

Google's Napoleonic Moment - gregpurtell
http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2012/07/09/googles-napoleonic-moment/

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kkowalczyk
It's rather incoherent article.

At one point he claims that few years from now we'll all be buying the
cheapest tablets made by asian manufacturers who'll outcompete everyone on
price, because "no one cares whose tablet we use as long as it does the basic
stuff".

Then he contradicts himself by saying that Microsoft will win the tablet war
because of more desirable software. I guess we do care about the software in
the tablet after all.

More fundamentally, even if Google totally fails in tablet market, they'll
still be making money hand over fist from their web ad business and from their
youtube video business.

Google doesn't care about profits from selling hardware that much. I'm sure
they would like to make Apple-sized profits but they are strategic enough to
sacrifice those profits to defend their ad cash cow.

Low prices are Google's weapon - as long as a tablet runs Android, Google most
likely makes money from the person using it so if they could give Android
table to everyone for free, they would. Apple and Microsoft don't have that
option, they have to sell them at a profit.

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creamyhorror
I read this mostly as a fluffy piece urging Google to consider targeting the
enterprise instead. That's a fine option, if Google had strong integrated
business services already. I'm not sure that it does - not at the level of
Microsoft, anyway. Consumer is where Google can play the game and where it has
a strong foothold, and we've seen that strong consumer penetration gave Apple
a strong entrance into the enterprise market (I see a lot of organisations
adopting iPads).

I'm not so sure about its claims about Asian manufacturers likely to turn out
market-winning low-priced devices, either - I've been considering picking up a
made-in-China tablet for a while, and the prices aren't so much better than
the Nexus 7's $200 (a dual-core would be $100 or more right now). And as you
point out, Google cares about having tablets run Android, not about profiting
from the hardware. What are all the Chinese manufacturers loading on their
tablets? Android ICS, essentially without exception.

I do think having an official, well integrated keyboard would be very
beneficial to the tablet's ecosystem. That's where the Surface wins - I can
almost see it as a light laptop replacement. The writer is certainly correct
in painting this as important.

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friendstock
Yes, the Surface hardware is intriguing, but the jury's still out on whether
their OS will gain acceptance, or seen as a non-cohesive mishmash that won't
run many of the popular apps.

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nl
And there is why you don't take business strategy from random Forbes writers.

* The author took his wife's behaviour and generalized it to represent the entire marketplace. _I_ use the Kindle app on 2 different tablets in preference to my Kobo, and anecdotal evidence is just as relevant as his.

* He claims _the copy-catters will beat them both [on price]_. As has been previously discussed on HN, Google has priced the Nexus 7 pretty close to cost. No copy-catter is going to going to undercut that with similar features for a while yet.

* "Office is the Microsoft weapon for Surface" The iPad seems to be doing just fine by _destroying_ the Office monopoly in the enterprise.

* "Business apps from Microsoft's parters will be MS's secret weapon." How's that working out for Windows Phone 7?

It's pretty clear the author is a MS fanboy who hasn't accepted the fact that
MS has to do a lot of work to remain relevant. An "Enterprise Strategy" is
great, but the iPhone showed CIOs back in 2008 that all the strategy in the
world is useless when your CEO decides they want an iPhone (or, now, and
iPad).

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Tuna-Fish
I think the author's biggest failing is that he assumes that just because
Google is spending time designing tablets, Google wants to make money selling
tablets. He could not be more wrong. The entire Android venture is a defensive
play. Google is perfectly happy to pour tens of billions of dollars into
Android without seeing any direct revenue from it.

The reason for this is that Google's real core business is still the search
advertising. So long as people "google" stuff when they want to find
something, Google's future is safe. The walled garden device model is a direct
threat to it -- even if the manufacturers never directly block Google, if they
make using Bing or whatever easier and more convenient, Google might lose
their money press.

So Google makes sure that walled gardens don't win. That's really all they are
in for. The Nexus 7 exists because IPad was soundly beating all tablets
competitors. All the relevant IP in it has already been distributed to
basically everyone who could possibly want it. Google wants it to be cloned.

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Zenst
What a terrible article. If the chap writes the muppet history then that may
be worth reading but this managed nothing tangable and is trying to make
something out of what it is not. So many assumptions, so many parralels that
have no corilation.

Only story here is that the chap got paid to write that, now that is a story!

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GiraffeNecktie
Worst historical analogy ever. The French invasion of Russia was a massive
commitment of resources and therefore failure would be clearly catastrophic.
The Nexus 7 is at the most an incremental step in a much larger campaign. More
importantly, the goal is to encourage a vigorous and somewhat cohesive
ecosystem rather than to become a leading electronics manufacturer.

The author also makes a number of odd statements like "Like Napoleon’s
obsession with the resources of Russia, Google continues to fall in love with
the potential riches of the consumer market." WTF? Google has been almost
entirely focused on reaching the consumer market since day one.

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rwhitman
I've always seen Google's "Nexus" line of products as essentially prototypes
that Google releases into the market to light a fire under device
manufacturers to raise the bar for the latest Android OS.

I would be surprised if Android isn't already nearly the dominant OS for
enterprise mobile apps. A cheap, stable tablet is a big win for business, as
the iPad is pretty expensive. So who says the Nexus 7 isn't a strategic move
toward more of Android in the enterprise market?

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vamsikv
Its a sign of times that "leading" magazines publish such crappy articles. the
author doesn't have a frigging clue about ad business models - I guess his
objective is just to meet the word count.

