Entering the virtual world (screenshot of
Manchester snatched in June 2005, Google Earth, click to enlarge)

The Internet is bound to make most sectors of traditional industry obsolete. Below are several examples, which have begun to prove more realistic than ever before.

• Telephone companies- suffer from VoIP for local and international calls
• Internet Service Providers (ISP’s)- giants like Google can gnaw at their revenue by appealing to a large userbase
• Newspapers – readers opt for the Internet, get access to blogs of many ‘flavours’
• Television – user opts for interactive content, not one-way communication with a finite number of channels
• Reviews move on-line – similar impact to that of digital TV (on-demand menus) on the TV guide — a river that have dried up
• Book publishers – the impact of Wikipedia and free books in PDF format; easy printing and sharing
• Film industry – media ‘ripping’, DRM
• Music industry – same as before with but increased levels of piracy, also due to P2P networking
• Classified services, real-estate (among other middlemen-type services) – superseded by eBay, classifieds service from Google, Microsoft, Craigslist, etc.
• Banking – online banks with neither concrete branches nor assets
• Groceries – as previously predicted (along with other wild guesses), warehouses may replace supermarkets and be managed and accessible via the Internet

What will be the outcome of this revolution? Nothing far-fetched, but nonetheless a noticeable transition. More free content, low-cost services and fierce competition among service providers, primarily left in the hands of giants.

This article speaks for itself.

Google will unveil its own low-price personal computer or other device that connects to the Internet.

It was only a matter of time.

Related item:

• Google OS – What if?/
• Google and Linux
• Sun-Google Pact

Update (05/01/2006): Google renounce low-margin PC speculations

The use of money to skew real facts and lure customers

INUX forums (including newsgroups) often encounter harassment by trolls that spread anti-Linux FUD. This puts off a few participants and adds noise to discussions that are largely Linux-oriented.

There is often a suspicion arising that this community sabotage ‘bubbles up’ to managerial roots. Some would suggest that disruptive involvement by trolls is actually paid for. Past evidence supports such suspicions and is echoed in this blog item which quotes John Dvorak.

“Some years back, Microsoft practiced a lot of dirty tricks using online mavens to go into forums and create Web sites extolling the virtues of Windows over OS/2. They were dubbed the Microsoft Munchkins, and it was obvious who they were and what they were up to. But their numbers and energy (and they way they joined forces with nonaligned dummies who liked to pile on) proved too much for IBM marketers, and Windows won the operating-system war through fifth-column tactics”

Mr Dvorak wonders if Microsoft is today using reverse-dirty-tricks to promote the Xbox 360: pay people to create Web sites that slam the gaming computer in order to provoke a barrage of defenders.

Last week I went to watch King Kong. There were no less than 3 Xbox 360 commercials before the film commenced. Microsoft sure know how to spend money. It is worth mentioning that Xbox 360 units are sold at a cost which accounts for a significant loss. Regardless, the Xbox fails to sell in Japan, despite the heavily-invested-in commotion.

Related item: Xbox 360 Off to a Slow Start in Japan, Microsoft-funded Benchmarks

Why I put my cards on the table and wound up using Google

NTIL about 3 years ago I was using Webcrawler as my text and graphics search engine almost exclusively. Webcrawler offered some nice features, without a doubt. I can clearly recall suggestions for completion or extended/refined searches on the side of existing SERP‘s. This assimilates to Google Suggest, which came about much later. In due time, Webcrawler also harvested results from Google, which made the results rather pleasing.

At present, Webcrawler has an interesting feature, which enables the user to see results from all major search engines (crawlers rather) side-by-side. One can see the top 10 from each on the same page. This is nothing like Dogpile (bad name for a business) that is composing results artificially. Rather than getting a mishmash of results, Webcrawler gives a more comprehensive and impartial view that brings together many search engines into one (overloaded and cluttered) page.

A9 is doing something similar to Webcrawler, but it very Google-centric. The user can see results from the Web, alongside images, videos, and more. Speaking of video search, see my previous post on search results bias.

The disadvantages of the approach are speed and visual clutter. Much of the information on the screen will be discarded. Yet, having plenty of information, both textual and visual, might be helpful sometimes, especially over a quick Internet connection where traffic is expendable.

This one comes from a blog, but it is still worth reading.

The New York Times reported that Google will give AOL preferred placement for AOL’s videos in Google’s video search in Google’s new Google Video search site. In addition, Google will include links to AOL videos on the Google Video home page — and won’t label any of those links advertising, or call the preferred listings advertising, even though they clearly are ads.”

More bad news to commercial software

AST week I decided to explore performance issues with MySQL, which is a ubiquitous system over a large specrum of Web sites. In particular, I wanted to look at comparisons and benchmarks involving PostgreSQL, which is yet another FOSS database system. I came up with the following two links, which indicate that a comparison would be hard to conduct and assess:

• Benchmarking MySQL and PostgreSQL
• Benchmark Results For Postgresql, Mysql, Firebird

Then, just a short while ago, I came to discover an even wider-scape benchmark. It suggests that MySQL is superior to databases from Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. Without a doubt, applications that are based on LAMP technology gain tremendous strength and popularity. They have become mainstream, as a matter of fact, and WordPress is a model example.

Let us wait for a heavily-invested FUD campaign is launched to avoid deterrence among companies that use commercial databases. My Steve Ballmer/FUD comes to mind.

As a side note, what worries me most is MySQL’s partnership with SCO, who are of course a sworn enemy of Linux.

UITE recently I mentioned Google’s negotiations with AOL. There is a $1 billion deal in stake. It turns out the the deal may lead to more graphical (i.e. imagery) ads, which thus far Google have trialled and tested on a mere subset.

Users of Google’s search engine will soon see something they are not used to on the notoriously spare site: advertising with logos and graphics. And the advertisers will not be limited to America Online, whose talks with Google prompted the change in policy, according to two executives close to the companies’ negotiations.

This could break the long-standing tradition of non-obtrusive ads from Google. It will, nonetheless, be avoided by many advertisers who opt for text-only ads. This comes only 7 months after Google ads in feeds were initially introduced. Speaking of unwanted intrusion, feeds are often intended to serve pure content in a minimalist way. Ads are adverse to their true purpose.

My message to Google: “With food comes the appetite? Is the mantra losing its mana?“