The point the article is making is that if Google hadn't entered those markets, someone else would have and done it a lot better.
Who's going to seriously invest in an online word processor or spreadsheet with Google apps squatting on the territory? Just MS.
Google apps is still pretty basic and they're not operating under commercial conditions, which means potentially the customer is not getting what they actually want.
I think in some ways he's wrong, not operating under commercial pressures is not necessarily a bad thing, but Google and Microsoft have recently been extremely weak on following through on promising technology, abandoning projects instead of pivoting.
But in Google's case it can be especially toxic, it's then difficult for others to enter those markets as suddenly there's a free competitor. That's not healthy and on that I agree with the author.
But in Google's case it can be especially toxic, it's then difficult for others to enter those markets as suddenly there's a free competitor. That's not healthy and on that I agree with the author.
But isn't this the grave we've dug for ourselves (as software developers)? We've pivoted the whole market so that software has no intrinsic value on its own?
Look at WordLens for example. Mindblowing technology. If you could only get it in a standalone piece of HW the markup would purely be a function of the HW cost. As it is, they started pricing at $5. And as ridiculously cheap that is I can see people saying, "Why isn't it 99 cents?"
At this point the horse is out of the barn. The value of your product is no longer the utility of the product, but rather how well advertisers can leverage your audience.
Although that makes me think, there's great advertising angles with WordLens since you know what words/signs people are looking at. I freaking went to sleep thinking about that product... sorry for the tanget. :-)
I don't really agree with you here, the size of the biggest market they can go after, anyone who takes foreign vacations, is so massive that $5 is fine.
By keeping the cost lowish, they're discouraging immediate competition, but can still make a large profit if they market it right. And that video certainly looks like the right marketing to me!
I'm sure they'll make plenty of money, no disagreement there. My point is that I don't think they can charge much more than $5. Consumers just don't value software enough to pay that amount. The people that complain about a $10 app w/ this functionality will have no problem paying an extra $20,000 for the top line package on a new car. Or $20 for a T-Shirt. Or will pay an extra $2,000 to upgrade to 1st class on that foreign vacation.
For most people software has the value of a Happy Meal prize.
read the last line of the WordLens review... "A price cut would also help a lot." $5 is too much to pay for this app! A medium caramel frappucino from Starbucks is almost $5!
It just seems like over the past 20 years I've seen this evolution of programmers building intricate valuable product, to now it being generally viewed as disposable crap... even the best stuff. It only has value when coupled with HW or is a service.
1) Android is growing like wildfire-- contributes over a billion to revenue last year it was claimed.
2) Google App Engine serves over a billion page load a day.
3) Google Apps? I love it--
etc etc.
Spin-off is a technique, but I don't think it's the only way to go.