Steve Jobs, in his biography, on his meeting with Larry Page after the latter became CEO: We talked a lot about focus. And choosing people. How to know who to trust, and how to build a team of lieutenants he can count on. I described the blocking and tackling he would have to do to […]
Hangouts requires a Google+ account
Jon Russell: I’m really impressed with the Hangouts messenger service. Web client is a good addition IMO, but mandatory G+ account is a big frustration. Benedict Evans had a brilliant post a month ago about why consolidation may not be the endgame for mobile chat: On mobile the social graph comes ready-made in your address […]
The Tragic Beauty of Google+
Harry McCracken has a pretty good articulation of the conventional wisdom about Google+: Google+ is exuberant. It’s fun to use. And yet I’m pretty positive I won’t spend remotely as much time in it as I will in Facebook. You might have already guessed why: My friends, family and acquaintances are all on Facebook, where […]
If Not for Android, Where Would Google Be?
John Gruber responded to yesterday’s piece about an alternate reality where Android didn’t exist and Apple gained 70% market share with piece called If Not for Android, Where Would the iPhone Be?: But with today’s piece, we have a first: one where I disagree with Thompson’s conclusions. I don’t think the iPhone’s market share or […]
Apple Rejects Google Now; EU to Investigate
Google today announced via their blog that they are filing a complaint with the Justice Department and EU regarding Apple’s recent rejection of Google Now for iOS. “It’s clear that Apple is leveraging its OS monopoly to ensure Siri is the leading personal assistant software,” said Kent Walker, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at […]
Is Blink Bad News for Apple?
Fun aside, I think this post by Krzysztof Kowalczyk gets a lot right: For Google the viability of the web is life or death situation and as such they’ll pour as much resources as necessary to make Blink work. In contrast, Apple is rumored to be pulling engineers from other projects and making them work […]
Blink
Rather burying Mozilla’s announcement (a coincidence, I’m sure), is the news on Blink: WebKit is a lightweight yet powerful rendering engine that emerged out of KHTML in 2001. Its flexibility, performance and thoughtful design made it the obvious choice for Chromium’s rendering engine back when we started. Thanks to the hard work by all in […]
The Real Reason Andy Rubin left Android
Business Insider: Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Andy Rubin viewed Android’s most successful partner, Samsung, as a potential threat. Why?: Samsung could grow so popular with consumers, that it could eventually re-write Android’s code in an entirely customized way, and stop calling it Android altogether. The report said Rubin told a […]
First targeted attack to use Android malware discovered
Ars Technica: On March 25, the e-mail account of a Tibetan activist was hacked and then used to distribute Android malware to the activist’s contact list. The e-mail’s lure was a statement on the recent conference organized by the World Uyghur Congress that brought together Chinese democracy activists and Tibet, Southern Mongolia, and East Turkestan human […]
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, Google-style
Ed Bott nails what really happened with Google Reader: The short life and sad death of Google Reader tells a familiar story of how Google swept in to a crowded field, killed off almost all credible competition with a free product, and then arbitrarily killed that product when it no longer had a use for […]