It’s all about profit, and I understand where the silence is coming from, but they are missing the long-term picture. [Chinese leaders’] end game is to extract as much technology out of American companies as they can, transfer that to their own companies and, when they feel those companies have reached a level of technical maturity, show the American companies the door.
—Dan Slane, chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission,speaking to Bloomberg about Google’s plan to offer uncensored search data in China and why the information giant stands alone.
Too Many people are making too much about ComScore’s searcher penetration data, which released on August 14. Microsoft and Yahoo executives shouldn’t get their hopes up, nor should analysts, bloggers or journalists writing about the data otherwise be misguided. Similarly, ComScore has overstated Microsoft-Yahoo combined search potential.
Themes for Chrome 3.0 beta got me to thinking about Google’s sudden personalization push. You can skin Gmail, and there are comic-book heroes and other themes for iGoogle. Now there are Chrome skins, and what about that Android-powered MyTouch from T-Mobile? The marketing push is big customization and personalization.
Late this morning, BetaNews founder Nate Mook and I IMed about Google’s Chrome OS announcement. Our differing positions somehow fit oddly together.
The Microsoft-Google tit-for-tat spat over Apps Sync accents the new battleground over which the companies are fighting. Google has moved onto sacred Microsoft territory: Office. Google’s synchronization approach is simply brilliant, and Microsoft executives should cower in fear.
Now how did I miss this earlier—or is it new? While comparing Bing and Google search for the post before last, I came across something surprising (see photo below). Google is more aggressively hawking Chrome with search. Will Chrome’s shine blind trustbusters?
In my next blog post, I plan to write about good design. As prelude, I offer my May 23, 2005, column for Betanews:
In 1984, Apple’s Macintosh introduced the world to the graphical user interface, eventually changing how people interact with computers. The GUI may not have been Apple’s idea — great credit there goes to the folks at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center–but the company did deliver the first meaningful, commercial product.
