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Apparently Apple isn't 'thriving' enough for some people
Yesterday, Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page let investors know that he wouldn't be able to attend every single earnings call as he has made a habit of in the past. Some speculated that it's because of an increasingly difficult medical condition that makes it hard for Page to speak. Regardless, none of this would normally make me raise an eyebrow until I saw this headline on Wired. Note: The original title of the Wired article linked above was "Google Without Larry Page Would Still Thrive - Unlike Apple Without Steve Jobs" but it has since been changed (without explanation) to "Google Without Larry Page Would Not Be Like Apple Without Steve Jobs" The premise of the article is that since Google's stock rose in the wake of Page's announcement, the company is better suited to life without its longtime CEO than Apple was (or "is," I suppose). The author assumes a lot here, using "likely" and "even if" to push his arguments into a fictional world where they're automatically correct. My biggest issue with the article as a whole is the fact that we're comparing apples and oranges -- and that's just when it comes to Jobs and Page. If we add their corresponding companies, we're comparing caramel-covered apples and vodka-infused oranges. Jobs stepping down from his post as the most visible person in the company and then dying is not equal to Larry Page -- who, as the article notes, is more of a behind-the-scenes CEO -- telling investors he can't make every earnings call from now on. Acting as though the two events are even in the same ballpark in terms of relevancy is irresponsible. Then there's the general tone that permeates the rest of the piece regarding Apple's supposed downfall, and in particular the insinuation in the title that Apple without Jobs is not thriving. Here's a quick list of things that have happened since Jobs left Apple for the last time: The third-gen iPad became the fastest-selling iPad The iPhone 5 became the fastest-selling iPhone The fourth-gen iPad and iPad mini combined to sell 3 million units in three days, another new record iTunes sold its 25 billionth song The 50 billionth app was downloaded from the App Store Apple has been named the most valuable brand in the world, dethroning Coca-Cola for the first time in 13 years The iPhone 5s and 5c combined to sell 9 million units in three days, another record The iPhone 5s took the title of the fastest-selling iPhone from the iPhone 5 But hey, Wall Street is wringing its hands over whether or not Tim Cook can run a successful company (which, at this point, isn't even a question), so of course Apple must be doomed. What's that? You mean Apple's stock right now is higher than it ever was under Jobs? Huh. I guess some people have a different definition of "thriving" than the rest of us. We'll ignore the fact that investors have been wrong about Apple so many times, it's pointless even bringing them into the discussion, because that blows the original argument out of the water. Wired's piece isn't an isolated incident, and there have been "Apple isn't what it used to be" opinion pieces popping up for the past two years now. I realize that taking the time to write this rebuttal probably won't change much (or, let's be honest, anything), but the beauty of all of this is that it doesn't matter. As I've said before, Apple's been "doomed" for a while, but that's never stopped them from selling their products in record numbers and embarrassing the competition at nearly every turn. [Image credit: GDS-Productions]
CE-Oh no he didn't!: Google's Larry Page says Facebook does a 'really bad job'
It's no secret that Facebook and Google are in a war for the social web. Even so, there's been a certain sense of decorum involved -- up until a just-posted interview with Larry Page at Wired, at least. He acknowledges that Facebook is top dog in social, but is more than a little blunt in claiming that the online rival is doing a "really bad job" with its products (don't hold back now, Larry). While he doesn't say just what Facebook's flaws are, he sees the Bay Area rival as entirely assailable through a unique Google approach to the category, much as Google fought past other search engines roughly a decade ago. As for other competitors, Page is also dismissive, if more diplomatic: he doesn't see lawsuits dictating a company's fate, and questions "how well" all-out legal assaults work in practice. We're not expecting a direct retort from Mark Zuckerberg or anyone else, although the Facebook founder could easily contend that Graph Search speaks volumes on its own.
Google CEO discusses relationship with Apple
Apple and Google are clearly competitors on a number of levels, but being two of the largest tech companies on the planet means having to work together at times. In a recent interview with Fortune, Google CEO Larry Page dishes the dirt -- or lack thereof -- on the relationship between the two companies. Unsurprisingly, Page chooses his words carefully regarding one of his company's primary competitors. "I think it would be nice if everybody would get along better and the users didn't suffer as a result of other people's activities," Page responds, when asked about the state of Google's interactions with Apple on the distribution front. "I try to model that. We try pretty hard to make our products be available as widely as we can. That's our philosophy. I think sometimes we're allowed to do that. Sometimes we're not." There's no denying that a constant push and pull exists between the two companies, and it's a chess match that neither side is likely to win anytime soon. Page's responses to the Apple-based queries aren't exactly shocking, but it's an interesting read nonetheless. [Via: The Verge]
Google CEO Larry Page talks Apple, Android monetization and an eventual Motorola Nexus device
It's been a little while since we last heard from Larry Page, talking up Google Plus's adoption rate over the summer and, most recently, supposedly chatting with Tim Cook about the patent war that looms over both companies. Now he's letting his voice be heard again, sitting down with Miguel Helft from Fortune about a variety of topics, including the company's recent dealings with Cupertino. He calls Apple's "island-like approach" to its platform "somewhat a shame for users." He continues: What I was trying to say was I think it would be nice if everybody would get along better and the users didn't suffer as a result of other people's activities. I try to model that. We try pretty hard to make our products be available as widely as we can. That's our philosophy. I think sometimes we're allowed to do that. Sometimes we're not. Availability and sharing, he says, is key to the success of Android, and Google Plus is a big part of that. "We had 18 different ways of sharing stuff before we did Plus. Now we have one way that works well, and we're improving." And when will they make some actual revenue from Android? "I think we're in the early stages of monetization. The fact that a phone has a location is really helpful for monetization." Finally, on the question of why Google hasn't launched a Nexus device from Motorola yet, Page says quite simply "we haven't owned the company long enough." While he stops well short of pledging such a device is coming, he does say that Google is continuing to develop "amazing innovative devices" with multiple partners, and that the company will do everything it can to keep those partners, both old and new, happy.
Daily Update for August 30, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
Google and Apple may be talking about patents
Reuters is reporting that Apple CEO Tim Cook and his counterpart at Google, Larry Page, have been meeting to discuss the ongoing patent issues between the two companies. The two CEOs apparently had a phone conversation as late as last week, and are expected to talk again soon. A source told Reuters that a meeting was scheduled for August 31, but has been delayed for unknown reasons. It's also unknown if Cook and Page are working on a possible settlement of the many patent disputes between the two companies or are focused on just a subset of issues. Reuters noted that the two chief executives might be considering a "truce" over disputes concerning some basic features of Google's Android mobile OS. That would be a decidedly more peaceful course of action than Steve Jobs' plan to "go thermonuclear" on Google over Android. Apple is pulling away from other Google products. In the upcoming release of iOS 6, for example, Apple has chosen to use its own mapping solution instead of Google Maps and Google's YouTube is nowhere to be found in the pre-installed software.
Tim Cook and Larry Page reportedly chat about patent war
According to Reuters, Tim Cook and Larry Page have been having behind the scenes chats over the last week or so, most notably about the ongoing patent proxy war between the two companies. According to sources, the Apple and Google CEOs spoke last week over the phone and are planning a meeting where, hopefully, they can hash out some of their differences. Discussions are also apparently taking place at lower levels, which could indicate this is a concerted effort to put to rest the tiresome battles over intellectual property. Unfortunately, details about what exactly the two talked about, and how broad those conversations were are unknown. But, it's definitely a good sign that the two sides are talking. Perhaps the relatively new corporate heads can avoid going completely "thermonuclear," as Cook's predecessor infamously threatened. Update: All Things D has gotten confirmation from its own sources, and points out that Google is "wearing several hats here," including one as the owner of Motorola Mobility, which is currently suing Apple. However, we're still holding out hope that the licensing deal struck between those two companies is a sign of better days to come.
Google asks car makers 'Ullo John, wanna self-driving motor?'
Larry Page's tenure as Googler-in-chief has heralded the death of many ambitious experiments, but even he refuses to kill the self-driving car. His project head, Anthony Levandowski, has now asked the car makers of Detroit to sign up with Mountain View for hardware testing, saying that if driverless cars are not ready by the next decade, then it's "shame on us as engineers." There's still some way to go before the tech is road-worthy, but Google is already working with insurers to work out how your car is going to handle making that call to Geico when things go wrong.
James Cameron-backed Planetary Resources to search the universe for Unobtainium
Planetary Resources will reportedly announce later today that it's developing and selling low-cost spacecraft to mine asteroids close to the Earth. The space exploration and natural resources venture is led by X-Prize creator Peter Diamandis, Eric Anderson and NASA's former Mars chief, Chris Lewicki -- with cash backing from James Cameron, Eric Schmidt and Larry Page amongst others. Within a decade, the company hopes to kickstart a 21st century gold rush by selling orbiting observation platforms to prospectors with significant rewards -- a 30-meter long asteroid could hold as much as $50 billion worth of platinum at today's prices. The company's own teaser materials promised that the project would add "trillions of dollars" to the world's GDP, which sounds like a film we saw recently.
Keep Google Weird
There's a sign that hangs in the windows of shops in downtown Santa Cruz, California. "Keep Santa Cruz Weird." It's not unique to that town, of course -- the best known implementation of the slogan is the one seen all over Austin, Texas. Localized versions have also been spotted on t-shirts and bumper stickers in places like Portland and Boulder -- any area where the undercurrent of independent thinking does daily battle with the threat of homogenized commerce. The Santa Cruz example sticks in my mind in particular, of course, due to the five years I spent in that town, whose weirdness never fully recovered from the '89 earthquake, a natural disaster that both wreaked havoc on the landscape and caused a shift in the local zeitgeist, opening crumbled and abandoned storefronts up for Starbucks and Taco Bells -- chain stores devoid of the character that makes the town so unique. So weird.There are, naturally, growing pains with any company -- particularly one that has had so meteoric a rise as Google has experienced over the past decade and a half. Evil claims aside for the moment, the transformation from a dorm-based project to an international corporation nearly always risks the loss of the character and principles on which the project was initially founded. After taking the helm as CEO last April, co-founder Larry Page stressed the need for focusing the company's countless product lines, announcing during an earnings call that, "We've [...] done substantial internal work simplifying and streamlining our product lines."It's easy to appreciate the sentiment. As Google grows at a tremendous rate, it risks losing focus, following in the footsteps of companies like Yahoo, which never did all that great a job subscribing to its own "Peanut Butter Manifesto," by pruning away its ever-growing list of redundancy. Surely no one can fault Google for opting to pump more resources into successful properties like Android -- brands with large user bases that require, arguably, even more attention than the company has been able to allot thus far.
Developer does the math: only 3.4 million Honeycomb tablets in the wild?
Google's rolling in the dough in no small part due to Android's success in the smartphone market. When it comes to tablets? Eh, not so much. Intrepid developer Al Sutton figures that only 3.4 million Honeycomb devices are currently in use, which pales in comparison to the number of slates sold by the competition in Cupertino. He arrived at the figure using Google's data -- Larry Page said that there are 190 million Android devices out there on yesterday's earnings call, and the Android Developers website shows that only 1.8 percent of 'droids accessing the Android Market during a recent two week period were running Google's tablet OS. Do the math, and that's just 3.42 million tablets running Android 3.x. It's hardly an official figure, but it does indicate that Android's got its work cut out for it the tablet space. That Ice Cream Sandwich better be mighty tasty if the bots from Mountain View are going to grab a bigger chunk of the market.
Page: growth on Google+ has been great, over one billion items shared
Wondering why Google+ ran out of disk space? Looks like it might be a casualty of growth: in today's earnings call, Google CEO Larry Page revealed that since its launch, more than ten million people have joined Google+, sharing some one billion items every day. Those numbers not big enough for you? Then chew on this: that little +1 button? It gets clicked 2.3 billion times per day in its own right. It's still a far cry from the 750 million users actively addicted to Facebook, but still, that's a heck of a start.
Google announces Q2 earnings: $9.02 billion in revenue, $2.51 billion in net income
It's everybody's favorite time of year. Yup, the Q2 earnings results are coming in, and Google's leading the pack, reporting $9.02 billion in gross revenue for the second quarter of 2011: a 32 percent increase over the same period in 2010. CEO Larry Page notes, that's a "record breaking over $9 billion of revenue," with net income reaching $2.51 billion, up from $1.84 billion in Q2 2010. Google's various sites apparently made up 69 percent of the $9.02 billion in revenue, generating $6.23 billion -- 2010 numbers were $4.50 billion. Operating expenses saw a notable increase over 2010, cutting into profits by $2.97 billion, up from $1.99 billion. Larry Page has just announced some Android usage numbers, pointing out that 550,000 devices, rocking the little green robot, are being activated per day. That's up from the 500,000 announced late last month. Android Market numbers are also up, with six billion total downloads.
Google announces Q1 earnings: $8.58 billion gross revenue, $2.3 billion net income
Well, it looks like Larry Page had a bit of good news and some bad news to deal with on his first quarterly earnings call as CEO of Google. The company has just reported $8.58 billion in gross revenue for the first quarter of 2011, which represents a 27 percent increase over the first quarter of last year, but is actually a bit less than analysts were expecting. That figure also doesn't include the company's so-called traffic acquisition costs, however, which totaled $2.04 billion for the quarter and bring the company's actual revenue down to "just" $6.54 billion. Net income for the quarter was $2.3 billion, which represents a more modest gain from $1.96 billion in the first quarter of 2010. Also cutting into profits quite a bit was Google's operating expenses, which were up a hefty 33 percent to $2.8 billion -- a sizable chunk of which went to the nearly 2,000 new employees the company hired during the quarter. Interestingly, Google also revealed a few Android stats during its earnings call, saying that app downloads are up a full fifty percent from the fourth quarter of 2010, and that there's a total of three billion Android apps installed worldwide. As for Android devices, there's apparently 350,000 of those being activated every day. Head on past the break for company's full earnings report.
Steve Jobs was top choice for Google CEO
Steven Levy's new book, In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, has some interesting insights regarding the relationship between Steve Jobs and Google throughout the years. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that when Sergey Brin and Larry Page were looking around for a new CEO, their first choice was Jobs. Jobs turned them down, but he saw enough in Google to see that it could be a success; he offered to mentor the two founders, going so far as to provide them with access to his closest advisers. After Jobs declined the Google CEO position, Brin and Page chose Eric Schmidt as CEO, and Schmidt also later joined Apple's board of directors. That's when things quickly took a turn for the worse. As Levy states in the book, Jobs was "furious" when he visited Google's Mountain View headquarters and saw that the Android OS sported iOS features like pinch to zoom, among others. Shortly after that visit, Jobs told an Apple town hall meeting what he really thought of Google: "We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them [...] This don't be evil mantra? It's bullshit." The book also states that after Jobs found out about Android's similarities to iOS, he felt betrayed enough to somehow keep the development of the iPad hidden from Eric Schmidt while he was still a board member of Apple. [via The Daily Mail]
Larry Page takes over as Google CEO today, ready to show Tim Cook how it's done
The Page-machine, the Larry-meister, the chief of all Google execs. As announced in late January, Google's top decision-making position is today changing hands from the trusty grip of Eric Schmidt to the slightly less proven hold of co-founder Larry Page. Monsieur Page should be familiar with the role, having performed it until Schmidt was hired back in 2001, but the Google of a decade ago was quite a different beast from the multi-tentacled, omnipresent one it is today. It's probably a good thing, then, that Schmidt is remaining on Google's board in the role of Executive Chairman, with a focus on outward-facing deals and partnerships, while Page takes care of strategic and product development decisions. The other original Google gangster, Sergey Brin, is still a big part of the company's triumvirate at the top, but his attention will be dedicated to developing new projects -- things like that gigabit broadband network Google's just started building in Kansas City, Kansas. As to us, our undivided focus will be placed on coming up with fresh "do no evil" jokes.
Google refocuses under Larry Page; Eric Schmidt says Microsoft is bigger competition than Facebook
Now that the dust has settled from the Google CEO shuffle that will see Larry Page take the top spot from Eric Schmidt in April, it's time for the profiles of the company to hit -- and Bloomberg BusinessWeek is up first with a piece that examines the company's past and future challenges, as well the key leaders of what it calls "Google 3.0": Vic Gundotra, who's heading up a now-not-so-secret social networking initiative called Google +1, Android chief Andy Rubin, YouTube head Salar Kamangar, advertising lead Susan Wojcicki, Chrome head Sundar Pichai, and search leads Udi Manber and Amit Singhal. It's all very fascinating, and it includes some great anecdotes, like Vic Gundotra and Phil Schiller getting into an argument about user location-tracking so heated that Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs had to intervene. Yeah, it's like that. Speaking of Eric Schmidt, he was in Davos this week, and he had some choice words for reporters on Google's competition -- and it's not Facebook. "Microsoft has more cash, more engineers, more global reach. We see competition from Microsoft every day," says Eric, while Facebook "has clearly stated they don't want to get into the search business. Facebook users tend to use Google search." As for Apple, he gave the usual line about both partnering with and competing with Cupertino, while taking a moment to laud Steve Jobs as "the most successful CEO in the world anywhere," who's built an "elegant, scalable, closed system" while "Google is attempting to do something with a completely different approach." Spoken like a true frenemy, we suppose. Check out the source links to read both pieces.
Engadget Podcast 230 - 01.24.2011
This week in consumer electronics was full of culture. Or maybe it was full of color -- we're not quite sure what the difference might be, but there was a lot of weird / cool news in the CEO, handheld gaming, and tablet worlds. The point is, we've got another weird / cool podcast on our hands that you haven't listened to yet and you need to take care of that, like, five minutes ago.Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, #1 Digitimes bestselling author Paul MillerProducer: Trent WolbeMusic: Superstition00:04:15 - Steve Jobs takes medical leave from Apple, Tim Cook taking over daily operations in his absence00:10:22 - Apple turns in record Q1: $6b profit on $26.7b revenue, 16.2m iPhones sold00:23:20 - Apple's invested in a 'very strategic' $3.9b component supply agreement, but what is it?00:25:10 - Asahi Glass introduces Dragontrail for consumer electronics, puts the Gorilla on notice (video)00:25:48 - Larry Page taking over as Google CEO, Eric Schmidt will remain as Executive Chairman00:35:30 - Google Voice now lets you port your own phone number, maybe (update)00:44:53 - Exclusive: HP / Palm's webOS tablets -- pictures, plans, and more00:45:42 - HP / Palm tablet to feature Touchstone dock, cloud storage, Beats audio and Tap-to-Share smartphone integration00:49:30 - HP calls us out, implies it's got even better scoops at February webOS event00:53:20 - HP's first webOS tablet may start shipping in March, fulfill longstanding promise01:06:00 - Motorola Xoom launching February 17th at Best Buy (update: priced at $700)01:06:22 - Motorola Xoom priced at $800 at a minimum, according to Verizon leak01:14:52 - Nintendo 3DS coming to US March 27th for $249.99, Europe first on March 25th (video)01:19:10 - Live from Nintendo's 3DS preview with Reggie Fils-Aime01:23:22 - Bloomberg: Sony PSP2 to debut next week, PlayStation Phone at MWC01:23:47 - This fan-made PSP redesign is sexy01:25:15 - PSP2 to be based on iPhone-esque PowerVR GPU, rival original Xbox in power?01:27:52 - The Engadget Show returns next Sunday with Steve Wozniak!Hear the podcastSubscribe to the podcast[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC).[RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.[RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator.[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune MarketplaceDownload the podcastLISTEN (MP3)LISTEN (AAC)LISTEN (OGG)Contact the podcast1-888-ENGADGET or podcast (at) engadget (dot) com.Twitter: @joshuatopolsky @futurepaul @engadget @reckless
Larry Page taking over as Google CEO, Eric Schmidt will remain as Executive Chairman
Google's Q4 financial results press release contains a bombshell: as of April 4, co-founder Larry Page (on the far right, above) will replace Eric Schmidt as CEO and assume responsibility for day-to-day operations and product development and strategy. That doesn't mean Schmidt is leaving -- he'll carry on as Executive Chairman and serve as an advisor to Page and co-founder Sergey Brin, focused on external things like "deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership." As for Sergey, he'll now "devote his energy to strategic projects, in particular working on new products," with the simple title of Co-Founder. Schmidt's clarified and explained the change in a blog post, saying that the idea is to make leading Google as efficient as possible, and that "Larry, in my clear opinion, is ready to lead." It's clear the idea is to frame this as a simple organizational shuffle -- Schmidt says that he, Brin, and Page "anticipate working together for a long time to come" -- but there's no question that Schmidt's reign as CEO set a clear tone for Google as the company expanded beyond search and into new markets like smartphones, connected televisions, and operating systems, and we're curious to see what Page's style is like. We're also very curious to hear more about why the change was made -- although Schmidt, Page, and Brin have worked together for over 10 years, there's always been some tension between the co-founders and their CEO, particularly over user privacy. In any event, this is a momentous change both for Google and the industry -- we'll see what happens next.
WSJ: Google 'agonizing' over user privacy, 'vision document' suggests selling data
It was just last week that the Wall Street Journal reported Microsoft's decision to limit private browsing in IE8 as part of its ongoing series on online privacy, and today the focus is on Google, which is said be "agonizing" over the balance between user privacy and advertising opportunities. It's a long piece that you should read in full, but essentially the WSJ claims that Larry Page and Sergey Brin have gone from strictly forbidding any efforts to track users online to a more subtle interpretation of their famous "don't be evil" motto which allows them to leverage user data and sell finely targeted ads without "exploiting customers." According to the WSJ, the change in attitude came with the rise of upstart ad firms that lacked Google's scruples and the search giant's purchase of DoubleClick, which led to Google's first use of cookies. What's more, once at Google, former DoubleClick exec Aitan Weinberg produced a seven-page "vision document" that outlined several strategies to profit from user data, ranging from building a "trading platform" for user data to allowing users to pay directly and get rid of ads all together. (Google says the document was for "brainstorming" and that some of the proposals are "complete non-starters.") The WSJ also says Google's working hard on that rumored social networking service to go head-to-head with Facebook, complete with a "like" button it can put across the web to build an even better profile of your likes and dislikes, and that the company is considering mixing user data from across services like Gmail and Google Checkout to make those profiles even deeper, all while trying to balance privacy, security, and legal interests. This balance appears to be causing significant tension between everyone at Google, Larry and Sergey included: the WSJ says the two founders have had shouting matches over things like selling "interest-based" ads, and that Sergey has been more reluctant than Larry to take advantage of user data. Like we said, it's a good read, so hit the source link and get to it.
