Apr 28 2008

What is the next big thing?

Published by sethyates under Business

Elias Bizannes wanted to know “What is the next big thing?” and tagged me and a few other people.

I reckon the “Next Big Thing” will be The Device Web / The Interconnected Me.

Part I - The Device Web

First, there will be a consolidation of the “Web 2.0″ applications as the recessional and market forces choose winners (there will be some carnage in The Valley).  Thanks to the social tools that will likely make it through (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc), we now have networks of our friends, acquaintances and co-workers.  All nicely annotated.

As more advanced handsets (iPhone, BlackBerry, etc) are released and become more prevalent, WiFi/WiMax/3G+ networks are more widely available and carriers break down the walled gardens, we will increasingly move our Web usage to the Mobile Web.  This will be similar to the fast broadband revolution that happened at the beginning of “Web 2.0″.  You’ll no longer see tables of geeks at the front conferences, typing away on their laptops.  The audience will instead be typing away on their mobile devices.  Connected Mobile apps will be big.

Twitter (or whatever it survives as) will go mainstream.

Add some Semantic Web goodness, and nascent web-database/applications will begin to appear.  Knowledge will begin to be codified and machine-understandable (not just readable).  Think about what happened when Google Maps came out, with local business listings.

Part II - The Interconnected Me

Now, here’s where it gets a bit Singularity / Orwellian:

We’ll begin seeing human-computer input devices beyond keyboards and mice.  Emotiv and other companies will release direct human-computer input devices using brain waves. No more “type, type, type, click, click, click”.  Simply think of the command and the computer will react.

Instead of the bulky headsets required today, in 10-20 years (2020-2030), they will be downsized to a device the size of a bluetooth headset (remember the first mobile phones?).

Natural Language recognition, processing and understanding will be widespread for a few languages (Hungarian will, sadly, not be one of them).

In the 20+ year timeframe (i.e., after 2030), we will develop human-computer feedback mechanisms.  No longer will we need the screens of an LCD or mobile device, but will instantly receive computerised feedback directly:

  • Want to know the nearest Thai restaurant (like you can’t just look and see one across the street, in Sydney)? Just ask the GBrain which will use the pervasive Mobile Internet and knowledge of your Social Web/Profile, and will query a Semantic Web service, returning the location, ratings and directions directly to you.
  • Want to talk to a friend in Sacramento? Just think about them and SkypeBrain will check to ensure they’ve not blocked you in the social network and will dial them and connect you, brain-to-brain (hope you’ve got a good firewall installed).
  • Want to know what your friends are up to? Just subscribe to their TwitterBrain feed, and you’ll instantly know when they update (seems like Psychiatry is going to be a big profession in the ’40’s).

Then all we would need to do is integrate Mechanical Turk….

UPDATE: Brad Howarth has a written post about Emotiv.

UPDATE: Harvard Business Online have an interesting blog post on this called The Business Opportunities in Mind Control. Interesting read.

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Apr 15 2008

Don’t be evil not “ordained” - Google

Published by sethyates under Business

TechCrunch has picked up on the “Don’t Be Evil” thread I posted on earlier:

Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto, first uttered by Googler Paul Buchheit (now founder of FriendFeed) in 2001, has long been the pillar of their self-imposed code of conduct.

…

[The] core motto is still displayed prominently on the Google Investor Relations site, and the company appears to be supporting it up 100%.

Not so, apparently. Last week, however, Google’s Marissa Mayer said “It really wasn’t like an elected, ordained motto” during an interview in Australia, adding “I think that ‘Don’t Be Evil’ is a very easy thing to point at when you see Google doing something that you personally don’t like; it’s a very easy thing to point out so it does get targeted a lot.”
…

This is most likely not a precursor to an official move away from the motto. I imagine it’s little more than a venting of a frustration that Google continues to be held to a promise made six years ago, when they were under significantly less scrutiny than they are today. Google can’t ditch the motto (the press would eat that up), and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to live up to it. What can they do? Not much. They made this bed. It’s too bad they couldn’t get Buchheit to take it with him when he left to found FriendFeed.

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Apr 12 2008

Google is now officially evil

Published by sethyates under Business

For me, this report confirms that Google’s famous “Don’t be Evil” philosophy is complete B.S.

Here’s the news from ValleyWag:

A recently departed DoubleClicker tells us that Google managers asked employees at the online ad company it acquired last month to sign one-year noncompete agreements. Most agreed, thinking that it would spare their jobs — but then layoffs came a week later. They were “pretty pissed” over the bait-and-switch and were forced to find jobs outside their industry.

Read the text of the noncompete clause here on ValleyWag.

Looks like Google needs to add another “full disclosure” to the bottom of their philosophy:

* Full-disclosure update #2: When we first wrote these “10 things” four years ago, we included the phrase “You can make money without doing evil.” Over time we’ve learned that you can in fact make much more money by doing evil.  In that time, we’ve expanded our company by gobbling up others and actions that then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of our philosophy (such as screwing employees of companies that we acquire). This doesn’t mean we’ve changed our core mission (total domination); just that the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more blurry those once lofty ethics have become.

Have you signed any employment contracts recently with non-competes?

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Jan 10 2008

Google processes over 20,000 TB of data per day

Published by sethyates under Business

via Niall Kennedy: “Google currently processes over 20 petabytes of data per day through an average of 100,000 MapReduce jobs spread across its massive computing clusters.”

That’s massive.  20 petabytes = 20,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.  That’s a lot of zero’s (and one’s).

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Apr 15 2007

More breaking news: Google acquires Internet for US$2.4 trillion

Published by sethyates under Business

On the back of the big announcement yesterday of Google acquiring DoubleClick, it appears that Google has decided to purchase the remainder of the Internet in a landmark US$2.4 trillion dollar deal. Details at Google Blogoscoped.

Funny stuff. And here I was thinking we were safe now that 1st April had passed.

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Apr 14 2007

Google acquired DoubleClick for US$3.1b in cash

Published by sethyates under Business

Saturday morning and news of a big acquisition in the Digital Media space. Google has paid almost 2x what it paid for YouTube to buy advertising platform and services provider DoubleClick. Works out to something like 10x earnings.

In five years time, I believe we’ll look back at this acquisition as one of the most important acquisitions in advertising (in any medium, not just online) and as an inflection point.

I won’t analyse the deal in any more detail than that and will leave it to more sage analysts:

This acquisition was apparently foretold by Sean Ammirati on 4th April at Read/Write Web: DoubleClick Advertising Exchange - Could Lead To Google / Yahoo / Microsoft Showdown.

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