Let’s take a trip back in time. The year is 1994, and two tech giants are going to war over copyright. They are Microsoft and Apple, and they are fighting over a copyright claim by Apple over Microsoft and HP’s use of graphical user interface elements from the Macintosh OS. The resulting court case, Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation, ended with a ruling in Microsoft’s favor, mostly due to a contractual license agreement between the two.
The matter was never fully settled by the case though. Instead, negotiations that took place several years later resulted in the two companies agreeing to make Internet Explorer Mac’s default browser. Microsoft also agreed to keep developing Office for the Mac. Most importantly though, Microsoft invested $150 million into Apple to keep it afloat.
This series of events, which happened while Steve Jobs was being reinstated as the CEO of Apple, set the stage for what is happening today between Microsoft, Apple, and Google (). While Microsoft and Apple are still bitter rivals, several recent events have inadvertently brought them closer together in order to fight their common enemy: Google.
The phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” comes to mind. Let’s explore how we got to this tipping point.
Android: Google Enters Apple’s Turf
When Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined Apple’s Board of Directors in 2006, the move made perfect sense. Here’s what Apple said about Eric in its original announcement:
“Eric’s 20 years of experience as an Internet strategist, entrepreneur and technologist give him a well-seasoned perspective which perfectly complements Google’s needs as a young and rapidly growing company with a unique corporate culture.”
At that time, Google wasn’t in mobile, hardware, operating systems, or browsers. Now Google is directly competing with Apple through the Nexus One, Google Chrome, Chrome OS, and even possibly in the tablet computer space.
It all started with Android (), though. Back in August 2007, details began to leak about Google building a mobile OS or even a GPhone. It turned out to be Android, the open-source mobile OS that is now the fastest growing smartphone OS on the market.
At first, Android didn’t pose much of a threat, but as more phones utilized the software, the relationship between Google and Apple became very uncomfortable. Eric Schmidt sat out board meetings discussing the iPhone due to conflict of interest, but the relationship only eroded from there.
Watershed Moment: Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple’s Board
Tensions between the two companies grew worse after Apple rejected Google Voice as an app on the iPhone.
The resulting FCC inquiry, along with an FTC investigation and the announcement of Google Chrome OS were just too much. On August 3rd, 2009, Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s Board of Directors.
In retrospect, this was the moment when Apple, Google, and the rest of the world realized that the two companies could no longer be allies. Google’s expanding interest outside of search was pouring over into Apple’s domain on multiple fronts. With the search giant free of its Apple association, it could go all-out on its agenda to bring more people onto the web for longer (read the Google Revenue Equation to learn why).
The culmination of the breaking of the Google-Apple alliance? It was the release of the Nexus One, a direct competitor to Apple’s lucrative iPhone.
Recent Events: Apple and Microsoft Talk Bing
Yesterday we learned that Apple and Microsoft are in talks to make Bing () the default search engine for the iPhone. While we’ve heard this rumor before, the talk seems to be heating up. Most of our readers expressed their dismay or shock over the potential deal, some questioning why Apple would ever team up with Microsoft over Google.
Really though, the deal makes perfect sense, given the new competitive landscape. Earlier today, Jim Goldman at CNBC provided some interesting new information on the dynamics of the Apple-Google-Microsoft relationship. According to his source, Steve Jobs hates Eric Schmidt (it wouldn’t surprise us) and Microsoft is offering a bigger cut of iPhone search revenues than Google.
While Microsoft and Apple’s relationship grew cold after the Redmond, WA company bailed Apple Computer out, it never vanished. Moreover, Steve knows that he can work with Microsoft, especially if it helps Microsoft hurt Google.
Android has become the de-facto alternative to the iPhone OS, and the Nexus One is closest thing yet to a smartphone that can stand up to the iPhone’s dominance. While Microsoft and Apple are still in competition over Mac vs. PC, Apple clearly believes that its future isn’t just in computers, but in other Internet devices such as the iPhone and the fabled Apple Tablet. Microsoft poses far less of a threat in these areas than Google does.
It’s time to call it: Google is now Apple’s greatest enemy. Soon Google will be entering its OS turf with Chrome OS. Apple increasingly sees Google as a major competitor over the next few years. While the company Steve built doesn’t particularly like Microsoft, it knows that it has to work with the lesser of two evils in order to succeed.
Say hello to the new dynamic. It’s Apple + Microsoft vs. Google. May the new battle begin.
Google Is Now Apple’s Greatest Enemy: Here’s Why
via mashable.com
Youtube expands its HTML5 experiment
Quite a while back Google launched a demonstration of what YouTube would look and function like if it used HTML5's video tag instead of the Flash player. The single page demo showcased a video which seemed indistinguishable form the Flash player, until you tight clicked the video and realized that no Flash player was involved.
The HTML5 demo page used to be accessible via http://www.youtube.com/html5, which now instead offers a page which allows you to join the HTML5 experiment.
YouTube is now making available an HTML5 version of its entire catalog -- well, almost -- of videos when you join the experiment. However the catch is, the video will be streamed in the H.264 format, which if you know is not supported in the Firefox browser.
The HTML5 <video> tag specification is still conspicuously missing a standard for a video codec. While there has been a huge push for the standardization of a format such as Theora, especially from the browser vendors Opera and Mozilla, however Nokia and Apple had doubts about the formats. Apple made the point that H.264 was already a more popular and supported format, which is quite valid. Concerns were also raised about the existence of unknown patents on technologies used by Theora and Ogg.
As such, with no standardized format recommendation browsers are free to implement a format of their choice. Currently the important players seem to be H.264, and Theora, and Theora as a format is supported on all browsers due to its open nature, which H.264 is present in Chrome and Safari.
This means that as for now, YouTube's HTML5 feature will only work on Safari, Google and Chrome Frame on Internet Explorer, sorry Firefox users. This limitation, along with the fact that the new HTML5 based player wont work with videos having annotations, ads or captions, is something that Google will address over time. Hopefully, soon YouTube will become a fully HTML5 compatible website with support for Theora as well.
YouTube is not the first the introduce HTML5 based videos though, as DailyMotion launched this experiment quite a while back, and http://tinyvid.tv/ is a website which exclusively caters HTML5 videos.
While the move to HTML5 is excellent surely, a standard video format still needs to be defined, and an open patent unencumbered format is the dire need of the web. Hopefully Google's acquisition of On2 will bear some fruit?
via thinkdigit.com
CAT might be conducted on Open Source software
Bangalore: After the unsuccessful attempt by Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to hold CAT online, IIM officials are now considering shifting to Linux based Open Source software Foss. Around 20,000 students were impacted by virus attacks while giving the online exam, thus forcing the officials to seriously reconsider the whole situation. The idea of going for Open Source software (free) would be much easier and cheaper for the officials rather than going in for proprietary software.
"Online exams can be easily conducted using Foss as it can not only reduce costs by over 50 percent, but it is also safe against virus and malware attacks," said one of the IIM officials to Economic Times. Experts like T Vignesh Prabhu, a hacker at 'deeprootlinux', which is dedicated to developing and supporting Foss, said virus attacks form the major concern of IIMs. "The only solution is to discard the virus-prone operating system you have been using and install Foss, such as GNU (free software) and Linux-based operating systems," he said.
IIMs had given U.S. based firm Prometric a $40 million contract for arranging the online exams. Despite installing several security measures, they were unable to prevent the virus attacks. Officials at Prometric, which had used proprietary software this time, said many centres were affected by mainly two viruses - Conflicker and W32.NIMDA. IIM officials said this happened despite the fire-walls systems installed. They said the CAT computers were sourced and leased from local colleges in the cities where the examinations were held. They said most of the CAT computers got infected through the servers and other computers in various colleges through the local area network.
Foss software, which grants users the right to study, change, and improve its design through its source code, is the most preferred option. Prabhu said there is enough statistics to prove that GNU/Linux-based operating systems are less prone to virus attacks. The only other way is to keep fighting the viruses by installing the latest updates of various anti-virus software. "And, you have to keep your fingers crossed hoping that developers of anti-virus companies are just as fast as the virus-writers," he added.
The Foss model is already working successfully in states like Kerala, where the state government's IT@School provides IT-enabled education to 1.6 million students a year in the state using Foss. "We will use Foss to handle over four lakh admission application forms in a period of 10-15 days for two lakh 11th standard seats in government and government-aided institutions," said IT@School Executive Director K Anvar Sadath. He said the CAT exam can be run successfully on Foss without any virus threats.
Despite all these advantages, some IIM officials also said it will be difficult to conduct exams like CAT on Foss as it is not user-friendly and there is very less awareness about it. But on the other hand many experts view Windows as too prone to computer viruses and hacking.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)