I’m beginning to despise Google.

I started noticing that Google appears to have disabled YouTube when its embedded in a web page for mobile safari. Used to be that on the iPhone it would show a graphic of the video, and when tapped would open the YouTube app. On the iPad, it would actually play in the webpage, with the option to go full screen. As of now, so far as I can tell, nothing appears at all.

Please let me know in the comments if you’re experiencing the same thing. Just scroll down a few entries and tell me if you can see the video of me reading the Declaration of Independence on your iPhone or iPad.

It strikes me as awfully suspicious that they should do this simultaneously with launching the new mobile YouTube site. I’m guessing what they’re trying to do is to get you to log in to your Google credentials in your web browser so they can associate your mobile web surfing with your desktop web surfing. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google shut down the YouTube app altogether. In fact, I’d be surprised if they didn’t.

Google really is evil.

So engadget says today that the new appleTV is going to be based on the iPhone OS:

The new ATV will do away with its current OS X-lite variation as a operating system, and will instead adopt the iPhone OS for the underlying experience. There’s no word at this point on whether apps and the App Store will be coming along for the ride, but it makes sense given the shared platform. Of course, scaling iPhone apps to that 52-inch plasma in your living room isn’t exactly a no-brainer. Perhaps not surprisingly, Apple won’t deliver the ATV news at the upcoming WWDC — that event will be focused on the capabilities of the new iPhone — but development on the product is most definitely full steam ahead.

They also mention that the device will only have a power in and a video out port, that it will put out a full 1080p and it will be priced at a $99. This doesn’t sound at all quite right. I have trouble imagining that any device meant to stream video at full 1080p wouldn’t come equipped with a gigabit Ethernet port. And while $99 strikes me as a low target price, it’s doubtful that apple has already established a price for a product that does not yet exist.

Furthermore it seems to me that the existence of an appleTV based on the iPhone OS is the best explanation as to why iPad apps are referred to as “HD”. My guess is that the resolution of the iPad is enough to display an app on an HD television screen. Moreover, if it weren’t then it would almost be required that apple announce the device in advance so that developers can get started working on apps for it. The only reason not to announce it early is that apps already work on it. Which I suspect they do.

More curious to me is the absence of a video-in port. This tells me that the device is not meant to act as a pvr. Could it be that they plan on selling streaming television provided directly from cable networks and other producers? Remember, Steve Jobs is the largest shareholder in Disney which owns ABC, who made an iPad app that basically throws all of the network’s content online Hulu style. In fact, only Comcast owned NBC seems to be resisting the move at this point. I think this device may be designed from the outset to make both broadcast and cable tv obsolete in one fell swoop, all the while facilitating the purchase of more content from the iTunes store and enabling the streaming of iTunes content from your PC. If that’s the case then it’s a bold move, and one that makes Google TV look like Child’s play.

I just wonder if Apple isn’t opening too many fronts against too many competitors at this point. Let’s just list briefly who apple will be competing against if the appleTV is delivered as described:

• Microsoft
• Google
• Adobe
• Nintendo
• Sony
• Comcast
• RIM
• Nokia
• Motorola
• HP

Am I missing anybody?

Finally I wrote this entire blog entry on my iPad using the web interface of WordPress. Not ideal, but it worked. I’d rather have had a dedicated WP application, but I really can’t stand the stretched iPhone versions of apps. I should hope that an iPad specific blogging tool is developed relatively soon, and if it already exists, plea keg me know what it is.

UPDATE: just discovered the WordPress app for iPad. Must have just been released because I looked for this a few days ago. Anyhow, looks decent so far. I’ll Include a review when I write a thorough review of my iPad, which I’ll do in late June after my vacation.

I have to admit that I’m deeply confused about Google’s moves right now. It seems to me that a war with Apple can only be destructive towards Google’s ends. Google appears to be letting the acquired Android division lead the company, rather than vice versa. I do not see this ending well for Google.

Google bought Android in 2005. That’s 2 years before the iPhone came out. The logic at the time was sound. Namely, Google is in the advertising business, and since nobody had hitherto come out with a smartphone that could display mobile advertisements in a reasonable way, Google would just go ahead and build the platform for that to happen, and then give it away to anyone who wanted it. It held a certain logic.

Even after the iPhone was released, it acted as a certain insurance policy. It in effect said to Apple, “Don’t mess with us, because if you don’t let us put our services and ads on your device, we’ll release our phone OS to the world…” And Apple seemed to make every effort to integrate the iPhone into Google’s services, like maps, email, and search. So there really should have been no conflict.

But now Google has declared war on Apple, over principles that really, make no sense. Google has always been about open standards, and yet they choose to take a stand over supporting Flash, a proprietary standard if there ever was one? They choose to support Flash despite the obvious battery life problems it causes? Just to stick their thumb in the eye of Apple? What?

They call their platform open because they release the source code? But then they tell developers they shouldn’t use undocumented APIs? How is that open? They have an app store, just like Apple, which 99% of installed apps come from, and yet they’re open because of the 1% that come from elsewhere? What?

In reality, the issue for consumers isn’t the phone and how open it is or isn’t to developers, it’s the network, and the extent to which they cripple the hardware that they sell and try to funnel users into using bullshit “Vcast” type online music services and whatnot. Apple’s biggest coup with the iPhone wasn’t just the hardware and the software and how well it all works (though that is no small achievement). It’s that they got AT&T to let them sell the phone that they wanted to sell. From all accounts, Verizon wouldn’t let them do that, so intent on selling Vcast crap they couldn’t abide by a phone that let people install stuff (like music even) not bought from Verizon. So no iPhone for Verizon.

None of what Verizon is up to benefits the consumer in any way whatsoever. The consumer wants a phone as designed by the phone engineer, not as crippled by the network. And Apple was the first to deliver that. Now an open source phone will have appeal to a network operator, because it will allow the network to build their Vcast crap right into the OS, and to cripple 3rd party software and whatnot. But that doesn’t appeal to the consumer. To be crystal clear about this, consumers, myself included, would rather have phones built and designed by the likes of Microsoft that are sold as originally conceived and designed than have the best phone ever built that was crippled by the network operator.

Google’s open source “advantage” is that it lets the network operator cripple the phone. Good luck with that business model.

Meanwhile, Google pisses off Apple, and throws away the ability to sell ads on the iPhone. Google may not strictly speaking be forbidden from doing so, but they will never get the well-oiled integration that Apple provides. What’s more, Google may well be thrown off the iPhone in every other capacity. I’m predicting that maps and search will be gone within a year. And will Google even be allowed to sell ads on their own Android phones? I wouldn’t count on it. I would think that Verizon and company will get into that business themselves. “V-ads” they’ll call them.

I don’t quite see how this ends well for Google. I suppose their strategy may work better in the international market where carriers can’t dictate which phones are allowed on their networks, and thus crippled phones are not an option. But domestically, I think Google is hanging themselves for the sake of glory for the Android division. Seems really foolish to me.

So Google Buzz is opt-out and not opt-in. So you have to turn it off, but that’s only after it starts sharing crap with everyone you’ve ever exchanged an email with. Mainly, it announces to the world who you chat and email with the most (link, link and link). That’s PRIVATE information. At a minimum, you have to go into your settings and adjust your privacy settings. But you’re probably better off scrolling down to the bottom of your screen and turning the whole damned thing off.

And that doesn’t even bring up that Buzz doesn’t work with Firefox, and breaks all sorts of other functionality in Gmail. Gee, THANKS GOOGLE!

I guess Steve Jobs had a point when he said that Google’s slogan, “Don’t Be Evil” was bullshit. It most certainly is.

It seems to me that in the future, every computing company needs to have a search engine (with maps), a desktop operating system (with office capabilities), and a mobile device, all of which work seamlessly together, but are operable with other company’s offerings should one choose to do that.

Currently, Google has a phone and a search engine, and is dipping its toe into the OS market. It offers online office applications currently, which will be integrated into their upcoming Chrome OS.

Apple has an OS with an office suite (iWork) and a phone, and is rumored to be developing a search engine. They bought a Google maps competitor, which will likely be integrated.

Microsoft has a mobile phone OS that is crappy, and is rumored to be working on their own phone. It wouldn’t surprise me to see them buying RIM or Palm to get the phone in their lineup. Microsoft has a search engine, Bing, which works pretty well, and appears to be the only viable competitor to Google at the current time. And obviously, Microsoft has an OS and office suite.

Until Microsoft and Apple are able to build/buy their mobile phone and search engine respectively, I expect to see them allying against Google for the time being (next 6-18 months). Once they launch their respective phone and search engine, expect a quick but amicable divorce.

Question(s): Where does console gaming and media distribution fit into all of this? Companies like Netflix and Amazon compete with iTunes and the XBox store for movie rentals and the like. And Google is rumored to be offering movies for rent over Youtube soon as well. Is this another component that needs to be offered by a modern computing company? Apple has the AppleTV device, which sucks, and the Mac Mini, which is awesome but not easily connected to a television. Will that change? Does Google need to make a device for the TV? Does that device need to play games? Is Nintendo a takeover target for this reason? I’ve long thought that Apple and Nintendo would make a good fit together. And where do the Playstation and Roku and Boxee Box fit into all of this?

Just looking for ideas here guys.

Be sure to opt out of the new Google based privacy violating behavior based advertising algorithm. It’s noteworthy that there is no Safari opt-out yet. I suspect that Safari plug-ins are too difficult to build.

(via ars)

The elusive Cuil has finally launched:

A new search engine dubbed Cuil is hoping to offer a rival to the likes of Google, Yahoo and Ask.

Cuil is pronounced ‘cool’ and comes from an old Irish word meaning ‘knowledge’.

The site has indexed 120 billion web pages, which it claims is three times more than any other search engine, and results are organised by ideas rather than just rankings. Cuil also boasts complete user privacy.

Sounds interesting. I couldn’t reach it this morning, but I’ll be sure to check it out.

Visit Cuil.com.

Previously on Cuil.

I’ve been thinking about voice activated dialing on cell phones lately. So I thought I’d share my thoughts on the matter.

One of the principle complaints of the iPhone is that it does not include voice activated dialing. Indeed, with California being the latest state to mandate the use of headsets while using a telephone while driving, everyone faces a greater need for voice activated dialing. My issue with it is that I don’t think it should reside on the client device.

I’ve had voice activated dialing on my phone before. It sucks. You have to train it to understand your voice, and the slightest sound throws it off. The problem is it takes up too much memory and computing power to do voice recognition correctly.

That having been said, Goog411 from Google offers excellent voice recognition over a 1-800 number. Basically, you tell it what you’re looking for, and then it connects you. Makes perfect sense; they have essentially unlimited memory and computing power at Google – way more than my client handheld will ever have. So my question is, why doesn’t Goog411 hook into my address book when I dial in? It makes sense that it would. Let Google know my cell phone number, and when it sees my caller ID, it offers to look up numbers from my address book and connect me to those numbers as well. If Google isn’t your thing, then perhaps Apple should offer something similar via their new MobileMe service.

Either way, someone needs to offer this service pronto.

Looks like Verizon and AT&S walked away with the bulk of it. Google got nothing.

Verizon Wireless, a joint venture between Verizon and Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Group, won the highly sought-after nationwide “C” block of licenses. AT&T won 227 licenses from among the B block of regional licenses. Frontier Wireless gained airwaves in the E block of the auction, covering almost all of the United States.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG), which had pushed for opening up at least some of the spectrum over the initial resistance of Verizon and AT&T, did not garner any licenses in the auction.

More here. More detailed analysis at Ars Technica.

So some executive leaves Google for Facebook, prompting FSJ:

Maybe it doesn’t occur to the startup kids that Google’s top execs don’t have any special genius, they are just lucky bastards who landed in the right place at the right time.

It’s not just the startup kids who don’t get that. It seems like a lot of people.

And there’s more:

You have to remember what Facebook’s core business is about. It’s not about helping people stay in touch with friends or express themselves. It’s not about changing the world or creating an ecosystem for small apps makers. It’s not even about selling ads. Facebook is a vehicle through which a bunch of investors in the Valley hope to turn a small pile of money into a much bigger pile of money by selling shares in the public markets. That is Facebook’s core business. That is its raison d’etre as they say in Latin. This is a company created by, for and about venture capitalists. It’s not a company so much as it’s a narrative. A fable. A fairy tale.

This is how entrepreneurs get tripped up in trying to pitch to VC’s. They think they’re selling businesses but what they’re selling are business plans, ruses to the public. Try and sell an actual honest-to-god moneymaking business and you’re out of luck. It’s about flipping to the next sucker.

Nothing has changed since the dot com boom. Not a damned thing.

Read Fake Steve Jobs.