[VIDEO] This 15 minute interview starts with some softball questions, but gets to the heart of the matter at about 4:19 when they bring in a clip from Digicel founder Denis O’Brien who accuses Google of not being a good partner, likening Google and Facebook to selfish party guests.
Schmidt is also pressed about his take on seeing the huge lines for the iPhone 6 rollout and the discussion turns to Google’s brutal competition with Apple. Fascinating to watch.
Nick Pierno is a longtime Android user. What would make him even consider switching?
It just kinda bums me out how mediocre all my photos and videos are. Not to mention all the missed opportunities from slow autofocus, bad low light sensing, etc. I know, I know.. woe is me. But if I can, I’d like to look back on the next 5 years with a bit more fidelity.
I’ve also been stricken with a bit of a bum rap this past year. I have an illness that has kept me stuck at home and in beds/bathrooms/waiting rooms/etc. a lot more than usual. This results in increased phone use, and of course, battery drain. Well… turns out the Nexus 5, despite being a truly outstanding phone, isn’t a champion of endurance.
There’s a lot more to this piece. Interesting to see how an Android user views the iPhone. One thing that is quite clear is that the move to a larger screen has opened up the potential audience for Apple.
Dan Frommer makes the case that the existing US mobile payment ecosystem is not easy to tame. What’s Apple’s edge? Unlike Google, Apple controls their ecosystem, makes their own hardware and, most importantly, has a big head start on account holder signup.
From MIT’s Technology Review:
Among other unsolved problems, Google has yet to drive in snow, and Urmson says safety concerns preclude testing during heavy rains.
And much more.
Typically, a fake version of an app is created by copying the .apk file and inserting code, with the possible goal of creating malware. While there are certainly knock-offs that have made their way onto Apple’s app store, there’s a review process to prevent this sort of malware factory.
About a month ago, word spread that Google-owned YouTube had completed negotiations to buy game-streaming service Twitch with an all-cash offer of $1 billion.
Yesterday, YouTube had the rug pulled from under them when Twitch announced that they had accepted another all-cash bid for $970 million from Amazon. Here’s the thank you post from Twitch CEO Emmett Shear.
So why would someone care about this? The key is the allure of Let’s Play, the general term for watching someone else play your favorite game. A huge win for Amazon. [Hat tip to Daniel Mark]
There are a number of reasons developers develop for iOS first, or avoid Android completely. Perhaps the top two reasons are OS fragmentation and device fragmentation, both of which drive up the development costs (more use cases to build for, more use cases to test for).
This post from GigaOM makes the case that Google has solved these problems, at least in part. The key is Google’s Play Services.
Play Services, introduced in 2012, is effectively a background download of core services required to run apps on Android. Putting the OS install numbers to one side for a moment, this is the stat that matters to developers – over 93 percent of all Android users are running the latest version of Google Play Services.
More importantly, Google has been slowly moving core Android features, APIs and app elements out of the OS and into Google Play Services — meaning developers can ensure their apps run smoothly (with all the new features they plan to implement) across all devices carrying the latest infrastructure.
From the NEC press release:
A consortium of six global companies announced that they have signed commercial agreements to build and operate a new Trans-Pacific cable system to be called “FASTER” with NEC Corporation as the system supplier. The FASTER cable network will connect the United States to two landing locations in Japan.
Oh, what times we live in.
A Hong Kong court has ruled that a local tycoon can sue Google Inc for defamation because searches for his name on Google suggest adding the word ‘triad’, Hong Kong’s notorious organized crime groups.
Two huge markets, two big market losses for Samsung. [See the full post]
Last week, a Houston TV station reported on the arrest of a man on charges of child pornography, purely based on a tip from Google. Should Google, Apple, and others be reading your email?
Android is available in two different flavors. There’s the Google-endorsed Android, which is used by companies that agree to the terms and conditions of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA).
The other side is the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), a far-freer version that lets device makers tinker with all manner of elements of the software.
Amazon’s Kindles run AOSP, replacing Google’s services with their own. The AOSP market is growing quickly and is emerging as a threat to Google.
Quartz:
When you install an app on an Android smartphone or tablet, it asks for access to data such as your location or address book. If you say no, you can’t install the app.
Apple handles things differently. On its mobile operating system, iOS, apps don’t ask permission when they’re installed. Instead, iOS takes some permissions as a given—internet access for instance—but for more sensitive data, such as your photos or location, the app has to ask for access when you use it. That more closely relates the decision to grant access to the reason for asking for it.
That there should be a difference between Android and iOS, which between them control 96.3% of the smartphone market, isn’t surprising. They have different overarching philosophies: Android is free for any smartphone maker to use while iOS is for iPhones only. Developers can freely upload their apps to the Google Play Store while Apple has tight gatekeeping. Android is easily customized; iOS is not.
My two cents:
Uber is now delivering ice cream. Imagine this value to Amazon or Google. Read the original Loop post for more…
Thoughts from InformationWeek on Apple’s existing success in enterprise and the difficulties faced by Team Android and Microsoft.
From Apple Insider:
Last July, a U.S. Government report titled “Threats to Mobile Devices Using the Android OS” warned that Android “continues to be a primary target for malware attacks due to its market share and open source architecture,” and stated that this “makes it more important than ever to keep mobile OS patched and up-to-date.”
A year later, Google still reports that more than 53.4 percent of active Android users accessing Google Play are still using an “Ice Cream Sandwich,” “Gingerbread” or other editions of Android prior to 4.2 that still “have a number of security vulnerabilities that were fixed in later versions.”
A good read with lots of follow-up links.
[VIDEO] Ingress was created by a startup within Google called Niantic Labs. From the Wikipedia page:
The gameplay consists of establishing “portals” at places of public art, landmarks, cenotaphs, etc., and linking them to create virtual triangular fields over geographic areas. Progress in the game is measured by the number of Mind Units, i.e. people, nominally controlled by each faction (as illustrated on the Intel Map).
Here’s a link to the iOS version of the game. It’s free. Note that you’ll need to login with a gmail or other Google account.
Note also that you’ll need to share your location with the game and that your location will be shared with other players. There is a bit of risk there, both in privacy and in sharing your actual location with people you don’t know. This is the one aspect of the game I find worrisome.
The trailer is embedded below.
What happens when a long time PC and Chrome power user moves to Mac OS X? How will Safari stack up?
Android Police:
App Encryption was added to the Play Store to encode paid apps with a device-specific key, making them more difficult to crack or transplant by would-be pirates. Despite some early issues that lead Google to temporarily take App Encryption offline, it has gone mostly unnoticed since it was re-enabled. That is, until now. It seems the Android Wear install process runs into a road block with paid apps because it doesn’t know how to extract the file of the encrypted apk. Since the installer fails to recognize the payload, it assumes there is nothing to install and silently aborts. This behavior appears to match another known issue that occurs if the Wear app is compressed more than once before it is published.
Seems to me, this is a real weak point in the Android Wear testing methodology.
[VIDEO] Vinod Khosla, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, interviews Google founders Page and Brin for about forty minutes.
Some good stuff, some obvious stuff, but fascinating to watch them interact, hear them talk about their vision of the future.
BBC:
After widespread criticism, Google has begun reinstating some links it had earlier removed under the controversial “right to be forgotten” ruling.
Articles posted online by the Guardian newspaper were removed earlier this week, but have now returned fully to the search engine.
Google has defended its actions, saying that it was a “difficult” process.
Reuters:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc said a contractor emailed confidential client data to a stranger’s Gmail account by mistake, and the bank has asked a U.S. judge to order Google Inc to delete the email to avert a “needless and massive” breach of privacy.
This raises some questions. Who owns a specific piece of email? Who has the right to delete it? Is it owned by the sender? The recipient? Google?
CNET:
Amazon said Szabadi, who left the company in May after nearly six years, can’t solicit business from any of his former customers for 18 months after his departure. He joined Google as a lead for the reseller ecosystem team in May.
In response, Szabadi’s lawyer told Amazon that Szabadi has also signed an agreement with Google, vowing not to do business with any AWS clients that he remembers having “material direct contact” with, or that he knows “confidential information” about, according to the court document. The agreement is in effect for six months.
Google is not backing down and is planning a strong defense for the suit. said a person familiar with the company’s strategy.
Google completed its long rumored acquisition of Songza for a reported US$39 million. Songza is a music curation service that lets you select playlists based on elements like genre, mood, and decade. It runs on iOS, Android, ChromeCast, and the web.
James Kendrick writes for ZDNet. He is currently using an Android phone and writes about the logic behind his decision to by pass the Windows Phone, which he was considering, and move to whatever phone Apple releases next.
Dan Frommer:
Never mind the watches themselves, which seem awkwardly large, must be charged daily, don’t handle sunlight very well, and simply aren’t cool.
This last bit, “simply aren’t cool” says a lot.
An interview with the top players in any major company is going to be interesting, but I thought this interview lacked vision. Worth reading, but there was far more breadth than depth.
One exchange that stood out for me, was the discussion on privacy.
Quartz:
Most promising app startups with venture capital investments that we analyzed are either building apps for iOS and Android simultaneously or are still iOS-only. Looking at 119 recent Y Combinator incubator participants and Google Ventures seed investments, of those offering apps, more than 90% had iOS apps, about half had both iOS and Android apps, and fewer than 10% only had Android apps. Among those with both, their iOS app typically launched several months ahead of their Android app.
Why is this true? Read on.
“Come with me if you want to live.”
That’s how it started. One moment I was ordering a Ketel and tonic at the bar, and the next some hulking bodybuilder with a bad accent was getting blasted out the window.
Lovely bit of writing.