The Nexus 7 and The Cloud Commit Conundrum: Google Wins (For Now)

Google was kind enough to send me a Nexus 7 tablet to play with last month, and over the past week or so I’ve had the chance to actually put it to use. Even though I own an iPad, I have serious reservations about the constraints of Apple’s iOS ecosystem (more on that below), so I was eager to see how Google’s alternative performed.

Now, before I get into details, I want to state what I think really matters here: The Nexus device – and others like it – represent a play for something extremely valuable: a hard-wired digital portal to our hearts, minds, and wallets. As I’ve written elsewhere, there are five major companies deeply engaged in this play – Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. All of these companies want us to commit to their services as the basis of our digital lives – how we consume media and entertainment, how we manage our work and personal lives, where we store our most important information (including our money), and of course, how we declare who we are and what we believe (our identity). The more these companies can get us to upload our music, videos, photos, identities, purchases, browsing behaviors, etc. etc. etc. into their nebulae, the more they’ve locked us into a lifetime relationship of revenue and profit.

Put in that frame, your choice of tablet or phone is about much more than feeds and speeds or features and prices (for all that, see this Engadget review). It becomes a choice about what kind of a company you want as a partner in your digital life. Will the company let you export your data easily to other services? Will it be transparent about how your data is used? Will it have the guts to stand up to bad actors, whether they be governments or other corporations? Will the company create dashboards where you can see, edit, delete, and contest how your data is displayed?

In short, will the company be a good partner in your digital life? If you’re going to upload your digital doppelganger into this company’s servers, can you trust it? I call this choice the “Cloud Commit Conundrum,” and I’ll be writing about it more in the coming months.

For now, I’ll just say this: while Google is far from perfect on any number of fronts, it comes far closer than any other in embracing a philosophy that I feel I can trust when it comes to the cloud commitment conundrum. To wit: The Google Transparency Report. Further: The Data Liberation Front. And further, the open (and yes, messy) nature of Android. Lastly, I believe Google’s founding DNA is as a product of the open web, and its founders have a deep commitment to that idea, even as we enter a rather cloudy era of closed, non-generative systems and walled gardens.

But up till now, Google hadn’t really “wowed” me with a product that I felt I could really get behind.

No more. I’m not a hardcore tablet user, but I might become one thanks to this device. I found the iPad to be too large and heavy to use comfortably in casual situations (like reading in bed, for example), and too limited to use as a replacement for my laptop. By comparison, the Nexus 7 is just the right size for use anywhere – it’s very similar in size to my daughter’s Kindle Fire, but lighter.

But what I like about the Nexus is how good it is for all those lightweight web-connected tasks I want to execute on the run. I find web browsing, checking multiple email accounts, and Google mapping rather tiresome on an iPhone – the iPhone’s native interface, for all its supposed perfection, has all kinds of wrong baked in – and the screen is just far too small. The Nexus 7 is about the same size as a Moleskin notebook, and  it just *feels* like the right form factor for doing all those things you want to do on a smart phone, but can’t quite do in the right way.  It’s not too big, and not too small – just right.

It’s also very responsive, and has plentiful access to apps and content (Google is a bit aggressive in how it promotes its Play store – but it’s very easy to remove the Play clutter and customize your own experience). So far, it doesn’t have cellular service, but I expect that will come soon. The wifi works great, and I barely missed a beat this week in New York – seems there was open wifi just about anywhere I went.

I think Google has a winner on its hands here – and the $200 price point makes the Nexus a clear competitor to not only Amazon’s more limited $200 Fire, but to the more expensive and clunkier iPad.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict Apple will ship a 7-inch version of its iPad soon, at a similar price point. If it does, I’m sure it’ll be a strong competitor to the Nexus 7. But for me, the tiebreaker comes down to the cloud commit conundrum. And the winner there, so far anyway, is clearly Google.

Anyone in the market for a slightly used iPad 2?

(cloud image via Shutterstock)