Jon Gruber at Daring Fireball and Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry at Silicon Alley Insider have great pieces on what iCloud says about how the Web is changing software. This is my takeaway from this debate.
Let’s start with stating that the Internet is a medium for software distribution. Webpages are software, and the Web is a unique access model for consumers. There’s a UNIVERSE of software at our fingertips, 24/7. We access it over a Network instead of built into our computer.
Mr. Gobry states…
Here’s how Google and Apple’s vision of the cloud differ: for Google, the cloud means cloud + web; for Apple, cloud computing means cloud + software, with the internet stuff happening behind the scenes.
In Gruber’s view web apps “just change where the client-side software runs, and what APIs it is written against.”
I agree with both of these points.
Where Google excels as a Company is building web-based applications. Apple excels at creating a unified customer experience, from web to OS to hardware. That means Google is VERY dependent on the browser, but Apple competes in many more markets.
We can’t have this discussion without talking about iTunes – the cornerstone of Apple’s software strategy. This isn’t news to anyone, iTunes could really use a TOP NOTCH web interface (I’m a fan of Rdio). This is where Apple’s cultural belief of a unified customer experience may actually be hurting it.
Mr. Gruber also states…
Apple’s strategy is correct for optimizing the quality of the user experience. Google’s strategy is correct for maximizing the number of users for its apps.
Well said.
Shared document editing is not an inherent advantage of Google Docs being web-based; native client could do it just the same.
Yep.
Google and Apple are both companies; organizations that reflect a set of beliefs and stick to those beliefs until they HAVE to change. This is what’s really at play.
Both Apple and Google are approaching the same destination, just taking different routes. The destination is a world of hybrid software, where each application is balanced across the Web and native OS in an optimized manner.
The winner will design Products that use the unique strengths each medium in a way which maximizes the customer experience.
Further reading from Jon Gruber and at Silicon Alley Insider.
In this post I’ll combine concepts from two books I read recently – “The Facebook Effect” (review here) by David Kirkpatrick, and “The Master Switch” by Tim Wu.
In “The Master Switch” (review here) Wu mentions Facebook three times, each in passing. He doesn’t choose to go into how the FB phenomena will impact how we consume content, and how information empires shift with these changes. I’d be curious to hear his take on Facebook as the next “Information Empire”.
The first “Master Switch” was switchboard operators. People called over the phone, told them what they wanted, and they connected them. Sound familiar?
Then Google automated this.
Enter Facebook
But what is people didn’t need to even know what they’re looking for anymore, but were being automatically connected constantly to relevant information? Your friends become the switchboard operators.
Nick Carr has a good quote in today’s NY Times about how Silicon Valley historically disrupts the state of media:
The story of the last decade or so has been a huge shift in value from the media companies, which produced the content, to Silicon Valley, where companies like Google and Netflix came up with newer, more convenient and far less lucrative — at least for the media companies — ways to distribute it.
The content distribution continuum would look like this: Cable TV -> Google -> Facebook
With Cable TV consumers got a wider choice of TV channels, beyond just the big three (NBC, ABC, CBS). With Google, a huge swath of content at your fingertips. With Facebook, content is filtered by your friends to remove the need for a keyword.
A New Master Switch
Facebook is accessible on a web browser with an Internet connection, same as Google. So that part of the network doesn’t need to change. There are some complications around mobile (apps and browsers) but it’s essentially data delivered over a network directly to a single consumer.
FB drives content consumption in two ways:
- Friends as a referral source to find new content
- Friends as the content creators themselves.
People use FB to get a combination of #1 and #2. With #2 they add value that Google does not today, and where there’s the most open questions. But which one will drive Facebooks future?
A Prediction
One key to Facebook’s success may be how effective they are in bringing professional content onto Facebook.
I think FB they will start getting more aggressive about letting users view pro and semi-pro content within Facebook. In terms of video, audio, and more. Facebook Q&A was a start of this. Today image content (friends pictures) is a huge part of their business.
The best way to reach FB users as a Media Company today is probably a Facebook App. But my sense is Media Companies is having a hard time to cut through the clutter.
FB may want to start cutting deals with the major content companies to get their content in Facebook and in front of users. There’s also the fact that FB extends its social graph to 3rd parties to improve their service, including big Media. This is the operating system model, and fodder for another post!
Content created by friends may be fun, but it also could hamper growth in the long run and make it hard for FB to take on the role of the Master Switch.
I’ll confess – the middle 150 pages or so of “The Master Switch”, by Tim Wu, went by slowly. But the final 100 pages more than make up for it.
Wu covers the emergence of communications empires from telegraph to telephone, radio to broadcast TV, and cable TV to the Internet. He provides context on the regulatory environment, business models, people involved, and technical breakthroughs at play during each shift. Cultural issues related to these changes are touched upon, but that’s a story for another book. It naturally follows that as people diversify their attention stream and consume a broader range of content, we have less in common as a society.
The Master Switch clearly explains the immense power and influence that comes with owning communications network.
A few things I learned:
- When asked what he would do differently at AOL, Steve Case stated “I would have bought Google.” Case didn’t realize at the time that Google would be the gateway to Internet content, and not AOL.
- How similar the emergence of the cable TV industry is to the emergence of the Internet. In both cases a broader range of content became available to consumers; we could call it content fragmentation. The two industries share the belief that consumers should have access to a broad range of content – they are there to provide it.
- I also haven’t read a clearer explanation of the philosophical differences of Apple (closed network) and Google (open network).
All in all – a good book but prepare for some slow moments!
