Google’s OnHub router may save WiFi from itself

OnHubGoogle this week introduced its first WiFi router and my initial reaction was “Why?” WiFi access points and home routers tend to be low-margin commodity products that could only hurt financial results for the search giant. What made it worth the pain on Wall Street, then, for Google to introduce this gizmo? And then I realized it is Google’s best hope to save the Internet… and itself.

WiFi is everywhere and it generally sucks. WiFi has become the go-to method of networking homes and even businesses. I remember product introductions in New York back in the 80s and 90s when we were told over and over again that it cost $100 per […]

By |August 21st, 2015|2015, Companies, Gadgets, Internet, mobile technology, Product Development, Technology|123 Comments
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IBM is so screwed

I’ve been working on a big column or two about the Office of Personnel Management hack while at the same time helping my boys with their Kickstarter campaign to be announced in another 10 days, but then IBM had to go yesterday and announce earnings and I just couldn’t help myself. I had to put that announcement in the context you’ll see in the headline above. IBM is so screwed.

Below you’ll see the news spelled-out in red annotations right on IBM’s own slides. The details are mainly there but before you read them I want to make three points. First, IBM’s sexy new businesses (cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security or CAMSS) aren’t growing — and probably won’t be growing — […]

By |July 21st, 2015|2015, Big Data, Breaking News, cloud computing, Companies, Industry, mobile technology, Privacy and Security, Social Media|167 Comments
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Remember when technology was exciting?

GoogleGraph
Al Mandel used to say “the step after ubiquity is invisibility” and man was he right about that. Above you’ll see a chart from the Google Computers and Electronics Index, which shows the ranking of queries using words like “Windows, Apple, HP, xBox, iPad” — you get the picture. The actual terms have changed a bit since the index started in 2004 as products and companies have come and gone, but my point here is the general decline.

Just as Al predicted, as technology has become more vital to our lives we’ve paradoxically become less interested, or at least do less reaching out. Maybe this is because technologies become easier to use over time […]

By |July 13th, 2015|2015, Technology|65 Comments
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2015 Predictions: It’s about the money, stupid!

MaxHeadroom460It’s time, finally, for my long-delayed 2015 predictions. Things just kept changing so fast I had to keep re-writing, but have finally stopped. 2015 will definitely be the Year of Monetization, by which I mean it’s the year when the bottom line and showing profits will become a key motivator in almost every market. And while profit — like beer — is generally good, it isn’t always good for everyone. So here are my 10 predictions in no particular order.

Prediction #1 — Everyone gets the crap scared out of them by data security problems. In many ways this was set up by 2014, a year when, between Edward Snowden and Target, […]

By |January 16th, 2015|2015, Business, cloud computing, Companies, mobile technology, Predictions, Privacy and Security, wearable technology|102 Comments
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The Secret of Google X

Sergey“All politics is local,” said House Speaker Tipp O’Neill, meaning that every politician has to consider the effect that his or her positions will have on voters. What makes perfect sense on a national stage might be a disaster back in the district, where the actual voters live. And so it is, too, with big companies, where local impact is sometimes more important than national or international. Sometimes, in fact, companies can be completely re-routed solely to please or affect a single executive. I believe we are seeing precisely that right now at Google concerning Google X.

Google X is that division of the search giant responsible for self-driving cars, Google Glass, and […]

By |June 27th, 2014|2014, Companies, People, Product Development, Technology|49 Comments
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