Twitter, France And Germany

Image via CrunchBaseWhen I read these headlines I was like, oh no, China is at it again. Ends up the guilty parties are France and Germany. And we all know Twitter never was allowed to enter China in the first place.

Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand

Twitter Blog: Tweets still must flow
The Next Web: Twitter isn't censoring you. Your government is.
technosociology: Why Twitter's new policy is helpful for free-speech advocates
Marketing Land: Twitter Now Able To Censor Tweets, If Required By Law, On A Country-By-Country Basis
Jillian C. York: Thoughts on Twitter's Latest Move
Boing Boing: Twitter caves to global censorship, will block content on country-specific basis as required

Something tells me there is going to be a ruckus.

Digital Dumbo

Google's Hidden Card: Become An ISP

Image via WikipediaSteve Jobs decided a long time ago that he wanted to do both hardware and software. Bill Gates' cofounder Paul Allen wanted the same. But Bill Gates vetoed the idea. He wanted to focus just on software. Software that will run on all kinds of hardware.

You could argue Bill Gates won the first round and Steve Jobs won the second round. But then Google was even more detached from hardware than was Microsoft. And yet Google bought Motorola, a hardware company. Granted it bought Motorola primarily for the patents to hit back in the Android fight. But there is no denying all that hardware.

Larry Page's Challenge

Google is going to build smartphones and tablets in-house. And that is not easy to do. Apple leads that herd.

Google, the king of search, made several clumsy efforts in the social space until it finally hit Google Plus. Google Plus is great, but it is no Facebook. And Google is well positioned in the Big Data space as well as next generation industries like driverless cars. Talk about hardware, software integration. A car is conspicuous hardware.

I think what though will set Google on the path to becoming the most valuable company in the world is Google getting into the ISP space. Hardware-software-connectivity integration beats hardware-software integration. (Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity, One Gig Per Sec: This Is What I Am Talking About)

What would be some of the ingredients? One gigabit per second speed. Ad based. Use snooping technology. (Eric Schmidt's Cloud Computing And My IC Vision)

The snooping technology is that the ISP reads the web addresses of all the websites you visit and serves ads accordingly. It is like Gmail reads all your emails and serves relevant ads. Same thing. It will not be an invasion of privacy. It is machines reading.

Google as a global ISP would eclipse Google as the search engine of choice in terms of influence and revenue. That also might be the best way to conquer the mobile space with Android.

The $100 Price Point For The Smartphone

Image by Getty Images via @daylife$200 does not feel right. Microsoft and Nokia will have a huge advantage that they seem to want to enter the market at the $100 price point.

Microsoft Finally Cracked The Phone

A $200 price point is actually a $600 price point. Only they don't charge you up front. You pay month after month for two years.

BGR: AT&T’s Q1 2012 roadmap: Nokia Lumia 900 to launch March 18th for $99.99

That price point would make this sleek smartphone an absolute game-changer for Windows Phone ..... Nokia could easily have a hit on its hands when this handset launches later this quarter.

If Android is free why are the good Android phones the same price as the iPhone?

The real stickler though is the monthly price. There Republic Wireless has nailed it. Only they are not a reality in the market yet. $19 a month is a good price point there.

Republic Wireless, Galaxy Nexus And Tardiness

Netflix Bouncing Back

Image via CrunchBaseI rooted for Netflix when it decided to bet on streaming. (Netflix Cut Off The Gangrene Limb) And then its stock price collapsed. And that surprised me.

But now looks like Netflix is bouncing back. That stock price drop was a sneeze it just had to wade through. But cutting off DVDs before the market cut off Netflix was a smart move. It was a life saving move, to put it more bluntly.

A drop in the stock price was the price Netflix paid to stay alive long term.

GigaOm: Netflix streaming users now outnumber DVD subscribers 2:1

even with its steep decline in DVD rentals, the overall number of customers is growing again. Netflix lost 810,000 U.S. subscribers in Q3 as a result of its unsuccessful attempts to spin off the DVD business into a separate company, as well as a price hike earlier in 2011. In Q4, that combined subscriber number once again grew by 610,000...... Netflix won’t enter any other territories in 2012, and might have to work on making more money with streaming if it wants to keep expanding in the future. Because DVDs may not be around for much longer.