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The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: It’s not a phone, it’s an alliance
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We’re not scared about this Google phone platform. First of all, it’s aimed at Windows Mobile. Second of all, alliances never work.
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The Journal kind of nails the problem with this story. Money quote: Tech consortia for decades have been notorious for failing to live up to their promise. Google Director of Mobile Platforms Andy Rubin acknowledged the troubled history of previous consortia, but said that Android was different because “we’re actually releasing in one week this software.”
But the issue isn’t about when the software ships. Consortia don’t work because nobody can ever agree on anything and everyone always wants to push the group in ways that advantage themselves and disadvantage everyone else. Reason #2 — the only companies that join consortia are the ones who are too stupid or shitty to make a great product on their own. It’s like, Hey, we’ve got forty spazzo companies that can’t fuck their way out of a paper bag; let’s put them all together and maybe they’ll magically become some kind of big bad powerhouse. More likely it’ll just be some scary ass Frankenstein monster, walking around drooling and tripping over its own tongue.
Think of what a customer wants. When you’re redoing your kitchen, and you’re choosing appliances, do you go out looking for some consortium devoted to food temperature management and environmental control technology? No. You go looking for a refrigerator.
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Finally, has anyone else noticed the way Google is kind of desperately grasping at straws lately? They spend years trying to do something other than search and nothing works. Then, despite their big brains and IQ tests, they get totally blindsided by Facebook and have to gin up this ridiculous OpenSocial thing. Just like with this phone thing, they round up all the losers in that social networking space to form some dumbass alliance. You know how it looks? It looks weak. Companies don’t form alliances and consortia when they’re winning. Also, whenever you see companies start talking about being “open,” it means they’re getting their ass kicked. You think Google will be forming an OpenSearch alliance any time soon, to help also-rans in search get a share of the spoils? Me neither.
Here’s another great rant on the same thing:
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A 34-company committee couldn’t create a successful ham sandwich, much less a mobile application suite. It’s going to be some half-baked turd undoubtedly based on GPE since that’s, you know, better than starting from scratch, right? (Wrong.)
For heaven’s sake: Find someone, ONE person, with a unique vision. Lock them in a room with some programmers and a graphic designer. Twenty people, tops. Change the world. Quit re-hashing the same old bullshit and telling me it’s new, exciting, or in any way innovative. Be ready to fail, many times, but for love of all that is holy take a stand on something.
You have NO CLUE why the iPhone is successful and highly sought after, do you? You think it’s all some sort of weird fluke. A market anomaly. That these millions of iPhone owners are going to wake up one morning and say OH SHIT this doesn’t have MMS, what was I thinking! How can such a technological abortion be popular? Come ON, Google, you know better.
People don’t want FEATURES. They’ll tell you they do until they’re blue in the face. But what they actually want is ease-of-use, and solutions to real-world problems — looking at a map, finding nearby restaurants, sending a photo to a friend without going through 6 submenus, not to mention making phone calls. You’re Google, you’re actually not too bad at this. Ditch those other 33 companies, put 20 of your smartest people on it, and you stand a fighting chance. Otherwise just let it go — this PR non-announcement isn’t worth the time it takes to read.
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