Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Inception’

Microsoft’s Keyser Söze Opportunity

“The greatest trick Microsoft ever pulled was convincing Apple that Google didn’t exist.“

If Microsoft plays its cards right, that may be a statement we’re saying years from now.

What does that mean? Aside from being a riff on one of the best lines in movie history, what I mean by that is: imagine if Microsoft was able to convince Apple to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone, rather than Google. Leading up to Apple’s press event last month, rumors were swirling about this possibility. As is always the case with Apple, it’s hard to know how legitimate those talks were or if they were just some ploy to get something else it wanted. But from Microsoft’s perspective, it should be more than wishful thinking.

While the iPhone may not control the overall mobile sphere in terms of sale, it does control mobile web browsing. And increasingly, that’s becoming a popular way for users to browse the web. Basically since its inception, stats have the iPhone at the top of the pile when it comes to mobile browsing share. Yes, as more and better Android phones become available Android can and probably will leapfrog it. But the fact is that the iPhone is going to remain a huge factor in web browsing going forward. And certainly, Microsoft won’t be able to cut a deal with Google to feature Bing on Android.

Other recent numbers have Google seeing 1.46 million impressions a month from the iPhone alone. Bing? It gets just 2,387 impressions from the iPhone. That’s pretty incredible.

So how much are those million and a half impression worth to Google? Apparently, north of $100 million a year via a revenue share with Google, Silicon Alley Insider reported today. For Microsoft to woo Apple away from Google, it’s going to have to cough up a lot of money. But I would argue that it’s definitely worth it. And Microsoft actually has a history of such maneuvers.

Remember, when Microsoft bought a tiny share of Facebook in 2007, everyone was up in arms over the extrapolated $15 billion valuation it gave Facebook. But the truth is, Facebook was never worth that much (at least not at the time) because Microsoft was never interested in purchasing it at that price, nor was anyone else. Instead, Microsoft was making a strategic investment to secure the rights to Facebook search and advertising. More importantly, its $240 million investment for less than 2% of the company insured that Google wouldn’t be able to cut a deal with the social networking giant.

And that deal worked out well for Microsoft. Who knows if Microsoft made any money off of it, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that thanks to that initial deal, Microsoft and Facebook just got done renegotiating a new one, which will now see Facebook take over its display ads, but give a larger role to Bing for web search. With Facebook surging past 400 million users, this search deal is key for Microsoft and it undoubtedly blunts the loss of the display ad business (which probably wasn’t doing all that great anyway). Again, more importantly, it means Google can’t cut a deal with the social network to power its search.

And Google loves those deals. Not only did it strike one with MySpace (that didn’t work out so well), it has ones with AOL and others. But the key one for it may be the deal with Mozilla to make Google the default search engine within the Firefox browser. Google is paying something like $75 million a year to Mozilla for this privilege (based on 2008 revenues). That’s relevant because it’s the same type of deal Google now has with Apple for the iPhone. And it’s the deal Microsoft needs to get.

Despite pouring resources into its online division, Microsoft continues to bleed money there. And despite some success for Bing this year following its launch, the recent numbers indicate that it’s stealing search share from soon-to-be-search-partner Yahoo (assuming the deal goes through), rather than Google. Top search billing on the iPhone would ensure Bing is eating into Google share instead. And for that reason, price really shouldn’t be an issue for Microsoft if it’s serious about Bing battling Google Search. This is biggest and best opening it has.

There are no shortage of people who believe that Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the others are now all basically on par with each other when it comes to search results. Certainly Microsoft and Yahoo believe that to be the case (while Google, of course, does not), but others do too. The problem, as Microsoft and Yahoo see it, is that users are simply used to Google so they keep going back to it rather than trying something new. That’s exactly why Yahoo is moving away from the backend of search and more towards prettying up results on the front-end to give users a better experience. Microsoft has an even easier way to prove this: cut the deal to make Bing the default engine on the iPhone. If users don’t start complaining, we’ll know it’s true.

And the Microsoft/Apple deal could go farther. As long as both sides are cutting a deal for the iPhone, why not cut one to make Bing the default engine on the iPad as well? And how about Safari for the Mac in general? Every little bit of share gained is a good thing for Bing. And if the iPad proves to be a huge success, it could end up being a lot more than a “little bit” of search share.

But would Apple do this — cut a deal with its longtime rival?

Absolutely, provided it too believed that Bing’s results were at least on par with Google’s. In fact, at this point, Apple might even prefer a deal with Microsoft over one with Google given the war brewing between the iPhone and Android. With every search done on an iPhone, Apple is simply giving Google more fuel to pump into Android.

Microsoft’s alternatives aren’t pretty.

It can hope and pray that that Google will rest on its laurels and let its search engine much wither in the way that Microsoft itself rested on its laurels when it had 90% market share with IE.

Or it can hope that Windows Mobile stages a dramatic turnaround (Windows Mobile 7 is expected to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress shortly) and becomes the dominant mobile device for searching the web, with Bing in tow.

I don’t see either happening.

Or Microsoft could keep pumping money into advertisements about Bing and watch as it continues to eat away at Yahoo’s search share. But Microsoft would likely get much more bang out of those bucks if it simply cut the deal with Apple. And the time seems right for that to happen, if it ever will.

Microsoft could play the role of the villain that gets its longtime nemesis to do exactly what it wants. And just imagine if that helps Microsoft pull its entire online division out of its funk, thus giving the giant the thing it needs to battle the likes of Apple and Google going forward. That would be Microsoft’s ultimate goal in pulling such a deal off, after all.

And then Microsoft can exit the negotiating room — and like that *poof* be gone.

[images and videos: MGM]

Read the whole story…

feature: Hands-on: Mozilla’s pocket-sized Firefox mobile for Maemo

Mozilla announced last week the availability of Firefox for Maemo 1.0, the first official release of Firefox Mobile for Nokia’s Linux-based smartphone operating system. It offers adequate browsing performance, support for add-ons, and a finger-friendly user interface that includes popular Firefox features like the AwesomeBar.

This Firefox variant is based on the Fennec project, which was originally launched in 2007 with the aim of bringing the full Firefox browsing experience to modern handheld devices. In the time that has transpired since the inception of the project, advancements in mobile computing hardware have significantly boosted the performance of smartphones. That factor, coupled with Mozilla’s aggressive optimization efforts, have made it possible for Firefox to become a mobile browser.

Read the whole story…

Google Maps Improves The Ability To See Where The Streets Have No Name

Since its inception, Google Maps has always rolling out little tweaks and new features that are useful. But today comes the first large-scale overhaul of the look and feel of the service in quite a while. But you may not even notice it.

The reason is that almost all of the changes are very subtle. And unless you spend hours looking at Google Maps everyday, you probably aren’t going to realize when a road outline has been toned down, for example. But looking at the side-by-side images, it’s clear to see that the new look is much nice. Gone is much of the clutter cause by darkened street outlines.

In Google’s own words, from their post:

Today’s changes are intended to keep the same information-rich map while making it easier to pick out the information that is most useful.  The changes affect both the ‘Map’ and ‘Hybrid’ styles, and include numerous refinements to color, density, typography, and road styling worldwide. For example, in map view, local and arterial roads have been narrowed at medium zooms to improve legibility, and the overall colours have been optimized to be easier on the eye and conflict less with other things (such as traffic, transit lines and search results) that we overlay onto the map.  Hybrid roads have gained a crisp outline to make them easier to follow, and the overall look is now closer to an augmented satellite view instead of a simple overlay.

Again, subtle, but much better. (Click on the images below to see more clearly.)

And just for the hell of it, I’ll embed one of the best music videos ever made.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Read the whole story…

This Used To Be My Playground

Maybe you’ve read some of the stories this past week about how FriendFeed’s traffic is way down following their sale to Facebook. The stats don’t look good, as the site’s traffic may have plummeted as much as 30% following its peak just prior to the sale. But to anyone who has meaningfully used the site since its inception, you probably didn’t needs stats to tell you what should be obvious: FriendFeed has turned into a ghost town.

One of the most compelling things about FriendFeed has always been just how easy it was to have a conversation on the site. Someone posted an item, and within seconds, many had robust conversation threads updating in the speed of realtime beneath them. This also lead to the occasional trollish activity, but overall it was great.

But since the acquisition, those conversation threads have largely slowed to a crawl, or worse, don’t exist at all on many items. Previously, FriendFeed had committed to keeping the site running indefinitely despite their new jobs at Facebook. And it has remained running, but the site’s innovation, always its key attribute, has been completely halted. And perhaps as a vote of no confidence, previously rabid users are now largely staying away.

And that’s really too bad. One of the key things I used FriendFeed for was to get information. There was a great system in place that would allow interesting things to bubble up based on people commenting on and the liking of items. Not all of it was great (baby pictures, while cute, get in the way of information), but overall the system worked. It was crowd-sourcing at its finest. But that obviously doesn’t work too well when the crowd has vanished.

Sure, there are some items on the site that still garner a good amount of conversation and likes, but as a whole, my experience post-sale has been severely tainted.

So why not just move on to Facebook, you may wonder? Because while there are similarities between what Facebook does and what FriendFeed does, FriendFeed is still much better at it. Hopefully soon we’ll begin seeing the effects of the FriendFeed team at Facebook, but so far that hasn’t happened. It’s still too slow to share, automatically imported items take forever to show up, the filtering system needs work (I want to be able to hide just a certain type of item from one friend, like I can on FriendFeed, rather than hiding everything), as does the relevance of the main stream.

That last item looks like it could be close as it would appear that Facebook Lite’s “View Top Stories” will soon make its way to Facebook proper. That’s a good step, but it’s basically FriendFeed’s “Best of day” area, and doesn’t do something like push recently liked stories to the top of the stream.

But more to the point, Facebook is an entirely different beast than FriendFeed. Facebook is still first and foremost a social network for people you know and want to connect with, FriendFeed was much more about information sharing and conversation. And that’s what I miss. There are plenty of others ways to get information on the web, but FriendFeed was like a playground for information. It was fast and fun.

And the team’s rapid pace of innovation pushed others, like yes, Facebook. Moving over to Facebook obviously didn’t make the FriendFeed team any less brilliant, but I worry about their ability to rapidly innovate in a much larger company, one that has to worry about its legacy of over 300 million users.

This week, one former FriendFeeder already left Facebook. He reasoning was that he didn’t want to telecommute anymore (he lives in Seattle), but he didn’t seem to mind doing it while he was still working on FriendFeed. Read into that what you will.

The bigger picture is that we see this happen all too often. A larger service buys a smaller one and proceeds to run the smaller one into the ground. Not on purpose, but because they have bigger goals for their own products. Google is particularly good at it. Jaiku, Dodgeball, you could even put Feedburner in there. Now we’re seeing Facebook do it too. The users are just along for the ride, helpless when this happens. They take our playground, and put glass on the ground. We can still play, but it’s not as fun. And eventually, everyone leaves with bloody feet — and doesn’t want to come back.

We should consider ourselves lucky that Twitter hasn’t agreed to be purchased yet, it could have very well suffered the same fate.

Look, I’m happy the FriendFeed team was able to get an exit that they clearly felt good about. And I realize that some services, no matter how innovative or how passionate their user base is, sometimes fade away. It’s just sad to see it go. It used to be my playground.

[photo: flickr/Alejandro Hernandez]

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Read the whole story…

The Bookmark App: Audiobooks finally done right

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

The Bookmark app [iTunes Link] has solved a number of problems I’ve always suffered while listening to audiobooks on an iPhone. It isn’t pefect yet, but what is currently in the app store is the best implementation of digital audiobook listening I’ve found. It’s earned a place on my home page and that alone is quite a recommendation. I’ll get to a play-by-play in a bit, but first a bit of context is in order.

Continue reading The Bookmark App: Audiobooks finally done right

TUAWThe Bookmark App: Audiobooks finally done right originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

The Bookmark App – Audiobooks finally done right

Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

The Bookmark app [iTunes Link] has solved a number of problems I’ve always suffered while listening to audiobooks on an iPhone. It isn’t pefect yet, but what is currently in the app store is the best implementation of digital audiobook listening I’ve found. It’s earned a place on my home page and that alone is quite a recommendation. I’ll get to a play-by-play in a bit, but first a bit of context is in order.

Continue reading The Bookmark App – Audiobooks finally done right

TUAWThe Bookmark App – Audiobooks finally done right originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

Media Loves Twitter This Much: $48 Million A Month (At Least)

If Twitter needed to pay for the media coverage the company and its free service get across the board, it would have spent almost as much in 30 days as the $55 million that has been invested in the company since its inception in 2006. That’s the claim of VMS, a media intelligence company that monitors news coverage on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet.

AdvertisingAge got more details from the company about its research, which pegs the total free media coverage given to Twitter the past month to be worth $48 million. As AdAge points out, that’s about half of what Microsoft plans to spend marketing Bing.

Online, Twitter received 2.73 billion impressions, undoubtedly some of them thanks to TechCrunch. Television contributed to 57% of the PR value, newspapers 37% and magazines 5%, according to VMS. As the monitoring company’s CEO Peter Wengryn explains, the total coverage may be much higher than what the firm could possibly monitor, since it doesn’t take into account mentions in smaller newspapers in the United States and media coverage in the rest of the world.

Either way, it’s a LOT of coverage, acknowledges Gary Getto, VP-integrated media intelligence at VMS:

“This is huge. It’s very, very high. In fact, we looked at online coverage of Twitter vs. Google. Twitter is running significantly higher than Google and I didn’t think anything was more popular than Google.”

How long will Twitter continue to be the social media darling in the media? Long enough to eventually reach 1 billion users and become the “pulse of the planet”?

And more importantly, when will it start turning the mountains of attention, traffic and users it is getting into cold, hard cash?

(Image via MaximumPC)

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Read the whole story…