Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poett and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual and you don't even
Speaker 1: have to search for him, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: You know, I feel so dirty when they started talking cute.
Speaker 1: I want to tell her that I love her, but
Speaker 1: the point is probably moot. Okay, well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: try to puzzle out what that is actually doing with
Speaker 1: this subject. Absolutely nothing. Sorry I spoiled it for you,
Speaker 1: But today we're gonna talk about we decided we're gonna
Speaker 1: do another kind of series. And if you if you're
Speaker 1: if you're aware of our series, you know that we
Speaker 1: do these sporadically. Um, but we we like there's certain
Speaker 1: series we like to do where there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff on a particular kind of sub topic in tech
Speaker 1: and we think, oh, that'd be great to tackle that.
Speaker 1: But there's no way we can do one episode that
Speaker 1: covers the whole topic, right, It's just too big. Right.
Speaker 1: And and for those of you who have been with
Speaker 1: us for a long time and you you hear us
Speaker 1: launch series and you go yeah, but you don't come back.
Speaker 1: It's because we we think of these lists of stuff
Speaker 1: like this, and then we go, oh, we just didn't
Speaker 1: two on that, we should wait a while. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then so so we'll have to get back to like
Speaker 1: the two series we need to get back to sooner
Speaker 1: rather than later, our our electronic series, in our medical series,
Speaker 1: because we've had requests for both of those, so we
Speaker 1: will go back to those. But in this case, we're
Speaker 1: talking about tech rivalries. And we've talked about some tech
Speaker 1: rivalries recently in the podcast, Like we've had podcasts that
Speaker 1: were recently talking about Edison and Tesla, and that's one
Speaker 1: of the most famous rival reason technology in all of history. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The funny thing about when we talk about companies, which
Speaker 1: we're going to do today, is that in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases, uh, some of these companies are sort of frenemies,
Speaker 1: you know, friends and enemies. They might have a history
Speaker 1: of working together as well as working at cross purposes. Actually,
Speaker 1: come to think of it, I guess Edison and Tesla
Speaker 1: did work to them for a little while. But anyway,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they were more enemies than front of me. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so yeah, so we're going to talk today. The tech
Speaker 1: rivalry were specifically talking about is Google versus pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody else. In fact, in a way, this could be
Speaker 1: a part one of google rivalries with other companies, because truly,
Speaker 1: Google has had it Scott's finger in a lot of pies. Actually,
Speaker 1: the funny thing is that the one will probably end
Speaker 1: with is the rivalry that just sort of popped up
Speaker 1: and made us think of this, And it's not somebody
Speaker 1: we necessarily would have thought of as being or at
Speaker 1: least I would have thought of as being a competitor
Speaker 1: with Google. So let's start with the obvious. So from
Speaker 1: a consumer standpoint, like a customer, like an end user
Speaker 1: like me or or like Chris. To us, Google is
Speaker 1: a search engine. Yes chiefly. I mean there are all
Speaker 1: the other things that Google does as well. But if
Speaker 1: I say I'm going to Google something, that means I'm
Speaker 1: going to a search for it, and uh, and I
Speaker 1: mean there is a verb now for googling. So that
Speaker 1: shows that Google really has dominated this whole section of
Speaker 1: the internet. You know, the marketing department will probably their
Speaker 1: marketing department probably disagree that it's a verb, but they
Speaker 1: probably secretly are going, yes, yeah, I wouldn't imagine so
Speaker 1: the so the the first rivalry we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about was with Yahoo. You know, another big search engine
Speaker 1: and in fact was a huge search engine back in
Speaker 1: the nineties. Yes, well sort of it, I would argue,
Speaker 1: it was enormous. It was only after the dot Com
Speaker 1: crash that it started to really have to it really,
Speaker 1: it took that hit pretty hard. Although it survived obviously
Speaker 1: as opposed to some of the other companies now, it
Speaker 1: then built up quite a bit again, only to start
Speaker 1: suffering again in the late two thousand era. Why, I
Speaker 1: don't want to, uh to put it down as a
Speaker 1: search engine, but I don't think um okay y'ah, whose
Speaker 1: existence predates Googles by a few years. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: when Google made the scene, Yahoo was at least one
Speaker 1: of the search leaders. There were others like Alta, Vista
Speaker 1: and Umu hot Bot, which actually used a different engine
Speaker 1: deemed Yeah, and so there were a lot of them,
Speaker 1: but Yahoo, um at the time they were uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they were using a lot of human
Speaker 1: based power. But the thing is they were sort of
Speaker 1: leveraging that. Now, if you think about Yahoo right now,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a content engine. Uh. They have a
Speaker 1: lot of material that they create, editorial content or a
Speaker 1: license from other people, and they were sort of doing that.
Speaker 1: They were sort of contextualizing search, like if you were
Speaker 1: looking for something in particular, they might tell you, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, promote somebody that they had worked with and
Speaker 1: say why it was that you might want to pick them.
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily as search result, although you would get
Speaker 1: search results. Yeah, the uh that sounds weird. They were
Speaker 1: kind of a web portal. Yeah, they really were. So
Speaker 1: you think it was sort of a combination of the
Speaker 1: the the search engine, the the Internet search engine, and
Speaker 1: so almost like the online service providers we talked about
Speaker 1: in previous episodes. It's like the old days of all
Speaker 1: l and Prodigy. It kind of had its own sort
Speaker 1: of portal into the Web that wasn't all inclusive, but
Speaker 1: gave you a good spread of information across various topics,
Speaker 1: so that you know, you you could at a glance
Speaker 1: on one page see some interesting headlines and that might
Speaker 1: be that might be the extent of your experience using
Speaker 1: the Internet. Back in those days. Well, people didn't necessarily know.
Speaker 1: I worked in a an I s P and Internet
Speaker 1: service provider in the mid ninety nineties, and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people who would who would call our
Speaker 1: phone number. I've worked in sales for a bit and
Speaker 1: people would call and ask, you know, my son or
Speaker 1: my daughter told me I need to get an Internet
Speaker 1: account so I can send mail messages. What is this
Speaker 1: internet thing? And and what do I do? And the
Speaker 1: thing is, people didn't really know what a u r
Speaker 1: L was back then because they were being introduced to it.
Speaker 1: It was a sort of a new concept. The Internet
Speaker 1: had been around, but it wasn't always a consumer uh
Speaker 1: you know service, and it wasn't necessarily user friendly. I
Speaker 1: mean this was built by engineers. Yeah, and so I
Speaker 1: love you engineers, I love you all. Yes, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that people knew where they were going
Speaker 1: on the World Wide Web. I mean Worldwide Web was
Speaker 1: only you know, a few a couple of years old
Speaker 1: at that point, a few years old. Yeah, yeah, who
Speaker 1: you know who launched officially as a company in n
Speaker 1: Now it actually grew out of a service that had
Speaker 1: existed before that, but in became Yahoo and then they
Speaker 1: launched Yahoo Mail in nineteen. It sort of became a
Speaker 1: web portal. They purchased Geo Cities in nine, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, a web page hosting service which now no
Speaker 1: longer exists, but was. It was big for a while,
Speaker 1: and it it organized web pages into neighborhoods, so it
Speaker 1: was it was an attempt to make the web more uh,
Speaker 1: user friendly and understandable to the common consumer by by
Speaker 1: relating it to concepts that the consumer would already be
Speaker 1: familiar with. So yeah, I was really doing a lot
Speaker 1: of work in this area. Uh. And then they had
Speaker 1: the dot com bubble burst in the two thousand two
Speaker 1: thousand one era. Right around two thousand, Yahoo began to
Speaker 1: do something interesting. Yahoo began to use the search algorithms,
Speaker 1: licensing them from another search engine company, and that search
Speaker 1: engine company was Google. Google h they registered Google dot
Speaker 1: com in the company itself officially launched in night, so
Speaker 1: it was late to the game compared to Yahoo. But
Speaker 1: Google's service was considered to be one of the best
Speaker 1: on the web. For one, Google was able to index
Speaker 1: millions and later billions of web pages and had a
Speaker 1: very stripped down simple user interface. I mean it's the
Speaker 1: same as it as today in the sense that you
Speaker 1: go to www dot Google dot com, you're gonna see
Speaker 1: the Google logo, you're gonna see the search bar, and
Speaker 1: then you just type in your query and you hit
Speaker 1: search Plus. There's other stuff there too, but it's not
Speaker 1: much right. They kept it really stripped down and simple.
Speaker 1: And so that was Google's philosophical difference between you know,
Speaker 1: from Yahoo's point, like Yahoo strategy was web portal, throwing
Speaker 1: as many services there, try and be as useful as
Speaker 1: possible and be the destination for the people on the
Speaker 1: web that they will get their web content through Yahoo.
Speaker 1: Didn't you write an article about that about what the
Speaker 1: Google algorithm? Yes I did. I wrote an article about
Speaker 1: what makes the Google algorithms so important? And in fact
Speaker 1: y'ah who recognized how important the Google algorithm was, And
Speaker 1: so again in two thousand they started to work with Google.
Speaker 1: They began to use the Google search engine technology on Yahoo. Now, Yahoo,
Speaker 1: of course was really concentrated on building up that web
Speaker 1: portal aspect of their business at the time, and they
Speaker 1: used the Google algorithm till about two thousand four, and
Speaker 1: that's when Yahoo ended that relationship with Google and switched
Speaker 1: to an in house developed search algorithm. Uh, so they're
Speaker 1: back doing their own search at that point, because then
Speaker 1: you've got another element that comes into play a little later. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so you then you have started to have
Speaker 1: this this rivalry in search between Google and Yahoo, a
Speaker 1: true rivalry as opposed to the kind of weird semi
Speaker 1: rivalry when you have one company competing against another company
Speaker 1: that's using the first company's technology. That's just kind of
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to get get your mind wrapped
Speaker 1: around that. Well. In two thousand three, Yahoo bought a
Speaker 1: company called Overture Services. Now, then in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: Yahoo levied a huge patent lawsuit against Google that said
Speaker 1: that Google was was used being technology based on patents
Speaker 1: filed by Overture Services, which yeah, who now owned in
Speaker 1: purchase the year before. It all hinged on online advertising,
Speaker 1: which is the way Google makes most of its revenue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Yahoo also has quite a lot of revenue. If
Speaker 1: you ask, if you ask an entrepreneur what Google's businesses,
Speaker 1: they're not going to tell you it's search engine. They're
Speaker 1: going to tell you it's online advertising. So uh and
Speaker 1: and the you know, you, yourself, you the user, are
Speaker 1: the commodity. Then the advertising is the way it generates revenue.
Speaker 1: So this was a big deal. I mean, Google depended
Speaker 1: on and still does depends on online advertising for money.
Speaker 1: So a lawsuit that could potentially, ah, we'll throw a
Speaker 1: monkey wrench into the works as far as online advertising goes,
Speaker 1: was a huge problem. Well, eventually they settled that lawsuit
Speaker 1: and Yahoo was granted a perpetual license to use these
Speaker 1: these technologies to Google, and Google in turn gave some
Speaker 1: stock to Yahoo, Google stock to Yahoo. Actually the two
Speaker 1: companies own stock in each other. Um, it's kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: but one wonders if perhaps Yahoo may be folded a
Speaker 1: little too easily, because since then, Yahoo has had some
Speaker 1: problems to the point where they've had massive layoffs and
Speaker 1: the company itself has been devalued massively over the years.
Speaker 1: And there's been some very highly publicized political struggles within
Speaker 1: Yahoo over the last couple of years as well, and
Speaker 1: and a lot of struggling at the executive level at Yahoo.
Speaker 1: And so then you've got a point in two thousand
Speaker 1: eight where Google and Yahoo had reached an agreement in
Speaker 1: which Yahoo could use Google advertising on Yahoo pages. So
Speaker 1: again you've got like this weird relationship with they're kind
Speaker 1: of competing against each other, and then they're kind of
Speaker 1: you know, who wants to depend on this? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is all good news for Google because they're gonna
Speaker 1: get money using their you know, licensing out this this
Speaker 1: advertising technology. But there was one little tiny problem. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the United States Department of Justice said that this smacked
Speaker 1: of monopoly as far as advertising on the web goes,
Speaker 1: and so they struck it down through antitrust laws. So
Speaker 1: this agreement never came to fruition. Uh. And then eventually
Speaker 1: you get to the point where you rereach today a
Speaker 1: coint to Business Insider, the most recent figures I could
Speaker 1: find for the market share for search has Google with
Speaker 1: sixty five point seven percent of all online search all
Speaker 1: the world around. Yeah, okay, and Yahoo fifteen point seven.
Speaker 1: So and then you've got you know, he's in third place, yes,
Speaker 1: being being nine percent. Now, Google is more or less plateaued.
Speaker 1: It hasn't really gained or lost a significant percentage of
Speaker 1: that market share in quite some time. It's it's kind
Speaker 1: of lost a little bit, but not a whole, not
Speaker 1: a lot. Yahoo has been in a very very slow,
Speaker 1: gradual decline, Bing has been in a climbing pattern, and
Speaker 1: Being is starting to steal some search traffic, our search
Speaker 1: market share from both Yahoo and Google. Yes, um, more
Speaker 1: Yahoo than Google really at this point. And that actually
Speaker 1: kind of is another interesting point because you know, Microsoft
Speaker 1: and Yahoo entered into a ten year agreement not too
Speaker 1: long ago in which Microsoft gets full access to Yahoo's
Speaker 1: search engine for the ten years. This was related to
Speaker 1: uh to bing to be able to use the technology
Speaker 1: that Yahoo had developed to help bolster the Being search engine.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that Being is completely based on Yahoo's
Speaker 1: search engine technology, but it may partially be based upon it, right,
Speaker 1: And if you run a search in Yahoo now, if
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, you will get uh bing Yahoo powered search. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So ten year partnership that was signed by the way
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, So that would end, of course
Speaker 1: in another few years. Yeah. Microsoft's Live search product had
Speaker 1: been floundering, uh compared to some of its competitors, most
Speaker 1: notably Google. Um, you know, you wouldn't necessarily think that
Speaker 1: Microsoft and Google would be competitors. I mean, Microsoft makes
Speaker 1: operating system software, productivity software. You know, some electronic devices,
Speaker 1: the Xbox Zoom. Hey wait a minute, what so does
Speaker 1: Google Google creates an operating system called Chromos, and Google
Speaker 1: has a suite of productivity software called Google Docs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is a rivalry I think is heating up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't around. I mean when you were talking
Speaker 1: about just a couple of years ago that it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily a rivalry. This is something that's cropping up now.
Speaker 1: There was a rivalry as far as search goes because
Speaker 1: of Coach. Microsoft have Microsoft Live Search. And then there
Speaker 1: was a rivalry in web based email as well, because
Speaker 1: you had hot mail and live mail accounts through Microsoft.
Speaker 1: You had the Yahoo Mail accounts through y'all who by
Speaker 1: the way, y'all who actually totally redid their their mail
Speaker 1: system after Gmail launched, because then that's the other one.
Speaker 1: You've got Google's Gmail. So you've got these three different
Speaker 1: or technically four if you talk about live mail versus hotmail, uh,
Speaker 1: four different web email based services. Uh. I know, just
Speaker 1: anecdotally talking with other people who are in the tech industry,
Speaker 1: tech journalists and and such, they get surprised when they
Speaker 1: see an email from a hotmail account at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because everyone thinks of that, at least when I say everyone,
Speaker 1: like all of the people I talked to think of
Speaker 1: that as like the spam account, um, and my my
Speaker 1: spam box filled up pretty quickly and hot mail and
Speaker 1: I hadn't even given it out to people, so I
Speaker 1: guess they're just blanketing everything there. Um. So yeah, being
Speaker 1: launched in the summer of two thousand nine, so it's
Speaker 1: really not even all that old as the time when're recording,
Speaker 1: is this less than just less than two years? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's been forever. Yeah, it does actually, um,
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people were skeptical. I mean,
Speaker 1: Google's had a sort of an iron grip on the
Speaker 1: search market for years, um, but then Being started eating
Speaker 1: into Google's market share. When you think about it, two
Speaker 1: years to go from nothing to thirteen point nine percent
Speaker 1: of the market share of search. That's enormous now. Granted,
Speaker 1: you could also argue that Being is sort of the
Speaker 1: the step child of Live Search, in which case you
Speaker 1: would have to look at the market share that Live
Speaker 1: Search had and compared to what Being has now. But that,
Speaker 1: you know, beside the point. Yeah, I've heard generally when
Speaker 1: I've used it, it's been a pretty good search engine,
Speaker 1: and um, a lot of other people seem to feel
Speaker 1: that way too. I have seen critical, critical praise for
Speaker 1: being um but yeah, all of a sudden, now, uh,
Speaker 1: Microsoft is completely retooled at search, and not every company
Speaker 1: has the pockets deep enough to just go, let's start
Speaker 1: a new one from scratch. Microsoft of beviously does and
Speaker 1: uh you know, now they're competing on that front. And then,
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, um, Google decided it wanted to
Speaker 1: get into the productivity software business as well. And this
Speaker 1: has caused Microsoft to react because we actually Google sort
Speaker 1: of acquired a series of they had their own, and
Speaker 1: then they sort of acquired a series of independent cloud
Speaker 1: based tools and a cloud of courses the internet. Um.
Speaker 1: You use these these pieces of software in your web
Speaker 1: browser online. The documents are stored online in general, although
Speaker 1: with Google Docs you can upload uh files and you
Speaker 1: can also have with Google Gears you can have offline
Speaker 1: capability as well. Yeah. But yeah, at the time, it
Speaker 1: may not have looked like it was an indirect competition
Speaker 1: because that functionality wasn't there. You had Microsoft Office, which
Speaker 1: as many of you know, is a well well entrenched
Speaker 1: productivity suite that includes presentation software and a spreadsheet document creator,
Speaker 1: and uh in an email client, the word which is
Speaker 1: the word processing software, and depending on the package you buy,
Speaker 1: it will include other different pieces of software, but those
Speaker 1: are the big ease UM and Google Docs. Google acquired rightly,
Speaker 1: they acquired uh UM, Presentation program, Um and and several others.
Speaker 1: And then you wouldn't necessarily Okay, so you've got the
Speaker 1: one that's based on your hard drive, which is Microsoft,
Speaker 1: and you've got the one that's based online, and they're compatible. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, not such a big deal. Well then Google
Speaker 1: up the anti They said, let's go ahead and add
Speaker 1: offline functionality. So now you can download document or you know,
Speaker 1: work on stuff offline, you can upload it back to
Speaker 1: Google Docs. So Google counters, but you know with Microsoft counters.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Microsoft counters with its own online version of
Speaker 1: the Office Suite, which has actually again gotten some critical praise.
Speaker 1: I've seen some reasonably positive remarks on it. And the
Speaker 1: one of the big benefits of the Google app, which
Speaker 1: was that it really created new opportunities for collaboration because
Speaker 1: you could share documents across multiple users and then collaboratively
Speaker 1: work on projects without having to create new copies of
Speaker 1: a document. That was the big problem with the old
Speaker 1: offline system was that if I wanted to work on
Speaker 1: a document and I wanted Chris to be able to
Speaker 1: work on it too, I would have to I would
Speaker 1: have to send him a copy of it, and I
Speaker 1: would work on one instance of that document on my computer.
Speaker 1: He would work on another instance of it on his computer,
Speaker 1: and then we'd have to recombine the two, which was
Speaker 1: always kind of a messy way of doing things. And
Speaker 1: it could mean that perhaps we both made changes to
Speaker 1: the same section, and then how do you incorporate two
Speaker 1: different sets of changes for the one part of that document.
Speaker 1: Sharing it online meant that everyone was working for the
Speaker 1: same master document and that you know, you still have
Speaker 1: issues that you run into there if you have two
Speaker 1: people trying to edit the same section at the same time,
Speaker 1: but you can see it in real time or or
Speaker 1: close to real time and h and tell the person, Hey,
Speaker 1: knock it off, I'm working on that right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then you can review it and you can make changes.
Speaker 1: So it made that a little more of a smoother process. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a rivalry between Microsoft and Google, and it
Speaker 1: does go beyond just the the productivity software and even
Speaker 1: the operating system, because like we said, Google's launching Chromos,
Speaker 1: and that's really starting to look kind of interesting. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know that's going to get widespread adoption,
Speaker 1: but Google is putting a lot of muscle behind it. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind, we've seen Google push other products really,
Speaker 1: really hard, only to have to eventually give up on them.
Speaker 1: So there's no guarantee that Chromos is going to be
Speaker 1: a huge success. But they're not sparing any expense and
Speaker 1: trying to make it one now, and they're not above
Speaker 1: defending their turf as we saw earlier in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven with the accusations flying back and forth between
Speaker 1: who's stealing whose search results between Google and being But
Speaker 1: there's another front too we hadn't talked about. You know,
Speaker 1: Windows has been making an operating system for PDAs and
Speaker 1: later phones smartphones for years. Um. You know, Windows just
Speaker 1: came out with a new version of its operating system
Speaker 1: for phones, which again, UH seems to be getting some
Speaker 1: reasonable success. But it's hard because they already have UH.
Speaker 1: Google already has its Android operating system, which is on
Speaker 1: millions of phones worldwide, and they're also competing on another
Speaker 1: front with that, which is with another company that creates smartphones, yes,
Speaker 1: and that would be Apple. Yes, there are other companies,
Speaker 1: of course that do create smartphones. We're not forgetting BlackBerry, BlackBerry,
Speaker 1: and we're not forgetting some of the other players, Nokia
Speaker 1: with the Symbian. Yeah, although Nokia is now doing Windows Phone.
Speaker 1: Isn't that interesting? Yeah, So you've got Google battling Microsoft
Speaker 1: multiple fronts, including the smartphone. Then you have Google battling
Speaker 1: Apple on multiple fronts, including the smartphone. Now, and here
Speaker 1: here's an interesting point. If you were to look at
Speaker 1: the Google versus Microsoft part of this picture, you would
Speaker 1: say that Google was the one who got there first
Speaker 1: for smart phones in that Android was more of a
Speaker 1: smartphone operating system than the old Windows Mobile operating system. Now,
Speaker 1: uh so Android was able to get established in that
Speaker 1: market before Windows Phone showed up because Windows Mobile Windows
Speaker 1: Phone or two different operating systems for phones, and Windows
Speaker 1: Mobile would be the more primitive version. Windows Phone is
Speaker 1: really snazzy. But Android already had a foothold there. So
Speaker 1: that in that case, you're talking about Microsoft trying to
Speaker 1: take down a giant. But really Google faced that same
Speaker 1: problem because in two thousand seven, uh the iPhone launched
Speaker 1: in in June, and it wasn't until November of two
Speaker 1: thousand seven that the Android phone launched, so Apple had
Speaker 1: a big jump already. You might say, well, that's just
Speaker 1: a few months, that's not a huge deal. It was
Speaker 1: an enormous deal because Apple was able to do something
Speaker 1: that no one else had done up to that point.
Speaker 1: Apple was able to create a market for smartphones among
Speaker 1: general consumers. Right. Of course, BlackBerry already had a pretty
Speaker 1: big presence, you know, in the in the in the
Speaker 1: enterprise market forces for companies corporate users. Yeah, because I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you might have a p d A, but
Speaker 1: you'd use it for your personal appointments and things you
Speaker 1: don't really necessarily need a smartphone for. And and they
Speaker 1: were expensive at the time too, so you don't you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily need one for your own personal use, right sure.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until Apple was able to show it
Speaker 1: as a consumer device, not just a corporate device. Now,
Speaker 1: the key there was to make sure that you still
Speaker 1: showed it as something that you could do productive work on,
Speaker 1: but at the same time show it in a really
Speaker 1: sleek and sexy and fun way. So it had lots
Speaker 1: of games and the animation was beautiful, and the graphics
Speaker 1: were gorgeous, and the apps that they developed were really
Speaker 1: really compelling apps. For the most part, they were couple
Speaker 1: clunkers in there. But and then opening up the app
Speaker 1: Store was a brilliant move because now you just created
Speaker 1: a market for all this kind of software. It was really,
Speaker 1: you know, a great, a great strategy on Apple's part,
Speaker 1: and they could not have done a better job with
Speaker 1: their launch. Whether you love the iPhone or you hate it,
Speaker 1: you gotta admit that their launch of that product was
Speaker 1: a complete success. Yeah now, and I'm sorry, no, please
Speaker 1: go ahead. I was going to point out I'm amused
Speaker 1: by this because, uh, you know, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: I was asked to write an article. I don't write
Speaker 1: many articles for How Stuff Works dot Com only have
Speaker 1: a small handful. But on this this um column by
Speaker 1: technology writer Nicholas Car Do you remember this? And I
Speaker 1: have to uh have no of him, I don't actually
Speaker 1: know him. I have to laugh at this because the
Speaker 1: name of this article is how the Google Apple Cloud
Speaker 1: computer will work. Because you know, the idea was and
Speaker 1: Car suggested, and at the time it was brilliant because
Speaker 1: you know, he said, Google can supply the cloud infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Apple can supply the software and the hardware, which would
Speaker 1: look amazing WHI would look amazing and work does Yeah,
Speaker 1: Apple makes stuff that works, and they make stuff that
Speaker 1: looks really really sleek. On the front end. Apple's got
Speaker 1: you know, got that. On the back end, Google's got
Speaker 1: the infrastructure. They know infrastructure, they know cloud computing. Except
Speaker 1: that that was right around the time they became enemies,
Speaker 1: and and and and we had Eric Schmidt on the
Speaker 1: board yeah Apple, Eric Schmidt, who at the time was
Speaker 1: the CEO of Google. Yeah, he was on the board
Speaker 1: of director for director for Apple. Because originally you would say, like,
Speaker 1: well that there's not really a conflict there. Yes, Google
Speaker 1: is a huge technology company. Apple is a huge technology company,
Speaker 1: but they both serve different markets, and everything changed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then once they both entered that smartphone market, that
Speaker 1: really made things complicated. And there were some pretty nasty
Speaker 1: kind of digs going on, although you could argue on
Speaker 1: the surface that they weren't necessarily digs, that you know,
Speaker 1: everyone had sort of valid excuses for what they did,
Speaker 1: but you felt that deep down there was really more
Speaker 1: of a how can we get these guys kind of
Speaker 1: thing going on, and I should also say that even
Speaker 1: if this smartphone thing had not happened at that time,
Speaker 1: I still find it hard to imagine at Google bowl
Speaker 1: cloud computer. And the main reason for that is because
Speaker 1: I think that Apple and Google have fundamentally different philosophies
Speaker 1: when it comes to the openness of technology. So Apple
Speaker 1: is all about creating a really lockdown, closed system, the
Speaker 1: benefit of which is that you know what's going to
Speaker 1: work because you've locked it down and you're not allowing
Speaker 1: people to come in there and mess with it. And
Speaker 1: Google is not totally open and free. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's Lenox or something, but it's there's like that less
Speaker 1: there is a perception that Android is completely open, which
Speaker 1: is not true. It's not true. No, it's not true.
Speaker 1: Android is more open than other smartphone operating systems out there,
Speaker 1: or most of them anyway, but it is not truly open. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the Mac os is also somewhat open, but not
Speaker 1: as it's not as closed as Windows. It's not black
Speaker 1: and white, it's not black and white. But Apple is
Speaker 1: definitely further along the closed part of that spectrum, and
Speaker 1: Google is closer to the open. And so yeah, you've
Speaker 1: got uh two thousand seven. That's when both the iPhone
Speaker 1: and Android phones launched. Now, Android at that time was
Speaker 1: it had a huge uphill battle, which eventually it managed
Speaker 1: to to wage uh successfully to the point now where
Speaker 1: you depending on whom you read, you'll see that the
Speaker 1: Android has the dominant market share in smartphones right now. Um,
Speaker 1: there's some reports that say that goes back and forth,
Speaker 1: and it all depends on how many consumers you have
Speaker 1: who are using old smartphones and how many of them
Speaker 1: are still Android versus Apple, and etcetera, etcetera. But the
Speaker 1: main argument is that Android and Apple are the two
Speaker 1: big players in this space, and everyone else is kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, on the boundary. Yeah, and and the other.
Speaker 1: The other interesting thing to note is too in the
Speaker 1: world of apps, Google had difficulty breaking into Apple's app store. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was one of the digs I was talking about.
Speaker 1: The you know, Google Voice app. Yes, took forever to
Speaker 1: come out. Well, it was originally rejected by Apple and
Speaker 1: then the and Trust's two thousand nine July two thou
Speaker 1: Apple rejects the Google Voice app from the app store.
Speaker 1: In September two tho nine, Eric Schmidt steps down from
Speaker 1: the board of directors from Apple, which some said what
Speaker 1: might have been at least partially in response to the
Speaker 1: app being rejected. Now Google and Apple both say that
Speaker 1: that's not the case. There were there was the antitrust
Speaker 1: concerns and things of that nature that we're really playing
Speaker 1: into it. But you know, people will talk, right. And
Speaker 1: then in November of two thousand nine, Google purchased a
Speaker 1: company called ad Mob, which a mobile advertising company. Right,
Speaker 1: so you've got this mobile advertising company and no one
Speaker 1: argues that mobile is the next really, I mean, it
Speaker 1: is the big thing. It's not the next big thing,
Speaker 1: it is the current big thing in web based technology.
Speaker 1: Everyone is grabbing onto mobile devices to access the web,
Speaker 1: whether it's an MP three player that has WiFi capability,
Speaker 1: a smartphone, a tablet, uh, you know, the that's or
Speaker 1: where it's really going. Even netbooks, you could argue, kind
Speaker 1: of fall into the mobile category just because they're small
Speaker 1: enough that people take them everywhere. Um. So, yeah, the
Speaker 1: mobile web is really a huge, huge thing. So purchasing
Speaker 1: this this ad mob mobile advertising platform was like a
Speaker 1: shot across the bow. And and plus Apple had been
Speaker 1: interested in ad Mob and had made an offer to
Speaker 1: purchase the company just before Google actually did purchase it, Yes,
Speaker 1: then they countered with another purchase their wireless yes. So
Speaker 1: and and now, as anybody who has seen both in
Speaker 1: uh an Android device and an Apple iOS device, they
Speaker 1: have similar styles of advertising in the applications that you
Speaker 1: see on there. So they are they're turning that into
Speaker 1: a source of revenue. And now you know, I've seen
Speaker 1: the bing app show up, and I don't remember there
Speaker 1: being any controversy about Apple and Microsoft, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: putting a bing app in the app store. The It's
Speaker 1: just funny to me after all the years of Microsoft
Speaker 1: versus Apple. But we'll talk about that later. We should
Speaker 1: talk about let's just take this up plus one plus
Speaker 1: one plus one, Google's plus one right where you can
Speaker 1: like anything on the web. Well, before we get to that,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know we're running out of time and
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to rush through this last one, but
Speaker 1: there's still some other stuff I want to talk about
Speaker 1: really quickly about Apple on Apple and the reason is
Speaker 1: that there are a couple of other fronts where they
Speaker 1: are they are competing. Again, You've got the chromos coming out,
Speaker 1: so you've got Google potentially competing against Apple products. And
Speaker 1: when you talk about that that's a huge thing because
Speaker 1: Apple does these high end computers. Right. They're expensive, but
Speaker 1: they're gorgeous and they work and they're you know, but
Speaker 1: it's it's almost like a boutique kind of purchase, right,
Speaker 1: because they're there. It's almost like an exclusivity sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Google is doing the Chromos where all the hard heavy
Speaker 1: lifting is going to be on the the the back
Speaker 1: end side, so you don't need a really powerful machine.
Speaker 1: So in theory you can buy a pretty cheap computer
Speaker 1: running the Chrome os. So that's an opposite approach from
Speaker 1: what Apple takes, so that they're going to compete in
Speaker 1: that space. You've also got Google where they launched the
Speaker 1: Chrome web browser, yes versus Safari, right, and Chrome already
Speaker 1: has I think, depending again upon whom you read, Chrome
Speaker 1: has a higher market share than Safari does in web browsing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know people who have Matt computers who
Speaker 1: they were so happy when Chrome came out for the
Speaker 1: Mac because they were not huge Safari fans. I'm one
Speaker 1: of them. And then then you also have YouTube that's
Speaker 1: renting movies now, which looks like it's competing against Apple iTunes.
Speaker 1: And then there's Google Music, which will be competing with
Speaker 1: the Apple Music Service as well as the Amazon Cloud Player.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you've got we We're not going to talk
Speaker 1: about Google versus Amazon. We could. We can also talk
Speaker 1: about Google versus Netflix. We can talk about Google versus
Speaker 1: just about anybody. We only have one other company we
Speaker 1: want to talk about. We're gonna go really fast because
Speaker 1: this episode's going long. Yeah, it was. It was earlier
Speaker 1: this year, not so far before we recorded this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when they announced the well, I was thinking about the
Speaker 1: plus one feature, and this is I think this sets
Speaker 1: up what we're about to talk about because suddenly, you
Speaker 1: know how Facebook a few years ago one because it
Speaker 1: was maybe a couple of years ago, came out with
Speaker 1: the ability to use their APIs, their application programming interface,
Speaker 1: and you could install it on your web browser and
Speaker 1: have people like stuff on Facebook on your own web
Speaker 1: page if you wanted to. Well, that was pretty cool, right,
Speaker 1: So if you had a Facebook account and more than
Speaker 1: five million people do um probably more than that. Now
Speaker 1: I might be able to make that six million, But
Speaker 1: you incorporate that into a web page and then suddenly
Speaker 1: someone from Facebook says, oh I like this, they like it,
Speaker 1: it shares it on their wall and then all of
Speaker 1: their friends can come and read your page. It just
Speaker 1: meant that there was an additional way to funnel people
Speaker 1: in to see your content, which is interesting because previously
Speaker 1: the way that people would come and see content there
Speaker 1: are two main ways. Right, they would come to some
Speaker 1: sort of homepage to a site where they visit over
Speaker 1: over and over again, or they would use search. Well,
Speaker 1: now you've got a third way, which is socially driven
Speaker 1: of avenues to get to content. So either you share
Speaker 1: it on Facebook where you say, hey, there's this great website,
Speaker 1: go here, or you go to a website that has
Speaker 1: that incorporated like button and it does it for you,
Speaker 1: and then your buddies all say, oh, well, Jonathan liked
Speaker 1: this one website, we should check that out and see
Speaker 1: what that's all about. So, in a way, that was
Speaker 1: a shot across the ballot, across all the search engines,
Speaker 1: because now you're saying, you, guys, used to be relevant,
Speaker 1: but now we're going to take that away from you,
Speaker 1: because we're going to have it where people find information
Speaker 1: organically through their their social connections, not through just going
Speaker 1: to a search engine and typing in some words. So
Speaker 1: that was a yeah, that was a wake up call UM,
Speaker 1: and Google answered, you know, you can do that when
Speaker 1: you have deep pockets and your employees can all spend
Speaker 1: their time working on UM with the plus one system.
Speaker 1: Uh So suddenly now Google was competing because you can
Speaker 1: you know plus one basically me, Hey, I like that too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that link, that link is really useful. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to say that out of all the search results I
Speaker 1: got for this particular query, this is the one that
Speaker 1: I think is the best. I'm gonna plus one that.
Speaker 1: And then when one of your friends comes on, someone
Speaker 1: who has a you know, who's one of your contacts,
Speaker 1: comes on and does a similar search, they're going to
Speaker 1: see that if they get their search result page up,
Speaker 1: they're going to see the search results that got the
Speaker 1: most plus ones from their friends. And again it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a socially driven thing, and they can even
Speaker 1: see like which of their friends plus one did, so
Speaker 1: they'd say, oh, what, you know, Jonathan was searching for
Speaker 1: uh fluid dynamics and so that this one video on
Speaker 1: non Newtonian fluid was really cool, So I wanna I
Speaker 1: want to check this out, and then you could plus
Speaker 1: one it and then it again it's socially. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: socially driving up the search is Now someone else coming
Speaker 1: in and searching that same query may not see that
Speaker 1: because they're not your contact. So it's it's it's not
Speaker 1: it's not like wild wet out there. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: completely uh game the system for Google search results, because
Speaker 1: that's one thing Google does not want to do is
Speaker 1: mess with their algorithms so much that it becomes useless.
Speaker 1: But it did. Um you know, people were saying, some
Speaker 1: of the tech journals were saying, look, this might be
Speaker 1: uh something that will play into Google's maybe possibly finally
Speaker 1: announced social networking tool. I mean, you had or Cut,
Speaker 1: but it really didn't take off like you thought, and
Speaker 1: people have been waiting for this thing for I don't
Speaker 1: know years. I would say, yeah, Ork it was a
Speaker 1: social network like Facebook. Actually it is a social network.
Speaker 1: It's not gone now. ORC It's very popular in places
Speaker 1: like Brazil and India, but never got widespread global adoption
Speaker 1: like Facebook did. So. Google has already had a history
Speaker 1: of competing with Facebook with things like orch It, but
Speaker 1: it was Ork. It was such a tiny blip on
Speaker 1: the radar from most of the world that we don't
Speaker 1: even really think about them competing because there was no competition, right,
Speaker 1: you know, if you've got someone who has the followers,
Speaker 1: you don't think of it as competition. Well I didn't,
Speaker 1: but apparently Facebook did because there again, as as Jonathan mentioned, right,
Speaker 1: not right before, but shortly before we recorded this, a
Speaker 1: scandal came to light. Yeah. Facebook, Um, it turns out
Speaker 1: Facebook hired a PR firm called person Mars Stellar, a
Speaker 1: very well known and and pretty well respected firm. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: used to be respected. Yeah, it was still well known,
Speaker 1: might be even better known now. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, the
Speaker 1: PR firm. Facebook hired this PR firm in order to
Speaker 1: pitch stories to bloggers and newspapers that would put Google
Speaker 1: in a bad light, specifically with this socially motivated um
Speaker 1: search and social circle services that Google's pushing. Uh. They
Speaker 1: wanted specifically respect to privacy and how Google handles privacy
Speaker 1: and talk about pot calling the kettle black. We've got Facebook,
Speaker 1: which is not known for being a great protector of privacy,
Speaker 1: saying hey, Google's really you know, putting your privacy at danger.
Speaker 1: We want these stories to get out there. So this
Speaker 1: PR firm started to approach various people. One of the
Speaker 1: people had approached was Christopher. Uh uh, oh gosh, I
Speaker 1: don't even know how to say his last name. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say Safoyan, but it could be totally wrong. It's
Speaker 1: s O G H O I A N. So that's
Speaker 1: an interesting Chris, if you're out there, let me know. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Christopher had received a request from the PR firm
Speaker 1: about this, and instead of running the story that the
Speaker 1: PR firm wanted them to run about Google's uh social
Speaker 1: uh social circle invading privacy, he ran the email that
Speaker 1: the PR firm sent him. He published, he published it
Speaker 1: on his blog, showing that this PR firm was trying
Speaker 1: to engineer this this smear campaign USA Today, same sort
Speaker 1: of thing. USA Today got a request for a story
Speaker 1: pitch about a similar kind of thing, and instead they
Speaker 1: decided to publish a story about the smear campaign. And
Speaker 1: that's when the story really broke across all channels. And
Speaker 1: uh then later on the PR the PR firm itself
Speaker 1: was caught removing negative comments from its own Facebook page
Speaker 1: and that helped spurn the the scandal even further. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're wondering about the social circle thing,
Speaker 1: it's kind of this way that Google shows the people
Speaker 1: you're connected to through various means like Twitter and and
Speaker 1: Google Contacts and all this kind of stuff, and then
Speaker 1: it shows the larger circle that you're connected to from
Speaker 1: people who are connected to the people that you're you
Speaker 1: that are in your your social circle. So, for example,
Speaker 1: one of the people in my social circle, and it's
Speaker 1: only because I follow her on Twitter as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, is Felicia Day or actually Google Buzz.
Speaker 1: I think it's because I follow her on Google Buzz
Speaker 1: is Felicia Day. But because it's Felicia Day, that means
Speaker 1: that that extra that next step in the social circle
Speaker 1: is enormous. But has lots of people follow Felicia Day,
Speaker 1: So that means that my information is also on display
Speaker 1: for all those people. But this is information that is public.
Speaker 1: It is information that you have willingly shared and allowed
Speaker 1: to be public on whatever network like Google Buzz or whatever.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it's not like it's digging up
Speaker 1: information that is behind some sort of security. It's just
Speaker 1: stuff that's already out there. So that that's the argument
Speaker 1: that other people have against uh Facebook's approach was that, well,
Speaker 1: Google is just sharing stuff that you've already opted to share.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's sharing information that you didn't you know,
Speaker 1: you said do not share this. So um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely a big, big, explosive problem. And you know what,
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google have had a long history of struggles.
Speaker 1: I mean there's none of them were direct struggles like
Speaker 1: open i D. Yes, Google backed open i D and
Speaker 1: open i D was this idea of creating a single
Speaker 1: log in kind of account and you would use that
Speaker 1: across multiple websites. Facebook at the same time was pushing
Speaker 1: Facebook Connect, which is similar except it wasn't based on
Speaker 1: open standards like open i D and it was into Facebook. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it benefited Facebook, but it would also benefit any
Speaker 1: site that used Facebook Connect because it meant that you
Speaker 1: were tapping into a social network that had over five
Speaker 1: hundred million users. So it's there's no there's really no
Speaker 1: surprise when Facebook Connect came out on top, because even
Speaker 1: if you argue that open i D was the better
Speaker 1: choice from just a consumer safety standpoint or from a
Speaker 1: kind of a disinterested objective standpoint, from a let's get
Speaker 1: business done standpoint, Facebook Connect made all the sense in
Speaker 1: the world. Alright, Well, we have gone forty minutes with
Speaker 1: this podcast, so I suggest we wrap it up now.
Speaker 1: We again, we could have talked about lots of other
Speaker 1: rivalries Google has going on, and we probably will do
Speaker 1: another episode at some point just about Google, although I
Speaker 1: would suggest our next tech rivalry episode, b face, you know,
Speaker 1: focus on a different company entirely. Um, and we we've
Speaker 1: talked about similar rivalries in the past, like I said,
Speaker 1: not just Tesla and Edison, but things like you know,
Speaker 1: we've done Microsoft and Apple, and we've done a few others.
Speaker 1: But I think that this is a fun kind of
Speaker 1: thing to talk about, really look at the two sides
Speaker 1: and kind of see what their strategies were and their
Speaker 1: their motivation for acting the way they did. Yeah. I think,
Speaker 1: well it's one of those central points in uh in
Speaker 1: any story, as you need some kind of conflict. So
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the reasons that we find
Speaker 1: this so fascinating. Yes, now that we've reached the Danu law, Yes,
Speaker 1: let us conclude. Here is our epilogue. If you would
Speaker 1: like to hear about a specific tech rivalry, let us know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email. That address is tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or contact us
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Facebook are handled. There is tech stuff H.
Speaker 1: S W and Chris and I will talk to you again,
Speaker 1: possibly about a rivalry really soon. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
Speaker 1: how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
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