Is Google becoming Microsoft with Android?
There's more than a whiff of truth to The VAR Guy's suggestion that Google's Android antics make it seem like the Microsoft of yore: heavy on marketing and light on substance. In particular, I'm equally dismayed by Google's "vaporware" announcements:
Throughout the 1990s and even today, Microsoft often pre-announces products to engage and excite ISVs (independent software vendors). Win the ISV battle, and you'll win the resulting product wars. It's a smart strategy, and Google adopted it when the company announced the path to Android. (Check out this preview video of Android devices.) But the strategy also has some downside: ISVs get early access to developer tools, but their work on an "emerging" platform often distracts them away from existing platforms and immediate business opportunities.
"Downside" for competitors, that is. This strategy is very tempting: you want the market to slow down and wait for you as a vendor, but few vendors have the brand impact to be able to command the market to do so. Microsoft does, and Google does. But the harm to real vendors that actually deliver substance is significant.
Google has always undercut this vaporware tendency with its "perpetual beta" product release strategy. This allows it to ship product without shipping "product." "Oh, it doesn't work? Well, it's just a beta!" Clever, and thus far effective, as Google's betas often outclass established products from other vendors.
Android, however, is different. It has underwhelmed, but has sucked up a lot of marketing oxygen. Let's hope this is an anomaly and not the beginning of a trend from Google.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
The concept is complex, and (by its very nature) involves many partners.
There's bound to be a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing. Seems quite reasonable to me that there'll be a fair bit of discussion before we get the benefit.
Plus the blog-obsessed media feeds off itself, much easier than getting REAL news, with stories inevitably going around in circles; how long before you get quoted ... and the circle of repetition continues until you next say much the same again (and yes, you said it before) about Android.
In what respect, exactly, is this Google's fault?
"Plus the blog-obsessed media feeds off itself, much easier than getting REAL news..."
You are truly right!
Writing blogs is "far too easier" than delivering a full stack of software to make a cell phone!
And a lot of times, no bloggers seem to be responsible of what she/he said and was wrong ot missguided!
But a non-working software...
Windows Mobile is still broken after almost a decade. RIM took like 7 years. Apple is having rought times... and bloggers/journalist blame the delay in an "effort to change the cell phone industry"?
Gmail is beta, but it works just fine.
Video is beta, but it works just fine.
Shopping (Froogle) is in beta, but it works just fine.
Calendar is beta, but it too works just fine.
Docs is beta, but it works just fine.
IDK what in the world you're talking about. Cite one instance, and all of a sudden Google has gone to pot? What gives?
This article is ridiculous.
Will you just state the actual reason for you bias against Android and stop wasting everybody's time?
Google produces products that are in Beta for a while. At least they're honest about the state of their software instead of rushing out incomplete products.
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by seo2seo
August 31, 2008 8:59 AM PDT
- >> only Google could get away with an announcement for an announcement -
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(11 Comments)And only a blogger would quote such inanities to promote his own blog.