

What Google can learn from John Sculley - ugh
http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/15/what-google-can-learn-from-john-sculley-how-technology-companies-fail-by-placing-their-strategy-burden-on-technology-decisions/

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laujen
This is an important article. It isn't about what it is on the surface,
though, which is Apple and Google fighting over the <video> tag. It is really
about strategic and tactical decisions and where technology infrastructure
belongs in those decisions.

As a technologist I often get caught up in those decisions, thinking a lot
about the infrastructure involved. What Horace is saying is that those
decisions are not as critical to winning the big fights, not as important as
partners, marketing and distribution are. This is an old story, right? We
usually hear it something like "the best products don't always win." He is
putting a slightly different spin on it.

Horace writes some great stuff and knows the mobile market inside and out.
Well worth following if you are in the space.

~~~
bradleyland
Short version: The H.264 vs WebM battle won't be won or lost on technical
merit, but on strategic partnership and market strategy.

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SwellJoe
Is it just me, or is this article all over the place? John Sculley and Apple
and RISC vs. CISC, and in the end jumps briefly to some product I've never
heard of (and probably never will again) called Flipboard (it "turns the
browser paradigm inside out", apparently, whatever that means) as evidence
that Google is making a grave mistake and lacking foresight. I simply don't
see any way to take _either_ bit of knowledge as having anything to do with
Google's choice on this matter. It seems like reaching in order to come to a
conclusion the author likes and back it up with a careful study of historical
precedents.

I'm definitely not coming away from this article with a sense of foreboding
for Google's future (and the only stock I hold right now is GOOG).

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"some product I've never heard of (and probably never will again) called
Flipboard"_

<http://www.flipboard.com>

Flipboard is an immersive iPad app that combines your Google Reader, Flickr,
Twitter and Facebook accounts to create a personalized magazine. Whenever you
see or read something you find interesting, it lets you comment on it or share
it from within the app.

It's likely that Flipboard will branch out to other mobile platforms and the
web. I'm willing to bet you'll hear more about them here in the coming year,
they're funded by Kleiner Perkins.

~~~
SwellJoe
"I'm willing to bet you'll hear more about them here in the coming year,
they're funded by Kleiner Perkins."

Make the timeline five years, and specify this particular product rather than
other products and ideas that the team/company may produce in the future, and
I'll take that bet.

I'd be absolutely _stunned_ if "an immersive iPad app that combines your
Google Reader, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook accounts to create a personalized
magazine. Whenever you see or read something you find interesting, it lets you
comment on it or share it from within the app" becomes successful beyond a
small niche audience. No matter how much money they've raised or who invested
in them. Investors, even smart ones, make stupid mistakes all the time (and
this may not be a stupid investment if the team is awesome, and flexible
enough to evolve their company into producing something of great value).

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gvb
Pedantic: The quote from Sculley is misleading "So Intel lobbied heavily to
get us to _stay_ with them… (but) we went with IBM and Motorola with the
PowerPC."

Apple switched from the _Motorola_ 68000 family to the joint IBM / _Motorola_
PowerPC. I am sure Intel lobbied heavily to get Apple to _switch_ to the x86
architecture, but they definitely did not lobby to have Apple _stay_ with
them.

To be more fair to Apple's decision, at the time it was made, RISC was the New
Hotness[tm] that was suppose to run much faster than CISC.

What they both missed was that the memory subsystem became the bottleneck, not
processor clock rates, so the winner became the processor with the biggest and
fastest cache. Intel ended up with the edge due to their fab technology.

~~~
jfb
Also, I think that the Intel processor that was in the running wasn't the 486,
but rather the i860 (a relatively clean RISC design). Which, although a flop
for general purpose computing, was used in the NeXT Dimension graphics
accelerator in later NeXT cubes.

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knowtheory
Seriously guys, why is it so hard to believe that Google is dropping H.264 for
the reasons they've stated?

Why does this have to be some secret conspiracy against Apple?

~~~
protomyth
Because they haven't dropped mp3. They announced it on the same day as
Verizon's iPhone announcement. If it was Microsoft and WMV / OpenXML or Oracle
and the Java, I would be just as concerned. Group standards seem to work
better than a single companies spec.

~~~
ergo98
_They announced it on the same day as Verizon's iPhone announcement._

The video codec announcement had zero impact outside of the tech-heavy sphere.
In no universe would it have undermined the Verizon announcement. The MP3
diversion is spurious and irrelevant compared to the video issue: You pick
your battles.

~~~
protomyth
Video encoding is a lot wider than just the computer industry. One group who
has a serious interest is those self-same media reporting on Verizon's event.
I would trust their commitment more if they at least put a plan to sunset all
patent-encumbered formats.

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redthrowaway
It'd be nice if they got the name of the codec in question right. Also, I
can't see Google making the WebM decision based on technical details, as it is
technically inferior (although just). Rather, I quite believe them when they
say they believe in and will fight for an open internet. Whether that's a good
decision for them as a company remains to be seen, but it's quite clear they
won't hurt themselves as badly as Apple did with PowerPC.

~~~
protomyth
I do wonder if Intel would have built a vector unit if the G4 hadn't existed.

~~~
metageek
Yes, they did. MMX predates the G4, and SSE came out the same year.

~~~
redthrowaway
Yup. I remember buying a 200 Mhz Pentium 1 (pro?) w/ MMX back in the day. 3dfx
made the improvement in 3d graphics kind of moot, but it _was_ there.

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Entlin
I feel Google's decision with h.264 is more related to its decision to pull
out of china than Apple's decision to switch to CISC. Google decided to nix
h.264 because it wanted to "do the right thing".

The current internet landscape with its open standards and pretty level
playing field is a fertile ground that produced innovations too many to count.
Google itself is a result of that ground.

A competitive, good open codec would ensure that the fast innovation we have
known in the Net for years spill over into video applications. Think OnLive
for retro and amateur games, made by 1 student, taking over the world. Or
countless other ideas nobody has yet thought of.

I applaud Google for aligning their decisions with their values. I hope they
stand by the decision, and inspire others to follow them.

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ergo98
"So the argument I’ve heard against Google’s decision is that they are using
an infrastructural technology decision (a new video codec) to placate or
sustain Adobe Flash, at the expense of Apple, a potential or perceived rival."

The "argument" is a baseless conspiracy theory that is the desperate defensive
clutching of so many Apple defenders, viciously taking up the fight against
mean Google. The rest of the article is full of incorrect beliefs about the
history of Apple, RISC, x86, etc, though I can't say that is all too atypical
for an Asymco piece.

For all of the "it will just bring back Flash" grousing, note that Firefox
will never support h264 without a major change in its licensing. Firefox is a
dominant web browser. Nice that Apple, a MPEG LA member, supports h264 though,
while simultaneously pushing Quicktime and iTunes junk on the web.

Sidenote -- Just went to view a movie trailer on Apple.com. What's with it
trying to foist Quicktime on me? Apple _still_ hasn't given up on that, and
they're still licking their wounds about having lost to Flash.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"Firefox is a dominant web browser. Nice that Apple, a MPEG LA member,
supports h264 though"_

Internet Explorer is _the_ dominant web browser, whether we like it or not.
Microsoft is a MPEG-LA member, and IE9 will have support for h.264 in <video>
containers. Adobe is a AVC/h.264 licensee, and mostly because of Flash support
and Adobe's content creation tools, the majority of video on the web is
encoded using h.264.

Chrome, Firefox and Opera have a combined global market share of 46%, IE and
Safari have 52% combined, so it can go either way. What's going to be
important is if, and how soon all major mobile OSes and GPUs will support
WebM. Apple and Microsoft are unlikely to support WebM, so count iOS and
Windows Phone out. Google will surely try to make it work on Android, even
though most phones won't have hardware accelaration for it. RIM and Nokia
remain wildcards, but most of their informed smartphone users use Opera
anyways, which I imagine will support WebM.

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TimothyBurgess
It's amazing how a single error in the article (or typo? "H.265") immediately
turned me off to the rest of it.

~~~
btmorex
It's because no one familiar with the technology would make that mistake (in
other words, the author doesn't know what he's talking about). There are other
H.26X codecs and they're quite different. It'd be like someone writing a
review of Windows 6... oops typo meant 7.

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bigwally
I can't understand why there is all this fuss over H.264.

Simply put H.264 looks like nothing more than a replacement for Adobes
offering. While I agree H.264 is superior it doesn't solve the long term
problem. So instead of Flash being the dominant video delivery mechanism it is
handed to some other company.

Now please excuse me while I check my realplayer messages, install my adobe
flash updates, update windows media player and why is quicktime flashing?

