Who is Google's worst enemy?

Post ImageIf you said Microsoft or Yahoo, you’d be wrong. I think the real enemy for Google is itself, which is kind of like Microsoft, but for different reasons. Microsoft’s worst enemy is itself because it has to find ways to get people to upgrade from the existing versions of Microsoft software they already use. Or to move their users to a subscription model. Google’s worst enemy is itself because they have done an amazingly good job of accomplishing nothing.

“But they have so many products!” you exclaim. Exactly. They have got a ton of products, including some like the recently released Google Spreadsheets that seem to target Microsoft applications (though Microsoft’s Don Dodge makes a good case that they target open source software instead), yet none of them make money. Honestly, Google must have the largest number of non-revenue earning products of any company in history. I say they have accomplished nothing because their core product (AdSense, not search) really hasn’t changed all that much since it was launched. Instead of improving it, and finding ways to deal with click fraud and the other problems, Google has blinded itself with these side projects that seem bent on competing with Microsoft. And don’t be fooled by their ad company purchases – none of them have come to bear any fruit yet.

When I first learned about it, I thought that Google’s policy of encouraging employees to spend 10-20% of their time working on non-core projects was a good one, but now I am not so sure. It has resulted in lots of interesting technology to be sure, but not much else. I really don’t see how Google would get any ROI out of something like Google Spreadsheets. I have no idea what Google’s revenue breakdown is, but I highly doubt there’s a gem, other than AdSense of course, to be found.

That’s why I think Google’s worst enemy is itself. They have grown so big, so fast, that they forgot to take care of the goose that laid the golden egg. They haven’t cut it open yet, but if they continue to focus on these other mostly unimportant side projects, they might as well have.

REVIEW: Game 2

Post ImageIt hasn’t been a great week for the Edmonton Oilers, who lost again to the Hurricanes tonight. Actually, they got slaughtered 5-0. Here are some thoughts on the game:

  • Jussi Markkanen played goal for us tonight, and he did a good job. Even though he let in five goals, it was a product of the team sucking hard, not Jussi failing to make saves. He’s no Cam Ward, but at least he handled the puck well and didn’t have any blunders like Conklin did.
  • Ryan Smyth gets my vote for worst Oiler of the game. He continually missed pucks, and was no where near the front of the net where he is most effective. As the leader on a team in desperate need of some momentum, Smyth really needed to produce tonight and he didn’t. He was -1 tonight, after a -2 performance last game. His only bright spot tonight was that his 4 shots on goal turned out to be more than any other Oiler.
  • Why is Georges Laraque playing in this series? Unless you’re gonna stick him in front of the net to cause trouble for Ward, we don’t need him. I agree with my Dad, bring Todd Harvey back into the lineup!
  • All of the Oilers need to learn to hit the net! So many shots were not even close tonight, it was sad. And on top of that, we need shoot more! And for crying out loud, get the puck high! Ward always seems to be down, so start shooting above him.
  • We were in the penalty box way too many times, and for some reason, our usually amazing penalty kill was terrible. Not all of the calls were our fault (I thought the officials made some really questionable ones on us, and missed some blatant ones on them).
  • On a related note, our power play totally sucked. No other way to say it.
  • I don’t know what game Kelly Hrudey was watching, but I completely disagree with him – the Oilers did not do a good enough job of sending a message to the ‘Canes when it was clear the game had been lost. We were in the penalty box a lot, sure, but for stupid calls, not for rough play that would be considered “sending a message.”
  • I think we gave up way too many odd man rushes tonight.

Now the series shifts back to Edmonton, where I expect the Oilers to fare much better. I am hoping this will be a repeat of the San Jose series, where both teams win their first set of home games. The puck drops at 6 PM MDT on Saturday. Go Oilers Go!

Download Windows Vista Now!

Post ImageIts another sign that Windows Vista is inching closer to launch. Microsoft today announced the “Customer Preview Program” that enables pretty much anyone to download and test out the latest version of Windows Vista:

The software maker is still cautioning that Vista is not ready for the average consumer, pitching the CPP as suited for developers and tech workers, as well as hard-core enthusiasts who don’t mind a few bugs and have a spare machine for testing. Microsoft also recommends those interested in the CPP run its recently released adviser tool, which helps detect how Vista-ready a PC is.

If you think you fit the bill, you can download Vista from the Microsoft website. I’ve had it running in a virtual machine for about a week now, and it’s pretty cool, but very slow inside the VM.

Read: CNET News.com

Roloson is out, what now?

Post ImageAs you probably know by now, the Oilers lost game 1 tonight against the Hurricanes, and worse still, Rolson is injured and likely out for the remainder of the playoffs. So the choice now is either Jussi Markannen or Ty Conklin. Listening to Overtime Openline on 630 CHED, I need to point some things out:

  • Al Stafford keeps pointing out that Ty/Jussi won over half the games they played for the Oilers, so don’t discount them. He’s missing the point. Most of the games we lost with those two could have been won if only we’d had one or two key saves, something Roloson has been able to do.
  • Don’t kid yourself. The main reason the Oilers are in the finals is Dwayne Roloson. He’s been able to keep us in games when we’ve needed it most. We’ve been outshot almost every game so far in the playoffs.
  • If you take out the first three games Roloson played for us this season, he’s been amazing, and better still in the playoffs.
  • Not Bergeron’s fault? There was no need to hit the player into Roloson – it was completely boneheaded. I would bench Bergeron, he played an absolutely terrible game.
  • Ty Conklin should never be allowed to play for the Oilers again after a play like that. Miscommunication or not, cold or not, that just isn’t something you can do in the Stanley Cup Finals. There’s a reason he isn’t a starting goalie, and he proved it right there.

There’s lots of faith by a lot of people that Ty or Jussi can step up, and I just don’t think it will happen. And we need the goalie to be amazing, it’s the way we play. Giving up lots of shots, sending lots of players up on rushes, etc. I mean the Oilers have still got a good shot, they’re playing amazingly well as a team, but losing Roloson is a serious blow. I guess we can only hope the Oilers will find a way to get it done.

I say play Devan Dubnyk. He’s a young guy, with something to prove, and the rest of the team can rally around him. And he doesn’t carry any negative stuff with him, like both Ty and Jussi do. Either that, or let’s put Pronger in net. He stops more shots than Conklin, seriously!

Entrepreneurial Genes

Post ImageBad news for the business associations of the world who try to foster growth in small business – genetics make the entrepreneur, not environment, according to a recent study:

A study of identical twins by researchers in Britain and the United States suggests family environment has little influence because nearly half of a person’s propensity to be self-employed, or entrepreneurial, is due to genes.

The rate of entrepreneurs among twins is the same as in the general population. [Prof. Tim Spector of St Thomas’ Hospital in London] and his team found that identical twins increased the odds of their twins following the same path more than nonidentical twins, which suggests genes are important.

I always knew there was some special about me 😉

While I find this study and it’s conclusions very interesting, I try to keep an open mind. I don’t want to fall into the trap of thinking that genetics determines everything. If they manage to isolate the gene(s) responsible however, I bet someone could turn that into a nice little business!

Read: CNET News.com

Notes for 6/4/2006

Busy, busy, busy lately. Hence the lack of posting. Here are my weekly notes:

  • Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals are tomorrow! I’ve got tickets for the game at Rexall too (they are showing it on the big screen) so it should be fun. Go Oilers Go!
  • Talk about a heat wave! The last couple of days have been pretty toasty here in Edmonton.
  • I finally saw The Da Vinci Code the other day. I enjoyed the movie, but only because I was paying attention. It’s definitely a movie that requires your full attention. I thought Magneto, oops, I mean Ian McKellen, did the best job.
  • I’ve been playing around with YouTube lately. It has some great features, but could be a lot better too. They launched a big upgrade on Friday that lets you make your own channel.
  • Anyone see Hard Candy? I’m planning to check it out this week. Looks interesting. Oh and don’t bother trying to find a torrent for it, all you’ll find is porn.
  • As some of you know, we’ve got a few (read: 4) internet connections here at the office. One of them is TeraGo, a “fibre-like” wireless ISP. After a troublesome start, the connection is working incredibly well, and very fast. At about half the cost of a comparable fibre connection, it makes a lot of sense. Their service and support have been great thus far too.

See Windows Vista

Post ImageI just stumbled across the SeeWindowsVista site via Scoble. It’s basically a marketing site that gives you some interesting information on what Windows Vista can do for you (when it finally launches).

Apparently the site got 39,000 unique visits in the first 24 hours of being live, which is pretty good. My only complaint with the site? Let me see the start menu! Gah, why put the icon there in the bottom left if it doesn’t do anything?! I was very disappointed I couldn’t activate a virtual start menu.

Read: SeeWindowsVista

Format and Reinstall

After attempting to install another gigabyte of RAM into my computer yesterday, it went completely bonkers. I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t seem to fix it (and actually I don’t think it was related to the RAM itself). I have lots of experience fixing computers, and yes I tried everything, but I just couldn’t get it to work again. So I went to my last resort – format and reinstall.

Everything is back up and running perfectly now, which makes me happy. For the longest time I have kept one drive for Windows and applications, and one or two other drives for data. I even remap My Documents and all of those folders to the data drives. Because of this, I can format and reinstall the system drive without losing any data. The only negative effect of a format and reinstall is the time it takes to install all my applications again! So that’s my advice – keep your system and data drives separate.

Another nice side benefit of formatting and reinstalling – everything is super fast 🙂

Dickson and I were talking about this yesterday, and we got on to the topic of virtualization. He suggested that it would make a lot of sense to simply run a virtual OS all the time, because you could move it around to any host. It’s a pretty good idea, but I am not sure how well it would work in practice. For one thing, it still wouldn’t fix a device driver or something from crashing and ruining Windows. On the other hand, I guess you could backup your OS image to an external device every night so that in the worst case, you could go back to yesterday! The other thing is the hardware – you probably wouldn’t be able to take advantage of an awesome graphics card or sound card or something inside a virtual machine. Maybe one day!

Podtrac Survey Results

Post ImageI am happy to see a large number of podcasting surveys and research efforts lately. The latest comes from Podtrac, who claims to have developed the largest podcasting demographics database in the world, with over 55,000 detailed demographic profiles. Some of the findings:

  • 56% of podcast audiences listen to and view podcasts on their computer, compared with 46% on a mobile device.
  • A huge majority, 88%, listen to or view podcast episodes in their entirety.
  • 76% of podcast users are also online shoppers.
  • 41% of U.S. online adults were aware of the term “podcasting” at the end of Q1 2006, compared with just 32% at the end of Q4 2005.

The results are more or less the same as some other similar surveys. Perhaps the only one that seems low is the number that listen/watch on their computers. I think the true number is actually quite a bit higher. I also wonder about the 88% who listen to an entire episode – I am willing to bet that will go down over time.

Read: Podcasting News

The Melting North

Post ImageNope, this isn’t about global warming – sorry activists (don’t you know most of that global warming stuff is hogwash anyway?) – it’s about Inuvik, where my parents live. Well, Inuvik and Aklavik. For those of you who don’t know, Inuvik is a planned town, created because Aklavik used to flood all the time. It’s been about fifty years since it last happened, but Aklavik has completely flooded again, forcing an evacuation:

River water started to flood the community Friday, and many roads are still underwater. The hamlet declared a state of emergency, flying 300 people, mostly seniors and children, out of the community over the weekend. Most of the evacuees are staying at Inuvik’s army barracks, while others are staying with relatives.

Apparently the water is really high in Inuvik too, according to my Dad:

There were ice chunks the size of cars. There were trees of all sizes. There was a 1000 litre fuel tank. There was a telephone pole. The annual spring break-up of the Mackenzie River is under way and it takes anything that stands in its way with it. This years break-up has the river higher than I have seen it before in my 16 years here.

The other interesting thing about break-up is that prices rise temporarily, as goods must be flown up. Normally trucks can drive up, crossing the river either using a ferry in the summer, or just driving right over the ice in the winter.

Hopefully the break-up will be over quickly. My Dad has a good set of pictures if you want to check it out, complete with telephone poles floating in the river!