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January 6, 2010
In his review of the just released Google phone--the Nexus One---Tim O'Reilly questions the common view that the Nexus One is at its core just another Android smartphone.
He makes the following argument:
What we see then is a collision of paradigms, perhaps as profound as the transition between the character-based era of computing and the GUI based era of the Mac and Windows. We're moving from the era in which the device is primary and the web is an add-on, to the era in which a device and its applications are fundamentally dependent on the internet operating system that provides location, speech recognition, image recognition, social network awareness, and other fundamental data services.
Unlike Apple's iPhone Google's Nexus One is a web-native device. Despite its rudimentary connecting features, it is still a more fundamentally connected device than any previous phone. Apple has done a fairly poor job on its cloud integration so far. Its MobileMe is yet to be backed by big data and powerful algorithms running on a cloud platform.
The competition between phones platforms is one front in what Reilly has called a war of the web, with its references back to the Microsoft/Apple war around the personal computer in the 1980s that was one by Microsoft.
Reilly's thesis refers to the conflict between two models of operating system, which he characterizes as "One Ring to Rule Them All" and "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," with the latter represented by a routing map of the Internet:
The first is the winner-takes-all world that we saw with Microsoft Windows on the PC, a world that promises simplicity and ease of use, but ends up diminishing user and developer choice as the operating system provider.The second is an operating system that works like the Internet itself, like the web, and like open source operating systems like Linux: a world that is admittedly less polished, less controlled, but one that is profoundly generative of new innovations because anyone can bring new ideas to the market without having to ask permission of anyone.
Apple has the proprietary position relative to Google's open position and Reilly's argument is that we're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill in the web economy.
Reilly also argues that database management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies and the race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespace. The failure to own an application's core data (eg., maps) will eventually undercut the applications competitive position. The key is to effectively turn certain classes of data into reliable subsystems of the "internet operating system".
Google is moving in this direction. It, for instance, has taken the role of data source for maps away from Navteq and TeleAtlas and inserted themselves as a favored intermediary. They are giving away the main product for future advertising revenue alone. Google's strategy is to use open source software to commoditise – and make cheaper for consumers – any technology that brings more people to its advertisement-serving algorithms, whether via a computer or a mobile phone. It wants to make mobile devices and software more accessible to raise demand for advertising, the segment it dominates. And it makes products that don't suck.
Update
I'm not sure that the dynamics of the internet are about open systems vs. closed systems and about Google vs. Apple. It seems to be more about the mobile web and mobile computing, which in general appears to be growing leaps and bounds, and will continue to do so over the next few years. Is there something special about the mobile internet that compels people to pay for things they wouldn’t pay for on the desktop internet?
Though Microsoft is still dominant in PC operating systems it is a bit player in the world of online music downloads and digital media devices, and is increasingly becoming a has-been in smartphones. This is significant because it appears that people will carry their TV (and print entertainment? ) around with them instead of being glued to a TV as we are now.
Thus Apple tablet customers---ie., Apple scales up the mobile screen size from 3.5 inches to 10 inches---will watch their favorite movies and TV shows anywhere they go, and without commercial interruptions. Apple will make money with the iTunes model for the content and it is advert free viewing for the customer. Content is the key.
The implication is that broadcast television is past its peak. We can see that in the steady drop in the quality of the content, due to the fragmentation of the TV audience and the decline in revenue from mass advertising.
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skynet?
cyborgs?
where next I wonder?