ParisLemon

What happens when the war is not Apple/iOS vs. Google/Android, but Google/Android vs. Amazon/Android?

I don’t know, but I can’t wait to see. And I suspect we’ll see a whole lot of “open” fly out the window.

He makes the argument that Google’s Blogger outage negates their big push for moving to the cloud made this week at I/O. In other words, more FUD.

First of all, using Blogger as the example is stupid. Blogging without the cloud? What a genius idea. 

Second, his “question” is what if this had happened to Google Docs? Well, offline Gmail, Docs, and Calendar are exactly what Google has been using internally for months and stated at I/O that they would ship this summer. 

Microsoft and its extensions are clearly scared shitless of the concept of Chrome OS. That’s not to say Chromebooks will be a slam dunk hit — we’ll see. But the concept of simple, cheap, fast machines that don’t run Windows and keep everything synced in the cloud is a very compelling one. 

I still see this as a big part of the Microsoft “squeeze”. Chromebooks and iPads pressure Windows from below. Macs pressure from above.

All these months later. ”Some”.

For years, all we’ve heard is that the labels were desperately looking to bolster an Apple rival to combat their dominance (and leverage) in the space. Now they’re looking to Apple to make sure those same rivals don’t succeed.

Funny.

Edward Wyatt:

Four months after the Federal Communications Commission approved the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, one of the commissioners who approved the deal said she would join Comcast to oversee its government affairs office.

Strikes me as extremely questionable and seemingly sleazy. 

For all their successes over their long history, Microsoft has gotten absolutely killed when it comes to their online services division. 

So naturally they’re paying $7 billion for a company that loses money to bolster that division.

Update: Make that closer to $8 billion. Wow.

Claire Cain Miller:

Google does not have licenses from the music labels, even though it has been negotiating with them for months to partner on a cloud service. As a result, users of Google’s service cannot do certain things that would legally require licenses, like sharing songs with friends and buying songs from Google.

It was almost exactly a year ago that Google first talked about this service at I/O. That’s embarrassing. So embarrassing that they’ve apparently had enough, and they’re going it alone. Like Amazon.

Why?

Android’s director of digital content tells Cain Miller:

A couple of major labels were not as collaborative and frankly were demanding a set of business terms that were unreasonable and did not allow us to build a product or a business on a sustainable business.

In other words, they’re using the press to try and rally support on their side. Smart, but it will likely just piss the labels off even more.

They have leverage after all. And its name is Apple.

Amazon’s move was a ballsy one by a distant second place player hoping to make a move. Google’s move is simply a failure to get something they pre-announced a year ago done.

I mean seriously, they could have launched exactly what they’re announcing tomorrow one year ago. They wasted all that time negotiating for nothing. Now they’re resorting to whining in the press about it.

This is exactly why you don’t pre-announce products. I hate to say this before I’ve even seen the product, but this thing has all the makings of yet another flop.

Steven Levy:

It’s probably something that Don Draper would come up with if Larry and Sergey were his clients.

Again, swear I’ve read this before…

The Tumblr share button is a great idea and the customizations are awesome for publishers.

Not so awesome is that whenever Tumblr launches something new and cool, their servers seem to crash, negating the goodwill of the coolness.

Just sayin’.

From a media perspective, this idea has always interested me. Eventually, you put everything on the web, but you give paying customers first crack at it.

Of course, it works for huge stories like an exclusive look at Apple — which I paid $4.99 for just like everyone else. But it’s a much harder sell for most things.

Still, if you prove time and time again that you have great content, a small percentage (your biggest fans and maybe even your biggest haters) would pay to get it early. 

Number one way you know this list is shit? Apple wasn’t number one on this list the past five to ten years in a row.