(image) Our friends in the press have decided that search has had its decade in the sun, and I can’t disagree, at least as it was known before. The question of how it becomes something else is still very much afoot, but not solved. But glimmerings abound, including from Twitter. For more, read on for the week’s best links….
A number of “Peak Google” pieces are in the air. But let’s not forget that Google has multi-billion dollar businesses in Android, YouTube, Ventures, and Apps/Drive et al. And it’s making plays in auto, healthcare, and energy. I don’t think Page is resting. To wit:
Now you can buy real, smiling, happy shiny people all over the web, courtesy Facebook.
Today’s summary covers the past two weeks of worthy reads, with a strong dose of the Internet’s twin titans Facebook and Google. I’ve also been busy writing on Searchblog, so you’ll find three of my own pieces highlighted below.
(image) This past week’s links are rife with people asking hard questions of Google and Facebook, and so much the better, I’d warrant. You don’t get to the lead position without raising questions. In fact, that seems to be the theme of the week – asking interesting questions – of our online services, our marketing, and our food (yes, our food). To the links:
This week’s Else is brought to you by good design, which trumps good code any day. And by the Alibaba IPO, which kind of pissed me off (see below). Enjoy the links!
I’m easing back into this weekly Else column, or put another way, I missed last week’s Else due to preparations for NewCo SF, which I’m proud to say was a huge success. This week is Detroit, then New York, London, Boulder, LA, Palo Alto, but I get ahead of myself. For today, I’ll just focus on the best stories of the past 14 or so days. Much has happened in that time period, including Microsoft buying Minecraft, Alibaba filing for an IPO in the US, and yet another Apple announcement. I like the watch best, but in the shorter term, I think Apple Pay is the first mover. Bigger iPhones? Been there.
Else is back after an extended summer hiatus – thanks for taking the time off with me. I wasn’t sure if I was going to return to this newsletter, but its a good ritual for me to condense and annotate my daily and weekly reading habits, and enough of you have subscribed that I figured you might be missing the updates. I kind of was.
The past week brought fresh revelations about how the NSA targets US citizens, and new insights on the founders of Google, the history of technology, and ongoing stories from Facebook and the EU. To the links….
This past week in tech brought Google’s I/O developer conference, and with it lots of debate on the culture of the Valley, the future of links in the mobile world, the end of the Internet (again), and the death of the IPO. To the (dead? resurgent?) links:
Inside the Mirrortocracy – Carlos Buenos From time to time a commentator hits the mark when it comes to the Valley’s culture. This piece resonated for many last week – and sparked a renewed debate about whether the Valley is too insular.
A fascinating week of links, starting with a blast from the past (see above), but the real meat of the week came in the debates around some of the Valley’s most scared cows. For more, read on….