My Fantasy League Pick for Yahoo's Board: Steve Jobs

Over 11 years ago, after seeing one of the release candidates for Windows 98, I wrote “The browser wars are over, Microsoft won.” I took a lot of heat from the Netscape and Mac faithful, but at the time it was obvious that whatever the default was in the late 90s was going to win.

That was one prediction that I got right. But saying “the search wars are over, Google won” isn’t a prediction, but rather a statement of what already happened. Here’s a screen shot from a recent day’s worth of search traffic for TVbytheNumbers:

If search is the focus, combining Yahoo and Microsoft doesn’t really make up much ground. I’m mostly for Yahoo staying a separate entity because it has such massive scale overall. It’s lagging in search, but its other properties ranging from mail, to MyYahoo, to Yahoo sports perform very well. My theory, boneheaded as it may be, is with that much scale you ought to be able to figure out how to make more money. The one problem I have with the combination isn’t really Microsoft, it’s that combining the companies doesn’t seem like it will wind up increasing the scale that much.

Today Fred Wilson posted a list of board members he’d like to see in light of Carl Ichan’s recommendations. To be honest, I’d rather see Mark Cuban than a lot of Fred’s recommendations. Though I loved Fred’s pick of Bill Gross, overall there are too many deep-thinking smart people on his list. I’m not sure anything ever gets accomplished when you throw that many deep thinkers in a room. And with the mix of people Fred recommends I’d worry about the testosterone warrior mentality of making Google the target of all strategy. I think that would be a bad strategy. I’ve seen what happens when companies make their major competitor the sole focus, and it doesn’t usually work out well.

The one guy I’d really like to see on Yahoo’s board if we’re doing fantasy league is Apple’s Steve Jobs. Think about it. Apple stopped making Microsoft its direct focus, all doing so got it was the need to ask for Microsoft’s help to bail it out! Which Microsoft did.

It took a while, but then came the iPod and now Mac and its OS are very steadily gaining share too. The Apple Store? A retail hit! The Microsoft Store? Not so much. Jobs seemingly knows how to ride these things out better than anyone. Marc Andreesen may be a great product guy and Tim O’Reilly may be a genius at seeing the future. But Jobs has the practical experience of actually surviving something similar.

People Like You: By Google

Google has a really cool social networking opportunity. Some sort of natural selection for finding people who are just like you.


The Google Analytics are pretty nice for free, and coupled with the Feedburner stats (which I hope will not go away now GOOG has acquired Feedburner) you can find out a lot of good info. I saw on Google that somebody searched on destructive capitalism and found part 1 of my rantings on that topic. And I'm pretty sure they read the whole thing because they spent 15 minutes on the site. But here's the really neat thing (and Google Analytics doesn't include this functionality yet though, at least not in this way but it certainly has the data to do so) in Feedburner I could see where the person came from, how they accessed and what browser they used.

They used the browser in the Wii to do a Google search on destructive capitalism! I have not done a Google search on the Wii yet. I haven't on the XBOX 360 either. I have done it on the PS3 (and on the PSP). But anyone out there surfing the Internet on a game console and doing Google searches on destructive capitalism -- that's someone I want to know. I'm not sure I need any other piece of data at all. In the future, Google will have some way of connecting anonymous random strangers with each other in a way that MySpace, Facebook, etc. can only hope to. I know there are all kinds of privacy issues, but Google really can broker the anonymous connection.
That's power and power that still hasn't quite caught up to the legal system. Microsoft felt it needed to settle an antitrust claim Google placedt by making some changes to Vista regarding Google desktop. What the problem is though is lost on me because the only machine I have with vista on it, came with Google desktop preloaded on it and it seems to work with Vista just fine. The Google desktop, aside from being a good search tool for the stuff on your computer is similar to Microsoft Vista's "Sidebar". Vista and Google’s sidebars have gadgets, can pull RSS feeds, and display quite a bit of info. It's a lot like the "Dashboard" products that were available for earlier versions of windows. Only Google's and Microsoft's versions are both, much, much better.

It wasn't any harder for me to figure out how to bring Google's sidebar up than it was to figure out how to get Microsoft's sidebar off my desktop. But you know what? I don't want either of them on my desktop. I have a 24" widescreen monitor so I have plenty of space. But I don't like these tools being on my screen at all. I'd much rather use Google's browser based counterpart and I am very quickly becoming a huge fan of iGoogle. Not just because they too are capitalizing on Steve Jobs by stealing his small i. It's the best "my" page I've ever used. Weak on sports though. Yahoo is still better for presentation of sports score data on a personalized home page in my opinion.

I don't like the sidebars on my desktop because I find them distracting and invasive. I don’t use either of them. I feel like I have full control in the browser and it’s not invasive. I love the gadgets though from both companies and use some of each. But both Google and Microsoft know that “what’s default” is king in the matters of the desktop and once your sidebar is up, it’s going to be a little hard to get it off – even if they want it off. I may or may not be in the majority when it comes to whether people want tons of information on their desktop, but I know I’m still in the minority (less than half) when it comes to people who alter the default settings. I can live with being in the minority.

My media card reader is broken (shakes fist at air), but here’s a fairly recent picture of my desktop with some of the gadgets (the media center window with PTI is not a gadget. Not yet anyway).

You Have to be Kidding Me! More iPhone, PSP, ORB, Streaming Video, etc

A couple of years ago I met a young woman and I took a very strong shine to her because her response to almost every travesty in the world, no matter how major, no matter how minor, was exactly the same: you have to be kidding me!

I realized after a short time that, "Goodness, that's my response to every travesty in the world, no matter how major or minor."

I have been attempting a shift where I reserve that response for other things. Not necessarily major travesties. I can tell you right now that performance enhancing drugs in professional sports are not considered any real travesty by the masses, and that's why they are still in use today. If you could blood test all the MLB players right now, I predict more than half of them would test positive for HGH (human growth hormone). You can't test for HGH without a blood test, and blood testing is not currently a part of MLB's collective bargaining agreement with the MLBPA. If anyone really cared to actually fix the problem right now, they'd find a way to get blood testing right now. This doesn't happen and likely won't until someone besides me, in a real position of power views it as a travesty and is hell-bent on fixing it. Let's face it Bud Selig and the players are not hell bent on fixing the problem, they are more bent on "not being stained by it". It's human nature. Ever it was…

It's no travesty, but I am ok with a "you have to be kidding me!" response to it because, especially in the coming weeks approaching the MLB All-Star game here in San Francisco, home of Barry Bonds there will be lots of talk, talk, talk with no actual "fixing of the problem". Fans are decidedly not voting with their wallets based on ticket sale trends over the last ten years. And it's the rub of trying to fix the problem. If we found out the real results are that more than half the players are using HGH who is that information good for? Not the players, not the owners and not the fans. I think we're in some classic "ignore it until it goes away" scenario with a lot of jibber jabber about doing something that really just amounts to jibber jabber. So of course, travesty or not: you have to be kidding me!

Then there's stuff like having a nice Playstation Portable (PSP) that would be able to receive wifi streams of all my media, except the nefarious scoundrels at Sony don't want you to have that much capability for their ~$150 device. You have to buy either a ~$200 add-on (Sony's Location Free Player) or a $600 add-on, the PS3. There's no reason it has to work that way at all, Sony set it up that way on purpose. So of course, "You have to be kidding me!" I bought both the add-ons though I didn't buy the PS3 with that in mind. Someday there definitely will be a very cool portable device that streams video from your home media library very nicely for less than $200, but it might be a few years. I don't really fault Sony as I do not believe they would have already sold millions more or even a 100,000 more PSPs if they had done this.

Here, it's me who is the hypocrite because I just contribute to the problem. Sony is a unique company in that it's business decisions really do make it look like it's run by a bunch of scoundrels, but their products are so good, people by them. I have a high end Vaio sub notebook, the PS3, the location free player, etc. That I sometimes view the Sony Corporation as a bunch of evil imperialists doesn't matter at all. If someone said they could only buy one Microsoft Windows based laptop, I would recommend the Vaio brand. Of course when the Apple Store moves into its Chestnut Street location, I'm for sure going with an Apple based laptop when it's finally time for me to upgrade. Take that Sony!

One of the most interesting things to me is that when I was writing ten years ago, Microsoft was a very interesting company to follow and write about. I don't know whether it's just me, but I no longer find this to be the case at all. I use Microsoft products, Vista and the Xbox360 and they are both fine products, but Microsoft the company, like Sony the company just isn't all that interesting. I like their products but don't find anything they're doing particularly notable. On the other hand, I find Google and Apple absolutely fascinating.

Google it seems is out to optimize everything. I'm not sure I'll live long enough to see OY.Google.com (with the OY standing for "Optimize Yourself" rather than a kvetchy oy), but I don't doubt they are on that trajectory at all. Apple, well, Apple seems way better at optimizing portability/remote access than anyone else with the iPod, and presumably with the forthcoming iPhone. When you couple some future version of the stand alone ipod that is an 80GB (or more) version with wifi? In 5 years when all that is hooked into the 3^rd generation of "Steve's Little Hobby™, AppleTV – I won't be the only one in Starbucks watching TV on my iPod. Steve will take an "aww shucks' approach to that success. If I had to pick right now who is going to own the "media server" space that will stream your content wherever you want it (whether it's your HDTV, the TV in your office, your computer at work, your iPod..) I don't see it being Microsoft or Sony.

Of course I may well be hugely wrong. Ten years ago there was no Google and I didn't think the future looked bright at all for Apple. But Steve Jobs came back, then the iPod, now the iPhone and…because of all that, Apple, in my opinion is likely to grow its market share in the personal computer space (and while it's not exactly a zero sum game, improved market share for Apple will come almost entirely at the expense of Microsoft).

These are exciting times.

For now Orb on a Microsoft Media Center machine provides a vastly richer and better experience than Steve's Little Hobby™, but in a few years there will be more options, all of them much better than any of the options.

Until then: getting all my media wherever I want it, whenever I want it, on any device I want it: miserably hard to do!! Please note, there are many good solutions in place if all you want to do is stream your video to a laptop, but if you want it wherever you are whenever you are, it's going to be a pain in the butt probably at least until version 3 of Apple TV (~5 years).

The stories I will be able to tell about "the old days" will have a strong resemblance to, "I had to walk 10 miles to school, through the snow, without shoes…" People will say, "You have to be kidding me!" I won't be kidding at all.

For now, having seen today's battery life announcement for the iPhone, I think I may well pass on passing on the iPhone. But I will definitely pass on being a fool standing in line on 6/29. You have to be kidding me!

Over/Under: 2012: How Long Before more Antitrust Fears of Google than Microsoft?

Mark me down for under.

Also, in the "who you got?" department with the Google vs. Ebay drama?

I'm going for Google. Why? Google really IS trying to optimize EVERYTHING (and as a result will optimize its profits). EBay is more of a traditional company which focuses on optimizing profits.