John Kirk has posted a terrific piece describing how large swaths of tech reporters seem unable to focus their “analysis” on anything other than market share. While Android’s world-wide market share is larger than Apple’s iOS, the higher market share is meaningless if the much higher profitability of iOS continues. After all, profits are the goal of businesses.
The article is worth a full read.
Disclosure: I am long AAPL.
According to Bloomberg, Google is considering making an offer for the crowed-sourced maps app created by Waze. Facebook has reportedly already offered more than $1 Billion for the company.
If Bloomberg is correct, then it might be a good time to pop some popcorn and watch the fireworks.
We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.
- Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, quoted in The Atlantic. (via The Quotation of the Day Mailing List)
With each new eyebrow-raising court judgment and federal fine levied against Google, it becomes ever more clear that this is a company hell-bent on innovating first and asking questions later, if ever. And its vision, shared with other California technology companies, is of corporate America redefining societal privacy norms in the service of advertising companies and their clients.”
– Milo Yiannopoulos, in the article Google Glass and Surveillance Culture.
I just don’t see the tons of crazy new ideas that I did a few years ago. Things that are genuinely new and interesting.
Yeah, yeah, mobile. I get it. Everything’s mobile these days. LET’S GO MO-BILE! But really that’s just an IQ test. When you see bold new startups with nothing but a desktop strategy, you know they just don’t get it and you move on.
But really a lot of the mobile stuff out there is just radioactive decay from the iPhone launching in 2007.
2007!
Old news! Ancient platforms!
Yeah, the iPhone and Android are great. But seriously, look at the top headline grabbers in tech news in 2012. Apple. Google. Facebook. Microsoft. Christ. It might as well still be 2007.
– Michael Arrington. I have to agree that the launch of the iPhone in 2007 was the last super-meaningful technology change since then.
Happy New Year.
If you are old enough to remember the days when using a computer involved punch cards, tape drives, and impact printers, you have to check out Google60. You can search Google with the tools of the 1960s. Fabulous.
The Economist has published a very thoughtful essay describing the growing competition in the consumer space among Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. It is well worth a read if you are interested in that market.
Excerpt:
The tech industry has a history of bitter rivalries: IBM and Apple in the 1980s; Microsoft and Netscape in the 1990s. But the rivalries shaping the market today are even richer and more complicated, not least because they have a personal edge. Three of the big four are still run by men who made their billions as founder, or co-founder, of their empires—Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Larry Page and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. And although Jobs no longer rules Apple, he groomed Tim Cook, his successor as chief executive. “In the modern history of technology we have never seen such a highly engaged group of chief executives and founders,” says Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture-capital company.
Nor has the industry ever seen such young and feisty firms—Apple, the oldest of the quartet, was founded in 1976—with so much financial firepower. Each of the companies has developed a powerful business model. Google has turned search into a huge money-spinner by tying it to advertising. Facebook is in the process of doing something similar with the way people’s interests and relationships are revealed by their social networks. Amazon has made it cheap and easy to order physical goods and digital content online. And Apple has minted money by selling beautiful gadgets at premium prices.
Note the missing company: Microsoft.
I love this.
Since I previously shared the “shit Apple fanatics say,” I thought it was only fair to share this one.
(via The Loop)
It seems that about a half hour ago Google accidentally pre-filed with the SEC a document showing quarterly earnings. The earnings were way down and the stock dropped more than 9% before trading was halted.
The version of the SEC filing included the phrase “PENDING LARRY QUOTE” which seems to refer to a quote by Larry Page, Google’s CEO, which was not inserted by the time of the early filing. This has already lead to a prank new Twitter user called “@PendingLarry.”
Google is blaming RR Donelly for filing without Google’s permission, according to live coverage by the Wall Street Journal.
Google posted a third-quarter profit of $2.18 billion, or $6.53 a share, down from $2.73 billion, or $8.33 a share, a year earlier. Excluding stock-based compensation and other items, profit fell to $9.03 from $9.72 a share. Revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, improved to $11.33 billion.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $10.65 a share and net revenue of $11.86 billion.
This certainly won’t help the rest of the NASDAQ today.
Via Boing Boing, check out 9-eyes for a great collection of amazing Google Street View photos. The site is curated by Jon Rafman, who named the site for the number of cameras on top of Google’s Street View cars.
Apple is dropping the existing native YouTube app from iOS 6, according to various sources. Google is preparing its own iOS YouTube app.
What does this mean? It is really quite simple: Apple is at war with Google. This is going to be a serious battle and Steve Jobs’ ghost lives.
Apple is at the start of a truly “thermonuclear war” on Google. It’s clearer than ever that Apple really is going to attempt to kill Google. And we’re not just talking about Android. Apple is going to try to blow up all of Google.
Google, for all of its ancillary businesses, lives and dies with search. Apple is doing everything it can with iOS to de-emphasize the importance of search, and the web, in its mobile devices.
Chitika offers a very interesting chart comparing the mobile data usage of Apple’s iOS devices and Android devices in the US. iOS traffic consistently exceeds Android. Could be because iOS is a more elegant or useful platform, given that there are more Android devices in the field and iOS in the United States.
