Julien Boyreau

Introduction
2008 marks the 10th anniversary of one among the most recent successful companies, Google.

Looking at the WWW today, one can see that Google is everywhere, nearing Microsoft like monopoly, in many domains such as revenue growth, brand recognition, management practices and computers' network expertise.

Facing this kind of power, people tend to have one of two kind of reactions.
Being angry and trying to beat the player in front of states' court.
Being fascinating and trying to beat the player in front of people, offering a better solution to them.
I am definitely at my humble level in the second category.

In this text, I will expose some of my thoughts about the way a group may beat Google in front of customers.

1) Beating Google by doing better
Even if the company has been digging in many territories in recent days as Microsoft's been moving around Windows+Office, the main role of Google is to provide what we call "search".
Search for me is an unnecessary complex word for a more simple activity: what's Google actually doing is answering questions from people.
When you're typing words to tell to Google, you're not actually "searching" but morelike asking a question.
Except for a very small subset, the way Google's answering is very primitive.
It's just getting from its giant memory the pages in which the words are: the main value in this process is so not in "what" Google is getting but how it is ordering these pages.
The main limits of Google answers is so:
You always needs to read pages to get the "real" answer.
Sometimes, the fact that Google just see "words" and not "proper nouns", "common nouns", verb or adjectives is that it misses completely the point and you're wasting time either refining your question or reading more and more pages.
Google does not read between the content words and actually encourages people not to type them.
Google is working well to answer to a person, but not at all for a computer.

The last point is the most important: the limits of Google for answering to a person is a waste of time.
But the limits of it for answering to a computer is a dead end. Because of that, one of the main aim of a computer, that is to do something for a person is lost.
When you want for example to know in which cinemas you can see a film, you'll type the nouns, Google will answer probably the pages of cinemas companies first, you will read these pages and get it.
But if you want to tell a computer to tell you that when one of the cinema is in the city where you are, there is no chance it will ever be able to do it for you, as from the words to Google, it won't read the good information.
Thus there are many room today to beat Google by doing better and actually many companies trying to do so.
One of the main problem of them, beside technology is the second way of beating Google.

2) Beating Google by doing it different.
The real reason of monopoly is rarely the undefinite leadership of a company at the product level.
It's more often a particular core pre requisite that's almost impossible to defeat.
Intel and x86 has been there for 30 years because backward compatibility kills any chance to win with a better set of instructions.
Microsoft has been the endless leader of software because of a killer business model, selling to computer makers and so spreading any new Windows version with the PCs growth.
Google is a very solid leader not because of what they do, but because of what they have to make what they do, that is the most powerful, big and efficient mainframe ever made.
It always made me laugh to see that Google's always been pride of telling that you can know anything from Google. Actually, one of the stuff you can not know is about Google's computers. Simple but customized machines, numerous (500000+), dispatched all over the world, this system is fascinating.
However it promotes a model of computing that was popular in the 60's, the mainframe, centralizing all the information and computing resource under a single group.
The main reason why all the Powerset, Twine and al will fail is not because of their product.
It's because they're following the same architecture idea that's to make a super mainframe, and at this game, no one could out beat Google.
In the same way that Microsoft defeated IBM, to beat Google is to do it differently by pushing forward personal computing with P2P and not backward to mainframes.
To do that, there's even not a need to invent complex new protocols, but to come back to what the first vision of Tim Berners Lee for the WWW was: a person's computer that is able to GET and POST as a 'browser' but also to BE GOT and POSTED as a "server".
Promoting this approach, you may decentralize the Google system and gain more privacy, more scalability and more freedom to publish your information to anyone.
This will also put back personal computers in light to rediscover a role lost that's the third way to beat Google.

3) Beating Google by monetizing different
The main thing that's people are seeing from Google is software.
But as all the successful software makers, Google is not selling it to users.
Microsoft is selling to computers makers, Apple is selling the computers and Google is selling spacetime for ads.
As told before, a computer is aimed both for a person to do something AND to do something for a person.
The first is the main pushed by Google because in this one, there will be an interface for the person to do on which you can put ads.
Thus Google's business model is pushing a person to do more and more where a computer should also be a way for a person to do less and less (unpleasant) things.
Automatisation is thus really the way to attack Google business model not by trying to grab a share of it but by repurposing computers on tasks that limits its scale.

Conclusion
Many companies are today looking indepently at these 3 axis to compete with Google.
I think that it's in the combination of both 3 that a new leader would emerge.
This will come and after the US government, IBM, Microsoft and Google, will hightlight a new leader in the 5th generation of computing.

Try a little test : google the questions words in English.
On top of the list, you will find the usual suspects, what, who, why and how.
One will be quite less used than the others, whose.

However, the whose question has been the most important, controversial of all.
It has been the cause of so many wars, murders, conflicts and tears.
It's the essence of what makes humans different.

For anything, you can always ask : "whose is it?".
When this is a person, the answer has been agreed by blood and sanctuarized by a famous text : a person is self's.

But for anything but a person, the question remains: "whose is it?'.
Knowing this is the most essential, because we've been (quite) agreeing that the one whose it is can do what he wants with it and especially gives it to someone else.
To this question are only two answers: it is either a person's or persons'.

When it's a person's, it can change faster than when it's persons'.
Indeed, a person has just to agree with himself to do something to it.
When it's persons', they have to agree on what to do with it.

The most used rule for one that's persons' today is the one of the most.
What to do with it is what the most wants.
Most often, this is implemented by voting.
People are most often voting in two cases : for what to do with a state, where a vote is a person and for what to do with a company, where a vote is a share from the company.

The biggest difference between the two are :
For a company, only people that have shares can vote. These people BOUGHT these shares so took a risk to care about the company. They can SELL these shares when they don't care anymore.
For a state, only people that are citizens for this state can vote, so:
People living in the country where a state is can not vote.
People "investing" a lot in the state are as important as the others.
Citizens can not escape from the state to give away both obligations and rights got from the state.

Whatever the case, persons' is most often slower than a person.

So, while I am hating the system for states, I do think that anytime we can have one that is a person's, we should make it.

As I wrote before, we have been witnessing since the beginning of WWW a tacit fight between two philosophical camps in the computing microcosm:

In the left corner sit the promoters of "cloud" computing, the same that tried to sell the Network Is The Computer propaganda ten years ago.
As I explained before, "cloud" is just a more cloudy term to refer to mainframe computing, the popular architecture of the...sixties!!!
The few have computers and the many have screens and keyboards to tap in these huge and shared computing resources.
In this model, you are depending on the big guys for the right to do what you want with THEIR computers.
The main forces in this Empire are the biggest on WWW such as Google, that built the biggest mainframe ever with hundreds of thousands computers, and the makers of servers like Sun and Oracle.

In the right corner sit the more hidden promoters of "even more personal" computing, building on the shoulders of computing democratizers of the 70s, especially with Peer 2 Peer (P2P) computing.
As I explained before, "P2P" is just a fancy term to refer to the next step of personal computing, where more and more is done by a person's computer, sucking the control from the mainframes.
The main forces among these Jedis are the biggest makers of personal computers, from Nokia to Apple.

The latest interesting nascent trend from the Jedis is the idea of Pocket Web Servers.
This was started by Nokia with their Web Server for s60.
This has been worked by the iJetty project, targeting the Android stack from Google.
This SHOULD be the most important feature to add to Firefox to make it a real competitor to the Facebooks of the world.

A Web Server in the Pocket could make person to person communications much simpler by enabling a direct and standardized HTTP messages between handsets.

What's lacking for this?
Number 1, the collaboration of carriers to allow then optimize incoming requests to handsets on their network.
Number 2, a more spread will of persons to buy, thus own their name on WWW to be fully independent from service providers.

I can thus dream of the day where I may have Julienboyreau.com on my iPhone, letting who I want GET FROM it and POST TO it in real time, punching back all the Twitters and Facebooks of the world.

In the short term, 4 key companies may have to choose a camp :
Google may have to choose between Adwords (The Empire side) and Adsense (The Jedi side).
Intel may have to choose between Xeon (The Empire side) and Atom (The Jedi side).
Nokia may have to choose between Ovi (The Empire side) and Web Server, s60, NSeries (The Jedi side).
Microsoft may have to choose between Live (The Empire side) and Windows (The Jedi side).

Any person on Earth knows a language.

This may be English, French, Mandarin, Spanish or whatever, but any person knows at least one among these.

Any text between persons are in one of this language.

We've been writing and speaking with each other in these languages since a long time and they all became quite robust and powerful to tell what you want.

Then since the 50s, we've been writing and speaking not only to persons but to computers.

And we've kept on "making" new languages to talk with computers, from assemblers to Javascript, XHTML and CSS by C, C++, Lisp, Java, Smalltalk...

All of these languages for computers seem to me to share false starting points.

1) They're choosing an "orientation" be it "imperative", "declarative", "object", "functional", whereas languages for persons are multi orientation.
2) They have thus a specific grammar, focused on a single concept such as "object", "function", "query", "tag", "class", "resource", "triple"...completely different from the grammar for languages for persons, that ALL exhibits COMPLEMENTARY ideas such as "noun", "verb", "adjectives", "adpositions", "affirmation", "question"...
3) They let a person choose whatever words to reinvent "identifiers" from words picked up in a language for persons, either by concatening them ("PersonsWithASalary") or abbreviating ("iframe" or "char"...).

All of these draw a line between persons that took the time to learn one of this language and the others.
With time, the so called "programmers" group has been growing but in 2008, it's still a very small one compared to the rest.

One of the refreshing idea of the past 10 years has been XML : this is not a language per se, but symbols or syntax to talk to computers.

The problem of XML are however serious by design.
1) The "tag" and "attribute" in XML are not mapped to any natural language, so two persons can equivocally do what they want with them.
2) Even if it can be made clear what a tag and an attribute are for, two relationships are not enough to tell everything you can tell in a natural language.
3) You can make whatever tag or attribute you want, exposing people to the drama of "nominalization" ("creation"), "concatenation" ("RectangleWithRoundedCorners") and abbreviation ("char").

Point 2 is particularly serious.
For example, 'animal' => 'dog' => 'Malik', 'USA' => 'San Fransisco' => 'Malik', 'Clara' =>'dog' => 'Malik', or 'Malika' => 'Malik' are 4 different meanings, that is, Malik is a dog, Malik is at San Fransico, Malik is Clara's dog and Malik is from Malika.
In English, it's easy to tell ; in XML, it's just equivocal or impossible to do.

For me, what's needed is thus not a new "language" but symbols much better than XML, but one that is :
a) Richer than the 2 "tag" and "attribute" thing.
b) Nearer from the grammar of a language, with way to see a noun, verb, adjectives...
c) Univocal to tell what a symbol is for.
d) More restrictive on words, preventing a person to reinvent a noun, verb or adjective already in a language.

I have been working for 1 year on such symbols and making recently progresses to make them into a working example.
The coolest right now is that I can tell it in plain French, let it get what I told from French for this to be told in English and for this to be thought about from English.

In the next 3 to 4 months, I hope I will show it to more people than myself ;).

Stay in touch if you're interested to overcome "programming" languages and moving to more natural interfaces.

I bought an iPhone and upgraded to a plan for iPhones 40 days ago.
My previous phone was a 3410 from Nokia with a GSM only plan (not even SMS!) so the upgrade was quite huge ;)
Everything's been told about an iPhone but I will tell you how I feel with it.

I) The present

1) It's so beautiful.
I am keen on gadgets mixing usability and art and I must say my iPhone is really the most beautiful I've ever had.
In the first few days, I was keeping on just looking at it and felt pleased.
The lines are so perfect, stripped down, "pure" that I don't know how one can be more beautiful.

2) being pervasive and unlimited mitigates how slow EDGE is.
Yes, EDGE is not the fastest and having Wifi on my iPhone is reinforcing this fact.
But coupling how pervasive it is and that it's unmetered makes me feel the biggest value similar to the transition from dial up to DSL : you don't even think about connectivity, you don't hesitate to grab some news or a map when you want it, it's just there.

3) music and videos is great.

4) the internet eventually.
Since 2000, carriers has been stuck into the idea that you should need a language (WML) and a protocol (WMP) for what's via the Web on your mobile.
Surfing the Internet on my iPhone definitely trumps this idea off !
The navigation is really simple, double tapping is smooth.

II) The future

When you're working in this industry and once you tasted an iPhone, the tough question came around : how to make this better ?

1) Short term.
At least 4 better are obvious and easier predict.
i) Faster cellular : HSPA then LTE...
ii) Better camera : 3 then 5 then 8...
iii) More memory : 16GB then 32GB the...
iv) More precise location : cell triangulation then GPS then...

2) Mid term
It became there harder to say.
v) NFC : to pay or pass gates with your iPhone.
vi) Automatic wireless connection to a bigger screen or keyboard : this will come but may be dangerous for Apple because it will put an iPhone in a competition with laptops and desktops for persons in the mainstream.
vii) Automatic wireless backup to a bigger and safer memory : would it be at home or at Apple's ?

3) Long term.
Somewhere in 2009-2010, an iPhone with the previous will come out ; it will be engined by a chipset as Moorestown from Intel, fast enough to do most of what the mainstream want.
It will be the ultimate monolythic-and-carried-in-a-pocket computer, to get only smally better.
Here will come the need for a new era, more than personal, not monolythic, not carried in a pocket, the first symbiotic computer.

60 years ago, John Von Neumann made a revolution when he figured out his famous architecture for computers.
Computers at this time were told what to do as any other machine ; by plugging cables once to do only one thing.
Von Neumann introduced first the idea of a computer with a memory to remember.
Some persons used this memory idea to remember as digits numbers, colors, texts.
Von Neumann then introduced a second more important idea : a computer able to remember an instruction aka "what to do".

Since then a computer was able to get from memory what to do as instructions.
This made an interface between circuits made with transistors to "do" the instructions and something else to make many instructions triggered by only one instruction from a person.
This gave birth to what we're calling now "software", the capability for a computer to do many things from one thing from a person.

The problem since then has always been the gap between the instructions done by circuits in a computer and the instructions a person can tell to do.

A person is thinking and telling to other persons in a language such as English, French, Mandarin or Spanish whereas a circuit can understand only instructions in a so called "machine language" to move, calculate and compare numbers.

The history of software is the one of narrowing this gap by making stuffs between "natural" languages and "machine" languages.

This history is full of attempts from assembly language to C, C++, LISP, Smalltalk, Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, Javascript, HTML, CSS...

This history is also full of (very) successful companies, from Microsoft to Google.

Any successful company today has to deal with software.

What is the most striking to me is that NONE of the most successful software makers don't sell it to individuals using it!

Yes, Microsoft is selling software but gets 90% of its sales and profits by selling it either to PC makers selling to people or to companies buying PCs for employees or servers for themselves.
Yes, Apple is selling to people but gets 90% of its profits by not selling the software but the machines (iPods and Macs) in which the software is.
Google is not selling software at all but the spacetime people spent using its software to advertisers.
Adobe is selling software not to users but to groups making either software, videos or images.

That is the rule to remember : if you want to get big profits from making software for people, don't sell it to them !!!

For 6 months, I have been reading more and more often texts polluted with this "cloud" meme.
Many among the most brilliant and salient tellers keep on talking about the magic of the cloud, how it will change everything and how good it is.

Be careful ! This is just the latest version of the famous "the network is the computer" propaganda made by Sun Microsystems and Oracle 10 years ago.

To get back on Earth, let's think about the underlined question behind the cloud : whose are computers and how many are they ?

1) In the 50s, computers were few and states'.

The first commercial computer was an UNIVAC and was sold to the US Census Bureau. Around 50 were made later and sold either to groups in states or to the biggest companies.
These had very big problems to solve and as a computer at this time was for 150 000 dollars, only big groups could afford them.

2) In the 60s, computers were few and companies'

The posterchild computer for this time was PDPs sold by DEC to more and more companies as they were for around tens of thousands dollars.
At this time yet, there were mostly one or two computers in a group but more and more persons wanted to use it.
So they had to SHARE it, that lead to persons responsible for deciding who to use it and to use it for.
A person had a screen and a keyboard to tell the group's computer to do something for him.

3) In the 70s, computers were many and companies'

Moore's law dropped the price of transistors at a point where you could make a computer cheap and small enough for companies to buy a computer for more and more employees.
An employee did not need now to share a computer.

4) Since the 80s, some computers were made a person's

The revolution of "personal" computing is less about "microprocessor" or "GUI" or "Apple" than that for the first time, a computer was "really" made a person's.
Since now, a person can decide what to do with his computer by getting software.

5) Will 2010 be like 1951 ?

Here we are : behind the cloud, there is this trend to come back to the 50s where :
There are more and more computers.
There are all in less than 10 gigantic mainframes that are companies', such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay and...Facebook ?
A person has only a screen (to touch) ; anything else is Google's.

Some problems may be rooted in this :
The more you tell Google's, the more dependent you will be on one provider.
The more you tell, the harder it will be for you to switch to another provider.
The more many tell, the more painful it will be when there is a failure of Google.
Google will be more and more tempted to sell what it knew from you to advertisers.
There will be a day when you want to do something Google does not want : without your computer, you won't be able to do it.

6) Or will there be a personal computing new champion ?

Let's face it : Microsoft screwed the personal computer, by delivering bad updates (think V...) and forgetting his DNA to seduce corporations and advertisers, running behind Google.
The reaction to it is a belief that the best way to beat Microsoft is to come back to the 50s with mainframes.
We already know the leader of this camp, Google, a company that's morphing into the third giant in computing history, after IBM and Microsoft.
I am still waiting for a company that will move forward the personal computing revolution, sell a computer to a person, investing in P2P technology...

Will this be Apple, Nokia or someone else ?

Among words between us, I came to think that the most misunderstood is "rich".

Let's try to clear some about it.

1) You can never tell whether you are rich.

This seems to be possible but it's not. Not because you are stupid or I want to negate the word, but just because of grammar ! "Rich" as tall or old is an adjective, a kind of word men made to compare 2 ones with each other. Think about it. For tall, we're using meters to compare. For old, we're using years. For rich, there is one most seen than others : that one is known as "money".

2) You can always tell whether you are richer than a person.

Yes, when that person has more money than you, he is richer than you.

3) Telling it with "poorer" or "less rich" is moral tactics.

Telling that you are poorer than me is exactly the same that telling you are less rich than me. But the first will be better to touch persons' heart and convince them to help you. Good tactics.

4) Richer is better.

Not big news here. With more money, you may get more goods.

5) There are 2 plans to get richer.

Plan A : You can get more money. Plan B : You can give less money.

6) You can do both at the same time !

Hard ? Easy ! Let's say that you have no money : a) you are giving a good you made for 120 in money. For 120, only one person gave it to you. b) a person is asking 120 for a good you want. you gave the 120 for the good. After these, you have a good but not much money.

Let's now say that later : a) you are giving a good you made for 80 in money. For 80, two persons gave it to you. b) the person you once gave 120 made the same and is now asking 80 for a good you want. You gave 80 for the good. After these, you got 160 for what you made, or 40 more, and you got the good for 80 or 40 less ! So, you have a good and 80 in money. You won on both ways !!

Where's the trick, you may say ?

7) Persons can shrink the time to make.

Aesthets will use the more complex word "productivity" but that is what it is. With organization, tools, machines, thinking or whatever, we are shrinking time. So you can make at once more and more and thus ask less money per one, sell more and get more money. The trick is when you can sell twice more before asking twice less money, what an aesthet would name how elastic the demand is.

There is also a variant of this.

8) As cheap but better

That's basically a variation. You give the same money again and again to get better and better. Intel or Free are making a lot of money with this simple approach. For the same quality, you would give less money.

All of these seem simple ? Yes it is. But there's a but.

9) Which one to be money ?

To see it, remember this : the more goods for the same money, the cheaper they are. That's the heart of why Plan B is working. For this to happen, there should be the least more money, or to say differently it has to be scarcier. Men tried many goods to be money. They eventually agreed on one, it was Gold.

10) From Goldsmiths to banks.

The only problem with Gold, as with money, was when someone wanted to steal yours. For this, some people, known as goldsmiths, once proposed to persons to keep Gold safe. For a person to get back his Gold from them, goldsmiths were writing it on a paper. A person could thus leave his Gold at a goldsmith in say Paris and give the paper back to a goldsmith of the same family in say Florence, to get his Gold back. Soon, goldsmiths, once Gold safekeeper, became known as "banks".

11) From paper for Gold to paper for nothing.

The revolution came once goldsmiths saw 2 things : a) More and more persons were not giving Gold to each other but instead the PAPER for it. b) Few persons were giving back the papers at once to get Gold back. So the occasion was too sexy : i) Goldsmiths started to make more papers than the ones for Gold, that is paper for nothing. ii) Goldsmiths started to LEND these papers as money to persons.

12) When Gold was here, the risk to die limit the number of papers.

With gold, the strategy of banks was risky. When too many persons were not trusting a bank making too much paper, they could always go to the bank to get Gold back. when too many were doing it at once, the bank died. The fear of dying was preventing banks to make too much paper.

13) A murder in 3 acts.

Knowing this makes you understand why banks did not love Gold as money. So they looked for a way to kill Gold. Unfortunately, they found the strongest ally in their quest, states. As you may know, persons in a state have 3 ways to get more money : i) Force persons to give more money as taxes. ii) Borrow money from banks. iii) Make more paper and tell that this is money.

The 3rd is the best for them because most of people do not see the consequence.

But Gold, as for banks, was a serious danger to the plan. So, some banks and states decided to murder Gold as money.

Act 1 : in 1910, on the Jekyll Island, in USA, the biggest banks and persons in Congress acted to create the Federal Reserve, for banks not to be killed by making too much paper and for a state to be the first to get the money from nothin. Act 2 : in 1944, at Bretton Woods, profiting from post War climate, every link to Gold as money were broken except for papers for dollars. Act 3 : On the 15th of August, 1971, Richard Nixon broke the link between dollars and Gold.

14) Where is the problem ?

Remember the rule : the more goods for the same money, the cheaper they are. Reverse it, it's still working : the same goods for more money, the more expensive they are.

With dollars alone and the power to MAKE money from nothing, there are no limits to more money.

So with time, you have exactly the reverse of Plan B : you're getting less and less goods for your dollars.

15) Epilogue : it's up to you to call back Plan B.

If you're still there after this long speech, I hope you understood a bit more. It's up to you to revive the plan B to get richer. I hope you will now want, as me, to murder dollars and get Gold back.

The last 2 months has been such an avalanche of news that it was very hard to connect all the dots.

What's sure is we will see from 2008 to 2010 the most impressive and exciting Shumpeterian creative destruction since the first successful personal computers in the 1980s.

It will be so big that anyone among the most successful 2007's stars may not survive to it !

First, 5 technical earthquakes:

1. 1) With the new Cortex family of chips, designed by ARM, the "cellphone" lignea of personal computers will become powerful enough to cover the needs of mainstream.
2. 2) With the new Silverthorne and Moorestown family of chips, designed by Intel, the "desktop" lignea of personal computers will become energy-savvy enough to power the needs of mainstream for a full day on a battery, and small enough to fit in a pocket.
3. 3) Wireless USB over UWB will allow these computers to wirelessly connect to big screens and keyboards when needed.
4. 4) With fiber, any home will have the bandwidth to become a server.
5. 5) Hard disk drive will pass the milestone where anything done trhough a computer can be remembered.

Second, 5 market consequences

1. 1) Computers in the home will revive, as a safe place to store data and server to the fiber
2. 2) Laptops will die : too big for the pocket and not safe enough for the data.
3. 3) Home+Pocket Integration will be key : especially for data backup and network mobility.
4. 4) Every big guy will think towards the endgame : to sell at once pocket+home+connectivities+services.
5. 5) As no big guy can MAKE the 4, some will move from B2C to B2B

Finally 10 questions :

1. 1) Will Apple sacrify the "Mac" or the "iXxxx" brand to build the Home+Pocket combination ?
2. 2) Will Nokia sacrify the subsidies from carriers to build the combination of devices+connectivities ?
3. 3) Will Texas Instruments and Qualcomm survive if x86-based chips breach into the pocket ?
4. 4) Will Intel survive if ARM-based chips breach into the home ?
5. 5) Will Intel try to break Microsoft by pushing Linux down to pocket, up to home ?
6. 6) When will Nintendo update the DS to kill cellphones and iPods ?
7. 7) Will ONE carrier decide to focus on connectivity as a B2B service for Googles or Nokias ?
8. 8) Will Microsoft become an Apple and update Zune and XBox for Home+pocket ?
9. 9) Will Dell survive ?
10. 10) What will Google do ?

Je suis le premier billet. Modifiez moi.