<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Thursday, May 13, 2004

What will Google do with all that money? 

They may save us all a lot of money. They’ve made an email service that everyone should be using and probably will be using. They’ve got the best search engine in the business. They’ve made everyone a web author with blogger. Now they are letting users create their own user groups.

While many people see google as the anti-Microsoft, they actually are following a similar business model. Let someone else test the waters and then come out with you own, better product.

Yahoo->Google Search
Price Watching sites -> Froogle
Hotmail -> Gmail
Yahoo eGroups -> Google Groups

I haven’t used Google Groups yet, but it seems to be integrated with their Usenet archives. Their Usenet archives are a godsend, especially if you are a computer programmer. It will be interesting to see how the groups develop. Will they stay centralized and broad, or will they fragment? With Google’s search technology does it matter?

Any Guess on what Google might take on next? If you were Google what would you do with 2.5 billion dollars?

Comments: Post a Comment

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Video Phones 

I know...I know. That title may have just cost me all credibility. The truth of the matter is that people have been anticipating the video phone for entirely too long. The biggest problems to date have been poor image quality and inability to penetrate the market.

It looks like someone may have the solution and you’re probably not going to like who it is.

Even though I hardly have time to play anymore, I always like to keep one eye on the happenings in the computer game industry. A lot of new trends evolve out of the industry and turn into something else entirely.

This week is the holy grail of weeks for keeping an eye on the industry. It is the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. All the big companies are there and they are making all kinds of announcements. One of these announcements was Microsoft revealing its desire to add video phone capabilities to its Xbox live system. This is a big deal because there are already over 1 million subscribers to Xbox live. That means that they have broadband and an Xbox. I believe another 10 million have an Xbox without the live service. Xbox live is also available in 22 countries.

I won’t predict that the X-box will be the video phone that we’ve all been waiting for since 1905, but the technologies that spin off of it will be interesting to watch.

Comments: Post a Comment

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?