Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff | August 2007

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August 2007

August 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

If a recent poll on the java.net site for Java technology collaboration is any indication, Sun Microsystems has work to do to get developers interested in its new JavaFX Script technology.

Unveiled at the JavaOne conference in May, JavaFX Script is built as a scripting language for content creation on the JavaFX multimedia application development platform. JavaFX technologies are only available in pre-release forms at this point.

But a poll on java.net last week found that a majority of the 756 respondents were at best not very interested in learning JavaFX Script. Some 16.9 percent, or 128 voters, were very interested and 27.7 percent, or 210 voters, were somewhat interested. However, the remaining respondents, totaling 418 voters, were either not very interested (25.2 percent), not at all interested (19.1 percent) or checked off the "JavaFWhat?" option in the poll (10.8 percent made this their choice).

Comments posted on the poll were more positive, however. "I think java.net is the wrong place to ask this question. JavaFX should be a good tool for non-programmers," said one commenter.

"I'm more interested in groovy. On the other hand, JavaFX will be first choice on mobiles in the future," said another commenter.

Another said JavaFX looks interesting but that developers could build Adobe Flex applications today.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 30, 2007 01:44 PM

August 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sun is JAVA? Huh?

So if somebody wants to find Sun Microsystems's stock price, they will have to look under JAVA, based on the company's changing of its stock ticker ID on Nasdaq next week.

The move from the SUNW identity is being done in recognition that the Java brand is more recognized than Sun, according to company President/CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

Sorry, but I don't see how this makes sense. Why not just change the name of the company to Java Systems, then, so investors won't be confused as to why Sun Microsystems is identified as JAVA on the stock exchange?

While Java has been prominent for years and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, it is a technology whose time in the spotlight may one day end. Then what happens?

What if IBM had identified itself as MNFRM, to identify with its mainframes, which, while still sold and popular, are not usually considered cutting-edge technology?

How about if Microsoft had identified itself as DOS?

In both instances, these companies would have had to change back.

The JAVA change just reeks of overbearing marketing and is more likely to cause confusion than clarity.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 23, 2007 02:12 PM

August 23, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Survey: Desktop Linux use grows

DesktopLinux.com, which is a Web site devoted to, obviously, desktop Linux, has finished a survey that found more than a doubling of Linux desktop users in the past year.

Ubuntu remains the top choice for Linux on the desktop, with 30 percent of respondents using it.

While DesktopLinux.com said its survey is not scientific, the survey did produce 38,000 votes as opposed to 14,535 votes a year ago.

Survey respondents chose Firefox as their browser of choice, with 60 percent using it. Thunderbird was the top email client, with 37 percent.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 23, 2007 09:52 AM

August 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sun eyes GPL for NetBeans

Having already licensed its Java platform under the GNU General Public License (GPL), Sun Microsystems now is considering doing the same thing for the NetBeans open source application development tools platform, a Sun representative acknowledged.

NetBeans currently is licensed under Sun's CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License). GPL would make NetBeans "even more Linux-friendly," according to a Web page of frequently asked questions on the NetBeans Web site.

A java.net blogger, Joshua Marinacci, goes a step further and says NetBeans definitely will be licensed under GPL version 2, although the CDDL remains an option for users.

"It hasn't happened yet as we are still working out the final plans, but it's official and it's definitely going to happen. This is great for three reasons," Marinacci said. "First, you'll be able to get NetBeans under the GPL, just like you can get so many other great open source products. Second, GPLv2 + classpath exception is the exact same license that the JDK (Java Development Kit) uses. This means more harmony with the rest of Sun's Java products. Third, this encourages the use of the GPL over other licenses which I hope will one day reduce the number of licenses out there in the world."

Marinacci has served on the Swing toolkit team at Sun.

But the official word is that the company currently is gauging community interest in the GPL for NetBeans.

Under the GPL, software developed under it must be made available to the community at large. But the classpath exception enables combinations of proprietary code with GPL classpath libraries without needing to redistribute the proprietary code.

According to another java.net blogger, Jim Driscoll, writing in June 2005, the difference between the GPL and CDDL is that GPL requires showing modifications made to the source and show any code you add as well. CDDL requires showing modifications made to the source, but it is not viral like GPL.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 21, 2007 04:42 PM

August 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Web apps use Google Gears to go offline

The appeal of browser-based desktop apps is obvious: They're free or at least very cheap. You don't need to install them. And they lend themselves to real-time collaboration. The problem is even more obvious -- without an Internet connection you're dead.

That's why, in June, Google came out with Gears, an open-source browser extension that enables developers to create an offline mode for Web applications. The first out of the gate to use Gears turns out to be Zoho Office, the suite that "blew the rest out of the water" in Oliver Rist's informal comparative review of browser-based desktop applications last year.

We haven't had a chance to check out the synching between offline and online yet, which will be key to the success of the product. And we assume Google is busily eating its own dogfood and prepping for the release of a Gears version of Google Apps. When both are available for review, we'll do a close comparison of Zoho's and Google's offline-capable versions.

Meanwhile, I can't help but notice that more and more people have caught on to browser based word processors and spreadsheets (mainly Google's of course) in just the past few months. Primarily for collaborative documents, it's true. But in my mind's eye I keep seeing the endless parade of "percentage complete" bars from the last install I did of Microsoft Office on my home machine. For $400. Will I ever do that again?

Posted by Eric Knorr on August 21, 2007 02:43 PM

August 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Spring in the air for Web services

Interface21, makers of the popular Spring development technologies for Java, are announcing on Tuesday Spring Web Services 1.0.

In development for two years, Spring Web Services 1.0 is an open source technology that provides Web services-based data integration capabilities and will work with Java and other languages.

Features of Spring Web Services 1.0 include enforcement of best practices such as the WS-I (Web Services Interoperability Organization) Basic Profile, contract-first development and having a loose coupling between contract and implementation.

Also included is the ability to distribute XML requests to any object depending on message payload, SOAP action header or XPath expression. Incoming XML messages can be handled in standard JAXP (Java API for XML Processing) APIs such as DOM (Document Object Model), JDOM, StAX (Streaming API for XML) or dom4j.

The Object/XML Mapping module in Spring Web Services supports JAXB (Java Architecture for XML Binding) 1 and 2 as well as Castor, XMLBeans, the JiBX framework and XStream.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 21, 2007 05:00 AM

August 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)

MS plans build improvements in Visual Studio 2008

The build system in the upcoming Visual Studio 2008 software development platform from Microsoft will allow developers to designate the target .Net platform, according to a Microsoft blogger.

In another of his many blog entries about Microsoft's software development plans, S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the company’s developer division, said this week two customer-requested features would be added to the MSBuild foundation introduced in Visual Studio 2005.

"This release adds a new focus on reliability by allowing you to control which .Net platform you want to target for each project that you build, such as targeting a build to run on the 2.0 or 3.0 .Net FX so customers do not have to install the latest framework to run your software," Somasegar said.

Also added is multiple core support for doing multithreaded builds on the command line for those who have a lot of projects and long build times.

"Enabling multiple core support requires only a few new properties, and MSBuild manages all of the work to schedule projects efficiently and effectively. The MSBuild team has tested this ability to scale by building some projects on a 64-CPU machine," Somasegar said.

Visual Studio 2008 is due to ship later this year.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 17, 2007 03:12 PM

August 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Citrix and XenSource: The best offense is good defense

Citrix Systems was already a wild card in the virtualization game. The longtime leader in thin client computing, clearly awakened from a slumber by VMware's launch of the Virtual Desktop Initiative last year, has been sprinting ever since to stay ahead of the threat. The acquisition of XenSource fills the remaining hole in Citrix' virtualization portfolio, allowing Citrix to go shoulder to shoulder with VMware (and soon Microsoft) on the desktop virtualization front. It also plops Citrix into the lucrative server consolidation market.

For companies thinking of pulling end-user workspaces onto server farms -- both to break the cycle of expensive client-side hardware upgrades (a move encouraged by Vista) and to keep enterprise data safely tucked away in the datacenter -- desktop virtualization has a key advantage over thin client computing: Instead of serving a standard desktop configuration to every user, it gives each user the same sort of personalized workspace we've all become accustomed to.

When it became clear that VMware wasn't satisfied with owning the virtual server space but wanted desktops too, Citrix was quick to respond to the threat and also quick to see how both desktop virtualization and application virtualization could complement its flagship Presentation Server. By February of this year, it had rolled a SoftGrid-like application streaming solution into Presentation Server, and in April it unveiled Desktop Server, a connection broker and remote access manager to desktops hosted on any flavor of server, be it Presentation Server, hypervisor-based virtual servers, or a server blade system.

The acquisition of XenSource continues the series of defensive moves against VMware, which Citrix must keep from eating away at its hosted desktop business. It also allows Citrix to hit back at VMware on the server virtualization front. Here, Citrix's resources could give XenSource a much-needed boost in beefing up its virtual machine management tools, where XenSource trails not only VMware but also Virtual Iron and undoubtedly Microsoft, whose server virtualization solution finally seems to be closing in on a ship date.

With VMware's hugely successful IPO and Citrix's XenSource gambit, this has been a fun week for virtualization watchers. But the weeks and months ahead will be even more fun as the one-horse race turns into a real fight. Microsoft is entering the ring. With XenSource snatched up, Virtual Iron expects to draw more interest in partnerships from industry heavyweights. And Citrix, whose claims to virtualization leadership carried the smell of desperation just a year ago, now holds a virtualization technology portfolio that perhaps only Microsoft can beat.

The Citrix play for XenSource might simply amount to good defense, but it puts the company in excellent field position. Whatever happens next, it looks like VMware might have launched that IPO just in the nick of time.

Posted by Doug Dineley on August 15, 2007 11:22 AM

August 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft phasing out GotDotNet site

Microsoft has decided to phase out its GotDotNet Web site for developing .Net communities.

Billed on a Google search as "The Microsoft .Net Framework Community," the site has featured blogs, FAQs, message boards and other amenities. But traffic and usage of GotDotNet features have significantly decreased the last six months, a Microsoft representative said.

Now, Microsoft wants to reinvest resources used by GotDotNet into better community features, the representative said. The company also wants to eliminate redundant functionality between GotDotNet and other community resources.

The phase-out has been planned for some time. No information was available on when Microsoft launched GotDotNet.

The company is suggesting its CodePlex site, for hosting of open source projects, as an alternative. Other sites suggested for developers include ASP.Net , MSDN and Channel 9, which is a discussion forum.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 15, 2007 06:36 AM

August 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Windows, Web eyed in MS tools upgrade

Microsoft with a planned upgrade to its Visual Studio Express products will center on Windows and Web development as well as on data-driven application development.

Visual Studio Express products are for neophyte developers. In his blog on Saturday, S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft developer division, said the Visual Studio 2008 editions of Express will leverage Windows Presentation Foundation graphical capabilities. Also, a redesigned Web page designer is featured in Visual Web Developer Express 2008, with capabilities for building HTML and AJAX-based Web sites.

Debugging also has been improved in Web Developer.

Somasegar's blog can be accessed by clicking on this link. Visual Studio 2008 Express products are expected to ship later this year.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 14, 2007 01:15 PM

August 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google bowls for Microsoft Office buyers with free StarOffice

Sun's Microsoft Office workalike, formerly $70, suddenly materializes in the Google Pack download, writes Executive Editor Eric Knorr

Microsoft, Office, Google, StarOffice Two years ago Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, and Scott McNealy, still CEO of Sun at the time, made a joint announcement that was notable for its lack of content. The only real substance: Sun would bundle Google Toolbar with Sun's Java Runtime Environment.

But Schmidt did drop one hint of more to come: "We will work to make the distribution of [OpenOffice] become broader. We are not announcing specifics."

It took a while, but if you check the Google Pack page –- where Google rolls together a motley group of free software into a big download –- you’ll now find StarOffice on the list. This is notable for a couple of reasons. First, although StarOffice and its open-source cousin OpenOffice share the same code base, StarOffice has added features -– a spell-checker and thesaurus plus some Windows fonts and clip art. And until now, StarOffice sold for $70.

In the past few people took Star/OpenOffice seriously. Those who still deal with the vagaries of, say, Mac Word documents opened in Windows shudder at the idea of adding file interoperability uncertainties with third-party software. And neither StarOffice nor OpenOffice support Office 2007 file formats.

But do they need to? Just over the weekend, a non-technical friend complained to me that Office 2007 hid all the commands he used and exposed all the commands he didn't use. Such lamentations depend on how you use the product, but the point is that Office 2007's UI is a major departure from earlier versions, and those who despise learning curves may seek out an alternative that more closely resembles previous Office versions.

Microsoft may be in a tougher spot than it's ever been -- Vista sluggishness in sales and performance, browser-based workalikes of its desktop apps, reports of developers moving away from Windows. And as far as anyone can determine, the company does not yet have a coherent response to Google Apps. The sudden appearance of StarOffice as a free download is not a momentous event. But it's one more chink in Microsoft's corroding armor.

Posted by Eric Knorr on August 14, 2007 03:00 AM

August 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Beer declared second-best CPU coolant

For gamers and other process-hungry PC users seeking to eke out an extra cycle or two from an overclocked CPU, the answer may reside in the cozy in your hand.

Shelton Romhanyi and crew over at Tom's Hardware have taken it upon themselves in a two-part video to put three industry-leading liquid coolants to the ultimate test: Can they outcool Molson's Canadian Beer in a CPU cooling comparison?

Each of the liquid contenders -- which included Thermaltake Standard UV Sensitive High Performance Coolant, SilverStone Thermal Fluid, and Koolance Computer Liquid Coolant, as well as a diluted solution of Zerex automotive antifreeze, and, of course, a flat, room-temperature bottle of Molson's -- was passed alongside an an X6800 CPU overclocked to 3.63GHz through a system of beer-bong-esque tubing. Temperatures were taken just before the coolant reached the CPU, under the premise that, the cooler the liquid when hitting the CPU, the more effective it is at cooling.

Naïve as this hypothesis may be regarding the principles of thermal physics, the tests show unequivocally that in a crude setting nothing beats a beer when it comes to cooling your computing jets. Well, except for SilverStone, which under-termperatured Molson's by a fraction of a degree Celsius.

Posted by Jason Snyder on August 10, 2007 05:14 PM

August 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft maps out Visual C++ future

Microsoft's Visual C++ team has been mapping out the future of the development platform, looking to highlight native and managed code capabilities, a Microsoft executive wrote this week.

"The Visual C++ team has been looking at what they should [feature] in VC++ to ensure that the direction of the product aligns closely with customer needs and market realities," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft developer division, in his blog.

Three things are on the minds of the team: a renewed emphasis on tools for writing native code, extending applications to take advantage of managed functionality and recognition that developers are using C++/CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) to bridge native and managed code. Managed functionality being eyed by the team includes technologies such as Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation.

"The team will be significantly increasing support for native development tools," Somasegar said. This involves investigating ways to make C++ developers more efficient in understanding, updating and validating the quality of large native code bases, he said. A front-end rewrite is being worked on to improve IntelliSense capabilities.

"This same work should pave the way for future enhancements such as refactoring and advanced source code analysis," said Somasegar.

Native libraries are to be updated to simplify development of rich client user interfaces and access to Windows platform innovation, he said. "Friction-free" interoperability between native and managed code is a goal also.

Microsoft's new Visual C++ strategy will begin to be reflected in the upcoming Visual Studio 2008 development tools platform, which had been codenamed "Orcas" and is due later this year. But most of the changes will occur afterward, said Somasegar.

"The team is currently kicking around a number of native code and interop features planned for Orcas+1, and we are always interested in hearing from customers," Somasegar said.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 10, 2007 04:00 PM

August 09, 2007 | Comments: (0)

SpikeSource CEO cites open source opportunities

Open source is creating more business opportunities rather than limiting them, even if the software itself is given away, said Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource.

"In fact, I see open source [as] driving an incredible renaissance right now," she said in an interview on Wednesday at LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco.

"There are more opportunities being founded," she said.

Open source business models generally involve selling subscriptions to technical support services. Another business model that does not involve selling software is the hosted model, in which software is hosted and accessed via the Web with advertising providing revenues, such as what Google has done.

When software is given away, a community forms around it, Polese said. Developers of this software can then build a commercial business. She cited as an example Bryght , which formed around the Drupal project for open source content management.

SpikeSource provides access to open source stacks and certifies them across multiple operating systems. Patch management and support services also are featured.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 9, 2007 12:11 PM

August 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Red Hat exec leery of Novell Linux effort

A call by Novell's CEO for a standardized way to certify Linux applications Wednesday was subsequently greeted with skepticism by a high-ranking official at rival Linux distributor Red Hat.

During a morning keynote at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, Novell President and CEO Ron Hovsepian said Novell was working with industry players on a plan to streamline certification of Linux applications. Red Hat's Michael Evans, vice president of corporate development at the company, said afterward that liked the idea. But he expressed doubts about the effort since Hovsepian was involved.

"Personally, that he's the guy that did the deal with Microsoft, I'm suspicious of things he says," Evans said.

Evans was referring to an agreement forged between the companies in which the vendors agreed not to sue each other's customers over any intellectual property infringement issues. The two companies exchanged monies in return for these covenants not to sue the other's customers. Microsoft later alleged that Linux and other open source software violate 235 Microsoft patents, although the company has not detailed those patents publicly.

The Novell-Microsoft arrangement amounts to a taxation of Novell's Suse Linux software by Microsoft, Evans said. "It's a taxation because there's a fee being paid by Novell to Microsoft for every copy shipped," Evans said.

The majority of the open source world thinks the Novell-Microsoft deal is a bad one, said Evans. Red Hat will not do a similar deal with Microsoft, he said. Novell has said it makes more money on the arrangement than it pays out.

Evans also said any plan to standardize Linux application certifications must be "grounded in reality" and that the Linux Standard Base project has been productive in the area of standards certification. Other than Red Hat and Novell both participating in Linux Standard Base, Evans was not aware of any approaches by Novell about the application certification plan.

Evans also commented on impacts of Oracle's effort to lure Red Hat users to Oracle technical support services. Evans said the company still has partnerships with Oracle and that Red Hat recently reported retaining 99 percent of its support customers, with a lone holdout just delaying a renewal. Red Hat has no numbers on the amount of Red Hat users who simply downloaded the company's Linux distribution and then sought out Oracle for support.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 8, 2007 01:36 PM

August 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Oracle eyes ALM space

Oracle plans to enter the application lifecycle management space, the company said on Tuesday.

While companies such as IBM, Borland and, lately, Microsoft, have been battling out in ALM, Oracle has remained on the sidelines. But not anymore.

"Oracle's focus on the ALM space is part of our long-term strategy to ensure our customers have the resources and technology they need to design, develop, deploy and manage large-scale software applications throughout the entire application lifecycle," the company said in a statement. "This requires bringing together a variety of diverse people who are contributing to different parts of the software process and allowing them to share information quickly and effectively."

"Continuing to build on Oracle Fusion Middleware's Hot-Pluggable philosophy, we expect that the Oracle ALM solution will respect the current technology investments that companies have made in this space and work with a variety of both popular and home-grown software packages," the company said.

"We also expect the Oracle solution to allow companies to be more efficient and maintain better control and predictability over their enterprise applications," the company said.

Posted by Paul Krill on August 7, 2007 06:06 PM

August 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Entering the Digital Dark Ages?

Welcome to the Digital Dark Ages -- an era of unprecedented information gathering likely to leave no lasting impression on the future, thanks in large part to a cross-departmental lack of understanding of the business requirements for data archiving.

Or at least that's the tenor of a recent study conducted by SNIA's 100 Year Archive Task Force, undertaken to shed light on the long-term fate of digital information as dictated by today's datacenter migration and archiving policies.

But whereas the late 5th and 6th centuries earned the "dark" moniker due to a dearth of texts from which to reconstruct historical events and philosophical leanings, today's informational blind spot may in fact be developing due to a lack of attention being paid to establishing the reconstruction mechanism itself.

"Long term, from an IT perspective, seems to come down to the 15-year period, during which three to four infrastructure refreshes will have occurred ," says Jeff Porter, chairman of the SNIA data management forum. "IT will have the ability to keep the bytes and bring them along, but not necessarily the ability to maintain the applications, and it's at that point that the risk of not being able to interpret the data begins to creep in."

Because of this, 60 percent of the survey's 276 respondents said they are "highly dissatisfied" with the likelihood of being able to read their retained information 50 years hence. And, although 50 years in computing time may seem an eternity, according to the survey of IT, security, legal, inventory management, and archive professionals, 80 percent of organizations retain at least some portion of their data stores for more than 50 years -- and 68 percent said they have data they must keep for more than a century.

"We were quite surprised by those numbers," Porter says.

The irony, of course, is that the very accumulation of data to be archived is among the chief factors pushing long-term archiving concerns even further down the IT priority stack. There are simply too many other business-critical endeavors not getting done to put resources into ensuring the readability of data a quarter century or more down the line.

"Archiving has not been viewed as a valuable business service to date," Porter notes. "But regulatory compliance requirements and the risk of fines really have businesses looking at these issues today, and they're discovering that archive has value and can help reduce their cost and limit their risk to legal exposures."

Chief among the SNIA task force's post-survey directives is to get application providers and storage system vendors on the same page when it comes to providing organizations with a means for reproducing original content unaltered over time.

"You have to get the application vendors involved. You have to move and store this data in a format that can be logically reproduced in the future and we don’t even know what the data formats will be 30 to 40 years from now," Porter says.

To achieve this, SNIA is betting on XAM (eXtensible Access Method), which it believes will provide much-needed metadata communication between applications and storage systems, thereby easing the ability to move data around in heterogeneous storage environments without application awareness.

Whether XAM can truly lead to an archiving Rosetta stone that will open today's troves to future generations remains to be seen. After all, XAM itself has yet to be seen, as XAM-based technology is slated for inaugural demonstration at Storage Networking World in Dallas in October.

That said, any enterprise that has attempted to reclaim knowledge locked away in legacy data formats knows that the case for some sort of comprehensive solution to long-term data reconstruction issues is compelling.

Posted by Jason Snyder on August 6, 2007 04:53 PM

August 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Nokia Siemens joins Linux Foundation

Nokia Siemens Networks has become a member of the Linux Foundation and will work with the organization to improve Carrier Grade Linux, the foundation said on Monday.

Nokia Siemens will develop Linux-based technologies for use in User Plane and Control Plane Network Elements and embedded applications. This work is expected to lead to further integration of the mobile and carrier grade Linux specification with the Linux Standard Base, to deliver a standard for these expanding Linux markets, the foundation said.

"Linux has become a very natural fit for telecom network and device manufacturers who are looking for an operating system from which they can easily and cost-effectively build differentiated services and value," said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, in a statement released by the foundation. "There is no question that the massive success of Linux in telecom is key in today's new stage of Linux growth. Nokia Siemens Networks will add another level of expertise as we transition into this stage of increasing open development, and we welcome their participation."

A Nokia Siemens official stressed carrier grade interfaces and Linux interoperability.

"Nokia Siemens Networks will play an active role as a Linux Foundation member by contributing both financial and technical resources to the Linux ecosystem to make sure it remains state of the art," said Stephan Scholz, chief technology officer of Nokia Siemens Networks, in a statement. "In Linux, the most important things for us are certified carrier grade interfaces as well as the interoperability between various Linux distributions. We look forward to working with the Linux Foundation and continue to use Linux in our commercially available products."

Posted by Paul Krill on August 6, 2007 09:12 AM

August 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google phone won't be about "voice ads"

A very curious quote cropped up in Ben Ames' coverage of the rumored Google phone. Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst, raised the following point of criticism about Google's rumored ambition to deliver the device and the service for free and expecting for it be paid for by ad revenue.

Here's what he said. (The underlined bit is this quote is my emphasis.) "The average adult who can afford a cell phone is not going to want to listen to ads. So this is mainly for teenagers, twenty-somethings, high schoolers or people who can't afford a phone."

I wonder if Kagan got wind of part of Google's plan that I missed, because frankly, when I first contemplated a Google phone back in March, it never, ever occurred to me that Google would force users of the device to listen to droning voice ads between phone calls. And I still don't see that happening. I'd bet that if Google were to try pulling something like that, the phone would indeed be a flop.

But the Google phone isn't going to just be a "phone" in the old-school sense of the word (i.e. a portable device capable for just making calls). Check out the Wall Street Journal's description. It's going to be a wireless mobile device that happens to have voice capabilities. "The specifications Google has laid out for devices suggest that manufacturers include cameras for photo and video, and built-in Wi-Fi technology ...", the WSJ reports. Google is also asking for a slide-out keyboard, according to the Journal.

It likely won't be as flashy as, say, the iPhone. People will be able talk on it, of course, but more important, they'll use it for checking e-mail, performing Web searches, getting directions, and all the other things you can do from a browser on a mobile device.

And, of course, while you're using all those browser-based services, you'll have ads delivered to your screen, just as you do when you access those services on your desktop PC. And that's where Google will rake in the revenue, I'm wagering; not through annoying and disruptive droning voice ads between phone calls.

Seriously, think about. When has Google ever been outright disruptive with its ads? I think one of reasons the company's search business is so successful is that it's not ridiculously in-your-face with advertisements. Rather, it delivers ads quietly and intelligently, targeting them with pinpoint precision at users as they use Google search, GMail, and other Google services.

Google's a smart company. It knows the search game. Heck, it practically runs the search game. And it knows that mobile search is the next lucrative frontier. What better way to stake a huge claim then to practically (or literally) hand out free mobile devices and services to the masses, giving them access to all those free services it already offers, then watch the ad clicks and dollars roll in?

Posted by Ted Samson on August 3, 2007 02:00 AM

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