Google Chrome OS is an Obvious Response to Bing

Bing has been gaining share in the search market for Microsoft.  So what does Google do?  Announce a full frontal assault on the Microsoft OS dominion, of course.  Never mind that it is a totally uninspired sort of response with no details about anything particularly compelling,  or that a Chrome-based OS for netbooks is neither big news nor a “nuclear bomb” on Microsoft.  Never mind that Android hasn’t seemed to go much of anywhere relative to iPhone, that times are tough, or that the market increasingly expects Google to be more profitable.  No folks, we’re going to open up yet another front on the war, spend more money, yada, yada.

Think what you will about the announcement.  It surely did set the blogosphere on fire.  It’s always fun to pile on the market leader.  We’re genetically wired to like doing that.  And it will be a good thing for consumers: competition always is.  But it isn’t the end of Microsoft or more than a temporary PR inconvenience.  It may even be a positive for Microsoft, seriously loosening the anti-trust handcuffs if Google makes much progress.  If nothing else, we haven’t seen anything but talk yet to even know if we like this thing.  We’ll see what “aggressively re-thinking the OS in light of the web really means.”  Android was a bust in terms of such rethinking for a mobile OS.  Hopefully the desktop OS will do better.  Meanwhile we are left with only questions, so many questions.  Folks, it’s a PR strategy not a product strategy: any product strategy is yet to be disclosed.  It is intended to generate questions because that’s what keeps the PR going!

And then there is the small issue of apps.  Of course Google will spin that the Internet is the only app you need.  Mike Arrington totally agrees with that perspective with his “patting himself on the back” post.  We’ve seen that movie before long ago in a galaxy far away.  Netscape tried it.  It didn’t work.  The iPhone has clearly shown that the Internet is a wonderful “built in app”, but that a vibrant third party app ecosystem is absolutely critical in addition to the Internet.  BTW, if it does seem to be working, GooglePads (netbooks with Chrome) and CrunchPads can be toast in short order with Apple simply stepping in with their own device, and MSFT will wind up just cutting XP prices for such devices in response.  After all, they survived the Linux assault in fine form, and that was far more innovative than anything we’ve yet heard about the Chrome OS.  Absent some real innovation (which I have to admit Google may still produce, and folks like my EI compatriot Phil Wainewright are confident are there), that’s check and checkmate.  Game over.

These are not the droids you’re looking for.  Move on.

PS  Congrats to Om Malik for being the only A-Lister I have read so far who called BS on this announcement instead of just breathlessly reporting how great it is for the world and how bad it is for Microsoft.  As Om says, “ChromeOS is a scramble to say nothing.”  And RE Apple stepping in, I do think they’ll wait until either Chrome shows real traction, or they come up with an “insanely great” user experience that others won’t be able to duplicate.  They’re already on record saying they don’t believe in Netbooks because laptops give a better experience and are about the same size.  For the record, I agree with Apple on that.

PPS  Scoble has some scoop.  Microsoft has an announcement he says will be interesting to compare to ChromeOS ready to go Monday.  Bets are that Microsoft’s announcement is either Gazelle, a browser-based lightweight OS just like ChromeOS (lions and tigers, oh my!) or Office Web.  The game is afoot.  Woot!

iPhones Not Used For Work? Balooney!

Sometimes folks struggle too hard to extract a headline from data when they should be trying to extract some new meaning.  So it is with Compete’s recent proclamation that the iPhone is not used for work.  Nothing could be more silly, as anyone that owns an iPhone will happily tell you.

The root of the problem is a simple one:  if you own one of the “other” SmartPhones, it isn’t good for anything but work.  In fact, it isn’t even that good for work.  It’s good for email and that’s about it.

The iPhone, by contrast, is a universal handheld web browser that can be augmented with zillions of apps.  Yes, I can and do check my email.  Yes, I can and do check Twitter.  Yes, I can and do read blog posts via the mobile edition of Google Reader.  Yes, I can and do make phone calls as well.  Yes, I take pictures.  In fact I often take pictures of white boards at work that we’ve just finished scrawling our key strategic plans and architectures on.  Yes, I use the maps function coupled with the web browser (so I can double check the address) to make sure I’m in the right place for a meeting.  Trust me, I have been to some unlikely locations, only to have my iPhone tell me I need to walk 15 feet further down the street.  I did so, peered in the window, and saw the sign for the business I was looking for just around a corner.  No evidence of it on the street.  Thank you iPhone!  And yes, I look up all sorts of things in meetings by Googling on my iPhone.  This makes me much more productive in those meetings.

Do I use my iPhone for work?  Absolutely!  I use it more than I ever did the gaggle of Blackberries and Treos that sit in a drawer at home unused.  To say otherwise is just Compete busy linkbaiting to get ink for their service.

Does that mean I don’t use it for personal time?  Absolutely not!

The iPhone will change your life, at least the telephonic part of it.  Towards the end of last year my family drove down to San Diego to pick up our new Schnauzer puppy, Butch.  My iPhone was with us all along the way.  It helped us to find great places to eat, and it entertained the kids.  I upgraded to a 3G about four months ago, and my 15 year old son inherited my old but still working perfectly 1st gen iPhone.  He is never without it and is constantly showing me fun things to do on iPhones that I will never find the time to track down.

If asked, do I use my iPhone more for personal than work use?  Like Techcrunch writer Robin Wauters, I would probably fess up that I do, but only because I do everything I can on my iPhone.  The other phones are stuck in Web 0.5 (not even 1.0, let alone 2.0) land. 

Is it any wonder that Tim Cook says Apple doesn’t need a netbook because they suck?  Apple already has netbooks in a far more convenient form factor.  If you’re going to lug a laptop, make sure it does a whole lot more.

Steve Jobs is Apple’s Chicken and Egg

Apple is RWWeb’s 2008 Best BigCo.  Everyone loves Apple.  But everyone treats Apple like Brittany Spears because of Steve Jobs.  It’s constant gossip and second guessing.

Jobs is irreplaceable to Apple.  Some say Jobs is Apple and Apple is Jobs, and that Jobs is worth $20B of Apple’s market cap.

It’s better for Apple and Jobs both if there is a little less focus on Steve Jobs and a little more focus on Apple.  Regardless of what people may suspect about Jobs’ health, there will come a time, probably sooner than later, when it makes sense for Jobs to wind down a little bit while others step up.

So how do you engineer a shift if you are Apple?

Pretty obviously, you look for some prominently public opportunities to substitute someone else in what would normally be a Jobs role.  How about Macworld Expo?  How about having Phil Schiller keynote instead of Steve Jobs?  After all, they probably thought, we’re pulling out of this Expo soon anyway, so it’ll be a great test opportunity with little downside since we won’t be back. 

The analysts get it.  Piper says it’s a signal a transition is underway.  Of course things go rapidly downhill from there starting with various folks declaring Macworld Expo is dead, the show’s owner, IDG, declaring they were stabbed in the back, and on and on about Jobs health all over again.

What is Apple supposed to do?

Going cold turkey on Steve Jobs is hard and painful.  Apple is like Popeye Doyle in the French Connection until they can show some of the other executives bring a lot to the table.  Given the state of the economy, it may not be such a bad time to be doing it though.  Plenty of other bad news around.  Let’s get it all out on the table now rather than dragging it into the good times when recovery starts.

Amazon Should Launch a Kindle iPhone App

There was news today that Amazon has launched an iPhone application.  The application is Amazon Remembers.  It’s an interesting application where you can photograph something you want to buy and Amazon will try to match it to a product they sell.  You can also just browse the Amazon shopping experience, but the “experimental” photo matching feature is the real news.  The photo recognition is done by real people via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk facility.

This is all well and good, but it just makes me wonder why Amazon hasn’t launched the real killer iPhone application:  a Kindle-style reader that runs on iPhones.  Assuming Amazon doesn’t think it makes most of the money from sales of the Kindle itself, the iPhone would be a huge acclerator for the Kindle business model.  And what better time than now, during the holiday season, to launch such a thing.  Amazon’s updated Kindle version 2 was delayed until next year anyway.

Can you imagine what a big splash a Kindle reader application for the iPhone would make?  Heck they could charge $50 or $100 for it and sell a bunch at a nice profit..  It might cannibalize some of the Kindle hardware sales, but I’ll bet not that many.  I’d sign up for an iPhone Kindle application in a heartbeat.

iPhone Activation Servers Fail

It should have been predictable, I guess, but the iPhone activation servers have failed and I ran afoul of it this morning.  Before heading in to work I thought I’d just download the stuff and see if there wasn’t some interesting new app worth installing.  You can download the new iTunes, download the firmware to the phone, resync the data to the phone, and then BAM!  The phone can’t contact the activation servers to complete the process.

This leaves you with the phone in “emergency” mode where all it can do is dial out a number you specify.  No other access seems to work and the phone says “no service”.  AT&T is actually sending customers home with their new iPhones and telling them to activate via iTunes (which was originally not supposed to have been an option).  BTW, I don’t have a 3G, just the original flavor.  I’m in activation purgatory because you can still upgrade an old iPhone so it can run apps.

You’d think this would’ve occurred to them to beef things up, but whether or not it did things aren’t beefed up enough. 

Doh!