Category: Google

Google I/O 2011

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I followed with a lot of interest the Google I/O  conference for developers online this last week. The I/O conference was held in San Francisco and there were a lot of interesting announcements and observations.  For starters it’s always interesting to see the charismatic Vic Gudotra present. Prior to his role at Google, Vic was the right hand man for the former Microsoft VP of development evangelism at Microsoft Sanjay Parsatharathay,  Sanjay was a lousy speaker, where as Vic was quite comfortable in front of an audience.  It always seemed Vic was the voice and face for developers at Microsoft, so it was a coup when Google stole him. He now is leading the development programs at Google.  Many people at Microsoft say he has adopted the Microsoft play book at Google.  I would say he has updated it and improved it.  For this event however he was the host so his role was minimized as developers never want entertainment they just want to get into the guts of the technology and how it will improve their productivity and generate new opportunities.  I am going to take the high road to summarize my impressions

Day one at the conference was all about Android.  Google started by highlighting all the success Android has had with developers world-wide.  When you look at the number of developers and the number of applications that have been built its pretty easy to have a successful opening to a developer conference.  Android has 100 million activated devices worldwide.  Any business today getting into the mobile space will only talk about two things Apple iOS and Android. So what were the cool announcements?  Improvement to the AppMarket for Android and some new tools for Eclipse (an open source development tool that has a huge following, not sexy but very important)) I found Android@home  the most interesting announcement and comical hysterical announcement at the same time.  The idea being Android on any device anywhere.  Think beyond what you know today and think of home appliance running Android tomorrow, it could be your oven, your washer, pretty much anything that could benefit from software. This is not a new idea, Novell and Microsoft toyed with this idea over fifteen years ago.  Interestingly Microsoft’s initiative was called…@home.  I think the difference now is where Novell and Microsoft were ahead of the curve, it seems like we are at the dawn of where this idea will become reality.  Coming up with big ideas is not that hard, timing it however is the trick to success.

Day two was about Chrome.  Chrome today is really a browser.  If you look at browser market share Chrome is between 10% and 12% (NetMarket Share Data).  Which is impressive but still a long way off from catching Firefox or Internet Explorer.  Chrome however is about the future of web development and browser-based hardware devices.  Recently we have seen the first Chromebooks hit the market and the conference had several more announcements about Chromebooks.  The idea of an always connected browser-based device without all the overhead if a traditional operating system has some merit.  The problem at east for now is we are not always connected and sometimes we do not want to be.  Still I agree with most that this is the start of the next generation device, where connectivity will be ubiquitous and cloud services will be everywhere.  Google also announced the expansion of the Chrome Store.  This is  all fine and dandy that it no is available in 41 countries, but we do seem to have a lot of companies out there with a lot of online stores…how many do we need?

Finally across both days there were a couple of horizontal technologies that went across both Android and Chrome. One was cloud based services.  The idea beyond a marketing term is that the days where certain things could only be done on the desktop are coming to an end.  Sure there may be certain apps that leverage the capabilities of the desktop OS or hardware, but they will have limited market value.  The idea that a word processor needs to be tied to the PC is rapidly changing as apps like Google Docs increase in functionality.  Are they at parity with Microsoft Office?  Not even close today, but the ability to make up ground and create new cloud based scenarios is causing disruption in the landscape and will continue t do so (that is not to say Microsoft could not be the drivers of this change).  The other theme was every demo it seemed was Angry Birds.  I gotta be honest I don’t know these birds and I am not sure why they are angry, but my kids do.   It got to the point it was annoying.  Hey wait…it’s on my iPhone.  I need to talk with my children.

What impressed me about Google I/O was the clarity of what developers should be looking to do to create value today (Android) and to start thinking about tomorrow (Chrome).   There is a lot to be said to keep it simple.  In many ways that is what Google has done.  Provide the building blocks and let the developer community be innovative and creative. We are still along way from the full promise of what the web can and will deliver but the pieces are coming together to make it accessible  to a very large audience.  As I have written before to be successful in technology you must have a clear vision  of the future and be able to articulate that vision to a large and broad audience.  Did Google I/O answer all the questions?  No.  I am still a little confused as to why we have to have two different platforms, why not just make it all Android?  But the long-term vision of the role the web will play in our lives and where Google will fit in that ecosystem is clear.  There was a time it was all about a PC in every home, now it’s..to the cloud.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann May 19th 2011

Skype…it’s a verb

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It was in the local paper today, Microsoft is buying a verb. It’s hard for me to comment here as I will be the first to say grammar was never my grade school strength. It was that stretch during the school day where I resigned myself to be bored. But thanks to Google it is now a core part of every major tech companies strategy. We must have a strategy that adds to the English language. Screw our partners the only partnership that matters is a partnership with Webster’s.  It’s the largest deal in Microsoft history so I am forced to address my youthful loathing and attempt to confront my greatest weakness.

The acquisition by Microsoft of Skype was largely driven by consumer behavior and the desire (in my opinion) to have a likable consumer face.  It is also great technology that has matured and been around for a long time (by tech standards). There are a lot of people and companies who actively use Skype for voice over IP communications.  It is one of those technologies if we are not using it today we can safely say we will be using it in the not so distant future.  If it can be done digitally, it will.  It is also popular with over 145 million subscribers, in particular in Europe where traditional lanline phone services are very expensive.  Beyond a large user base it seems a purchase with color or as it is called at Microsoft, life beyond beige.

A successful acquisition for Microsoft at this stage of the game is important.  Otherwise it will just prove the skeptics correct.  Many Wall Street analysts are saying it’s a bolt on solution, the real value in Skype is past its due date and why did Microsoft not buy this 10 years ago when it was just bursting onto the scene (and was much cheaper…eBay paid $2.7 billion while Microsoft paid $8.5 billion).  The last point I cannot fault.  Had they done this ten years ago it would have displayed a vision for the future.  By doing now they are just validating the future.

Still I believe there is tremendous upside should my former employer to do this right.  With Skype comes a lot of phone numbers and seamless integration into XBOX or the enterprise would be huge.  Also the upcoming Nokia Phones with Windows Phone 7  (or later) could provide a nice marketing opportunity to drive interest in the Microsoft Mobile platform.  Though XBOX has live chat today and video camera’s this could expand the base.  A question here is how many of Skyp’s 145 million users are gamers?  Based on that question this seems for XBOX more a technology play, I do not see this about driving XBOX adoption.  But with XBOX becoming more of a home media center integrating cool voice/video capabilities has its merits.

What could derail this?  Politics. Brain drain.  The first is internal to Microsoft but could affect the latter.  With Skype comes a lot of talent, now granted the good new here is it’s not all about the talent (which was major reason to buy Yahoo! for $35 billion, good thing that did not pan out).  Still retaining the key engineers who built up Skype and are loyal to Skype cannot be underestimated.  For too long now Microsoft has been losing the true creators of technology at Microsoft.  The people who built a business and wore Microsoft on their sleeve.  Once it’s handed off to those with no history it is just a business and the passion that built the breakthroughs is gone.  One thing about the tech sector, you had better have passion for what you are doing, otherwise save us all time and go home.

The biggest challenge will be integration, which over the last 10-15 years has been an Achilles heal for Microsoft. Starting with WebTV, through Navision and Great Plains to Danger,  aQuantive, all seemed like great acquisitions at the time they have just had trouble finding a home (ok I will come clean…I never got the Danger purchase).  With Skype the two likely places for the technology to land will be in the Microsoft enterprise solution, Office Communicator and it will make its way into XBOX.    I will add both products and technologies I really like.  The challenge could be more organizationally as they operate under two entirely different divisions at Microsoft.  Microsoft has long had the idea of integrated innovation and I do mean idea.  Sharing technology across organizations at Microsoft has proved far more challenging than the dreamy memo’s from Bill Gates originally suggested.  Internally Skype may have to be split up across groups.   The last point is interesting in that in the announcement a new business division was being created at Microsoft specifically for Skype.  But as has been pointed out the technology Skype brings is being eyed by multiple other groups at Microsoft.  I can only guess this was a part of the deal to help ease transition.  The tech industry is not a patient industry.

Buying a verb is an odd strategy, though as stated it has its technical merits.  But of late Microsoft seems to be doing odd things.  The partnership with Nokia to standardize on Windows Phone 7, getting RIM to use Bing as the default search engine for their mobile devices, and now buying Skype. I get the sense reading the blogs and talking with old colleagues, is people are frustrated with deals being done out of desperation and not a clear vision of the future.   The future used to be a divine right, now it seems a distant star.  Also so many of the things Skype is bringing our already being dome within various Microsoft products – why not invest a few billion in a significant marketing campaign?  It seems like  it would save some money and as a shareholder I may get angry about all this, but for now I am just going to try to identify the verb in this sentence…for free.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann May 12, 2011

Proprietary vs Open Source – who cares? Consumers don’t.

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In technical circles we love to have these propeller head debates.  Should code be shared?  What about the right to make a fortune off of ones intellectual property? Then there are patents to be protected.  How do I license my open source code?  How should I license my code?  Which governing technical bodies should I listen to?  It is like a love fest for lawyers  I will try and break this down into layman’s terms and then explain to everyone why you should not care.  As consumers do not treat technical folks like a deity.

Proprietary:  This is where the company owns everything soup to nuts and has control on what developers, engineers can access in terms of source code.  The most proprietary is Apple as they literally own everything from hardware design to the software.  Microsoft often is called closed but one of the reasons for it’s success in the early days of the PC industry was licensing it’s operating system to every hardware maker who was building a personal computer. Developers got access to part’s of Windows not the whole thing.  This is what made Open Source advocates so hateful towards Microsft as they want access to all the source code.  The advantage of these proprietary models is if you look at the balance sheets of these two companies today financial clout is not an issue.  These companies will be around for along time to provide high levels of supports to their respective communities.  Despite calls by some to make their trades secrets free to everyone cash is king.

Open Source:  Really the brain child of a Finnish engineer named Linus Torvald’s and his Linux operating system.  There are others but for now we will focus on Mr Torvalds’s community model.The code is posted on the internet and anyway can make additions or changes to the underlying source code.  Provided Linus approves it.  I find it ironic that this so called democracy is run like a dictatorship.  The advantage of Open Source in is you can tap into the talents of thousands of software engineers.  It creates an abundance of innovation and their is nothing better to get a software developer motivated then a technical challenge, which there is an abundance of in open source forums.  It’s free and easy to get access to what you need, which to me is why open source has really appealed to the aspiring developers on the planet.

Now that we have that brief explanation behind us, should you Mr or Mrs consumer care?  Absolutely not.  Let those techno losers go have their fun in tweetle dee and tweetle dumb land.  All you want is technology that works for you.  If Product A (let’s say a iPhone) is better than Product B (A Windows Mobile 6.5 Phone) or Product C (one of those Motorola Linux Phones) you will gladly pay more for Product A.  Why not?  It’s your choice.  I really highly doubt the source code model factored into the purchase.  To those who say sales and marketing do not matter I think they are misguided individuals.  Great Technology and great Sales and Marketing go hand in hand.  Apple in my opinion has done a great job in creating very accessible technology while conveying the message that the technology is colorful and fun and a part of an individuals lifestyle.  The Android folks have gone a bit more technical in their approach but still have been able to partner with companies to make cool consumer devices while providing a  dynamic ecosystem.

Throughout my career I have seen and listened to numerous propeller heads go through their wiz bang demos. Everyone seemed to have a higher purpose.  Sometimes I would look on in amazement as some technical wizard would show me a mobile demo (pre iPhone) and say how cool it is they could look up and find a cool bar on their phone while on the golf course.  It sure was cool to watch that person click ten times and after each click wait 30-45 seconds for the page to load.  In the end the demo took 5-6 minutes.  Time in my life that I will never get back but the memory of the useless mobile app lingers.  We tend to use the term “main street” America too much and too loosely these days.  But I think if we were to start trying to create a definition we could probably agree that the person that represents main street America is not a technologist.

At the end of the day people want items that add value to their lives.  Sometimes that value can be concrete like a automotive vehicle.  It gets me from point A to B in a manor that is useful to me.  That same item though can be purchased on emotional appeal.  I want the Ferrari for what it says about my importance in society.  The latter is hard to quantify and even harder to program for.  But one thing is clear in either scenario no one cares how it is made, it just needs to work.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann April 25, 2011

Paul Allen and Bill Gates

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Paul Allen recently released his book “The Idea Guy”.  I have not read this book, but can already see that it is going to generate a lot of buzz just based on some of the comments about his high school friend and co-founder at Microsoft Bill Gates. Many of them seems very vindictive and paint a poor portrait of Mr. Gates.  I can see the interest on multiple levels.  One being that they are the best of friends and agree on everything.  the second being, unlike Bill Gates, you rarely hear anything come from the mouth of Paul Allen.  Nothing sells lie a break-up.  For him to speak, let alone in this manor, is kind of ground breaking news.  Given that thee two men are local to me and I worked at Microsoft for 18 years allow me to comment and peal back the layers of the onion at a distance.

Paul Allen is quite a bit different from Bill.  First some of the interest will be that he is an introverted character.  You never hear of a speech by Paul or rarely do you see him interviewed.  .  Unlike Bill who was always visible to the public eye  projecting the future of what technology will be and what it will deliver, you never, even in writing, saw much of the mind of Paul Allen on the subject.  His post Microsoft career in technology has been a bit all over the map.  He his the major shareholder in Cable provider Charter Communications, a true dud of a company.  He had a company called Assymetrix, never really did much.  In fact most of the noise he has made has been away from the tech sector.

There was mentioned the issue of his involvement at Microsoft and how much or how little he contributed.  He did coin the  name, Micro-Soft so he will always be able to hang his hat on that .  He and Bill created the BASIC programming language.  But as the article pointed out Bill always had majority control, which seems to hint at Paul’s not standing up to Bill (looking at photos of Bill from this era is kind of comical), when Bill said it should be a 60-40 split, then 64-36 split and he agreed without much of a fight, well it was costly, but he is still worth $15  billion so my tears shall be limited on the subject.  There was the one area of concern, where after he was diagnosed with cancer that he overheard Bill and Steve Balmer discussing that Paul was not pulling hos weight and maybe they should force him out.  Paul confronted them.  The national press seems to stop there, but the Seattle Times did note that both Steve and Bill apologized after the incident.

Even though Paul Allen was 8 years removed from Microsoft when I joined, I always felt that his being forced to leave Microsoft due to his illness was a “blessing” (I say this very carefully and do not mean to minimize or disrespect the trauma brought by cancer to families).  After he recovered from hodgkins disease he explored his passions.  He had the money to do it as well.  Unlike Bill, Paul Allen is not a type “A” personality driven by a singular goal.  That is apparent by all that he has done in the community.  He built the Experience Music Project (EMP) from his love of music an din particular Jimi Hendrix.  He collects art, and having seen his collection at the EMP it is impressive (Manet, Monet, Picasso, etc..),  He owns the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers. Though his technology investments have faired poorly, his Real Estate investments have done very well.  He restored the train station in Seattle.  He has a huge yacht. In short the guy is living.

From what I read there is more focus in the book on his sports clubs and other activities then his days at Microsoft, but the bits about Microsoft make for good press fodder.  A really interesting book would be Paul or Bill writing about the early days.  I have no doubt that it was very passionate and very intense.  It was all the talk in the halls at Microsoft about the intensity of the early days, where screaming matched could erupt in the hallway at anytime.  As Paul said  in the book you could have a screaming match with Bill but as long as you held your ground and could back up your argument that was fine. When you here about companies like Google or Facebook being intense environments you hear a lot of similar stories, they are all just following the path and the format that Microsoft created.  A big contributor to that model of success was a friendship forged at Lakeside High School in the early 70’s between Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann March 31, 2011

Where is the Microsoft Tablet?

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It has been nearly 2 years since the release of the iPad and during that time we have seen a titanic shift in technology and the market’s expectation of what technology can provide.  It seem every week companies are coming out with a new iPad application.  If you watch local news or national programs they all seem to have a iPad application. The good news for the market is it is not just the Apple iPad.  Not far behind and rapidly growing its user base are the Google Android tablets.  The Android provides a greater range of choices while still providing access to thousands of cool and useful applications.  Soon there will be other entrants like the HP tablet based on the Palm OS.  The interesting thing is not what is coming out, but where is the 800lb gorilla?  It seems very hard to hide a beast of that size, but yet the gorilla has remained hidden.  You cannot even hear it whisper.

At the recent Consumer and Electronics Show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was on stage delivering the keynote address.  What I guess was interesting about the whole presentation was not what he said but what he did not say.  At a trade show where everything was focused on tablets, Ballmer talked about everything but a tablet.  His big thing was Microsoft’s foray into engineering and developing for ARM (for you non-techies who read my blog it’s a microprocessor like Intel).  This should not be trivialized, this could have benefits.  However it is short on sex appeal.  Unlike some tech shows where new things are touted at CES, tablets were new, but there were sales to back it up.  So it was not just another gizmo.

Since CES we have seen launches of new Tablets like the Samsung Galaxy and iPad 2.  We see them developing channels for resale through the service providers.  Companies like AT&T and Verizon are eager to have these devices on their network as they can drive data plans.  Microsoft for years has been trying to build a resale channel with the Telco’s. An old boss of mine is in charge of creating the worldwide reseller channel with the telecommunications carriers.  What does he tell them when they ask, “what’s your tablet strategy?”  He also used to tell me in sales, “You are what your numbers say you are”. In its first weekend of sales the Apple iPad 2 sold over 500,000 tablets.     Now we can have positive adjectives to describe our numbers, which is fun or we can have negative adjectives to describe our numbers, which is pro fain.  Apple and Google would both have very colorful adjectives.  Microsoft, well lets just say they may need to spend time in the confessional booth .

One thing that seems to be holding Microsoft back and seems to fuel a lot of speculation and gossip is what  operating system will they use, when they do come out with a tablet (I gotta admit I am guessing on this one as I have seen nothing in the press or heard from old friends about this one)?  The debate is between Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7.  Do you mimic what Apple did with the iPhone and simply enlarge to the iPad or do you go with your bread and butter, your flagship product, Windows.  I can say from a historical point of view when push comes to shove, the big boys at Microsoft always win, with that in mind it would seem Windows 7 will come out on top.  All I know is while the debate rages on the market does not stop.

When thinking about what is going on can history really repeat itself again?  Microsoft was in the Smartphone business for quite some time before Apple joined the party with the iPhone, and before they could respond out the gates and off to the races came Google’s Android platform.  By the time Windows Phone 7 came out the market was in a mature phase, so the Windows Phone was just another player trying to be heard. The Tablet business is similar in many ways. Microsoft has been in the Tablet business even longer than the phone business, as the vision of a more interactive device had long been a pet project of Bill Gate’s.  Yet as I sit in my office it seems as if history has already repeated itself.  Apple came out withe iPad but not far behind, once again, was Google with their Android based Tablets.   To be honest this is all eerily similar to the early days of the PC industry where Apple made the expensive high-end computers and Microsoft did the cheaper low-end computers, except now we can replace Windows with Android.  One area of my theory can be brought into doubt by one single question, “Where is the Microsoft Tablet”?

Good Night and Good Luck

Hans Henrik Hoffmann March 24th 2011