In general, most New Year's resolutions tend to last as long as the NFL playoffs. But those who enter the year working for the world's most ambitious technology company won't have that luxury.
Google enters its 12th year as an information and financial powerhouse, holding claim to perhaps the most enviable position on the Internet and worming its way into all sorts of businesses that Internet companies have traditionally avoided. The company shows little sign of slowing down its innovation engine, but as a result of that pace faces competitive threats like never before from other giants of the technology and media worlds.
What should Google leaders Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page focus on in 2010? Here are five suggestions:
1. Don't forget where you came from
Search remains Google's cash machine. It ended the year with around 65 percent of the U.S. search market, according to ComScore, and does not appear to be losing any momentum. Microsoft's well-received reinvention of its search efforts in the form of Bing seems to have the main effect of taking business away from Yahoo, its pending search partner, rather than denting Google's advantage.
But the nature of search is changing as the nature of information produced for the Internet changes. Real-time results are now seen as important, and Google has much work to do in order to prove its real-time strategy unveiled in December will produce the same types of relevant results that its main search engine did in rising to the top. Social-networking sites are host to an enormous amount of relevant content that Google can't necessarily find.
Google does not face as many competitive threats in search at the moment as its antitrust defense lawyers would like you to believe. But that doesn't mean that it's not vulnerable to the same sort of scrappy start-up that it once was, operating under the radar with a fresh take on the world. As Schmidt well knows, having imposed a strategy of focusing 70 percent of Google's attention on search, keeping the gravy train running is job No. 1 at Google.
2. Get control of the engineers
This is undoubtedly a controversial notion inside of Google. But the tech history books are raft with giants that slowly grew arrogant and haughty with their success, from IBM to Microsoft. Google knows it needs to avoid traveling down a similar path while catering to an engineering culture that has almost never taken no for an answer.
Simply put, Google's engineers do things because they can. And at some point, that's no longer going to fly as Google enters more and more markets. That's because while much of Google's self-image revolves around avoiding evil, that mindset only applies to users of its products. It doesn't apply to competitors or partners, who have the ability to cry foul if they believe they are the victims of unfair competition (regardless of whether or not it's actually true).
If at some point the government deems Google to have a monopoly in search advertising, expect Google's march into other markets to slow. Engineers may scoff at such restraints, truly believing in the quality and usefulness of their work. But regulators are not engineers, and those folks might arguably hold more power over Google in 2010 than any other force.
3. Get HTML5 standards finalized
Much of Google's strategy for ushering computing into the 21st century revolves around the notion that the browser can be the dominant platform for applications. There are numerous benefits to this approach in theory; software can be much more lightweight and suitable to mobile devices if run over the Internet, malware can't knock out a personal computer that doesn't allow things to be installed locally, and, of course, users who spend their lives on the Internet are more likely to search for information.
But in order to make that vision happen without being labeled as a usurper, Google's representatives on the W3C Working Group for HTML5 must make sure that the various components of the HTML5 technologies are approved in concert with the community of other browser vendors, so that Google is not seen as having a distinct advantage. The company appears to take this very seriously, and the sooner the process can be brought to fruition, the easier it will be for projects like Chrome OS to develop without being seen as an attempt to corner the personal computing market.
4. Live up to the promise of Google Books
Perhaps the biggest albatross around Google's neck in 2009 was its settlement with authors and publishers over Google Book search, a process in which Google managed to turn lemonade into lemons. Its attempt to create a digital library for the ages was vehemently protested by authors, privacy advocates, and copyright experts angry over Google's scan-first ask-later approach to building that database.
Few doubt the value of an open digital library that unlocks access to books stored on musty shelves at exclusive universities. But many are distrustful of Google's intentions when it comes to Google Books, and putting their fears to bay could go a long way toward ending the acrimony over the settlement. A final hearing is scheduled for February, and while Google has already made concessions in response to criticism from the Department of Justice, lining up an independent partner to be a second source of this digital material would take the wind out of much of the opposition's argument.
5. Clarify your mobile strategy
We may get a sense of this one extremely soon, as Google is scheduled to host an Android event Tuesday that most believe will mark the debut of its first Android phone sold directly to the general public.
Google is walking a fine line at the moment, should it really intend to sell its own branded phone. One of the primary reasons that the iPhone took off was that Apple dictated the experience that iPhone users and developers would see, locking the hardware specs and controlling the distribution of software for the platform. Of course, that approach has all kinds of side effects, which appeared to be the primary motivation behind Android: a modern mobile software platform free of such restrictions and available to anyone who wants to make a phone.
However, Google's partners--even if they knew about the Nexus One months ago--are likely to be perplexed by its decision to make its own phone. Will Google developers reserve key Android features for Google devices? Will they cut back on their promotional resources for Open Handset Alliance partners in order to promote their own phone? And why should they trust Google in the future, given that the company has said numerous times that it had no interest in making its own phone?
The beauty of the mobile computing market is that it is truly up for grabs, and that no one company appears ready to dominate in the same manner that Microsoft came to own the PC. But Google will have crossed a line if it really does plan to sell its own phone: it will have leaned on the efforts of others to create a viable market for Android only to swoop in once the software has grown popular with a device of its own.
That means other companies could think twice about partnering with Google in the future.
Google has announced an Android related press conference for January 5, the same day that earlier reports indicated would see the launch of the Google Phone.
Invitations were sent to various members of the media Tuesday promoting the event at Google's headquarters, to be held just as the annual CES gadget fest gets under way in Las Vegas. Expectations are high that Google will use the occasion to announce the launch of the Nexus One phone as its first phone sold directly to consumers.
It also seems Google is finally ready to address the questions that have risen about its Android strategy following reports that it planned to sell this particular phone directly to consumers through its Web site. Google has invested a lot of time and money during 2009 promoting the Android phones of its partners--namely Motorola and Verizon--and could be about to complicate the work of those partners with its own device.
In any event, Google's announcement will likely kick off a crowded week for the technology industry and could perhaps overshadow any news to emerge from CES later in the week.
The ethereal Google Phone could arrive as early as January 5 on T-Mobile's network, according to a report.
Google could start selling the Nexus One directly to consumers on January 5, according to a new report.
(Credit: Cory O'Brien via Twitter)That's according to TmoNews, a blog that obsessively tracks the movements of T-Mobile. It says it has obtained an internal training document that mentions the Google Phone, thought to be the Nexus One phone distributed to Google employees earlier this month.
In the document, T-Mobile informs its employees that "the Google Android phone will be sold solely by Google via the Web," backing up other reports that Google is about to make a radical departure from its previous phone strategy and "compete with its customers," something Google Android chief Andy Rubin had said the company was not interested in doing.
The document makes no mention of timing, but TmoNews said its sources believe the phone will launch on January 5 at 9 a.m., just before the major CES trade show gets underway in Las Vegas (we presume that's 9 a.m. Pacific time, but the document didn't stipulate the time zone). Engadget reported a similar launch date last week.
We still don't know what the Nexus One/Google Android phone will cost, or even whether sales of the phone will be limited to a small number of registered developers, as Google as done with two previous phones. However, it's hard to believe that T-Mobile would need to gear up for the launch of a phone sold in very limited qualities.
Ever since Google said it had no plans to sell its own phone directly to consumers in October, it has refused to comment on its Android strategy as reports it was about to do just that have built. A Google representative did not return an e-mail seeking comment on Tuesday.
A small update to version 1.2 lets you upload photos from your phone and share favorite businesses with friends.
(Credit: Yelp)Yelp's first foray on Google's Android phones wasn't much to look at.
The initial feature set of Yelp's business review app for Android, which debuted December 7, was minimalist. It contained enough features--read-only access to Yelp.com, click-to-call, and a hyperlink to get directions from the browser or Google Maps--to avoid a user riot, but one would hardly call it the answer to Yelp's iPhone app.
On Tuesday, Yelp is making good on its promise to quickly pad the app's features. Version 1.2, an update available through the Android Market app on your smartphone, now lets you upload pictures from your Android phone to Yelp's site.
If you're meeting someone at a restaurant, bar, or museum, you can now share Yelp's business listing with others over SMS, e-mail, Facebook, and other third-party apps you may have installed on your phone, like a Twitter service. As a third addition, you're also free to sign in to your Yelp profile from the smartphone.
These changes may seem like small potatoes at first--you still can't add your own rating, write tips, or review a place from the phone--but they reverse two of our complaints. Yelp tells us we should expect to see more interactive features in early 2010, like drafting a review for later publishing, and bookmarking a business.
As a company that has built a business model atop trust, Google is in a sticky position as it prepares to formally introduce the Nexus One phone.
Google's Nexus One phone could be a sea change in how Google works with Android partners who might turn into competitors.
(Credit: Cory O'Brien via Twitter)Google employees were given free Nexus One phones at a company party Friday night, and the Internet went into a tizzy. Reports surfaced later in the weekend that this device was the long-awaited Google phone, the company's answer to Apple's strategy of controlling the hardware, software, and distribution model with the iPhone, rather than the partner-oriented strategy of developing the guts of the operating system and letting partners each put their own stamp on the finished product.
Just two months ago, Google's Andy Rubin rolled his eyes when asked about an analyst report picked up by TheStreet.com that said Google planned to pursue this exact strategy. He said Google had no plans to make its own hardware--which is one thing since smartphones are almost exclusively manufactured by contractors in China and Taiwan--but he took a further step in spending about 10 minutes arguing why it would be a bad idea for Google to design its own phone and sell it outside of carrier channels.
That line of thinking resonated with many who follow Google and the mobile industry. After all, Google's stated goal for Android ever since the project was revealed in November 2007 was to create an "ecosystem" of multiple phones that would help improve access to the mobile Internet. And Google seemed to finally reach that goal this year, with over a dozen phones in the wild and more promised from some of the world's leading phone makers and wireless carriers.
But if the reports are correct, Google is about to make a radical departure from that strategy. And Google's new course would take it down a path that could sow distrust among the company's Open Handset Alliance partners, who must now be wondering if they're about to get into a marketing war with one of the tech industry's richest companies.
Katie Watson, a Google representative, said on Sunday that the company has confirmed nothing about its plans for the Nexus One, described as a "dogfooding" experiment for internal testing by the company in a blog post Saturday.
In the rush to anoint the Nexus One as the Google Phone, it's quite possible that the tech industry glossed over the fact that Google already sells Android phones, albeit on a limited basis. For quite some time, registered Android developers have been able to buy completely unlocked versions of the G1 and the T-Mobile MyTouch3G (also known as the Google Ion) for $399.
Google does sell some phones, such as the Google Ion, but only to developers for Android testing purposes.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)So there is a solid chance that the Nexus One is merely the Android Dev Phone 3, following the Dev Phone 1 (G1) and Dev Phone 2 (MyTouch or Ion). Just this year, Google handed out Dev Phone 2 models branded as the Google Ion to attendees at Google I/O 2009, but if regular people want to buy that particular phone they have to get the MyTouch3G from T-Mobile with a two-year contract.
It does seem clear that Google has played the premier role in designing the software for the Nexus One. In the company's blog post over the weekend, it said "we recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities, and we shared this device with Google employees across the globe."
But the key unconfirmed detail is how Google plans to sell this phone. According to The Wall Street Journal, Google plans to sell this phone unsubsidized on its own, with consumers able to choose a wireless service provider after the fact. However, according to corporate sibling Peter Kafka at All Things D's MediaMemo and Reuters, Google has plans to hook up with longtime mobile partner T-Mobile to help sell the Nexus One through Google's Web site for $199.
How will Google market this phone? Anyone with a television set has likely seen an ad over the last month for the Motorola Droid, an Android phone sold for Verizon's network that has been billed as one of the best Android phones to date. It was also the launch pad for a long-term pact between Google and Verizon that will supposedly produce a family of devices based on Android.
If Google plans to sell the Nexus One directly to consumers, will it insist upon using its brand as the lead brand, rather than the "With Google" branding found on the back of many Android phones? Will it blast the airwaves during the NFL playoffs in January to trumpet the arrival of the Nexus One, perhaps just in time for the Super Bowl? And how will that affect partners such as Motorola and Verizon that have sunk so much money into promoting the Droid, only to see rumors of a Google Phone leak out at the worst possible time: the height of the holiday shopping season?
This could be a very telling moment in Google's history. At the moment, Google's mobile division does not seem to be completely in control of the message it wants to send consumers, partners, and competitors.
If Google really does plan to sell the Nexus One directly to consumers and compete with its customers, it has chosen an interesting way to announce it to the world, keeping the Google Phone rumor mill alive for months while publicly denying such plans. Apple has employed such a marketing strategy for years, insisting on near-silence regarding future product plans but benefiting enormously from the frenzy of interest in every little morsel that mysteriously pops up regarding those plans.
However, Google is not Apple. Google public-relations representatives will sheepishly admit that they have little control over how Google rolls out its products: Google is a company run by engineers, and engineers push the button when the product is ready to ship.
But when you're working in an environment with multiple partners that have competing interests, any confusion over your future plans--especially plans that would appear to yank the floor away--can breed distrust among those partners. One of Google's largest problems right now is that it has built a business model geared around the notion that it can be trusted with almost unprecedented control over the flow of information across the globe, and any cracks in that wall of trust will be exploited by its enemies.
With the way details have trickled out about the Nexus One, Google has either alienated current and future Android partners by muscling in on their turf, or set up thousands of eager smartphone consumers looking for an open alternative to the iPhone for disappointment when they realize Google merely plans to sell an expensive unlocked phone to a limited audience, if at all.
After all, Google essentially declared in its blog post that employees are testing a product with "new mobile features and capabilities" that presumably can't be found on the current crop of phones. It's almost the same language Google used to introduce Chrome OS ("our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be") while insisting that it had no competitive reasons for introducing that Netbook operating system.
Few believed that line with Chrome OS, and fewer still will believe that Google is creating Android for the betterment of humanity if it really plans to sell its own phone.
What's behind the Google Chrome OS, technologically and from a business perspective? This week on the Roundtable, I discuss the pending operating system with CNET writers Stephen Shankland (Deep Tech) and Gordon Haff (Pervasive Data Center).
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Reporters' Roundtable #13: Google Chrome OS ... Read more
(Credit:
Yelp)
Frequent Yelp users will be pleased to see a Yelp for Android app take its place in the Android Market on Monday. Be forewarned, however, that the app contains the minimum services from Yelp.com in this iteration.
There's the usual search for restaurants and businesses nearby, which Yelp sniffs out using GPS or cell tower triangulation. Results records include ratings, reviews, and photos you can view from the phone. You can click or press a button to call the business. There's another button to map the location to a movable Google map, and this version thankfully includes our favorite new feature--a link to pop open directions in a browser from your current location to the business.
Yelp on Android lacks many of the interactive program features that are present on the iPhone version, including the ability to contribute your own photos and tips. We'll presumably see more functionality in future editions. For now, Yelp is read-only on Android phones.
Residents of the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Ireland can download Yelp for free from the Android market.
Ustream in action on Android-based devices.
(Credit: Ustream)Online video-streaming site Ustream announced on Wednesday that a mobile app that allows users to view Ustream content is available now in the Android Market.
According to Ustream, the app, dubbbed Android Viewer, allows users to watch any show on the site over Wi-Fi or 3G. The app works with Android software versions 1.5 and up. It also includes a chat function, allowing users to communicate with others who are also watching the show.
This isn't the first time Ustream has released an application for Android. The company already offers the Android Broadcaster, which allows users to stream a show to viewers from their Android-based gadget.
Those looking to try out Ustream's new Android app can download it for free from the Android market.
The Twitter service with the cutesy raccoon mascot is making a new home on BlackBerry and Google Android phones. The free Seesmic, like its proliferate rivals, lets you read, manage, and compose Twitter messages much more flexibly than you can do from Twitter's Web site. We crash-tested both mobile versions as soon as we heard the news.
Seesmic on Android
Seesmic 1.0 for Android is available from the Android Market app, which is located on the smartphone. It takes up just over 1MB. The interface spreads four tabs along the top in both landscape and portrait mode, one each for the timeline, replies, direct messages, and your profile. There's also a ribbon on the screen that you can tap to refresh the feed. Click to open a tweet and you can save it as a favorite, retweet, or reply as a public "@" message or as a private posting. From the menu button, you can refresh, compose, or tinker with the settings.
Although Seesmic's Android interface is much more stripped down than its desktop AIR app for Windows and Mac, the app manages to remain flexible by giving you a choice over the kinds of notifications you'd like to receive, and over the partner services you'd prefer to use to send a photo, video, or shorten a URL.
Sure, it's blurry (blaming the BlackBerry camera), but squint hard enough and you'll see that Seesmic associated a picture with my account that's not actually my face.
(Credit: Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)The biggest flaws we've noticed so far? ... Read more
Google co-founder Sergey Brin
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google's dual-pronged operating-system strategy will likely produce a single OS down the road, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Many Google observers were puzzled when the company announced plans for Chrome OS in July, coming amid growing acceptance of the company's Android operating-system project as a smartphone and Netbook OS. After all, why design an open-source operating system with the goal of reinventing the personal computing experience when you're currently developing another open-source operating system with the goal of reinventing the mobile computing experience?
Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, have downplayed the conflict ever since, asking for time to let the projects evolve. And a few days after Chrome OS was revealed, Android chief Andy Rubin said device makers "need different technology for different products," explaining that Android has a lot of unique code that makes it suitable for use in a phone and Chrome has unique benefits of its own.
But Brin, speaking informally to reporters after the company's Chrome OS presentation on Thursday, said "Android and Chrome will likely converge over time," citing among other things the common Linux and Webkit code base present in both projects.
It's not clear when Google thinks it might want to merge the projects, but it seems to be eyeing a future in which the smartphones currently served by Android meld into the Netbooks Google has in mind for Chrome OS. Of course, Brin's vision might not necessarily be shared by all members of the Google management team.
"As Sundar [Pichai, Google's vice president of product management] said in his presentation, we're reaching a perfect storm of converging trends where computers are behaving more like mobile devices, and phones are behaving more like small computers," Google said in a statement in response to questions about how and when the two projects would merge. "Having two open source operating systems from Google provides both users and device manufacturers with more choice and helps contribute a wealth of new code to the open source community."
Any future combination of Chrome OS and Android could be aimed at a new type of device distinct from Android's smartphones or Chrome OS's Netbooks.
(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)This also allows Google to pick and choose the best ideas to emerge from each project, setting up a bit of friendly internal competition to develop new operating-system technologies. The main difference is that while Android is a shipping product, Chrome OS is still very much in the research stage, with devices not expected until late 2010.
It's way too early to know how that pending convergence will affect development for the different operating systems, as it seems pretty clear Google is spending most of its time at the moment building out each one separately.
But Brin--no idle bystander--believes at some point, Google will emerge with one next-generation operating system.
