Image via WikipediaWhile I have been busy blogging for Reshma 2010 over at my other blog Barackface, the biggest tech story I seem to have missed is the Google-Verizon pact on Net Neutrality. For the longest time Google was the loudest voice for net neutrality. What gives? What has brought about this about turn?
I think Google's losing fight in its China tussle is the reason. Google did the right thing, but it did not get the tech industry support it expected. China kept hammering Google, and kept hammering some more. Soon enough the tussle was no longer even news. That loneliness got to Google. And so this is Google saying to the American people, if the Chinese people being denied free speech does not bother you, maybe it would not bother you either if you were yourselves denied net neutrality. How do you like them apples?
New York Times: The Google/Verizon Payment Plan: The F.C.C. should have an expanded role in regulating what is rapidly becoming the most important channel of communication in the world. ...... The Google/Verizon proposal gives broadband providers lots of leeway to offer preferential treatment to some and to choke off others. ..... the two companies propose to exempt wireless communication from most government regulation — a serious error ...... the Verizon-Google proposal ..... Google, Verizon And Net Neutrality ..... propose freeing wireless broadband — the fastest growing part of the Internet — from any antidiscrimination restrictions..... Verizon and AT&T control about 60 percent of wireless subscribers and 80 percent of Americans live in areas with only two wireline broadband providers. Consumers will lose if wireless goes unregulated.....ensure that the open Internet survives into the future.
Microsoft could not have become Google. We should not be surprised Google has not been able to become Facebook. Facebook is not Twitter. Twitter is not FourSquare.
I have been arguing at this blog that it just is not in Google's DNA to do social. Being very good at information necessarily clashes with you becoming very good at social. There is a clash.
But social is big and getting bigger. What is Google to do?
I think Google should focus on the information and search aspects of social.
I'd love to have a ridiculously good blog search engine. And I'd love to have ridiculously good Twitter search results.
And Facebook is not doing Android, Google is. That is big one.
The Chrome OS is a really big one.
It is not possible for one company to come up with everything. That is unrealistic. That is not possible. Google is still doing cutting edge work. But it is not doing all cutting edge work. That is reality.
The world’s largest search engine covets a key to the magical kingdom called the social web. It would do anything to become part of that exclusive club that, for now, is the domain of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and to some extent, Twitter..... Having failed to hire a head of social, Google decided to put its man for all seasons, Vic Gundotra, in charge of social. .... Social is more than just features ..... what it can’t do is internalize empathy. It doesn’t know feelings. It doesn’t comprehend that relationships are more than a mere algorithm .... the social web is moving toward a future where serendipity replaces search.....Buying Slide, investing in Zynga or launching Google Me are great ideas in theory, just as is the idea of me playing baseball!
"There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003," Schmidt said, "but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing...People aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them." .... user generated content .... "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence," Schmidt said, "we can predict where you are going to go." ...... "Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? ..... diseases and other crises will become predictable as well ..... "In our lifetimes," Schmidt says, "we'll go from a small number of people having access to information, to 5 billion people having all the world's knowledge in their native language."
Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time. Figuring out how to rank real-time social content is "the great challenge of the age" .....Today's teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years - they jump from app to app to app seamlessly. ....... Within five years there will be broadband well above 100MB in performance - and distribution distinctions between TV, radio and the web will go away. ..... "We can index real-time info now - but how do we rank it?" ..... Not discussed were distributed social networking, structured data, recommendations, presence data and other factors that could complicate Google's plans.
tweeting the same link over and over can boost a page's rank ..... Too many tweets over a certain period of time will be noticed by Google's algorithm. Tweets are just one of many "signals" Google uses to determine rank and cannot be as easily gamed
Google had been automatically redirecting google.cn to google.hk, its uncensored site in Hong Kong, but stopped that practice earlier this month and simply included a link to google.hk on the google.cn site in order to pacify Chinese lawmakers.
a social-networking type of display where soldiers interact as "buddies" and track each others' movements on the battlefield. ..... soldiers would carry smartphones with them into battle ..... Military satellites can focus in on minute features you can't see when using consumer-grade technology like Google Earth, so the software installed on RATS could potentially zero in on facial features or be used to read license plates..... the Indian military is another potential customer for this Android-based technology
"Our policy is we try things," the Google CEO said, hours after the company announced it was halting development of the complex real-time communication tool. "We celebrate our failures. This is a company where it is absolutely OK to try something that is very hard, have it not be successful, take the learning and apply it to something new." ..... "As a culture we don't over-promote products...we tend to sort of release them and then see what happens." .... a panel in which he said that society is not ready for all the changes technology is foisting upon it..... a range of issues ranging from Android and Chrome OS to China to competition with Microsoft to a rumored deal with Verizon on Net neutrality.
My personal excitement over Google Wave ended on a personally unpleasant note. But that might have saved me some time.
Image via WikipediaWhile I have been busy blogging for Reshma 2010 over at my other blog Barackface, the biggest tech story I seem to have missed is the Google-Verizon pact on Net Neutrality. For the longest time Google was the loudest voice for net neutrality. What gives? What has brought about this about turn?
