Don't be Evil

Don't be Evil, Google said.
Yet, it streams cookies onto your computer. Knows what you read, what videos you watch, what links you click, what keywords you search for. The works. It even came up with a browser that is great for browsing, yet mysteriously, doesn't provide any real support for blocking ads (that would be real stupid, wouldn't it, if advertising was your bread-and-butter).

But is Google really out to become 'big brother', or is it simply very good at a number of things, and has made the web experience so good for us that we choose to conduct the lion's share of our online activities through Google?

According to Google's data, each dollar spent on advertising leads to two dollars in revenue for the advertiser (directly, through Adwords), and about eight dollars in profit (direct Adwords clicks, plus non-sponsored, i.e. regular search results). Definitely not evil !!!
Note: It might be too good to be true, and it would be interesting to investigate the assumptions made.

Bringing Films and TV onboard
Not so long back, the major studios viewed Youtube as a menace. However, the cliche "If you can't beat 'em, then join 'em" worked, and we got music videos from Sony, UMG, and EMI (3 out of the big 4) on VEVO on Youtube. NBC, Fox and ABC set up HULU (as an alternative to Youtube that they could live with).

Now, the consumers have got better quality content, and the studios are happy about that too. They wouldn't want low-quality videos of their star artists being put up. The advertisers are happier, too. They get to run their ads against slick videos uploaded by the studios, not against some grainy stuff uploaded by a teenager. Google's happy to overcome it's copyright hassles.
Hulu's actually better than Youtube, in this regard, but is currently restricted to USA, and has a fraction of the user-base that Youtube does.
The next step for Google would be to ink deals to provide studio-authorised content. Already started !

In an innovative move, Youtube broadcast IPL games, real-time, and split the ad-revenue with the IPL. Now if this could be extended to the NBA, NFL, the Premier Leage, Champions League.... wuff ! Enough said !!

Innovation, The Labs and their Alumni
Google docs, Google reader, iGoogle, Google Maps, Google groups. Alumni from Google Labs, each of these. I love the innovations that come out of Google Labs. I've often tried them out, out of curiosity.

The cool thing is that many of these are the product of Google's famous 20% time off policy. No, the engineers don't take Friday's off; they just work on whatever brainwave they have. GMail, Google News and AdSense are products of this really cool policy. Reportedly, about 50% of new product launches come from this 20% policy. Boy, I'd have loved to have this flexibility when I used to churn code.

Certainly not evil !!

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Hitting the roof

Today, I had a class that was the best I've attended at IE, as yet. By far, it was the most intellectually stimulating one.

We just went through some basic 'supply and demand' curves, and saw how simple things can be, and yet people get them wrong time and again. The shocking part was that this stuff is so elementary, and yet governments the world over mess it up with their ham-fisted attempts to control markets & prices. And going by the reactions of the others around me, I wasn't the only one shocked !!

We went through two cases of Govt. price controls messing things up in a big way.

We studied how Price Ceilings invariably cause shortages, hurting the very people they're intended to benefit. We took the example of Venezuela, how Hugo Chavez's price ceilings on essential commodities gave the poor people the illusion that it was good for them, whereas it actually left them facing massive shortages.

It reminded me of this WSJ article, which I'd recently read and discussed incredulously with a Venezuelan friend at IE. There is also this video, in which a farmer discusses the exact same points we went through in class, only more specific to his case, how he was driven out of his coffee business. Amazing !!

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Microsoft - A Cloudy future ahead ?

A disclaimer, right off the bat - I'm not a big fan of Microsoft. As an end-user, I use Chrome, not IE, Gmail a lot more than Hotmail, and would love to have Ubuntu on my laptop instead of Vista, but have chickened out.

The Good
Having said that, Microsoft must have done some things right over the years (duh, I could've said that without enrolling in IE Business School). For most of us, the first time we used a PC, we used Windows or DOS. Methinks, the best thing the boys in Redmond did was to simplify everything. I still remember the days when people took classes to learn how to operate computers! Now, everything is so intuitive.
The Bad
There's so much to say here! The highlights:-
* Windows is prone to crashing
* PCs kept getting faster, and Windows kept getting slower
* By the time Vista got around, people were fed up with the bloatware
The Ugly
There have been anti-trust issues. But these don't concern me directly as an end-user. So let's pass.

The arch-enemy - Google
More and more of your day-to-day work is going from your laptop onto the internet. Onto the cloud.
This makes them go head-to-head with Google in
* IE vs Chrome
* Hotmail vs Gmail
* MSN messenger vs Gtalk
* MS Office vs Google docs
* Bing vs Google
* Android vs Windows


The money, today?
Currently, Microsoft is getting the bulk of it's money from 2 blockbusters - the Windows operating systems (XP, Vista, 7) and Microsoft Office (2003, 2007, or the new 2010). From licenses.

The money, tomorrow?
In the near future, it'll be selling a service (a subscription). Microsoft will host these applications on their own servers, and the corporations will pay subscription on some sort of a per-user basis. Microsoft calls this Software + Service. The rest of the world, SaaS (software as a service) or Cloud Computing.
If you can buy milk, why go buy the cow? By the way, it's not just Software, you can get IT infrastructure too, as a service.

The new Office 2010 is already available, for free. It can be used to keep all your work 'online'. The cloud-wars have begun !

My $0.02 on the outlook (ok,bad pun!) for Microsoft
* I think the Microsoft of the future will be heavily reliant on the cloud.
* Google currently has a one-size-fits-all approach. All corporations get the same deal, be it a 10-man startup, or a biggie like Cap-Gemini. Microsoft has a more nuanced approach. They have one offering for the 10-man startup (where Microsoft hosts the apps on its servers), and another one for the big ones (can be hosted on the company's servers, and customised). This will be an initial advantage over Google, as their offerings are already tailored to enterprises scale implementations.
For Google, this is proving to be a bit of a challenge.
* And, I'm sticking my neck out here, but I think they're going to be fairly creative, and might finally shed their image of being 2'nd best in everything. If that's tough to imagine, then check out this amazing video clip - Vision 2019.

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Using technology to increase effort !

In my eco class in school, we are using an online tool called Aplia to turn in our assignments. It's a pretty cool tool (hey that rhymes, unintentionally, though !). There's all sorts of geeky stuff to play around with... Price elasticity of demand, income elasticity of supply, curves that shift, but don't move, and still more curves that move, but don't shift. Anyhow, you get the drift.. Stuff that can keep an economist up at night !

The website is pretty neat. Another one of the cool things we're doing here at IE. But what really beats me (as opposed to all the problems that are posted on Aplia, that also beat me) is this : "Aplia is a learning solution that increases student effort blah-2".

What ? Double check !! Did I get this right ??

On reflection, it appears so. As they'll teach us in some Marketing class in the future, this website is targeted at the academic community, not us, the end-users.

Increasing student effort ? Awesome !
Just kidding here ... the website is pretty cool !!

PS: Pardon me, but in plain and simple English, if a thing 'moves' or if it 'shifts', aren't these one and the same? These things should've been simplified a long time ago !

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Think before you click !

If you're one of the people spammed by this nonsense (so-called 'candid camera prank') on Facebook, then watch out.
You'd better be more careful the next time around !

You can check out further details here.

Methinks, one point to Jose Ramon, here !

PS: For the non-IMBA people reading this, Jose is a guy in my class who's spot on in saying that Facebook is a blight.

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Can't Beat 'em, then join 'em !

The news
Quite some time back, Oracle had acquired Sun. Now, in an attempt to catch up, Oracle's arch-rival, SAP, has acquired Sybase in a $5 billion deal. This was widely expected, since SAP was under pressure because of Oracle's stunning 'stack' strategy.
Sun had a hugely diversified product offering - the language used for many applications (Java) was theirs, the servers that a lot of companies used were theirs, the servers used an Operating system that was Sun's (Solaris) and the database that stored all the info could also have been from Sun.
The background
In early 2010, Sun was acquired by Oracle. Oracle had two hugely successful products - a suite of applications used by end-users in corporate offices, and the database that stored this info. After this merger, Oracle was in a position to offer a complete end-to-end solution to corporations, blocking out it's competitors, IBM and SAP, by offering better prices and the peace of mind that comes with dealing with only one vendor. In tech-speak, this concept is called a 'stack', with the software stacked upon an operating system, stacked upon a database, in turn stacked upon a server.
The competition
Oracle is currently the only one with a complete stack.IBM has everything except the strong ERP applications.SAP had only the application software. Now they've moved to acquire Sybase, a database.
Why the merger?
Now, it's only about half a year since Oracle acquired Sun and completed it's 'stack'. Definitely not enough time for the strategy to show any concrete results, either good or bad.
But SAP couldn't afford to wait and see if the strategy worked or not. They were placed in a sink-or-swim situation. They decided to swim. Will it work? The jury is still out on this one !!

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When I grow up .......

"A time comes when you stop waiting for the man you want to become, and start being the man you want to be".

~ The Boss, Bruce Springsteen

This is it...

The time is now!

Carpe Diem!!

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Show me the money !

At the IE IMBA program, there are some off-beat things that we do. None, so far, has been more off-beat than "Information Systems". So far, we've been discussing how Social media is changing lifestyles, and how companies are being affected (hey, it's a B-school !).

Sooner or later, every to-be-MBA goes "Show me the money !!". Take Twitter, for instance.

* Does it make any money?
* If yes, then how could it possibly do so?
* If not, then what's the point?

But if you're still at Twitter, then you've got some catching up to do. Meet Foursquare.

Foursquare reached the million user mark in half the time it took Twitter to do so.

Whats it about?

People can 'check in' to Foursquare from a specific location, say a restaurant. The more you do it, the more points you get. Visit a place (and check in from there) more than anybody else, and you become the 'mayor' of that place.

"What's in it for me, eh ?"

Maybe, the points don't mean a thing to you. They wouldn't, to me. But what if the bartender at the local Irish pub knew that I'm the 'mayor', and gave me a free beer each time (s)he saw me. That would definitely mean something ! Cheapskates, aren't we all !!




But why should the bartender do this for me?
* Well, customer loyalty, for starters. It's an easy way of identifying the regulars. And then keeping 'em regular!
* It's an easy-to-get word of mouth publicity for yourself
* the pub gets market-analytics info (age, sex, occupation etc. of the clientele, their timings at the pub/restaurant etc.). That helps the pub focus on the most profitable clients.
* the pub gets data on how effective it's marketing fundas have been

Fine, so the regular users are happy (a bit sozzled, too, with all the free beer !).
The bartender at the pub is happy. Just a few discounts(unavoidable anyway, but more targeted now), and more business in return.

But is that all ? Something's missing here !

Foursquare is still not making money !!
That's not what the to-be-MBA wants !
Show me the money !!

Raking it in with highly localised advertising
This is where the user helps Foursquare. It's not legal for advertisers to obtain your whereabouts based on your phone transmissions. So, Foursquare gets you to advertise your presence. This information is made available to advertisers.

You go to a gym, register your presence there, and lo, you get an SMS "Tired after a workout? There's a cold iced-tea and salad waiting just 2 minutes from you, at so-and-so location."

Creepy? For sure !

Invasion of your privacy? No. You let them know where you are.
Effective Local Marketing? Absolutely !

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