Google's mortal threat isn't Apple. It's actually Amazon that poses a far greater threat. With Amazon dominating e-commerce and continuing to gain marketshare, Google becomes ever more dependent on the online retailer. All it would take to decimate Google's ad revenues would be for Amazon to decide they no longer need Google search. Google is trouble anyhow as more and more Amazon's sales move to their own smartphone app anyhow. It is actually far more of a hassle to search the web for a product and then be directed to Amazon rather than going to the Amazon app in the first place. While other companies may beat Amazon on price, they don't offer free 2 day shipping as a member. They also don't offer Amazon's media library as a prime member and no one makes a voice assistant comparable to Alexa. And Google is making a half-hearted effort to copy it with Google Home. It's just far easier to just launch the Amazon app, find the product and press one click. Easy and done with the item on my doorstep in 2 days. There is no need for Google search.
Google needs to move smartphone users back to text entered web based search, but failing. And they are failing miserably, especially on iOS where much of the potential revenue base is.
Google's AI will fail as their search based Ad revenues dry up. Amazon doesn't need Google's AI algorithms to determine consumer preferences as they have their own hard numbers of the sales data. Google desperately needs someone, anyone to establish real competition for Amazon. Since Bezos is laser focused and continuing to win greater amounts of online sales, Google is in major trouble.
Samsung will usurp Android. It's inevitable as Amazon eviscerates Google. It's only a matter of time now.
It didn't have to end this way. Google was too afraid to turn to the direct sales model of actually charging for Android, maps, etc. They saw everything through the prism of selling advertisements to their user base. They never saw anyone swooping in and capturing that user base directly and with direct access to the userbase, Google as the "middleman" is literally being cut out of the deal.
Amazon has captured the userbase that conducts most of the online purchases. The terrifying aspect for Google is that Amazon no longer needs to pay for search ads. It's actually been some time since I made an Amazon purchase through Google search.
That's a serious problem for Google going forward.
Getting their spyware installed on iOS won't change the situation they're in. And if they haven't figured that one out, their best and brightest are failing spectacularly, far more so than would appear to the public and many of the Google apologists who regularly visit this forum.
It's really now only a matter of time before the company fails in substantial fashion. They have only a single major revenue stream and unable to diversify. Things are looking dire. They are rapidly running out of time.
Yeah Google is doomed because Amazon will blow it away, and Amazon is doomed because Apple will blow it away and Apple is doomed because Google will blow it away, or did I miss something??
Companies don't crash that fast. One example: the market share of Android grew 7% in Q1 2016 in the top 5 European countries; 2.6% of that gain came from customers switching from iOS switching to Android. The market share of iOS is in these 5 countries just below 20%, meaning that 1 out of 8 iOS users switched to Android in 3 months time (and that is a lot). So Apple is doomed! No, because Apple will react to such situations by launching new product and services. Of course if this situation remains unaddressed for a long time, Apple will indeed suffer
The same is happening with Google vs Amazon. If the Google search business is really threatened by Amazon, Google will react. But currently Google has not to fear Amazon: Google is a global company, while the international presence of Amazon is very poor.
Warning! Misleading Samsung profit chart. The chart is two years old and by chance ends exactly in the worst quarter Samsung had. It did since recover recording up to 100% higher profits a year later!
Come on DED, do you have to keep hurling mud at the Google users with yet ANOTHER article? Why kick a dog when they're down?
BTW, you left out some key information on Project Ara. The baseplate (or backplane) comes with the CPU/GPU, antennas, battery, sensors and display. You heard that right - the battery and display are fixed and not swappable. The only things you will be able to swap would be the camera, storage and audio. And whatever useless modules people come up with. So much for upgrading your processor or getting a new screen if you break the old one.
Project Ara should have been killed by now. There's no commercial reason for its existence other than to pander to a very small niche.
I agree, Project Ara is one of the dumbest things in all techdom.
First, let's just use common sense. If modularity in mobile devices is such a great idea, where are all the modular laptops? They've been around longer, and with less dense componentry, surely it's easier to design and manufacture a modular laptop than a modular phone, yeh? How come no laptop manufacturer tried to offer one if it's such a sure winner with users?
Second, let's look at the trend in technology, the one that's been going on at least since the transistor was invented: miniaturization and component integration. Or what is the same thing, the solid state movement. Devices are moving into ever denser components with ever smaller number of parts, even as functionality and power grows exponentially. This points to a natural endpoint (it may never get there, but that's where it's pointing to) where the phone becomes a single, solid block of battery, circuitry, and screen that like its great grandmother, the integrated circuit, is never repaired, just replaced when the time comes. A modular phone goes completely against this trend, bringing along major disadvantages of wasted space and problems of compatibility between components as they get upgraded at different rates.
Third, and this goes hand in hand with the previous paragraph, is the economics of the miniaturization/integration trend. To put it succinctly, if miniaturization/integration was not the most cost-efficient technological path, it would not have prevailed no matter how technologically dazzling it may be. The confluence of production scale, the state of technology or more precisely, the complexity thereof, and the cost of labor vs capital in advanced industrial countries has led us to a situation where repairability has become a costly feature, cubic millimeters (in device volume) have become ever more valuable, and designing component modules to be compatible with more than one generation of devices becomes ever more complex.
I think Ara is a dead ender. It's a nice engineering challenge but that's all it is. Google might actually release one just to save face and prove that the idea was no folly. After all, Howard's Spruce Goose did actually fly. Once only. But it was enough to prove Hughes right, right?
While that is true trend for tech to date. What we have seen to date is tech as a standalone product. It comes in box you unwrap it, make some space for it plug it in and use it. That space has gone from rooms, to desks, to laptop now just a palm but it's still a completely standalone product. Modular has been a nice idea for a while but in the end all the parts for been moving forward at a fairly similar rate so in the end modular was just more packaging for less product.
I fully agree for standalone tech modular is not going to make much sense till various components start lasting very different time frames. Then again like desktops I'd expect the refresh cycle to get longer across the board as the need for more power slows down.
The interesting thing to me for something like Project Ara or for Apple to tackle with Home or Car where tech is being built in to products that have 10+ year min life spans. Then modular starts to make it case more interesting. I mean even if you upgrade your car you expect good resell value so if a cars tech was modular then cameras, sensors, media integration could be consumables like tires and old.
Take that to a larger even more permeant product like houses. Time frames of 20+ years at least for a refit let alone structural of the house that should last 50 to 100+ years. Modular makes a lot sense. Even in high end houses home automation hasn't been well received to date because it's both complex and feels like it will be redundant before the house is even finished. Dumb wiring with smart modular sensors, controls and connections that can be switched out as the families needs shift.
Apple fans view Android as a failed product (even as Apple "adopts" more and more Android features) that will inevitably crash. People in the U.S. and worldwide continue to buy more Android products. Frustration over their failed predictions of Android doom cause even more such predictions, which fuel even more frustration. Year after year after year.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Come on DED, do you have to keep hurling mud at the Google users with yet ANOTHER article? Why kick a dog when they're down?
They are only "down" in the eyes of Apple fans such as yourself. In the eyes of everyone else - including objective reality - quite the contrary. Rising market share. Everyone except Sony and HTC making profits. An increasing number of devices, including more companies making them. Rising profits for Google (to the point where nearly everyone is suing them trying to get a piece of it). And so on.
You can argue that Android won't sustain their current uptick. Recall that Android folks stated the same ... that the boom that Apple experienced by copying the Samsung Galaxy with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus wasn't going to last. It didn't ... it petered out in less than 18 months. But please remember that while the iPhone 6 boom was going on, Apple fans predicted that Android was over and would never recover. Turned out to be totally wrong, just as has been every other prediction of Android's demise since the product was first released in 2008. But here's reality: if a product has been on the market for 8 years, has consistently increased sales during that time in spite of local and global economic problems, and its only competitor prices out 75% of the potential market, it isn't going anywhere.
Apple knows this, which is why they cut prices. The 4 inch iPhone SE was only the beginning. Look for a full-sized and lower cost iPhone 7 this year. Apple joining the race to the bottom? Nope. Apple is merely recognizing that all devices drop in price when the newness wears off, and mobile devices are no different. The only amazing thing is that it took so long, as Apple cut prices on their iPad line by offering very inexpensive iPad Minis in response to Nexus 7 type devices years ago. If Apple had dropped prices on the iPhone at the same time, it might have made a difference, but just like multi-tasking and devices bigger than 4 inches, it was too little, too late.
And yet my Twitter feed is full of tech writers and Apple bloggers talking about how great I/O was and how Apple really has to bring it at WWDC. The last ATP podcast was all doom and gloom, and Marco even has a post up now comparing Apple to Blackberry. https://marco.org/2016/05/21/avoiding-blackberrys-fate
I wish there was some place we could get decent Apple reporting that wasn't either D&G silly panic or everything's great Apple's the best they make all the $$$ blah blah blah. If these AI pieces are meant to reassure I don't think they do. If everything was peaches and cream there would be no need to write these pieces in the first place.
And this is what I really appreciate about Dan's perspective - he analyses I/O in an historical context, while Twits are in-the-moment reactions to new/shiny. Goog really is looking flaky and desperate - where are the initiatives announced last year, even? By looking at repeating situations - announce wow, announce new wow, never mention old wow, silently delete old wow, announce new wow - ms and now goog are building a smoke-screen of bs that never results in a new product or service. Even Facebook has done better than them!
I'm really disappointed that few, if any, people - bloggers or otherwise - connect the dots of past behaviours to adjust future expectations. Goog has consistently failed, despite changing management, to develop any initiatives brought over the past ten years that have gained any tractionl apart from gmail and maps on the consumer end. On the business end, it has certainly improved upon its invasive anti-security and anti-privacy initiatives. This does not bode well.
I totally hear you. It seems that people do indeed have a short memory. How many times has Google announced a product years away from being in the hands of a customer to great fanfare, only to all but kill the project and mention it only in passing after the initial announcement? I've lost count-Google TV and Google Glass are just a few examples. What's it going to take for people to change their expectations of any Google announcement?
The author does make use of hyperbole and exaggeration but he raises some important points. The media has said for years that Apple's business model was finished because people weren't going to shell out big bucks every year for new iPhone that has just a bigger screen, better camera and thinner design and Apple needed to start catering to the low-end market or else it would slide into obscurity. It is certainly valid to question why anyone would be willing to pay extra money for VR functionality if they weren't even willing to shell out money for a high-end smartphone.
Google's mortal threat isn't Apple. It's actually Amazon that poses a far greater threat. With Amazon dominating e-commerce and continuing to gain marketshare, Google becomes ever more dependent on the online retailer. All it would take to decimate Google's ad revenues would be for Amazon to decide they no longer need Google search. Google is trouble anyhow as more and more Amazon's sales move to their own smartphone app anyhow. It is actually far more of a hassle to search the web for a product and then be directed to Amazon rather than going to the Amazon app in the first place. While other companies may beat Amazon on price, they don't offer free 2 day shipping as a member. They also don't offer Amazon's media library as a prime member and no one makes a voice assistant comparable to Alexa. And Google is making a half-hearted effort to copy it with Google Home. It's just far easier to just launch the Amazon app, find the product and press one click. Easy and done with the item on my doorstep in 2 days. There is no need for Google search.
Google needs to move smartphone users back to text entered web based search, but failing. And they are failing miserably, especially on iOS where much of the potential revenue base is.
Google's AI will fail as their search based Ad revenues dry up. Amazon doesn't need Google's AI algorithms to determine consumer preferences as they have their own hard numbers of the sales data. Google desperately needs someone, anyone to establish real competition for Amazon. Since Bezos is laser focused and continuing to win greater amounts of online sales, Google is in major trouble.
Samsung will usurp Android. It's inevitable as Amazon eviscerates Google. It's only a matter of time now.
It didn't have to end this way. Google was too afraid to turn to the direct sales model of actually charging for Android, maps, etc. They saw everything through the prism of selling advertisements to their user base. They never saw anyone swooping in and capturing that user base directly and with direct access to the userbase, Google as the "middleman" is literally being cut out of the deal.
Amazon has captured the userbase that conducts most of the online purchases. The terrifying aspect for Google is that Amazon no longer needs to pay for search ads. It's actually been some time since I made an Amazon purchase through Google search.
That's a serious problem for Google going forward.
Getting their spyware installed on iOS won't change the situation they're in. And if they haven't figured that one out, their best and brightest are failing spectacularly, far more so than would appear to the public and many of the Google apologists who regularly visit this forum.
It's really now only a matter of time before the company fails in substantial fashion. They have only a single major revenue stream and unable to diversify. Things are looking dire. They are rapidly running out of time.
Great post and thanks again DED. I also find it telling that Alphabet sold Boston Dynamics, the one part of their development umbrella that was doing something truly ground-breaking with technology. Their robots were far ahead and were on the cusp of practical deployment.
They are running scared to sacrifice something so promising. Is it to cover an earnings shortfall for a quarter?
Great post and thanks again DED. I also find it telling that Alphabet sold Boston Dynamics, the one part of their development umbrella that was doing something truly ground-breaking with technology.
So Google is done with robotics? How much did they get for Boston Dynamics?
and I would like to add that Amazon's suggestions have been much more successful in selling me things than a Google ad has ever been. In the mobile world most users go straight to their principal trusted source to buy an item (eBay, Zappos, Etsy, Amazon, Apple, or etc). I think at the end of the day that internet ads are going to be found to be largely ineffective. And Google's data mining is going to be blocked by governments worldwide.
and I would like to add that Amazon's suggestions have been much more successful in selling me things than a Google ad has ever been. In the mobile world most users go straight to their principal trusted source to buy an item (eBay, Zappos, Etsy, Amazon, Apple, or etc). I think at the end of the day that internet ads are going to be found to be largely ineffective. And Google's data mining is going to be blocked by governments worldwide.
Amazon's data mining is different I guess besides being much more specific and identifiable and personal? Being linked directly to you, what you've looked at, even purchases from 3rd party sellers, and all tied to your real name, address and credit cards? That makes it more acceptable to you then, more so than anonymised ads from Google or others. Gotcha.
and I would like to add that Amazon's suggestions have been much more successful in selling me things than a Google ad has ever been. In the mobile world most users go straight to their principal trusted source to buy an item (eBay, Zappos, Etsy, Amazon, Apple, or etc). I think at the end of the day that internet ads are going to be found to be largely ineffective. And Google's data mining is going to be blocked by governments worldwide.
Amazon's data mining is different I guess besides being much more specific and identifiable and personal? Being linked directly to you, what you've looked at, even purchases from 3rd party sellers, and all tied to your real name, address and credit cards? That makes it more acceptable to you then, more so than anonymised ads from Google or others.
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The difference is that people create a business relationship with Amazon, or any other retailer. They have stuff you want to purchase, you make those purchases, and they keep track of what you bought. That's a bit more acceptable versus being stalked everywhere you go, your every move tracked and examined.
I agree, Project Ara is one of the dumbest things in all techdom.
First, let's just use common sense. If modularity in mobile devices is such a great idea, where are all the modular laptops? They've been around longer, and with less dense componentry, surely it's easier to design and manufacture a modular laptop than a modular phone, yeh? How come no laptop manufacturer tried to offer one if it's such a sure winner with users?
Second, let's look at the trend in technology, the one that's been going on at least since the transistor was invented: miniaturization and component integration. Or what is the same thing, the solid state movement. Devices are moving into ever denser components with ever smaller number of parts, even as functionality and power grows exponentially. This points to a natural endpoint (it may never get there, but that's where it's pointing to) where the phone becomes a single, solid block of battery, circuitry, and screen that like its great grandmother, the integrated circuit, is never repaired, just replaced when the time comes. A modular phone goes completely against this trend, bringing along major disadvantages of wasted space and problems of compatibility between components as they get upgraded at different rates.
Third, and this goes hand in hand with the previous paragraph, is the economics of the miniaturization/integration trend. To put it succinctly, if miniaturization/integration was not the most cost-efficient technological path, it would not have prevailed no matter how technologically dazzling it may be. The confluence of production scale, the state of technology or more precisely, the complexity thereof, and the cost of labor vs capital in advanced industrial countries has led us to a situation where repairability has become a costly feature, cubic millimeters (in device volume) have become ever more valuable, and designing component modules to be compatible with more than one generation of devices becomes ever more complex.
I think Ara is a dead ender. It's a nice engineering challenge but that's all it is. Google might actually release one just to save face and prove that the idea was no folly. After all, Howard's Spruce Goose did actually fly. Once only. But it was enough to prove Hughes right, right?
While that is true trend for tech to date. What we have seen to date is tech as a standalone product. It comes in box you unwrap it, make some space for it plug it in and use it. That space has gone from rooms, to desks, to laptop now just a palm but it's still a completely standalone product. Modular has been a nice idea for a while but in the end all the parts for been moving forward at a fairly similar rate so in the end modular was just more packaging for less product.
I fully agree for standalone tech modular is not going to make much sense till various components start lasting very different time frames. Then again like desktops I'd expect the refresh cycle to get longer across the board as the need for more power slows down.
The interesting thing to me for something like Project Ara or for Apple to tackle with Home or Car where tech is being built in to products that have 10+ year min life spans. Then modular starts to make it case more interesting. I mean even if you upgrade your car you expect good resell value so if a cars tech was modular then cameras, sensors, media integration could be consumables like tires and old.
Take that to a larger even more permeant product like houses. Time frames of 20+ years at least for a refit let alone structural of the house that should last 50 to 100+ years. Modular makes a lot sense. Even in high end houses home automation hasn't been well received to date because it's both complex and feels like it will be redundant before the house is even finished. Dumb wiring with smart modular sensors, controls and connections that can be switched out as the families needs shift.
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A potential application of modularity in tightly integrated devices might be the Apple Watch, should Apple plan to offer a swap out of the S1 module in some of their first generation watches. This would make sense for a very expensive product like the gold variant of the Apple Watch, as the lifespan, and value (at least perceived value) of the watch case far exceeds that of the engine.
Does anyone have solid, common, ongoing uses for VR? It gives good demo, but unlike voice UX or even AR, VR seems to be about a decade too soon.
VR has been a few years away for 30 years.
More like 20 years since viable consumer software was available to make spherical panoramas but your point is correct. It is something that has a wow factor for some but nearly all people realize that there is nothing worthwhile to see all around you in most cases and tire of the media. That may be different for gaming but for real life applications such as real estate, it has gone nowhere.
Yep. Material design was totally not invented by Google. It is totally not the best design ever. The thin-till-invisible fonts of Apple is totally not a joke.
and I would like to add that Amazon's suggestions have been much more successful in selling me things than a Google ad has ever been. In the mobile world most users go straight to their principal trusted source to buy an item (eBay, Zappos, Etsy, Amazon, Apple, or etc). I think at the end of the day that internet ads are going to be found to be largely ineffective. And Google's data mining is going to be blocked by governments worldwide.
Amazon's data mining is different I guess besides being much more specific and identifiable and personal? Being linked directly to you, what you've looked at, even purchases from 3rd party sellers, and all tied to your real name, address and credit cards? That makes it more acceptable to you then, more so than anonymised ads from Google or others.
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The difference is that people create a business relationship with Amazon, or any other retailer. They have stuff you want to purchase, you make those purchases, and they keep track of what you bought. That's a bit more acceptable versus being stalked everywhere you go, your every move tracked and examined.
...for anonymized ads and that's all as far as I've read. You've seen something that says otherwise? If not then what's the fear other than "well maybe someday" which would apply without exception to every company that collects any user data, right?
Your visit here was tracked by no less than 70 different companies. Apply for a credit card, bank account or even just register with some on-line service and that information gets shared with dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of other companies. Heck, some of them actually just sell whatever personal information they collect with no service provided to you whatsoever. You literally are the product.
Personally, and maybe it's that fresh roll of aluminum foil I bought this weekend, I believe there's companies out there purposefully pushing the story-line of "Google.Scary.Evil" as a red herring to keep the attention away from them, as they do much more than put a few ads in front of you. Misdirection seems to work too as you yourself seem to believe Google is the problem we should all be focused on. Yeah, eyes on Google are important but not if the bright lights shining on them blind you to the true privacy-eating monsters.
Comments
Companies don't crash that fast. One example: the market share of Android grew 7% in Q1 2016 in the top 5 European countries; 2.6% of that gain came from customers switching from iOS switching to Android. The market share of iOS is in these 5 countries just below 20%, meaning that 1 out of 8 iOS users switched to Android in 3 months time (and that is a lot). So Apple is doomed! No, because Apple will react to such situations by launching new product and services. Of course if this situation remains unaddressed for a long time, Apple will indeed suffer
The same is happening with Google vs Amazon. If the Google search business is really threatened by Amazon, Google will react. But currently Google has not to fear Amazon: Google is a global company, while the international presence of Amazon is very poor.
I fully agree for standalone tech modular is not going to make much sense till various components start lasting very different time frames. Then again like desktops I'd expect the refresh cycle to get longer across the board as the need for more power slows down.
The interesting thing to me for something like Project Ara or for Apple to tackle with Home or Car where tech is being built in to products that have 10+ year min life spans. Then modular starts to make it case more interesting. I mean even if you upgrade your car you expect good resell value so if a cars tech was modular then cameras, sensors, media integration could be consumables like tires and old.
Take that to a larger even more permeant product like houses. Time frames of 20+ years at least for a refit let alone structural of the house that should last 50 to 100+ years. Modular makes a lot sense. Even in high end houses home automation hasn't been well received to date because it's both complex and feels like it will be redundant before the house is even finished. Dumb wiring with smart modular sensors, controls and connections that can be switched out as the families needs shift.
The author does make use of hyperbole and exaggeration but he raises some important points. The media has said for years that Apple's business model was finished because people weren't going to shell out big bucks every year for new iPhone that has just a bigger screen, better camera and thinner design and Apple needed to start catering to the low-end market or else it would slide into obscurity. It is certainly valid to question why anyone would be willing to pay extra money for VR functionality if they weren't even willing to shell out money for a high-end smartphone.
Well, we shall see if Apple brings the innovation next month I guess and again in Sept. most likely.
Not seen anything this year 5 months in to the year.
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The difference is that people create a business relationship with Amazon, or any other retailer. They have stuff you want to purchase, you make those purchases, and they keep track of what you bought. That's a bit more acceptable versus being stalked everywhere you go, your every move tracked and examined.
I fully agree for standalone tech modular is not going to make much sense till various components start lasting very different time frames. Then again like desktops I'd expect the refresh cycle to get longer across the board as the need for more power slows down.
The interesting thing to me for something like Project Ara or for Apple to tackle with Home or Car where tech is being built in to products that have 10+ year min life spans. Then modular starts to make it case more interesting. I mean even if you upgrade your car you expect good resell value so if a cars tech was modular then cameras, sensors, media integration could be consumables like tires and old.
Take that to a larger even more permeant product like houses. Time frames of 20+ years at least for a refit let alone structural of the house that should last 50 to 100+ years. Modular makes a lot sense. Even in high end houses home automation hasn't been well received to date because it's both complex and feels like it will be redundant before the house is even finished. Dumb wiring with smart modular sensors, controls and connections that can be switched out as the families needs shift.
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A potential application of modularity in tightly integrated devices might be the Apple Watch, should Apple plan to offer a swap out of the S1 module in some of their first generation watches. This would make sense for a very expensive product like the gold variant of the Apple Watch, as the lifespan, and value (at least perceived value) of the watch case far exceeds that of the engine.
Material design was totally not invented by Google. It is totally not the best design ever. The thin-till-invisible fonts of Apple is totally not a joke.
Your visit here was tracked by no less than 70 different companies. Apply for a credit card, bank account or even just register with some on-line service and that information gets shared with dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of other companies. Heck, some of them actually just sell whatever personal information they collect with no service provided to you whatsoever. You literally are the product.
Personally, and maybe it's that fresh roll of aluminum foil I bought this weekend, I believe there's companies out there purposefully pushing the story-line of "Google.Scary.Evil" as a red herring to keep the attention away from them, as they do much more than put a few ads in front of you. Misdirection seems to work too as you yourself seem to believe Google is the problem we should all be focused on. Yeah, eyes on Google are important but not if the bright lights shining on them blind you to the true privacy-eating monsters.