Google: Arms Dealing in Weapons of Mass Destruction

Been thinking about the various fights against Microsoft over the years.

Apple went to war head on and failed. Linux tried “free” but their efforts were unfocused and uncoordinated.

Google took a different tactic. It’s seeded a revolution by handing out weapons of mass destruction to everyday people.

Rather than fight the war itself, Google took the role of “arms dealer” and started giving away weapons of mass destruction for free.

Those weapons?

Gmail, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Adwords and Adsense, Google Voice, Android, the Chrome browser, the Chrome OS…and others.

When you think about it this way…Google isn’t fighting anyone…and Microsoft is literally fighting everyone…very clever.

I never count Microsoft out, but one has to wonder how can they compete when everyday people have such powerful alternatives…or should I say weapons?

Google’s Chrome – the “iPod” of browsers

Sometimes when you back and look at something you’ve read before, you see new things due to the passage of time.

I re-read the Google press release about Chrome.

In it, Sundar Pichai, Google’s Vice President of Product Management said “We think of the browser as the window to the web”.

That in itself is cool to see and think about, both simple and philosophical.

Next he says “it’s a tool for users to interact with the web sites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience” and I see the passion he and the rest of the team have about creating a great product for customers.

In other words, “we’re going to make you a great tool that’s very important to the things you do, but at the same time, we’re doing everything we can to be an invisible part of that process”.

In the last part of the paragraph that I like, he says “Just like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome has a simple user interface with a sophisticated core to enable the modern web.”

Does the concept of a “use it every day” product made of sophisticated technology and wrapped with a simple interface remind you of anything?

If not, turn up your iPod, relax and see if anything comes to mind.

See the full press release from Google is here at Business Wire.

See the cool new iPod nano’s from Apple here.

Chrome’s Omnibox to go anonymous in 24 hours

On the Google Blog, Sr Vice President of Operations, Urs Holzle, announced today that IP addresses logged by the Google Suggest feature in Chrome’s Omnibox will go anonymous “within about 24 hours”.

The change comes about in response to criticism and concerns raised about Google storing IP addresses and search terms of Chrome users.

Good move Google!

Seriously though, Google also says that they were only holding data from 2% of the users. This means it wasn’t holding 98% of the data it received. Still, it’s great that Google stood up and did the right thing.

Separately, Sean Carlson, Google’s Australia public affairs rep, reportedly said that Google doesn’t capture any more information than what is already being captures by Microsoft (IE), Mozilla (Firefox), and Apple (Safari).

That may be true or it may not be true, but now at least we have an official policy from Google which provides us with an alternative.

You can read Urs Holzle’s full post here.

Chris Keall at National Business Review New Zealand has more about this topic in his article here.