It's just unusual if you think about it. It helps to have been alive in a time before the web was significant. Think of all the companies you give personal information to. Think of how much information you actually give them. Think about what they are permitted to do with that information.
Then think about sending a list of all your friends, family, colleagues, your personal thoughts and commnications on personal matters, to a random, characteristically anti-social CS major you've never met. It's just plain weird. And Zuckerberg was absolutely right in what he said: we're dumb to do it. The problem is this didn't phase him one bit. He went right ahead as if it was all going to be OK. And we just kept sending him more and more info.
Granted, Facebook calls itself a company, and the situation has grown quite large and complex, but I still think of Facebook as one CS student's website. It is what it is.
You send your personal info, in some cases more personal info than you would give your personal banker, your doctor, or your lawyer, through the web to total strangers, many of them are anti-social kids like Zuckerberg, to be posted on his website.
in fact there are some patent owning institutions who have mandates that prevent them from licensing their patents unless the licensee promises to develop. the licensee can't just sit on the patent and do nothing. their is an obligation to develop.
myrvold and his patent troll economic theory totally disregard development (though he will always claim otherwise and cite some red herring examples). while his firm won't "do nothing" as a licensee, they will not develop. they simply wave their big stick, a massive patent pool. they will pose the threat of litigation through noname shell companies. no doubt with these threats he can persuade institutions like the ones above to forget all about development as well. it's all about moving capital.
there are no doubt people, including patent policy makers, who think he and his IT patent lawyer co-founder are "brilliant" and are leading us toward a bright future. after all people are getting paid. but it seems some people are also starting to wise up to the game he is playing and the long-term effects on the system.
Sell it as a portable display not a laptop. Give it connectivity via a variety of connectors (not just HDMI). It would be far more useful than an iPad. Keep dreaming, right?
2. Things like Adwords have allowed businesses to exist...
What sort of businesses? SEO?
You fail to to recognise that business directories aka the yellow pages in some countries were around long before Google or Adwords existed. That's where small business advertises.
Neither Google nor Adwords is anythng like print, radio or TV. It's like the yellow pages. Except Google has has the lure of being a gateway to noncommercial content. There's reason to use Google even when you have no intent to purchase. There's little reason to use the yellow pages unless you are planning a purchase of some sort.
As such you have millions of people looking at Google search pages who are not looking for anything commercial in nature. And that audience presumably makes Google look like a more attractive place to advertise to a small business than the yellow pages. Whether it is actually more effective for these advertisers in terms of sales is another question.
We come back to that word again: intent.
For an advertiser, targeting a large crowd of people, _some_ of who may have an intent to purchase might seem more appealing than targeting a small group of people who _all_ have intent to purchase.
Whether it's more cost-effective for small business to devote its limited resources toward targetting the crowd or toward targeting the small group is still an open question. For Google, it's not necessary to answer that question. As long as advertisers believe the big crowd, which may include lots of people lacking any intent to purchase, is a better choice, there's no reason to question if it's true.
Maybe public libraries should start selling ad space? Surely some patrons might have an intent to purchase or could be persuaded to make one.
Google has its origins in a web-based library project at Stanford so this comparison is not as bizarre as it might sound. Subtract the non-commercial "library" aspect of Google and what's left? Adwords? SEO? Content farms, on-demand "articles" laced with display ads?
Not sure how much it relates to the article, but I enjoyed the war story. Good stuff.
There's a lot of garabge in online HBR in recent years, mainly on their blogs, as they grovel for traffic like any other site using whatever means possible. I am rarely tempted to even read HBR links that get posted here.
When consumers realise they are paying too much (i.e. people in Asia will be paying less for the "same" phones), then things will get more interesting.
Apple's patent suits will enable it to charge inflated prices. And that's what they will do.
The comparisons commenters make to pharmaceuticals are amusing.
Apple is not like a drug company that charges high prices for it developed drugs. Those companies are reimbursed for their R&D through government programs and health insurance. Apple is reimbursed directly from people's paychecks or company budgets if the devices are purchased for employees.
These devices are cheap electronics. Few people can develop a generic version of a drug in their garage. But with 3D printing, the possibility of making protoypes that rival what Apple is selling is a real possibility.
Patents on biological materials came well before patents on software. The seriousness of the problems with the patent system (that would prompt people like Posner to speak out) is due to the behaviour of IT companies, not pharmaceutical companies.
If search engines starting charging I'd teach people to scrape and if necessary to crawl, for free. Others would too. The web is about sharing knowledge.
I dare any search engine to start charging. Go for it.
They would end up like Twitter is going to end up (if they continue down the path they're on).
Then think about sending a list of all your friends, family, colleagues, your personal thoughts and commnications on personal matters, to a random, characteristically anti-social CS major you've never met. It's just plain weird. And Zuckerberg was absolutely right in what he said: we're dumb to do it. The problem is this didn't phase him one bit. He went right ahead as if it was all going to be OK. And we just kept sending him more and more info.
Granted, Facebook calls itself a company, and the situation has grown quite large and complex, but I still think of Facebook as one CS student's website. It is what it is.
You send your personal info, in some cases more personal info than you would give your personal banker, your doctor, or your lawyer, through the web to total strangers, many of them are anti-social kids like Zuckerberg, to be posted on his website.
It's a disaster waiting to happen.