The five REALLY big things about Google Chrome
1. There will be a mobile version of Google Chrome.
Does it seem strange that Google have decided to build their new web browser on the Webkit platform instead of Mozilla? Especially when you consider how much support Google has provided for Firefox? Not when you think of the mobile device angle. As I have posted before, Google understand that the next major phase of personal computing will be mobile centric, it’s no coincidence that the Webkit platform also powers the browsers found on S60 Nokia’s, Apple iPhone’s and (soon) Android based devices. Expect to see versions of Google Chrome, almost certainly with Gears support, for at least these popular mobile operating systems.
2. It doesn’t actually matter whether Google Chrome ‘wins’ the browser war. Google’s entry to the market will influence future browser development.
How long do you think till Firefox, IE and Opera implement some of the best features found in Google Chrome? (about as long as it took for Microsoft to copy tabbed browsing over from Firefox I imagine…). I’m sure sure that Google will actively campaign for a big slice of browser share, but the companies bigger long term goal has consistently been to deepen and extend everyday internet usage. More web use = more searches = a bigger advertising market. Google Chrome is as much an ‘application’ browser as it is a conventional web browser. It is built to make it as easy as possible for people to do more, and spend more time, attention etc interacting with the web. If competing web browsers also implement features that encourage users to spend more time using the web then Google will likely win no matter which browser you choose.
3. Google Chrome will help to push the uptake of Google Apps in enterprise.
Businesses interested in the benefits of moving to a cloud desktop computing approach but concerned about offline access, browser stability issues and user acceptance now have an answer. Chrome’s implementation of Gears will make it much easier for organisations to make the switch. Offline access is baked in and Google Apps can now be made to look and feel very similar to traditional desktop software - users don’t even need to know that their software is being delivered through a browser. Application stability is now no longer any more of an issue than it is for existing desktop applications, due to the way Chrome ’sandboxes’ browsing sessions.
4. All this means that mainstream cloud computing is now really going to happen.
Prepare for a tipping point - over the next year real people are going to start using web applications in their daily lives - just like us early adopters and nerds. How fast will depend on how successful Google is at getting PC manufactures to bundle Chrome (handily pre-set up with easy access to Google Docs, Gmail etc) on newly shipped PCs. If I were Google, I would target the emerging ‘netbook’ PC market like crazy to make sure that Chrome was the first thing users saw on their initial boot. I heard Kevin Rose on Diggnation recently relating his sisters surprise at having to pay extra to have a (Microsoft) Office suite added to her new PC. Google Chrome will ensure that she and millions more won’t have to in future. This is going to be like Windows 3.1 - a new browser based phase of personal computing is just around the corner.
5. Which also means that Microsoft really do now need to get themselves a new desktop software strategy.
It’s been a long time coming, but Microsoft have now to face the reality of a long term decline in demand for their desktop software products. I was interested to see the results of a ReadWriteWeb poll yesterday asking readers which Word Processing tool they mostly used; Microsoft Office had remained static compared to last year at around 47%, Google Docs had nearly doubled its share over the same period up to 19% from 11% previously. Obviously this is just a snap poll - but the trend is realistic. Would you bet against Google Docs taking market share away from Microsoft Word when poll is repeated next year? Microsoft need to think about what they are going to do - perhaps they should be consider becoming a cloud computing enabler, opening access to it’s servers, processing capabilities and desktop API’s to developers?
Google Profiles now starting to use XFN identity data?
This is interesting - I think Google are starting to utilise public XFN data in their Google Profiles service.
If you’re not familiar with XFN, the XHTML Friends Network is a great place to get started and find out more. Basically, XFN provides a set of tags that can be used to ‘mark up’ hyperlinks so that information on the web represents real personal relationships. As an example - if you’re using Firefox to browse the internet - right click on these next two links, click on properties and take a look at the relationship field:
And this is a link to my Dad’s blog.
I think XFN is very cool, and likely to play a big part in managing individual online identity, as more and more social interactions are carried out through the web. Google seem pretty interested in the XFN standard too - last year releasing the Social Graph API that made use of XFN and other publically availalbe mark up data to determine relationships between personal web pages.
And now I’ve just noticed that Google Profiles appears to be making use of XFN. I was updating my profile this evening and noticed that the service was recommending a few additional pages to be added to my profile:
When I entered this Typepad blog, my profile refreshed and added a few additional suggestions - all of which I had previously added to my sidebar up there on the right and marked up with XFN rel=”me” tags a little while ago:
I’m really pleased to see Google indexing and building use of XFN (and presumably FOAF) data into their services, there are so many potential uses for web services that can accuratley and securely identify you and those you like to interact with. Another sign of Google’s emerging social network ambitions prehaps?
iPhone Friday. It really is a small world now.
Despite the queuing, the O2 customer service problems and some iTunes server issues - I really enjoyed this years ‘iPhone Friday’. Most of all I loved following friends and acquaintances around the world (and making new ones) on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and IM as we all chased after our respective iPhones today.
Today definitely felt ‘bigger’ than than the UK only release back in Novemer last year. It was a wierd kind of global event - uniting hard core Apple fan boys with normobs who just wanted to get their hands on this years must have gadget. Well for those of us daft enough to stand in line for it anyway!
You hear this phrase all the time, but using the web to swap stories with others in iPhone ques around the globe today really made me realize just how small the world has become. I love it. I love that technology (both the pursuit of purchasing and the capability it provides) has done this.
Now I’m off to download and install stuff from App Store. If you managed to get your hands on an iPhone today - enjoy!
Google Profiles - is this new?
I know that Google Profiles (linked to Google Reader and Google Shared Stuff) have been around for a little while now, but I've just noticed this trick. If you go to http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/me it brings you to a full page version of your profile - see below.
A bit of Funky Business…
I didn’t want the week to close out without saying a few words about an incredible presentation I saw on Thursday by Swedish economist and business author Kjell Nordstrom.
One of the best things abut working at Vodafone is the quality guest speakers we get at our company events. Kjell’s presentation at our people managers conference this week was a real highlight for me - so much so that I actually bought a copy of his book through Amazon whilst he was halfway through his presentation. When I told him this afterwards he seemed genuinley pleased.
Co-author of “Funky Business” and “Karaoke Capitalism“, Kjell gave a whirlwind tour through some of the key ideas from both books that had most of us on the edge of our seats. His originality, passion and sheer enthusiasm - for his subject, and for the future, was genuinely inspiring. Like most of the best economic ideas, his conclusions are based on acute social observations that seem obvious with the benefit of hindsight.
He discussed how social and technological change has provided unprecedented freedom - the freedom to know, go, do and be pretty much anything we choose - and that these freedoms are a key challenge that enterprises have to learn to enjoy if they are to successfully manage their people, and ultimately be successful.
The feminisation of economic activity, social ’singledom‘, the breakdown of nation states for ‘the world of cities’ and American dominance over innovation - were all given the ‘Funky Business’ treatment. Most insightful to me, was his belief that successful businesses need to either become ‘Fit’ (ready to create continual temporary monopolies by adapting quickly to market conditions) or ‘Sexy’ (use the power of emotion and attraction to attract custom).
Aside from ordering both books I’ve found a couple of other related bits and pieces online. The website accompanying Funky Business has more details on Kjell and co-author Jonas Ridderstrale. If you register with the Funky Tribe community site an MP3 version of the first chapter of Funky Business is available to download for free. Amazon also have made available a short slide presentation read by Kjell introducing some highligts from Funky Business. I really encourage you to check them out.
iPhone 3G; ‘Second Coming’ or ‘Morning Glory’?
So then…were you surprised by any of that? The 3G, the GPS, AppStore and slightly thinner form factor available in white and black? I must confess I was a little bit - not really by any of the new 3G iPhone features announced earlier, but more by some of the things we didn't hear from Steve today…
I was genuinely convinced we would also see a smaller, cheaper, feature stripped iPhone nano joining the new 3G device today. I refreshed Gizmodo's live blog again and again as we got towards the end of what was a pretty long key note. I was waiting for Steve to drop his famous 'one more thing', but it didn't happen. I still do believe we'll see a nano model before the year is out - possibly as part of the pre-Christmas iPod refresh that Apple seem to do now in the Autumn - the business case for it is just to strong to ignore.
Second big surprise for me was the lack of an upgrade to the camera (2MP) and RAM (8GB or 16GB) found on the current version of the iPhone. James is not wrong with his initial "meh" assessment! The problem for those of us who watch this industry just a little too obsessively with a passion (geekmobs?) is that we follow the rumors closely enough to have known roughly what was coming today. Anything falling short of these expectations is going to be blasted. Expect an awful lot of criticism in the next few days as the Jobsian 'reality distortion field' powers down. Nokia, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Sony-Ericsson marketing departments and fanboys will rightly go after these chinks in the armour - and as I said last week all of these now have genuine iPhone competitor devices with better cameras to point to.
This isn't going to matter though - mainly because of the third thing I was surprised we didn't hear today - pricing for the UK and rest of the world. We're going to have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out, but if the rumours are true, and the new 3G iPhone costs the equivalent of $200 or even less for new contracts in the UK and elsewhere then it's going to go absolutely supernova! Seriously, it will sell like nothing this industry has seen before.
For all it's perceived or actual shortcomings the iPhone has always been a desirable piece of phone. If the iPhone has proved anything over the past year, it's that genuine usability triumphs over feature set. Every person I've put my iPhone in the hands of has wanted to get one. Every. Single. Person. My wife wants one, my father in law wants one, my best mate wants one. The thing that's stopping all of them so far is the price. I'm willing to bet that not many people have been put off from buying an iPhone in the past year because of the lack of 3G - the 2MP camera (the current version of which is not bad by the way) will also not have much of a negative impact. Steve in fact claimed during the key note that "The number one reason people didn't buy iPhones is because they just can't afford it (56%)". Now that Apple have found another revenue stream they can use to cross-subsidise the price of the device (is it 30% of each sale through the AppStore that will go straight to Apple?) they can finally add price competitiveness to the iPhone offering. In my opinion this will make it near unstopable - how quickly did the iPhone sell out in the UK when O2 knocked prices down to GBP170?
So it's still not perfect, may dissapoint hardcore mobile geeks and will get some fair criticism over the next few weeks. Difficult second album is the right analogy, but will it be 'Second Coming' or 'Morning Glory'? We'll start to get some idea when we see the prices for the rest of the world tomorrow morning…
iPhone 2. The difficult second album…
I think there are remote Amazonian tribes, isolated from western civilization deep in the jungle, who have heard that the 3G iPhone is coming on June 9th.
I’m not sure that speculation is any longer the right term for it; pretty realistic looking predicitons have been circulating the web for months now. 3G, HSDPA, GPS, AppStore - I’m sure you’ve heard the list. I remember speculation back before MacWorld 2007, the rumours were flying then to be sure but none that I can remember came close to the final spec or even the look and feel of the device. When Steve Jobs finally whipped the first iPhone out on stage it was to genuine awe. Do you remember that wow factor? Do you remember scouring Flickr and the web that night trying to track down as many ‘real’ pictures of the device as possible?
No? Just me then…
I guess the point I’m trying to get to is that it’s getting harder and harder for the 2nd generation iPhone to launch with the same buzz. 3G…’meh!’ Better camera…’and?’ Download applications…’so what else is new?’ It’s going to be harder to impress this time. Added to this competition in the device market is hotting up - Blackberry, Nokia, LG, Google Android each have devices ariving or on the scene already that are real iPhone competitors. And all of these are ready to compete with the presumed future specification of the 2nd generation iPhone, not the current version.
Has the iPhone had it’s moment? Will the event next week be an anticlimax? I don’t think so. I think Apple will use a few of the tricks learnt in building the iPods market dominance to also unveil a real surprise. I’m betting Steve’s famous ’one more thing’ next week will be the announcement of an iPhone mini / nano / air - a smaller, sexier ‘fashion accessory’ device that will take the iPhone truly towards mass market adoption.
Skeptical? I was explaining my train of thought on this to a friend the other day…
Apple launch the 1st generation iPod. Whilst the specs aren’t that impressive by themselves Apple’s design approach and innovation in bringing these pieces together creates an interesting (if overpriced for what it is) product. The user interface in particular is pretty revolutionary. Early adopting geeks like me buy it, but it doesn’t immediatley take off in every market. Sound familiar? This is where we’ve been for the past year with the iPhone. The mobile industry is alerted, but not quite sure to what extent or how they should compete, and starts to build devices that mimic the specs and functionality.
A couple of years later Apple launch the iPod mini. Specification wise it appears to be a step backwards - it even has a smaller hard drive, but it looks cute and crucially it comes in pink. People like my wife start to buy it. Incremental changes are made to the user interface as the Click Wheel is introduced. It may be inferior technically to most other offerings in the market (including Apples now 2nd and 3rd Generation iPod’s) but the iPod Mini is now cheap enough to become a fashion accessory, mass adoption starts quietly. A repeat of this is what I’m expecting from the key note next week. Lots of players in the mobile industry will misread the move and start to think that Apple has lost the plot, but a cheaper smaller device with a spec that doesn’t push the boundaries could really spark mass market appeal.
Fast forward one more year, and Apple launch the iPod nano. It’s a really bold move - replacing the now best selling mini only one year into its product life and it wrong foots most of the competition who are now scrambling to bring out small hard drive iPod mini competitors (remember the Creative Zen Micro?). The nano introduces significant innovation into the market place (flash memory, dramatically reduced form factor, colour screen). The iPod line as a whole is now well on the way into mass adoption, and has reached a price point sweetspot. Won over by the design, and at a price which is now more reasonable the iPod line starts to cement long term dominance of the market place. This is what I think will happen next year, by which time Apple will have caused a major shift in the handset market place.
It really wouldn’t be difficult for Apple’s engineers to take the hardware feature set of last years 1st Generation iPhone and put it into a smaller, sexier reduced form factor case. For sure the specification of such a device wouldn’t be impressive - but isn’t this the exact same trick played with the iPod Mini, and more recently the MacBook Air?
Only 9 days to go to find out..
Flickr Find! - Another Hugh Macleod “change is not death. fear of change is death.”
Another classic card from Hugh’s gapingvoid.com blog. ”Change is not death. fear of change is death.”
See here for Hugh’s ‘Global Micro Brand Rant’ accompanying this card.
A good motto to live by I think…
Flickr Find! - From SXSW, an original Hugh MacLeod
From Guardian Online - blogs.guardian.co.uk/digitalcontent/2008/03/sxsw_hugh_mac… Original picture taken by Jemima Kiss.
A Hugh MacLeod improved Business Card, but is it art? For more check out Hugh’s blog and be sure to follow him on Twitter.
Think Jaiku is loosing to Twitter? Wait till Android Devices Start Shipping.
Twitter may be the current leading micro blogging service, but an obvious move by Google can turn that around overnight…
What Jaiku’s fans lack in numbers to Twitter, they certainly make up for in passion. A post by Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engeström apologising for the apparent lack of activity since the Google purchase, and follow up criticism from Ars Technica and ReadWriteWeb have sparked a micro debate!
A lot of these concerns are being driven by what happened to Dodgeball following their purchase by Google in May 2005. For those unfamiliar, Dodgeball was a promising early mobile based social network that alerted groups of friends to each others locations via SMS notifications. The service showed promise but Google never found a clear direction for developing it, and the founders famously quit Google last year.
ReadWriteWeb report this week that Jaiku is loosing the user numbers game to Twitter. Jaiku traffic fell by 30% last month, widening the gap between the two services:
These figures don’t look good, but this is a long game, and a clever move by Google could allow Jaiku to catchup to Twitter almost overnight.
What if Google where to build Jaiku into Android as the standard phone Address Book? As soon as Android devices started to ship, Jaiku (whatever form it takes in the future) would gain hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of users rapidly. This isn’t as crazy an idea as it sounds. As I’ve posted before, Jaiku was originally conceived as a location and status aware address book; many Nokia users who have the Jaiku S60 client application installed already use the service in this way.
A Jaiku Android address book would be a real game changer in micro blogging, and best of all it would almost seamlessly integrate into daily life. I realise this would not be without difficulties. The service would need to scaled to support a rapid uptake of users, and Google would no doubt have to be very careful in building in privacy safeguards and assurances. But the opportunity is there - Jaiku could easily catch up to Twitter this way, in fact the two services would then not necessarily have to compete. If Jaiku were so heavily integrated into my mobile it would become my micro blogging service of choice by default. I could then see myself, and other heavy Twitter users, reverse posting Jaiku updates to Twitter to share with others.
It’s great to see such passion and sense of ownership from Jaiku early adopters driving this debate. Also good to see that Jyri and the others are clearly listening to the ideas their users are having. Take a look through the articles Jyri has tagged on del.icio.us recently and you can see he’s personally watching the debate and the ideas Jaiku fans are discussing. As I’ve said before I firmly believe that Jaiku will play a big part in Google’s next phase - as part of this it can still catch Twitter.
Me
I like web services, mobile devices and most things technology related.
I am all over the internet.
I work for Vodafone UK.