The Unthinkable: Verizon Dates Google
August 23, 2008
Late last year and in the first four months of this year, one of the consulting firms who use me as an old rented brain had me do Google Mobile briefings. We did five or six of these to different telcos. I showed up, did my talk, took bullets and left. I can honestly say that the telcos were clueless about Google.
The key points in my briefing included:
- Google’s interest in thing telephonic date back to 1999. One of its first patent applications was for Quality of Service
- The sweep of Google’s patent documents and technical papers was broad, making it clear that ideas were not confined to two or three lone wolves; there was a range of interests evident
- Search was “baked in” to many innovations; that is, an innovation in mobile “snapped in” or “hooked” into search functions.
Now battle lines are starting to be visible. AT&T has a deal with Apple. Verizon may have a deal with Google. You can read informed descriptions of the speculations, insights about informed guesses, and business analyses. I found these write ups useful:
- eCommerce Times has a “why the deal is good” write up here.
- GigaOM’s useful business-technology comments here.
- The RedHerring.com site has a good business slant on the alleged deal here.
My take on this deal is somewhat different from the Wall Street Journal type of analysis. First, I think Verizon, like IBM, believes it has the upper hand in any deal with a vendor. Google’s a vendor, so the Verizon mind set is “we have this under control.” I think Verizon has only limited awareness of what Google’s capabilities are. Remember. Verizon is doing a search deal.
Second, Google is going to benefit from this deal. When the agreement is finalized, Google gets to learn from Bell Heads. How this first hand knowledge plays out is anyone’s guess.
Third, Google is not “officially” in the telephony game. Forget the Android partners. Forget the Sprint close dancing. Google and Verizon–it’s the hard evidence that Google is serious.
Exciting stuff if the deal gets done.
Stephen Arnold, August 23, 2008
Android: More Than Mobile
August 16, 2008
Venture Beat has an interesting article “Android Wants to Be on Any Device, Not Just Your Phone.” The premise of the write up is that Android may be a cog in a larger operating system initiative. For me, the most interesting statement in this write up by Eric Eldon and Matthaus Krzykowski is
The blogosphere hasn’t treated Android well — the SDK has taken many months to get to this stage since it was announced last year. The anti-Android trend will likely continue as commentators compare the HTC and the iPhone (the iPhone is better), and also say the U.S. T-Mobile network is bad (it is).
I agree that Android is part of a larger push by Google What struck me when reading Google’s technical papers is that the company seems to be considering an approach that puts some functions in the cloud and others in devices. When the two are hooked together, a different type of computing environment becomes possible.
Stephen Arnold, August 16, 2008
Google and Hosted Telephony
August 11, 2008
Network World’s Matthew Nickasch wrote an interesting article “Will Google Consider Hosted Telephony?”. You will want to read it in its entirety. The story is here. The premise of the story is that Google may offer a range of wireless services from the cloud. Mr. Nickasch asserts:
While no official plans, or even rumors have been released, a Google-hosted VoIP environment may be incredibly popular for organizations that utilize Google Apps for all other collaboration needs. We’ve seen our fair share of free hosted VoIP environments, like Skype, Free World Dialup, etc, but Google has yet to venture into such a market.
My own research into Google’s telephony activities suggested to me that:
- Google started working on mobile and other telephony services as early as 1999
- Telephony, based on my analysis of Google patent documents, has been one of the areas of intense activity for almost a decade.
- Google’s innovations extend deeper than hosted applications; for example, Google has a clever invention for routing calls in a distributed mesh environment.
Mr. Nickasch ends his article with several questions. What’s your take? Has Google lost its chance to make a telco or has Google a different game underway? In Google Version 2.0, I discuss options for Google’s “other game”. Hosted services are already here, and I think Googzilla is watching and learning.
Stephen Arnold, August 11, 2008
Google: Universal Search on Mobile Devices
July 31, 2008
My earlier post here about Google in South Africa contained a reference to universal search on mobile devices. I had two incoming messages asking about this functionality. One person asserted that universal search on a mobile device was not possible and that the South Africa source I cited was out to lunch. To offer some additional information, I would like to direct everyone’s attention to US20080183699, “Blending Mobile Search Results.” This patent document discloses an invention by Ning Hu and Vida U. Ha. You can snag a copy at the wonderful USPTO here. The abstract for this invention is:
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for blending mobile search results. A method includes receiving a search query and multiple search results. The search results each satisfy the search query and have a respective search result quality score. The search results include generic and mobile search results. The generic and mobile search results each identify a generic and mobile resource, respectively. The search result quality scores include mobile and generic search result quality scores for the mobile and generic search results, respectively. The mobile search result quality scores and the generic search result quality scores were generated according to different scoring formulas. Based on one or more terms in the search query, the search query is classified as a mobile query. As a consequence, one or more search result quality scores are modified to improve the sorting of search results that include both mobile and generic search results.
My reading of this patent document suggests that Google indeed has some Universal Search tools on its digital workbench.
Stephen Arnold, July 31, 2008
Google: South Africa Market Share
July 31, 2008
MoneyWeb reported on July 31, 2008 about “Google’s Search Dominance.” You can read Rudolph Muller’s article here. The points about Google that I found interesting were:
- Google’s South African office is headed up by a former Novell wizard, Stafford Masie
- Google traffic dwarfs that of Ananzi and Aardvark. “Ananzi currently attracts 221,436 unique monthly visitors, down from 314,132″, reports Mr. Muller. Aardvark “received 88 774 unique monthly visitors, down from 106 102 during the same period in 2007.”
- “Mobile remains the leading telecommunications medium in the country,” Mr. Muller reports. Google offers universal search for mobile in South Africa.
- YouTube.com is popular in South Africa.
Africa is quickly becoming the next “big thing”. Google appears to be poised for growth.
Stephen Arnold, July 31, 2008
Autonomy Bites into the Juicy BlackBerry
July 31, 2008
Autonomy has rolled out software and services for BlackBerry email. The two-pronged product/service makes it possible to archive email, which is proliferating despite the advent of Twitter-like mini-messages. In addition, Autonomy has added a dollop of the Zantaz eDiscovery functionality to the new service. Autonomy has lashed to the new product/service the filters that can handle more than 1,000 formats. These include multimedia, images, BlackBerry’s proprietary device-to-device messages, and, of course, text. You can read more about the service here. One interesting point is that Autonomy is using the descriptive phrase “infrastructure software for the enterprise” for its wide array of products, services, and technologies.
Stephen Arnold, July 31, 2008
More about Mobile Search
July 31, 2008
On July 30, 2008, Ryan Spoon wrote “Sergey Brin: iPhone Users Conduct 30x More Mobile Searches (and Other Fascinating Stats) on the Ryan Spoon Web log here. The title of the article is a bit off center. The increase in mobile searches is information that I have known for a couple of months. Mr. Spoon does nail two pieces of information that I found most suggestive:
- The soon-to-be really interesting Pandora service “had 350,000 downloads in the iPhone’s first week”
- Mr. Spoon makes the point that “every additional iPhone search is opportunity for Google… not for Apple”.
I thought partners were in win-win relationships. Maybe not if Mr. Spoon is correct.
Stephen Arnold, July 31, 2008
iPhone BI
July 20, 2008
Business intelligence is coming to the iPhone, the mobile device that delights those with tiny fingers and a youthful love of multi-function gizmos. Cliff Saran’s “Oracle and Salesforce Develop iPhone Business Apps”, published on July 11, 2008, pulled two announcements together that I had overlooked. One of my engineers has an iPhone, and I watch him surf the Web, make the occasional call, and send misspelled SMS messages to me about projects’ status. You can read Mr. Saran’s interesting article here.
Mr. Saran identifies two companies pushing into what is for me a territory near the BlackBerry frontier. First, he describes Oracle’s Business Indictors. The id4ea is that a hip CFO will use her iPhone to “to view the latest company financial trends and enables sales managers to receive alerts on sales performance and customer satisfaction issues.” You can learn more about Business Indicators here but the Oracle Web site is a sometimes snail-like machine. Be patient.
He also describes Salesforce Mobile for the iPhone. This application “allows Salesforce users to view and edit records (accounts, opportunities), log sales or service activities such as e-mails, phone calls, and in-person meetings, and assign tasks and events to colleagues.” More about SMiP is here.
From my vantage point in rural Kentucky, it is too soon for me to make a call about the iPhone’s ability to gain a foothold in the enterprise. But my engineer is, as he says, “likin’ it”. Also, I want to see how the Apple and Google mobile initiatives interact. Could a showdown be coming between Apple and Google with Research in Motion relegated to the scrub team?
Stephen Arnold, July 20, 2008
Symbian: Simpatico toward Google
July 17, 2008
Symbian [http://www.symbian.com/] makes open source operating systems for mobile phones and has been building reference designs for telecommunications companies for years. Nokia, its major stakeholder, recently announced that it’s going to buy the rest of Symbian’s shares and turn it over in its entirety to the Symbian Foundation, a new group backed by several mobile phone companies that have pooled their knowledge and resources to create one big, happy, open-source, royalty-free, customizable Symbian platform.
Enter the Googlemeister. It’s about to launch a new product: Android [http://code.google.com/android/]. Android is (drum roll) “the first complete, open, and free mobile platform” and was developed by a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies.
Symbian’s CEO said in a July 16 article here [http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080716/tc_pcworld/148477] that the company has a good relationship with Google and cooperation between the two companies is possible. But he also defends Symbian and basically questions why Google is pitching Android as if Symbian didn’t exist.
Perhaps Symbian sees the hammer about to fall.
Google has grown far beyond just being an Internet portal and is a serious player in the telecommunications industry. You know the “walk softly and carry a big stick” credo? There isn’t a big enough stick for Symbian to carry to ward off Google. It might not be a bad idea to embrace the GOOG’s services and functions.
Jessica Bratcher, July 17, 2008
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