Microsoft is running a very confusing strategy here. Google understood that with Motorola and it's why they sold it off. Microsoft hopes to keep its monopoly in the PC space with its multi-OEM operating system, yet still try to get every PC consumer to buy its own devices. Something's got to give.
I expect Microsoft's partners will increasingly continue to push other operating systems into the market on their devices, even if initially it's not exactly what the market wants. But they will do it anyway, because they will increasingly hate Microsoft.
And it will work, because the PC ecosystem is much bigger than Microsoft, and Microsoft won't succeed fighting against it. They will lose more money from lost licenses than they will be making (in profit, since so far Surfaces have continued to lose them money) than they will be making from these devices.
Yes, the choice was between no rules and weak rules, either of which will allow the telecoms to do whatever they want to service companies (despite the meaningless "commercially reasonable" clause). The Title 2 reclassification wasn't even on the table.
This should be the main issue at this year's elections. Unfortunately, this is America, where the main issues are only those the large campaign donors care about.
As an European I probably should be glad about this, since this combined with all the NSA spying issues and implementing backdoors into US products [1], should increasingly force innovation out of US and bring it to Europe, but somehow I'm not.
All the ISPs will slow down all the major companies services, unless they pay up. There is no "faster" Internet. It's just "paying to get normal Internet back", like they've already done with Netflix:
As we've seen with the recent patent case that reached the Supreme Court, once again because the Federal Court overturned the lower Court's ruling, it seems the Appeals Courts are a lot more inclined to be pro-patents, while the lower Courts (other than the East-Texas ones) and the Supreme Court aren't.
That being said, I hope this forces Google to deprecate Java on Android and start pushing developers to using Go. They should've been working on this since the trial with Oracle started, and not rest on their laurels.
I hope TextSecure/Whisper will get to have video-calling, too, soon. People need to stop using insecure platforms like Skype that make mass spying so easy.
I strongly recommend reading Blue Ocean Strategy, too. Innovator's Dilemma focuses on technology mostly, but Blue Ocean is a similar theory that applies to any industry.
They are pretty much the same theory, though. They are not that "new", just much better researched by these two books, and more fleshed out. Peter Drucker was actually talking about this strategy in his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship decades ago, although while it was obvious he "got it" himself, his book doesn't do a great job of explaining it to the reader in a way that he can understand it very well and then go and apply it. But I think Innovator's Dilemma and Blue Ocean Strategy authors were inspired by that to research their theories.
Innovator's Solution sequel is also pretty great, if you want to read it after Innovator's Dilemma (especially for the integration/disintegration insights).
But really these books and these theories have taught me so much about how technology companies can succeed or fail, and I think they are so critical to a CEO, especially a large company's CEO, that if I was a board's Chairman, I would not hire a CEO that doesn't have a deep understanding of the disruption innovation theory.
Oh, and btw, Steve Jobs was a big fan of Innovator's Dilemma (it's mentioned somewhere), and I remember thinking years ago that Steve Jobs is the CEO that is applying the most the disruptive innovation/Blue Ocean theory, out of all existing CEOs in the world at the time.
"Modern" IE that doesn't support WebRTC, HSTS, and the most behind in supporting HTML5 features [1]. If that's "modern", I'd hate to see how their "non-modern" products look.
Maybe it was an execution problem, too, but I think it was mainly a strategic problem - i.e. the leadership didn't want to try and replace Symbian very quickly. They still thought Symbian could be made into an iOS/Android competitor if they just put touch on it. They thought that was the only real problem with Symbian - not having touch. When in fact there are many other major problems with it, such as being very hard to develop for, and having a big problem from an image point of view (nobody thought Symbian could ever be as good as iOS or Android for touch).
Olli just refuses to take responsibility. He kept dismissing both the iPhone and the adoption of Android for its phones for 4 years after the iPhone came out. That's a ridiculous amount of time in today's tech world.
> In the end, timing is all about intuition.
Saying he needed intuition, is like saying any advanced technology is like "magic". He didn't need intuition to "get it". He just needed to understand the disruption innovation theory and to have read Innovator's Dilemma (seriously, how can any CEO ignore the teachings of that book 10 years after it came out? It should be every large company's BIBLE. If they don't really get it, they should be reading it again every single year until they do).
I've also noticed sites like TheVerge do native advertising in a way that's very hard to tell until you actually see the article. And I don't think I've seen any "Sponsored" or similar tag anywhere close to the article, which I believe is in Google's policy.
Google itself seems to be doing this, too (not properly labeling ads), while telling everyone else not to do it and penalizing them.
Yes, I was also wondering if FSF or someone like that could take the project themselves. Let's see who comes knocking. It wouldn't be the first time FSF "facilitated piracy" by building tools like that (see GnuNet, Mediagoblin, etc), so I doubt they would be too afraid to try it.
#1 reason why I think they should not fire Vic Gundotra: all of this is most likely not Gundotra's fault, but Larry Page's fault. Gundotra was VP of engineering before and then he was VP of...social, or whatever that department is called now. I don't think he wanted the job, but most likely given to him to clean up the Android leadership structure a bit (I think Andy Rubin was answering to him rather than directly to Larry Page back then), and to put one of their more experienced leaders in charge of this major and critical (from their perspective) project for Google. Maybe he wanted it in the same that he wanted to "prove his worth" with a new major project, but I doubt he seeked out a social project.
#2 reason why they should not fire Vic Gundotra: I really like him, ever since he gave that Google I/O keynote in 2010 [1]. I thought he gave a Steve Jobs level of keynote, and it's still the most exciting Google I/O I saw in recent years. When Eric Schmidt announced his retirement from CEO position, I was hoping Gundotra would get the job, actually.
Kill Google+ if they must, but I think firing Gundotra would be a big mistake.
> Above all else, I want to make sure you understand how deeply I value the principle of private communication.
How deeply? Enough to implement proper end to end encryption? Otherwise, you're just paying lip service to "privacy", just like Facebook and others are. They all say "we value your privacy greatly", but track and mine every single thing you do or say. The facts don't match the words in almost every case.
So show us how much you value our privacy. Implement end to end encryption (by default, obviously - don't pull a Telegram).
But if that makes Hollywood sleep better at night, sure - sleep tight, Hollywood! All is well with the world now. No need to bother your pretty heads with Popcorn Time anymore. You can go back to your extortionist business models again.
It is a pricing problem, but also a distribution and licensing problem. Netflix for example is not available in most countries of the world, and nor it nor anything like it has all the latest shows and movies on time, some being available many years later.
The future is definitely being able to stream all the shows and movies immediately after release anywhere on the web. The problem is it could take 20 years before we get anything close to that at the pace Hollywood is moving. Something like Popcorn Time could've pushed the move to happen within 5 years or less.
> Brokenshire suggested that the government was also pushing for a "code of conduct" for internet service providers and other internet companies, which might include changing search algorithms to downgrade "unsavoury" content in internet searches.
Google, the search engine, will die by the end of this decade. Mark my words. This is the beginning of the end. This is the moment in history when Google the search engine, started to serve not its users, but the governments.
As soon as there's a "good enough" P2P censorship-free and privacy-friendly alternative to Google, millions of people will move to it. Such a search engine seems pretty unlikely today, but it will come, and when it does, Google won't be able to stop it, because to be like it, it will mean reverting all of these shitty policies they're engaging in right now, and it will be too late to do that.
I expect Microsoft's partners will increasingly continue to push other operating systems into the market on their devices, even if initially it's not exactly what the market wants. But they will do it anyway, because they will increasingly hate Microsoft.
And it will work, because the PC ecosystem is much bigger than Microsoft, and Microsoft won't succeed fighting against it. They will lose more money from lost licenses than they will be making (in profit, since so far Surfaces have continued to lose them money) than they will be making from these devices.