a rebranding, though.
Google+ makes perfect sense for Blogger and Picasa — they are both social products that improve as more people use them. It’s important to note that Google+ already has a photos feature, a product that we believe utilizes Picasa technology. It’s also important to note that Google+’s photo feature has no Picasa branding of any kind.
Update: Google declined to comment on this story.
About time!
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Google’s Six-Front War
Editor’s note: Guest contributor Semil Shah is an entrepreneur interested in digital media, consumer internet, and social networks. He is based in Palo Alto and you can follow him on twitter @semilshah.
While the tech world is buzzing about the launch and implications of Google’s new social network, Google+, it’s worth noting that Google isn’t just in a war with Facebook, it’s at war with multiple companies across multiple industries. In fact, Google is fighting a multi-front war with a host of tech giants for control over some of the most valuable pieces of real estate in technology. Whether it’s social, mobile, browsing, local, enterprise, or even search, Google is being attacked from all angles. And make no mistake about it, they are fighting back and fighting back, hard. Entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist Ben Horowitz laid the groundwork for this in his post Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO, saying Larry Page “seems to have determined that Google is moving into war and he clearly intends to be a wartime CEO. This will be a profound change for Google and the entire high-tech industry.” Horowitz is exactly right.
Before I investigate each battle front in the war, it’s important to highlight the fact that perhaps no other tech company right now could withstand such a multifaceted attack, let alone be able to retaliate efficiently. Sure, Apple might get pushed around by Facebook, so it integrated Twitter into iOS5, and sure, Amazon and Apple have their own tussles over digital media and payments, but at the end of the day, Google is in this unique and potentially highly vulnerable position that will test the company’s mettle and ability to not only reinvent itself, but also to perhaps strengthen its core. Let’s take a quick look into the GooglePlex, which may now resemble more of a military complex, plotting out strategies and tactics for this war. Google must battle on at least six fronts simultaneously.
The Browser Front: Users have a choice between Internet Explorer (Microsoft), Firefox (Mozilla), Safari (Apple), and Google’s offering, Chrome. The speculation is that Facebook is interested in a browser, too, since Mozilla co-founder Blake Ross is an employee, but that hasn’t happened yet. More recently, the social browser RockMelt has captured some peoples’ interests, and last week secured $30M in financing, adding Facebook board members Jim Breyer and Marc Andreessen to its board. Andreessen obviously knows a thing or two about browsers. Though most browsers enable users to power their search by Google as an option, Googe’s Chrome offering isn’t the lead browser by market share, and not even in second place.
The Mobile Front: Apple’s iOS took the mobile world by storm in 2007 with the first iPhone. Then Google’s Android operating system roared alongside it, turning into a freight train of downloads, as Bill Gurley said, only recently to be slowed by Apple’s release of a phone with Verizon. While Android may have more installs, they don’t have the developer community to build killer apps because the Android marketplace (both for hardware and firmware) is highly fragmented, whereas iOS is about symphonic convergence. All the along, there’s been ample speculation about whether Facebook was building its own mobile phone device, or as the company has publicly hinted, how it would integrate social layers into different mobile operating systems and platforms.
The Search Front: Whether we’re on the desktop/laptop, a tablet, or a phone, Google wants to be powering our search, and this is where they dominate, though Microsoft’s Bing has been able to acquire an impressive number of clicks. While everything is fine today, there are some troubling warning signs. On desktops and laptops, people will continue to use a variety of browsers, though they end up spending a lot of time on Facebook, which scares Google because of the trend of people moving slowly from search to discovery. This, however, won’t shift overnight. For mobile devices, it’s trickier. Most iOS users navigate the web either through Apple’s own browser, Safari, and can have it search by Google. On Android-powered tablets and phones, Google controls more of the user-experience, including search, navigation, and application integration. While this is going on, users are trying their hand at realtime search on Twitter or BackType, looking for content directly within Quora, or using Blekko’s hashtags to better cut through and sort the web.
The Local Front: When users search for things on Google and click through, Google gets a little cut of that click. It knows how to drive traffic online and be paid handsomely for it. Driving and directing traffic that originates online into the real world, however, is a different story. As Steve Cheney elegantly stated, when we search online for places to go and then end up there in real life, the place itself does not have a clear sense of what drove them there. This is why the Daily Deals space is so red-hot and competitive, as it helps to close this major, valuable loop. If you search for a restaurant via OpenTable and make a reservation, the merchant knows exactly what drove you to the door. That’s why Yelp, which only used to provide reviews, offered the ability to check-in for credit after Foursquare built up a head of steam. The opportunity here is so complex yet fragmented that it drove Google to offer $6B for Groupon just six months ago. In local, Google is competing against Groupon, but also Amazon (which has a stake in LivingSocial), and a host of smaller (Loopt) and forthcoming deals companies will continue to roll out. This is just the beginning.
The Social Front: Yes, again, Google is fighting a war with Facebook. That much is obvious. What’s less obvious is how other social networks have been able to capture bits and pieces of our identities, leaving Google without any information of who we are. Users have been pumping personal content into blogs like Tumblr, networks like LinkedIn, and even asking search-related questions on Quora. Although we may all predominantly search via Google, the company is struggling in the social field. That is why Larry Page stepped in as CEO, why he tied bonuses to social, and why Google+ is their social sword and shield to fight back and capture user data, despite it being late in the game. Strategically speaking, even if Google+ doesn’t hold or catch fire, it will probably cause its rivals to pause for a moment and consider a range of short- and long-term implications.
The Enterprise Front: If you think the browser, mobile, social, local, and search isn’t enough, check out Google’s combatants in enterprise—just some names like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and VMware, among others. Google’s App Engine could go up against AWS, though that doesn’t seem likely. Google competes with IBM and Oracle on enterprise search (such as OmniFind) and email and work collaboration tools (Lotus). Google’s Chromebooks are seen as a potential entry point into enterprise computing, going up against hardware giants like HP, Dell, and Lenovo. Furthermore, Google may be trying to push Android into the enterprise, which would apply even more pressure on Research in Motion. There’s VMware, which offers Zimbra, PaaS, and presentation tools, to name a few. And, of course, there’s Microsoft, which competes with Google for a wide range of productivity applications. For all of Google’s consumer-facing brands and applications, its strength in enterprise sometimes is underestimated despite the fact that they currently hold many excellent positions.
It’s easy to pile on Google given their size, their wallet, and their global influence and impact. They are the goliath, and have been for many years, and are now facing many challenging tests, all at the same time. And while it’s a fun parlor game to sit around and pontificate about how Google’s reign might be over or how slow GMail loads, the reality is that no other company could compete legitimately on so many different battlefronts against so many different competitors. There’s no way Google can win each battle, and they must know that, but they will win some, and it will be fascinating to see how the company both adapts and stays the course along the way. Google is not going to go down without a fight, and it could take another decade for all of these battles to play out. The company has some of the world’s brightest engineers, a stockpile of cash, and incredible consumer Internet mind share, worldwide. Sit tight.
Photo credit: Flickr/hellosputnik
Fantastic synopsis of what is going for Google...this is a must read!
The Power Of Pull
Editor’s note: This post was written by Alex Rampell, the CEO of TrialPay. Rampell is a regular contributor to TechCrunch – see his previous guest posts here.
What makes email, Facebook, and Google so valuable? Answer: Visiting them is largely unprompted, notwithstanding the synapses that fire in your brain that make you check your email, your Facebook feed, or decide to research something on Google. In other words, people pull content themselves, rather than having that content be pushed — or foisted — upon them.
The best way of looking at consumer web applications is as a complex stack of “pulls” and “pushes.” Lest these terms be confused with an earlier generation of push: a “pull” is an unsolicited action by a consumer, whereas a “push” is a solicitation by a seller/producer. The consumer ultimately “pulls” from a mobile phone or computer. Everything else is “pushed” to the consumer, through ads, e-mails or other marketing efforts from companies eager to get business and traffic.
The greatest trick that Facebook ever “pulled” was transforming itself from a push platform (dependent on email to woo users back) into a de facto pull platform. Facebook touts that 50%+ of its users log-in every day, and my guess is that the vast majority do so with no prompting. Push is still valuable but simply complements the massive pull that Facebook has developed.
Why is Pull so essential for a web company? The intersecting forces of human psychology and economics.
First, psychology: consider how most people hate being “sold” to. “Being sold to” is a form of push. Consumers get hundreds of unsolicited offers and emails pushed to them every week. They learn to tune these solicitations out, especially if they are not in a buying mindset. Relevance is a function of offer-consumer fit paramaterized by time.
Second, economics: A pull platform doesn’t need to spend any money to reach or acquire customers; a push platform does. Facebook’s marketing spend per user has to be the lowest of any company known to man. Granted, Facebook is intrinsically viral and laden with network effects, but the unprompted pull phenomenon has been crucial to Facebook’s dominance.
The value of pull is not just for consumer companies. Any Business-to-Business company knows the value of “demand generation”: catalyzing a “pull” by customers. The quickest and cheapest sales cycles start with a pull by the prospective customer.
For any web company, fostering Pull is essential to creating value and engagement. There is no shortage of great applications and amazing technologies which stagnate due to a lack of pull. But the greatest economic achievement of being a “pull” platform is in becoming the mechanism by which “push” companies must engage with audiences, paying handsomely to do so. This expectation is why a company like Twitter can be valued in the billions with minimal revenue.
Here are some ways of thinking about fostering pull:
Plan Around Events
Groupon Now is Groupon’s attempt to add Pull to its traditionally Push service. I want to eat, where do I go? Groupon. Every human desire has a natural pull tendency. Being the “first responder” to a human desire is incredibly valuable.
Find Offline Analogies
Most forms of pull fit a predefined social pattern, per the comment on “human desire” above. Before Google, people used phone books (unprompted) to find services. Before email, people would check their postal mailbox, generally at a given time (after the mail was delivered).
Answer Recurring Questions
There are certain types of content that consumers will invariably pull (or want pushed to them). These types of content generally answer recurring questions of a consumer. How much did I spend Receipts, bank websites)? Where am I going (Google Maps)? How do I get there (Kayak)? What’s wrong with me (webMD)?
Build Brand and Familiarity
Once one of the above is satisfied, brand and credential storage foster pull. A frictionless and “known” experience catalyze pull for transactional activities. While Amazon, as the largest spender on Google, does a fair amount of push, they also benefit from a tremendous amount of pull when consumers decide to shop. This is a combination of the brand but also their accumulation of user/payment credentials.
There is no substitute for pull in establishing success for a web company; the key is producing something sufficiently valuable in repeat interactions. Reid Hoffman has noted that “social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins.” It’s no coincidence that people have, unprompted, “pulled” those sins since the dawn of humanity.
Image: thisisboss
Companies: TrialPay, Friend.ly Alex Rampell is the co-founder and CEO of TrialPay, where he is responsible for general management and building corporate infrastructure. Prior to TrialPay, Alex co-founded FraudEliminator, the first consumer anti-phishing company, which merged into… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBase
Very interesting. Much of it seemingly obvious but we rarely sit down and think about how these interactions work at the most base level.
Why Google+ Will Take Half of the Social Networking Market from Facebook (or “There Calacanis Goes Again”) - Launch -
By Jason Calacanis
A year and a half ago, while hosting an unsanctioned -- but very lucrative -- poker game at the TED conference in Long Beach, I wrote the worst prediction of my career.
In a blog post titled “Google Buzz is brilliant, Facebook just lost half its value,” I gushed over BUZZ, Google’s very impressive second stab at social networking. Their first, Orkut, was a Friendster-like service that was serviceable, but not something folks would consider wildly innovative.
BUZZ was wildly innovative because, like the recently funded Color social network, it created what I’ve dubbed the “implied social network” (ISN) from your most emailed users. This was a brilliant, but dangerous, gamble. Your contact list is a great place to start building a social network -- except in the event that you’ve been in a flame war with your abusive ex-husband.
Color is building an ISN based on proximity, e.g., you took a photo at Madison Square Garden and Gramercy Tavern just like I did, so we must have something in common (in this case we both like to drown our Orange and Blue sorrows in morels, foie gras and sweetbreads). My interview with Color's founder here.
After gaining an impressive collection of vanguard users, including Leo Laporte and Robert Scoble, the buzz around BUZZ died down.
It was really odd: Google simply stopped innovating on the platform. We learned last week that Buzz development continued in the form of Google’s third major stab at social networking, Google+.
New entries into the consumer Internet market typically need some combination of the following in order to succeed:
a) a brilliant technical innovation
b) a brilliant business innovation
c) a bunch of little innovations around things like design, speed, community and qualityIn the case of Facebook vs. Myspace, Facebook won based on amazing technological innovations in the form of the app platform. In fact, one entrepreneur on the app platform is responsible for half of Facebook’s success: Mark Pincus.
Without Mark’s innovations driving 20% to 35% of the traffic on Facebook (in my estimation), Facebook would be half the company it is today. In fact, don’t be surprised if Zynga is responsible -- even at this late date -- for 25% of the time spent on Facebook and a third of its earnings. We will find out when Facebook files its IPO.
Zynga’s IPO filing shows $597.5M in revenue and $90.6M in earnings in 2010. If Facebook had around $2B in revenue and $250 million in earnings in 2010, and 99% of Zynga’s revenue comes from Facebook, the math says Zynga could be nearly a third of of FB’s top and bottom line.
This is strictly an educated guess, and we don’t know how much money Zynga paid to Facebook to get traffic. However, Zynga has long been rumored to be the largest advertiser on Facebook. We also know that Zynga is paying a whopping 30% of Facebook credits purchased to The Zuck.
Is it possible that Zynga is contributing $300M in Facebook credits and $200M in advertising back to Facebook? Do tell us what you know: tips@launch.is. :-)
Anyway, back to Google+.While my BUZZ prediction was way off (thanks to Google freezing development!), I think my Google+ prediction will be spot on: Google+ will compete with Facebook as effectively as Android is competing with the iPhone.
Which is to say, Google+ and Facebook will, essentially, split the social market in half (+/- 15%).
Here are my top reasons why Google+ will be a crushing success.
1. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are using the product
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When Larry Page took over as CEO, I sent him an email and told him that if Google was going to be taken seriously as a player in social, he needed to get a Twitter account and start using it.Leadership starts at the top, and Google’s leadership is, finally, taking social seriously. Notoriously press-shy Larry (how many interviews has he done since taking over as CEO? oh yeah, zero) sharing kiteboarding photos speaks volumes. Sergey is also posting, interestingly, action shots (a sky-diving photo).
2. Forced categorization of contacts
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Google+ forces you, through an elegant user interface, to put your contacts into circles. When you update your profile (a.k.a. your Facebook newsfeed or Twitter stream), you are forced to select who you want to give this information to.This throttles how quickly you can build your social network and how quickly you can share with it -- and that’s a good thing! Zuckerberg elected to build Facebook as fast as possible, and he believed people would never take the step to select which groups they wanted people to belong to, let alone which groups they would send to.
That decision, combined with the horrible treatment of a user’s privacy, has meant that many people simply do not trust Facebook. Google realizes this, and in a brilliant move the company has, as Dave Winer says, “zigged where they zagged.”
3. Google Hangouts is as good as Skype, and a lot more fun
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Google Hangouts is a 10-person, video chat product that’s fun and free. You can hangout with your address book in seconds, it’s rock solid and -- did I mention -- completely free. I could certainly see myself using this product instead of firing up Skype.
4. Chrome Browser and Chrome Store integration
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If you didn’t know, Chrome now has 20.7% of the browser market. That’s from a cold start with the beta launch in September 2008. Google also has an app store that competes with the iTunes store and charges 30% to developers for apps just like Apple. However, Google only charges 5% for in-app purchases, while Apple holds the line at a very unfair 30% for in App purchases.That’s how Google like to do it: take your competitors revenue stream -- be it Microsoft Office, Windows, Apple’s iOS or Apple’s in App purchases -- and make them free (or close to free).
Google gave Angry Birds away for free on Chrome starting on May 12. More than 1M folks downloaded it in the first 10 days. Boom.
Browser market share = power.
Facebook does not have a browser or an app store -- yet. You can be sure there are 50 developers somewhere on the Facebook campus working on one right now -- 100% sure.
5. Android integration
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Let’s do some deep, deep analysis shall we?a) Apple has a mobile operating system but no social network.
b) Facebook has a social network, but no mobile OS.
c) Microsoft has a mobile OS but no social network (arguably, Skype is a dormant one).
d) Google has a social network and an operating system.Who’s going to have the best mobile social user experience?
If you answered D, you are correct.
6. The avant garde have left Facebook already
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Last week I gave the opening keynote for the fabulous Future of Web Apps conference in Las Vegas. If you’ve never been to a Carsonified event, I highly recommend it, as it’s filled with people who actually build stuff (as opposed to CEOs like me who simply take credit for other people’s work).During that keynote I asked how many folks used Facebook for photo-sharing. About 15% to 20% of the audience raised their hands. I asked how many folks used a new service like Instagram, Path or Twitter to share their photos, and 70% of the audience raised their hands.
I asked how many people were using Facebook more now than last year. Almost no one raised their hands.
The tech-savvy crowd has grown tired of Facebook and Facebook’s privacy games -- including the huge misstep of making facial recognition opt-out and not opt-in -- are starting to drive folks from the platform.
Bottom line: if you own Facebook shares, I’d sell them at the $70B to $80B market cap you can get now and put that money into Google shares. I’m absolutely certain that $1 invested in Google (at a $167B market cap) will make it to $2 before $1 invested in Facebook (at $80B market cap) makes it to $2.
Google+ is another sign that Facebook has peaked.
LAUNCH Coda
#39: Debate is what scared people do instead of trying.
I feel alot better about my Google investment......