Google does the right thing in China, but is it for the right reasons?
Four years ago this month, Google controversially started censoring search queries in China at the local government's request. Microsoft and Yahoo soon followed. Today, in a stunning blog post, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond writes: "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."
Google's seemingly altruistic gesture is as much about business priorities as was the original decision to censor search results in China. Otherwise Google wouldn't have given in to Chinese government demands four years ago.
Google upgrades Docs, cross-promotes Memeo Connect to pull in Office users
Often, when a big company releases a new piece of hardware or software, smaller companies will launch their own products that ride in the bigger product's proverbial draft. But this time, One big launch has rolled another smaller launch in with it.
Today, Google announced it will be expanding the storage capacity of Google Docs to 1GB, and allow single files up to 250 MB to be uploaded, which opens up the ability to upload other file types such as raw graphics files or zipped archives. Word documents are limited to 500 KB in size, and PowerPoint presentations are limited to 10MB, but the general limit is still many multiples higher than the maximum Gmail attachment size.
Microsoft will not deny report of Windows Mobile 7 delay to 2011
Last Sunday, former Tom's Hardware correspondent Theo Valich, now editor-in-chief of Bright Side of News, referred to sources from at least five smartphone manufacturers plus Microsoft itself as telling him that Windows Mobile 7 would not be made generally available until 2011 -- what those manufacturers would perceive as a delay. This despite indications from CEO Steve Ballmer last Wednesday at CES that an announcement of a forthcoming product would come at Mobile World Congress next month, and a preview of coming attractions given to Betanews' Tim Conneally by Windows Mobile Senior Product Manager Greg Sullivan at CES the following Friday.
Given multiple opportunities to clarify Valich's report, and to deny that any delay was in the works, Microsoft spokespersons would not provide Betanews with information that shed any light on the timeframe, or that would refute the information from vendors cited in that report. The company appears to be taking the position that, since it has never set a firm timetable on WM7's release, whatever date it announces, however far in the future that might be, is not a delay.
iTunes pricing is out of control
Succinctly stated: You pay more.
Apple has a reputation for charging more for most everything, while often delivering less than competitors. Any Windows PC-to-Mac laptop pricing comparison is example enough. The Windows computer typically comes with higher-resolution display, more system memory and beefier storage than comparatively-priced Mac portable.
Pattern emerges for Nexus One 3G problems, points to baseband firmware
In an effort to minimize the apparent scope of the problem faced by at least a sizable plurality of Nexus One customers this week, Google has issued a statement to the press. It essentially acknowledges what we've all seen with our eyes, that users are experiencing widespread 3G connectivity issues, but it offers no information as to what measures are being taken to address those concerns.
"We are aware of the issues that have affected a small number of users, and are working quickly to fix any problems," reads the statement from Google to Betanews this afternoon. "We hope to have more information soon. When we do, we will post it to the user forum."
A pre-Mobile World Congress look at the best handset keyboards
I only briefly touched on this point in my first article about the Apple tablet, but I'm a firm supporter of device manufacturers that install QWERTY keyboards whenever they can. In fact, it is the single reason I have avoided the iPhone, and no amount of soft key practice has made me comfortable with it as an efficient method of text entry.
Even though the HTC HD2 is a spectacular piece of hardware, I am not likely to give it much consideration because it has no keyboard. In talking with Microsoft's Greg Sullivan of Windows Phone about the HD2, he told me that getting used to soft keys requires you to reach a point of abandonment, where you just accept mistakes and roll with them.
The Nexus One debacle: How does one beta test a phone?
The first absolute confirmation of the existence of the "Google Phone," as no one calls the Nexus One now, came when the company admitted it had distributed a few hundred models to its employees, now exactly one month ago. It could be the single shortest beta test period in the history of Google, especially compared to the number of years Gmail bore the "beta" tag before it was quietly removed last spring.
Clearly after the first week of Nexus One's retail availability, Google has proven itself not ready for instant launches. In one sense, the problem is actually systemic: For a new product to build market momentum leading up to its launch, its manufacturer needs not only to maintain secrecy but to nurture that secrecy like a cash crop -- Apple is easily the best company at nurturing secrecy as a virtue of any company, in any industry, in history. By contrast, the whole beta test process, and the basis of Google's software development model up to this point, has been transparency -- a type of openness which, when applied to the realm of hardware, feels more like nakedness.
Nexus One development commences with Android 2.1 SDK update
In addition to launching the latest skirmish in the mobile platform/mobile carrier wars, Google and HTC's Nexus One smartphone also introduced the world to Android 2.1.
Before the Nexus One came out, the Motorola Droid launched in a similar fashion, where the device ran Android 2.0 exclusively before the SDK component was released to the public and other devices were upgraded.
HTC admits customers have Nexus One 3G trouble, not yet blaming the phone
If samples from customer support threads are an accurate indicator, hundreds and perhaps thousands of early adopters of Google's Nexus One phone aren't looking for humanity from some pinstripe or tapered edges, so much as from customer support.
A spokesperson for HTC, the manufacturer of the Nexus One phone sold by Google and deployed thus far on T-Mobile's GSM network, told Betanews late Monday evening that it is aware of the magnitude of 3G connectivity problems reported by customers nationwide since last week. As of Monday evening, several hundred messages were posted to Google's support Web site, many reporting essentially the same problem: For the most part, their 3G connections are spotty and variable; and for some, 3G is non-existent.
Motion picture industry is not a 'cartel,' judge rules in RealDVD case
For years, RealNetworks has wanted to produce and sell a product called RealDVD that would enable the legal owners of DVD movies to copy their content onto a hard disk drive, in order that the original discs may stay protected like archival copies. Movie studios responded in September 2008 by suing Real, alleging that its technology intentionally circumvented their copy control system -- a circumvention that violated the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That led to an injunction barring any sale of RealDVD, which is still in force today.
Real then responded with a countersuit, blasting the movie studios with an allegation that they were leveraging the DMCA as a platform on which to build a kind of content cartel -- a mechanism that disables viewers and the companies that sell to viewers from using DVDs in any other way besides direct viewing, that doesn't involve a licensing agreement. Last Friday, the judge in that ongoing suit ruled that Real had not proven the basis of its argument, noting that at any time, Real was free to enter into its own individual licenses for copying DVDs, and that there's nothing to stop it from doing so.
Microsoft's Bach points to new cloud-centric Windows Mobile, over time
During a Thursday financial analysts' conference at CES 2010, whose transcript has recently been released by Microsoft (DOCX available here), Microsoft Entertainment & Devices division president Robbie Bach painted a broad-brushstroke picture of the Windows Mobile-related announcement the company intends to make next month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Certain carefully phrased elements of that broad outline do offer distinct clues as to the direction the company plans to take with the product, which may be different than some have speculated.
Most telling of all is an analogy Bach cited that implies that whatever does get revealed in five weeks' time may not be a product or service in its entirety, but rather the beginning of a long-range construction project that had not been under development during all this time that customers had been waiting for Windows Mobile 7.
Please tell us your Google Nexus One story
Last week, Betanews founder Nate Mook and I both purchased Google Nexus One phones. Nate is coming from iPhone, and I have been using the Nokia N900. We haven't yet coordinated our reviews, or how we'll write them (separately or together), but they're coming sometime this week. Why should Nate and I have all the fun when you could join in, too? So this is a call for Betanews readers with Nexus Ones to share your experiences, either in comments below or by sending me e-mail.
To start the discussion, I'll offer a few first impressions. I ordered the Nexus One during Google's event last week, before the invited attendees got their free review units. Google shipped the phone by free FedEx overnight, so I began using the so-called "superphone" on Wednesday (January 6). Google impressed with the simple ordering process and prompt delivery.
A suggestion for the FCC: Less spectrum, not more
"Throw more money at it." That's an old suggestion for trying to solve problems big and small, but it's a solution that rarely works, because it doesn't address the root cause of the problem in question. Despite knowing that it's bad advice, the FCC has recently come up with a corollary to it: Throw more spectrum at it.
Recently, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined a plan to promote growth in the mobile communications sector, including a proposal to give mobile operators more spectrum. That's bad.
CES 2010: Windows netbooks obscured by armies of ARM-based Linux gadgets
While new Atom-based Windows netbooks did show up at CES 2010, the Wintel mobile PC platform so omnipresent only a year ago, got way overshadowed this time around in a blitz of announcements around Linux-based smartbooks, e-readers, and tablets running on ARM processors.
Some of the ARM-enabled netbooks on display, such as Lenovo's Skylight (pictured above), are outfitted with Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips. Plastic Logic's Que e-reader uses ARM processors from Marvell. Freescale, another ARM chipmaker, rolled out a reference platform for a sub-$200 tablets, also during the 2010 show.
CES 2010: What did we learn this week?
Without a doubt, Android has emerged from CES 2010 as the software platform story of the year. In a strange way, the sudden surge of activity for the platform prior to CES, and even prior to Google's Nexus One announcement the day before CES, is what substantiated the presence of Android in the public discussion this year. Up until now, Linux on the smartphone has been perceived as an "alternative" to the branded systems -- last year, Android seemed to be the culmination of something going on in the "open" space, out there somewhere, categorized under "Other."
Android is not "other" any more. It is here, and very much at the center of things.
So as we look back on our flashpoints from last Tuesday -- the topics we set out to watch throughout the show -- what we find are fewer surprises...but the few we got were big ones.
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