Two Apple and one Microsoft posts are begging me to be Thought Out Loud, and yet I am so damn busy I can’t write. yet. So here they are in shorthand form.
….Apple is creating a closed advertising and distribution system that taxes all publishers and retards the Internet. Discuss.
….Apple leveraged open development operating systems – in particular Windows – to get iTunes into a position of distribution lockin. Ironic? Discuss.
….The only company that could execute a defensible acquisition of Foursquare is Microsoft. Discuss….
Now if I can get some time to write, I’ll unpack each of these…
Unpack the last one first, pretty please. I’m curious. (Not Google?) (define “defensible”?)
When you talk about a closed advertising and distribution system, will this be for Music, Apps or what exactly.
Who gives a flip about Apple? They are a vocal minority market share on the Internet. They can’t even make a reasonable dent in the desktop computing market.
The first two are pretty obvious, and right in line with how Apple always behaves. When you’re the best, you get away with it. For a while, which is all that matters if you wish to make a bunch of money and/or make cool things. I think it is best to understand Steve Jobs as an artist, performing in the business space.
I completely fail to understand what you mean about MSFT/Foursquare. In particular, if I’m reading you correctly, in the execution of eating them Microsoft would be subject to their own peculiar form of regulatory capture that would end up crippling the interesting parts of Foursquare, which in and of itself is only notable for being a name in what is going to be a vibrant utility used by many firms, and not be a viable firm itself for long.
The Microsoft Foursquare idea is off the deep end my friend. It doesn’t make any sense that I can tell.
It would be significantly cheaper for Microsoft (or any other company) to clone foursquare than to acquire it. In addition, at the moment, foursquare has some serious flaws that need repair.