Microsoft gets a lot of heat for not leaving enough on the table for others. My mother, who's English, and quite a character, once said of Bill Gates, "He sounds like someone who would come to your house for dinner and say, ‘Thank you. I think I'll have all the mashed potatoes.'"
That's Google today. What major tech giant has Google not pitted itself against? Whose mashed potatoes do they not seek to take? Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon — Google has made enemies of all of them. The difference between Google's predatory rapaciousness today and Microsoft's of yore is that Microsoft wore it on their sleeve, they owned it, celebrated it.
Every story I read about Google is “us versus some other company” or some stupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting. We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative isn’t how we make progress. Most important things are not zero sum, there is a lot of opportunity out there.
Google fans seem to eat this kumbaya stuff up, to really believe it. But Google is the company that built Android after the iPhone, Google Plus after Facebook, and now a subscription music service after Spotify. They entered the RSS reader market, wiped it out, and are now just walking away from it. Gmail? Webmail but better. Think about even web search: Google search wasn’t something new; it was something better. Way, way, way better, but still.
Consider maps. Google Maps entered a market where MapQuest and others had been around for years. That wasn’t something great that didn’t already exist. It was a better version of something that already existed. Google is a hyper-competitive company, and they repeatedly enter markets that already exist and crush competitors. Nothing wrong with that. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work, and Google’s successes are admirable. But there’s nothing stupid about seeing Google being pitted “versus” other companies. They want everything; their ambition is boundless.
Posted June 2nd, 2013 @ 09:29am by Erik J. Barzeski
I will point out, however, that vertical videos work quite well for the golf swing. It's more vertical than horizontal, and Analyzr lets you rotate videos (and they stay rotated).
Posted May 31st, 2013 @ 12:32pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I've never used Keyboard Maestro. I like FastScripts, and use it quite a bit, but perhaps someone has an example of how they use Keyboard Maestro that will resonate with me.
Do you use Keyboard Maestro? How?
Someone, sell me on it. I'm interested, I just don't think it'll fit.