It also occurs to me that there’s no company in tech with as many enemies as Google. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter — Google has taken the fight to all of them. In this sense they’re like Microsoft 15 years ago.

This just doesn’t seem smart.  I like Google, and I like the services I use from Google.  But they’re running the risk of alienating people who otherwise would like them – a lot.  Not to mention, they’re creating competitive risks where there might not have been any before.

I sense there will be a lot of damage as things settle out, but I expect Google will continue to reap huge profits from Search, regardless.

Related posts:

1. Staying off-topic: More Google-Moto-Apple
2. Interesting articles on Apple and Google
3. With Competitors Like These…

I’ve speculated for years that by making Apple into an enemy, Google could wind up losing money with Android, long-term, compared to a hypothetical world where they’d kept Android as a BlackBerry-ish OS rather than an iPhone-ish one. iPhone users are the cream of the crop, demographically.

It isn’t at all clear that Android is a net-positive for Google’s bottom line given the relative marketshare of Android devices vs. iOS devices, and the relative search share (which is where Google’s revenue comes from), and the costs of supporting and defending Android (not to mention, buying a manufacturer).

It just feels like Google hasn’t been editing itself enough.  And prematurely it is taking on more fights than any company would rightly be interested in taking on.

To put it in perspective, right now Google is likely making twice the revenue from search on iOS than it is for search on Android.  I would have guessed at (and have always assumed) rough parity between Android and iOS devices, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  With competitors like these, who needs friends?

http://www.bp-3.com/blogs/2011/08/its-also-about-what-you-dont-do/

Related posts:

1. It’s Also About What You Don’t Do
2. Staying off-topic: More Google-Moto-Apple
3. The “Just Google It” Process is Broken

1. confirm how weak Android’s patent position really was
2. validate what Apple’s execs and fans have been saying about the value of integrated over fragmented (“open”) at least in the mobile space.
3. calls into question the whole android venture.

Maybe #1 and #2 are obvious and don’t need further explanation.  But for #3, Horace Dediu of Asymco asks the question I’ve been asking: “Is Android profitable? The debit column just increased by $12 billion. Good luck with those ads.”

Seriously.  Google has been saying Android is profitable.  But I think you have to measure the credit part of the ledger as revenues accrued by Android that would not have otherwise been accrued:

• Ads on Android that arguably would not have otherwise been sold on another platform
• Licensing fees (I don’t think there are any)
• Etc.

Horace Dediu goes on to give a better explanation than I did as to the perils Google has entertained:

The lesson (and warning) was that a licensor that is also a licensee makes other licensees uncomfortable. The supplier is also a competitor. This is classic channel conflict and never ends well.

Apple and Microsoft have to be pleased that their patent strategy just caused Google to spend $12B.  Android is certainly no longer free to Google – whether it is free to handset OEMs or not.

John Gruber’s Daring Fireball really digs into all the details, and if we’re wondering whether there was a real cost to Google for taking the path of aggressively pursuing Android:

Look at Google’s financial results. They reported $8.5 billion in net income this year, and $6.5 billion last year. That’s for all of Google. They’re offering $12.5 billion for Motorola. So Google just spent almost two years of its profits to buy a second-rate phone maker that itself is unprofitable,1 almost went bankrupt, and is arguably only the third-best maker of Android devices, behind HTC and Samsung.

That definitely puts $12B into perspective.  Nearly 2 years of profit.  I’m not sure that Google wouldn’t have been better off, financially, just partnering with Apple and other OEMs and taking a more passive approach to Android.  Still, acquiring Moto may be the right thing to do given where Google finds itself today – the best path forward may be to double down on the Android investment.  But an alternate path would be to make Android more open – by opening up the development process and assets and scaling back Google’s own financial commitment to it while letting the community drive (making Android a bit more like Linux in the process).

Related posts:

1. Interesting articles on Apple and Google
2. Google Nexus One is Out. I Still Like Apple’s Chances.
3. Apple’s Strategy Pays Off

But why? Why is Google now a villain to many in the industry? I don’t believe it’s because they’re evil, I believe it simply relates to the Plainview quote. Increasingly, Google is trying to do everything. And they have the arrogance to think that they can. And it’s pissing people off.

Actually, it doesn’t piss me off, personally.  But, I want to put the Steve Jobs question to Google:  what are you going to say “No” to?  And how do you know that you’re doing the right thing when you say No?

Right now it feels like Google says “yes” to a lot of projects.  But they say “no” to very few markets.  I’ll take Android as an example.  Google had a strong ally in Apple (and vice versa).  They had common market interests, common competitors (e.g. Microsoft).  If Apple spurred on a new generation of phones that consumed more Google ads, that’s good for Google (and doesn’t require Google to launch its own phone OS).  If Google’s great apps (maps, gmail, search) worked well on iPhones, Apple sells more phones.

But by betting the farm on Android, Google lost a great partner and ally.  Not that any of these relationships is guaranteed forever, but I certainly expected the alliance to last longer than a year or two.  And I’m not convinced that Google gets more revenue per device from Android than it does from iPhones – I’ve yet to see someone break those #’s out so that we can understand if their Android investment *actually* makes sense.

The TechCrunch article covers lots of other areas where Google is competing with major industry titans or at least category killers in the niche areas.  My takeaway from this is that perhaps Google hasn’t learned the power of “No”.

At BP3, we’re all about BPM.  That’s it.  When we get asked to build a custom app, if it isn’t BPM, we politely decline.  If it is a big integration project – politely decline.  Saying no has power.  Our branding is focused on what we actually do, and do well.  It doesn’t get diluted by a less-than-stellar performance on something outside our core competency.  It also allows us to partner effectively with companies that can really help our business – they know what we do, what we do well, and what we don’t do.  And therefore they can shape their partnering strategy accordingly without worrying about whether we’ll be interested in the food on their plate and not just happy with what is on our BPM plate.

Maybe it is too late for Google to put the genie back in the bottle – but we can look back and think about how things might be different.  They could have taken a bit more “hands-off” approach to Android  – sponsoring the project but not getting too invested in pushing it to vendors and carriers – let those vendors do more of the heavy lifting, and not getting involved in positioning against Apple or any other specific phone vendors.  A bit more hands-off approach might have preserved their relationship to Apple without undermining their goal of having the lowest common denominator phones capable of browsing the web or running a Google Search (and seeing a Google ad).  Would the value of good partnerships with firms like Apple outweigh the benefits of an Android?

When you’re looking at your own business, what is it you don’t do?  What would you say no to?

Related posts:

1. Apple’s Strategy Pays Off
2. With Competitors Like These…
3. Staying off-topic: More Google-Moto-Apple

So, when someone used to approach me with a general technical question – the process went something like this:

Me:  “Did you Google that?”

Them: “uh, no.”

Me (typing into google search for the answer)… : “there ya go.”

However, these days I increasingly find myself going to more targeted sources – wikipedia, for example.  And if the subject isn’t technical in nature (product-related, lets say) – then I’m heading to twitter, facebook, or other channels to get the opinions of peers.  Of course, you can still use Google and constrain the search to particular domains or sites – but many Google users simply don’t do this or don’t know that they can.

The “Just Google It” process is broken.

If this isn’t an example of how Process Debt can sneak up on you, what is?!

Related posts:

1. The Google #Wave Effect
2. Interesting articles on Apple and Google
3. Staying off-topic: More Google-Moto-Apple

In the six months ending August 10, Android phones accounted for 32 percent of the smartphones sold, Nielsen said. By comparison, iPhones accounted for 25 percent of devices sold and BlackBerry handsets for 26 percent. A month earlier, the three types of devices were in a virtual dead heat.

(I believe these numbers are US-only).  Clearly, from a marketshare point of view, Apple needs to get out of its exclusivity with AT&T to improve its US numbers.

However, it is worth noting that Google’s share of smartphones is… pretty much zero.  They don’t sell phones.  But some other folks DO sell phones that run Android:

• HTC
• Motorola
• Samsung
• LG
• etc.

One would think, as they’re selling so many of these Android phones, they must be killing it in profit, just like Apple, right?

Not so fast.

Check out this article from Horace Dediu which reveals the velocity of profit and market-share changes in 3 simple charts:

The change in 3 years is astonishing

The dramatic nature of the change is all the more apparent looking at his last chart, which really shows the velocity of change:

Profit Share Growth is telling

So, if Android handset manufacturers are killing it in volume, surely they’re making a hansome profit as well, right?

Wrong.  Over the last 3 years, none of them has profit share growth north of 10%, and it looks to me like HTC is only barely above 0%, and Motorola might be about 1%.  The others are negative.

Meanwhile, Apple’s profits from the iPhone are soaring… and Nokia’s profits are plummeting.  So how is Apple getting all the profit when it has such small market share, and isn’t even the leader in market share growth?

First the obvious items:

1. Apple’s iPhones are still considered the creme de la creme and therefore fetch a higher price from service providers like AT&T.
2. Apple is selling every phone they can make – in a sense right now they are build-to-order – which means, no inventory going stale on store shelves.  That usually enhances profit considerably, though it also often means they lose out on some marketshare.

The less obvious items:

Apple benefits from laser focus – having essentially one model every year means that all the engineering focus can be on one model.  All the sales focus. All the support focus.  Yes, they still sell the 3GS, but this pattern of selling last year’s model at a lower price is a pretty simple model to sustain and support.

By leveraging common components and commodities across several device categories, Apple gets “scale” in certain components they might not otherwise:

• The A4 chip (iPhone4, iPad, and AppleTV)
• Flash Memory (NAND) – they are the biggest buyer by far, buying 20-25% of the world’s supply!  This gives them a huge pricing and availability advantage in the market.
• Touch screen R&D
• Touch screen components – Apple is already the largest purchaser of capacitive touchscreen glass screens.
• Leveraging iOS across multiple devices… and iOS itself leverages much of OSX.

By developing a few key differentiators and then leveraging them to the hilt across their product line, Apple is moving up-market at the same time that Apple is growing share.  But from Apple’s perspective, quality is much more important than quantity.

A reasonable difference, however, between Apple eating Nokia’s lunch, and Apple eating “Android’s” lunch (if we can pretend for a moment that Android phones are one thing rather than dozens of companies), is that Android *does* represent a viable competing platform, whereas Nokia’s fractured smartphone strategy did not.

However, as long as Apple’s platform is seen as the premier platform, with a halo effect for those who write apps for it, Apple will continue to see the best apps first.  And the platform will continue to be not only viable, but defensible. To that end, we’re already seeing Apple leverage the platform (appstore/iOS) across more devices than just phones.  And they’re making these moves faster than the competition, and in a more rationalized way.  I think in this market, you want to be the phone provider that is making money, rather than the one that is taking market share, if you have to make a choice.

Related posts:

1. Apple’s Strategy Pays Off
2. Data to Support Apple’s iPhone Strategy
3. Google Nexus One is Out. I Still Like Apple’s Chances.

The official Google Blog blames the closure of Wave on a lack of user adoption:

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

So, there’s a bunch of open source code, it looks like, that partners and customers might leverage.  But most of us, I think, would prefer to just use a finished product.  There are many other unofficial takes, here and here are two examples.  I had a few others linked, but no need – you can find such commentary easily!

When Wave was announced last year, I spent some time discussing with others what it meant for BPM.  Some thought it was a game-changer, some thought it was a non-event.  The thing that became clear to me: collaboration tools like this are going to tend toward being free, or extremely inexpensive.

Starting last fall, the discussion in BPM circles had often turned to “ACM” (A variant on Case Management).  Some in BPM circles would call this unstructured process. Some would call it “chaotic” or unpredictable processes/work.  Keith Swenson and colleagues even penned a book about managing such unpredictable work.  Google Wave was, to this crowd, a great example of where “knowledge work” is headed – into collaboration spaces, not into BPM software.  To me, it was just proof that email and lightweight project management tools were not going away.   If Google Wave accomplished anything, it showed:

1. Separating yourself from email divorces you from a knowledge worker’s daily routine (some might say, process).
2. If it isn’t trivial to involve the right people in a collaboration, then users give up
3. Collaboration is going to be free or nearly free.  Even if it has pretty amazing features.
4. It is really hard to do a “big bang launch” successfully.  It makes me even more impressed that Apple seems to pull this off with such regularity.

So what does it mean for BPM?  Not much.  Wave was never really about structured interaction, it was about ad-hoc interaction.  Although ad-hoc interaction is important to a good BPM strategy, no one (maybe except for SAP) was really leveraging Wave for this.  If they were, they can probably leverage the open source bits to get a jump on the development effort.  For the ACM crowd, its both good news and bad news.

First, the good news:

1. A free competitor to your products, supported by a major software company, has gone away.
2. Hm. I think that’s it.

The bad news:

1. If you were counting on convincing users to leave email to use your product for knowledge work, it is time to change gears.
2. If you were expecting that being good and free was good enough… Maybe it isn’t.  Although Wave was panned in the press, it really was pretty good at what it did, though perhaps it tried to do too much.
3. If you were expecting to charge a lot of money for general-purpose collaboration software… I think those days are over.
4. If Wave was your favorite example of how ACM was really relevant to what people are doing… time to find a new example.

Silver lining:

1. Collaboration software for very specific purposes will live on (aka process modeling, or services like tripIt).
2. Some of Wave’s features will likely get absorbed by Gmail.
3. Some of Wave’s features will likely show up in other products.

I think Keith Swenson summed it up best for the ACM folks on Twitter:

“nooooo. It can’t beeeee. :-( RT @jpmorgenthal: Google waves goodbye to Wave: http://bit.ly/bg3ixC”

Well, fans of Wave and its approach were bound to be disappointed.  I saw quite a few more comments on twitter with a more positive spin on Wave being shut down.  Google found Wave squeezed inbetween email and all the other things we do in life.  It apparently couldn’t live on its own.  I’m not sure the future of ACM, per se, is anything different.  Yes, the ACM proponents will have their analogies, and they sound compelling.  And we could even agree that a large percentage of work is not addressed by BPM today, or by, more specifically, structured process.  But what ACM proponents fail to mention is that even less work is currently addressed by purpose-built ACM software.  It *could* be, but isn’t.  It is still likely to be addressed by email, project management tools, telephone, hallway conversation, and more email.

Note, I’m not arguing against ACM as a description of work, I’m just looking at the software market and not seeing it as an independent market, yet.  Willing to be proven wrong.  And I think there are a couple vendors that have the right strategy or tactics, but we’ll see if they can execute.

Working on a longer collaborative post on ACM and the marketplace.  Watch this space.

Related posts:

1. The Google #Wave Effect
2. Gravity, Google Wave, and SAP
3. Google #Wave – A Disruptive #BPM Solution?

It’s really too bad because most of what these two companies do is so complementary, and symbiotic.  One wonders if Google is fighting too many battles on too many fronts- the same kind of question that was often posed to Microsoft when they were competing with so many software companies for so many of its applications.  The interesting thing to me is, I’m not sure that this fight was necessary for Google.  “Smart” phones were inevitably going to give Google the opening in the mobile space that it was looking for… The only real concern I can see is whether these platforms would, in some fashion, be closed to Google’s applications and ad platforms.  It doesn’t seem likely, given how compelling Google’s map and search applications are, and the ubiquity of Google Apps as a platform. And given that smart phones are already cheap ($99 or less), price doesn’t seem to be a huge barrier to entry anymore…

I hope that in spite of the competition in some areas, that these two firms can work together in areas where it makes sense-  I love the map application on my iPhone, but I’m not switching to Android in the foreseeable future – I like the overall Apple iPhone experience.

Related posts:

1. Staying off-topic: More Google-Moto-Apple
2. Google Nexus One is Out. I Still Like Apple’s Chances.
3. What Does Google Wave Mean to ACM and BPM?

1. Me-too product releases
2. VERY corporate-appropriate names for the products being released
3. Failure to embrace the world outside the ‘plex

Maybe I should explain what I mean in more detail…

Me-Too Product Releases

You might say everything Google has ever done is “me-too” – its not as if Search didn’t exist before Google came along.  Or email.  Or even web email.  Or instant messaging.  Or document editing in a web browser… the list goes on and on.

But the difference in (most of) these cases is that the field had become a bit moribund and was lacking innovation – leaving itself open to a new entrant.  Search seemed like a dead-end.  Web email was stagnant and sites like Yahoo! mail and Hotmail left a lot to be desired.  If there wasn’t a technological edge that Google could gain, then Google was able to exploit an economic edge (more storage for the “free” price, or free document editing on Google Apps instead of paying for MS Word).

But the space of real-time broadcasting and status updates and social graphs is hardly a field of stagnation.  Facebook and Twitter are robust companies at the top of their game for their respective niches.  Foursquare is up-and-coming (and several other firms like it). The problem here is that Google can’t out-innovate these companies in their core competency.  The fast-follow works better if you wait for the arteriosclerosis to set in with these firms – either due to the weight of technical debt they’ve taken on (client side apps, instant messaging), or due to the organizational heft and indecision (Yahoo?) or due to painting themselves into a corner with respect to revenue models (e.g. Microsoft).  The new firms have none of these problems.  They’re nimble, decisive, and have emerging revenue models with little to lose and much to disrupt. VERY corporate-appropriate names for the products being released

Corporate-Appropriate Names

Remember when Microsoft had a lock on this approach to naming applications? Now Google is doing it.  Latitude, Gmail, Gtalk, Buzz, Docs, Apps, etc.  And when they do come up with a “funky” name, it really doesn’t resonate (Orkut?).  Meanwhile, companies with lighthearted names are eating their lunch – Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla.

It just makes me wonder if the suits have taken over important naming-functions at the firm.  Sometimes the name of something affects how people perceive it – even internally.  And unfortunately, even when Google tries to be more whimsical these days, it comes off like they’re trying too hard.

Remember when Google was coming up with whimsical names like… “Google” ?

Failure to Embrace the World Outside the ‘Plex

Search gives Google an advantage in “embracing” the outside world in most of their applications – most noticeably in Google Maps (now there’s a product name with all the creativity of paint drying).  I’m not sure why Google didn’t just buy Twitter and get it over with. But, if Google’s not going to buy Twitter, another straightforward thing to do is embrace it by integrating Twitter functionality into Gmail – not copying Twitter, but leveraging Twitter’s API.  Show how integrating Twitter functionality into your email client could make both more useful.  Show how integrating search into the experience can also make them more powerful.

And then figure out how to slip Google’s own “real-time-update” infrastructure into the mix – perhaps by granting twitter users their identical @names on Google’s infrastructure – essentially adopting the useful conventions of the leading platform.  Don’t make people rebuild their social graph, let them port it over while retaining a separate identity from their email address (one of the beauties of Twitter, for example, is that it is (somewhat) resistant to spam because you only see messages from people you follow).

Well, Google has a lot of smart people – I’m sure they’ll figure out the strategy, but I was disappointed that they didn’t just improve my life by making it easier for me to Tweet (Twitter?) and Facebook.  I’m not the only one who thinks they might have missed the target.  The Business Insider describes Buzz as “Late, Boring, and Lame“.  And Twitter was not full of supportive comments today, e.g.:

cdixon : Prediction: Google’s Twitter killer will be lame. A few billion dollars later they buy Twitter.

cdixon : Besides being just generally bad at social, Google products seem to be suffering from a strategy tax a la MSFT.

I think Google should drop the product launches.  Apple is really good at them, and each product launch creates almost as much negative buzz in the aftermath as positive buzz (where’s my videocamera on the iPad!? who named it “iPad”? ).  If you do a mediocre or “okay” job with the product launches, its even worse.  I suggest they go back to releasing product the Googley way:  by putting it out there and letting people discover it.

Related posts:

1. The Value of Customer Engagement on Twitter?
2. The “Just Google It” Process is Broken
3. I Guess I’m not the Only One

The first quote:

Flurry is estimating the Nexus One only sold 20,000 handsets in its first week. That means the Droid, with an estimated 250,000 units sold in its opening week, outsold the Nexus One by more than 12 times. The myTouch 3G, with 60,000 units outsold it by 3 times.

Ouch. And people were non-plussed with Droid and myTouch numbers… But it gets worse.

The iPhone 3GS sold 1.6 million units in its opening week, according to Flurry, which means it outsold the Nexus One by a “staggering” 80 times.

So, even if these estimates are off by 2x or even 10x, these aren’t stellar out-of-the-blocks numbers… I think it was too much to expect their first couple of efforts to out-do the iPhone. Story embedded below, courtesy of Business Insider.

Related posts:

1. Google Nexus One is Out. I Still Like Apple’s Chances.
2. Apple’s Strategy Pays Off
3. Data to Support Apple’s iPhone Strategy