Google and Microsoft: Are Your Wizards Really Innovating Again?
March 23, 2022
I scanned my headlines this morning and noted two different companies which have revealed their latest innovations. These are big outfits, and one expects each company to come up with big plays. Little plays won’t move the revenue needle, and money is important to these estimable enterprises.
What’s Google’s most recent innovation? I think it is ad supported video streaming of 4,000 old TV shows and about 1,500 old movies. “YouTube Makes Thousands of TV Show Episodes Available to Stream for Free” reports:
For the first time, YouTube is letting users in the US stream thousands of free, ad-supported TV shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Heartland and Unsolved Mysteries, it announced. That will put it into competition with OTA (over-the-air) TV and streaming services with ad tiers including Peacock, the Roku Channel, Tubi and others.
To me, Google’s “play” is a me too, not a “first time.”
What’s Microsoft’s most recent Eureka! moment? “Microsoft Looks Poised to Dominate the Quantum Computing Industry” states:
Microsoft Azure recently announced that its quantum computing research teams had invented “a new kind of qubit” based on elusive, never-before-demonstrated properties of physics. According to the Redmond company, this will allow it to build scalable quantum computers capable of solving the hardest problems facing humanity.
Hopefully Microsoft’s quantum efforts have not pulled resources from the company’s security initiatives.
For me, the Google announcement is another step in a long, somewhat confused video journey. The channeling of Peacock and Roku is interesting. Instead of confronting TikTok, Google wants to take on incumbents recycling old content. YouTube’s new content initiatives did not achieve orbital velocity in my opinion. There’s content on YouTube, but it is non directed. TikTok takes a different approach. Old TV shows are not a response to a competitive challenge.
The Microsoft quantum play is another attempt to demonstrate that Microsoft has something really big up its sleeve. Years ago, Microsoft was into search and contact lenses that worked like Google Glass. Now the future is quantum computing, and it is like general artificial intelligence going to be the next big thing after Teams I suppose.
Stepping back, these two “innovations” illustrate the me-too approach to generating excitement, appeasing stakeholders, and capturing mindshare. Am I quivering with excitement yet? Nope. Marketing and PR are bummers for me.
Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2022
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