The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

http://www.robinsloan.com/note/pictures-and-vision/index.html

by nextstep • 14 years ago

474 251 14 years ago

gfosco• 14 years ago

It is unfortunate they are both scary companies. They both know too much about their users, and their users connections.

Even if you don't have a Facebook account, there is probably still some evidence of you in their system. Unlike Facebook, it would be pretty hard to not use Google at all, but it's at least possible to use their services and remain unidentified.

Photos are over-rated, but tell that to the ~500 million people stalking each other on Facebook. Glass is an incredible vision into the future of computing, or a chilling vision of the future where there is no disconnecting from the web of surveillance.

eitally• 14 years ago

The fact of the matter is that most people are less concerned about personal privacy and data security than they are maintaining social relationships, so while I don't disagree with your premise I would argue that your point is fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I fully expect we'll end up with a few competing Skynets in the next couple of decades, but the best we can hope for is that their overlords are reasonable people. Imho, trying to avoid this is a fool's errand; we're better off educating people and creating peripheral controls to help guide the megaliths into an agreeable position.

kaybe• 14 years ago

As long as it's just companies that can be regulated by states and laws it's managable. The main task we have imho is to keep the governments out of the loop - we don't want the force monopoly combined with the data collection.

imd• 14 years ago

Surely that's not the best we can hope for—or work for. It is not out of the realm of possibility that distributed social networks, like email or Diaspora, can gain popularity. But I don't know how to make that appealing to average people.

qq663• 14 years ago

It's effectively impossible to avoid being visible to Facebook, since hundreds of thousands of websites implement the Facebook "Like" button which makes huge amounts of your browsing activity visible to them (by IP address if you're not logged into Facebook).

groaner• 14 years ago

Not if you invoke the nuclear option and put every facebook domain (including the fbcdn stuff) in your hosts file as 0.0.0.0

daenz• 14 years ago

> where there is no disconnecting from the web of surveillance.

When you look at what has happened with mobile phone cameras and police brutality, it seems that this kind of tech does more active good than it does passive harm.

rjv• 14 years ago

I agree that all of the Google X projects of today will ultimately be what defines Google tomorrow. The fact that they have the guts to tackle projects that are incredibly risky for a business but meaningful for humanity is a major reason I'm happy to use their products. I love the geek factor.

Symmetry• 14 years ago

I'm not sure it's that risky for them. Google tends to try a bunch of different stuff, but doesn't seem too shy about cuttings its losses and failing reasonably fast when needed.

ocirion2• 14 years ago

What happens when they fail one too many times and the seemingly endless supply of R&D money runs out?

joelrunyon2• 14 years ago

It seems that Google's products have future utility to them that seems to be lacking from FB.

Facebook is focused on sharing. That can be an action, but until the action is focused, it doesn't seem to be useful (other than as a time-suck of course).

taligent4• 14 years ago

I fail to see how photos which provide pleasure, foster relationships, enlighten and educate is not useful but a camera you wear on your head is.

joelrunyon2• 14 years ago

The camera is a prototype for the direction they're headed. Driverless cars and glasses which provide information about objects you look certainly have more utility than a "camera you wear on your head."

mrkmcknz• 14 years ago

I agree.

I made the argument only this weekend with a family member that technology companies come and go and tend to be cyclic. However, Google is here to stay. They might be search/advertising at the minute but those guys are really taking crazy problems head on and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Google had a breakthrough product in 5years with Cars.

We can all criticize Google+, but Google is one of those companies that I look at and stand in awe of day after day.

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

For anyone who didn't rtfa, here's a cool link of Sebastian Thrun demonstrating Project Glass on Charlie Rose:

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12321

gcb9• 14 years ago

i did read the article, clicked to the interview link, saw only a picture and left.

now i saw your comment, clicked the link and was about to dismiss the page a second time thinking all it had was a silly image when i finally decided to click it.

so much for usability. how difficult it is to add a "play" triangle to video?

saraid2167• 14 years ago

Charlie Rose, despite his quality as an interviewer, is still part of "Old Media" and their crotchety inability to get "New Media". I don't mean Rose specifically, but the people he's paid by.

Also, I sound completely stupid in that paragraph but I can't figure out how to say it better. :P

gouranga5• 14 years ago

That google glass picture scares the fuck out of me. It instantly devalues humanity and values voyeurism and narcissism over family.

If this becomes the norm, I'm going all Luddite.

I think it will also become: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma8NbpCvSwo

dfxm12• 14 years ago

Can you elaborate how a picture taken with a camera you wear like glasses "devalues humanity and values voyeurism and narcissism over family" compared to a picture taken with a more (I guess) traditional camera?

gouranga5• 14 years ago

Simply intent.

The intent shipped with google glass is social by default. share. Identify. Record. There is no other reason to use it.

The intent with a camera is to take a photo then decide the intent.

The former is a dangerous paradigm shift.

pessimizer• 14 years ago

A camera is alienating, and a camera that you constantly wear is even more alienating; like a locked cell is more imprisoning than a locked country.

Recommendation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29#3...

ihuman• 14 years ago

How does Google Glass have anything to do taking picture of yourself, or the pain of others (or am I looking at the wrong definition)?

gouranga5• 14 years ago

It doesn't. Watch this, or read the description if you can't get it where you are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29#3....

debacle• 14 years ago

Join the rest of us Luddites. It's a liberating world out there.

gcb9• 14 years ago

Glass will be google's newton pad.

a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten.

With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.

antidaily• 14 years ago

Agreed. Meanwhile, they've ruined Picasa with G+.

ImprovedSilence2• 14 years ago

As well as Reader.

toemetoch3• 14 years ago

Odd that you'd state that. My flickr-feed is dwindling because photographers are moving to Google+ for picasa's quality service.

stesch• 14 years ago

Yes, Apple will bring out a cool version in 2020.

shrub• 14 years ago

iEyes?

Splines• 14 years ago

How do you make wearing a headpiece cool? I wear glasses and imagine some teeny tiny thing embedded in one of the arms. What could 20/20 people do that would be socially acceptable? Maybe a bluetooth headset looking thing?

fuzzythinker• 14 years ago

You are thinking of today's Glass. In 2-3 iterations, the camera will be so small and embedded in the frame that it won't be noticeable.

grandalf3• 14 years ago

A camera that takes images comparable to a picture taken on a current iPhone? For every frame (such as in a video) the amount of work involved to reduce boredom increases. Raw video of people's lives is utterly, unimaginably boring, even if the person is a celebrity.

Still photos work b/c they capture a whole moment, with just enough detail to inspire the imagination and to ground the imaginings in reality.

My personal favorites are the slightly grainy and oversaturated images taken by the camera in the blackberry I had about 5 years ago. Still photos bring out the best parts of the human experience, while raw video makes everyone as boring as the worst video blogger.

dannyr2• 14 years ago

There are a lot of products that started as totally uncool, used by hippies/yuppies & eventually became mainstream.

PC. Twitter. I won't be surprised if cellphone was too.

Google Glass is a prototype. Product will evolve.

I bet decades ago, people would not have thought that PCs would fit inside a manila folder.

swalsh3• 14 years ago

Sir I challenge you to a bet, $100 to our respective favorite charities.

In my opinion Google Glass is set to be a game changer from the start. I wager that when google glass is launched, it will be a cultural icon no more than 1.5 years later.

It's clear WHY google needs glass. Owning the channel between my eyes and the world is a huge potential pot of money. Targeted ads have a lot of potential to disrupt the ad space, and if facebook ever decides to make their own ad network (such as Google's ad sense) competition will be fierce. Google glass is a really good way to increase their competitive advantage, and cement their position in the advertising arena.

Additionally, of the companies that would be interested in making a product like google glass (facebook, microsoft, IBM etc) Google probably has the best mix of engineers to do it. I've always said that Google is an AI company first. Well a huge part of AI is machine vision, and a large part of successfully monetizing google glass is machine vision. Additionally, with street view, and other aggressive initiatives Google is in one of the best positions to actually understand what and where the world you are looking at. Finally, while google has proven in the past they are weak as a hardware company (nexus 1) they have demonstrated they are capable of bringing a consumer product to the mass market... though perhaps maybe not enough to make it anything less then a wild card.

Finally the last point is one of consumer adoption. The newton pad was not successful in part because the hardware was premature. But I would speculate it was also in part because consumers weren't at the point of understanding the value. The hardware in Google glass is unknown at this point, and potentially could under-deliver... and that will cause it to be a newton.. but for the reasons i said above I think Google is capable of delivering a quality product. However consumer readiness will not be an issue. 1 billion people are already on Facebook. Social interaction through technology is accepted today more then ever before. Using smartphones in public is not only accepted, its normal. Years ago using a PDA might have made you look like a yuppie, but today no one would notice.

jack-r-abbit3• 14 years ago

I was thinking the same thing. I think one of the biggest issues with the Newton was timing. We are a different people now than then. The timing is right. If they don't mess it up with weird looking hardware, then it will probably be a success.

gcb9• 14 years ago

1. i don't believe in paying third party charity

2. you think all that for the same reason I also think all that: Wishful thinking... but deep inside i can see the truth. we are the hippies-yuppies who will buy it :)

put yourself on the shoes of people hearing about the newton back then: handwriting recognition!! how wouldn't want that instead of a 3x4 phone keyboard? Turned out 99.9% prefered T9. it's all the same. we are thinking as if the implementation and day-to-day use would be perfect on such a new concept on the first try. well, odds are it wont. but in one year can get back to it and see if my money goes to one of your charities or if your money will buy me something shinny (that's one bet i'd like to lose...)

zeroonetwothree• 14 years ago

What does "cultural icon" mean? Is the Segway a cultural icon even though only ~30,000 of them exist? Pretty much everyone knows what it is but most people have not benefited from them. I would be willing to take this bet if we determine some objective criteria.

jcampbell1• 14 years ago

I'll gladly take this bet. It is hard to frame since I don't think it will ever launch in any meaningful way (1.5 years from never, is still never). That being said, I think if they sell 20 million units globally before December 31, 2016 you will win the bet.

The marketplace is going to reject Glass.

jrockway4• 14 years ago

Did you mean: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.?

temphn• 14 years ago

This is a good comment. Google Glass is technologically amazing, but the demo video was incredibly distracting. You only want augmented reality when you want it. You don't want random notifications and messages from other people cropping up and making you walk into a lamppost.

On the other hand, if they can lick the distraction problem or even make the tool something that improves focus (say by reminding you unobtrusively of what you need to get done that day) it could be very cool in subsequent iterations. I don't think the product manager is thinking about minomizing distraction though.

Codhisattva• 14 years ago

Google could have been the picture sharing site of choice with Picasa but for it's broken paradigm.

loganlinn• 14 years ago

As a moot sidenote, this story was submitted yesterday http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4038962 (yes, coincidently by me)

AsylumWarden• 14 years ago

For me personally it was the title. For me, I am not as interested in "pictures and vision" as I am interested in the ongoing dominance struggle between Google and Facebook. Sensationalism, or at least a good teaser title, wins the day for me I'm afraid. It is a good find though. Good luck next time!

51Cards5• 14 years ago

"Google is getting good, really good, at building things that see the world around them and actually understand what they’re seeing."

That statement spells it for me. With Google I see research, I see pushing tech boundaries and hardware experiments, I see new ways to interpret the world. With Facebook I see a huge lump of data but nothing really too groundbreaking. I don't deny Facebook's momentum... it's huge and it's valuable... but is it future proof? Are they thriving on momentum alone?

Which wins the race? Dunno yet. Maybe it's just not the same race.

falling2• 14 years ago

With Google you see research (which is of course commendable), but so far they haven’t been able to produce profit from anything else than ads, so I would call that research awesome, useful, beautiful, but not (yet) future proof for the company.

mtgx• 14 years ago

Making money from ads is just a business model. Don't confuse it for a one-hit product. Google could make a lot of different products and services that are based on ads. What you're saying is like saying 30 years ago that TV networks only survive on ads.

I think in the next 5-10 years we'll also see a much more hardware-oriented Google, too. I think Google is serious about hardware (Glass,Motorola devices...maybe even a self-driving, self-sustaining electric car in the future? Who knows).

rogerbinns2• 14 years ago

Google don't have to produce profit now. Remember that they didn't profit from search or ads for a long time.

What they have to do is ensure no one else profits from some research, and to have a way of profiting in the long term. That is a lot easier to work out once something is successful, you know how people use it and it has become somewhat indispensable to users.

markmark• 14 years ago

You hear this a lot (Google is an advertising company, they make 95% of their money from ads). But by that metric many companies are ad companies. Pretty much every web site on the web is just an ad company, because that is how they actually make money, most of the television and radio industries are just ad companies, because that is how they make money.

From http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html if I'm reading it right, 69% of their revenue comes from ads on their own sites. For mine that deserves to be counted as "technology company revenue" not "advertising company revenue". If they didn't have their own ad arm they still would have made a big chunk of that 69% by using some other company to show ads on gmail, youtube and their search page, but if they were only an advertising company they would have just made the 27% that was pure "advertising on other sites" revenue. Just because youtube makes money by showing ads, doesn't make youtube not profitable.

saraid2167• 14 years ago

This is actually why I've been saying that Google is acting more like a government than like a business. They have a buoy of revenue to coast on and are spending it on (what appears to be) unrelated R&D. It smells more like IBM or Microsoft than Ford or Chevrolet.

To me, it's not just not the same race. It's not even the same game. Facebook's playing Tetris; Google's playing Civilization.

ajross8• 14 years ago

There's a lot of truth to this (though I'm generally a big skeptic when people talk about "research" in the abstract; and I remain genunienly "WTF are they thinking!?" about Glass).

Google tries stuff, fails a lot, and stumbles on as many successes as they engineer.

Facebook has executed really well on their core stuff, but... what else? I mean, they've been on a huge hiring binge now for four years. What do they have to show for all that talent? It seems like a big waste to society if nothing else.

taligent4• 14 years ago

Being able to connect with people from around the world and share content is not a big waste to society.

51Cards5• 14 years ago

The one little thought I would add to that is that when Google first started working on a self driving car everyone went "WTF is a search company doing..". Now, X years later... it's a different story. People have started to really think about self-driving vehicles and autonomous travel. I don't see Glass at this point... but I didn't see practical self driving cars 6 years ago either, let alone states licensing them.

ececconi• 14 years ago

Connecting people and giving them a new way to communicate with each other is a big waste to society? Facebook has fundamentally changed the idea of the weak tie for many people. If that's a waste, then I don't really know what else is meaningful in life.

timwiseman• 14 years ago

>Google tries stuff, fails a lot, and stumbles on as many successes as they engineer.

True, but worth pointing out that often the best way to succeed, especially on anything truly innovative, is to be ready to try stuff and fail a lot.

AJ007• 14 years ago

For a long time we heard the same thing about Google - they have a search engine that makes a lot of money with PPC ads, but what else?

Facebook's time will come. The IPO money could make that happen sooner rather than later (if they don't blow it buying mobile apps.)

tlrobinson2• 14 years ago

If I were Facebook, publicly I'd focus on growth, while quietly building killer applications with the massive amounts of data they have.

Consider how many photos they have with users' faces tagged. They'd be crazy not to leverage that data. With the right facial recognition technology they will own that space, which would be extremely useful in products that compete with, say, Project Glass.

Ditto with location data, but they don't quite have the same monopoly there, so I wouldn't be surprised if they acquire Foursquare in the next year (perhaps more difficult than Instagram give the stock price)

saraid2167• 14 years ago

Are you seriously suggesting that they'll come out with a piece of software that can compete with a piece of hardware? Competing with Glass, assuming it's successful by some meaningful measure, will require physical manufacture.

I guess they could leverage their massive amounts of data to blackmail supply chains or something...

bane• 14 years ago

Google just seems to be taking a strategy of pushing the "R" a little closer to "D" in "R&D" then taking it directly to market.

What most people don't see is that a feature of the "R" is a great many failures. By pushing the "R" forward some of those failures end up in the public sphere.

Will it work? Who knows. But history shows that investments into pure R&D ultimately end up paying in large multiples of the initial investment despite the large numbers of failures.

danielrhodes• 14 years ago

There's no question that Google is good at R&D. In the past these projects have led to full featured products that were pretty great. However, lately that hasn't been the case and it wasn't because of lack of vision but lack of top notch execution and lack of attention to the experience element people expect these days. When companies start competing with each other rather than with themselves, they tend to lose sight of the end goal which is to create great products.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

I don't think Google Glass is about taking photos (or videos) of your life. If anything, it makes the most sense to think of it as the next step to Google Goggles, and halfway to a Google Goggles HUD.

minalecs• 14 years ago

when he talks of sharing vision he nailed what google glasses is going to be. example:

https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts/CGR7sCzm...

Post of a video from a person jumping on a trampoline wearing the glasses.

excuse-me2• 14 years ago

"Imagine actors and athletes doing what they do today on Twitter—sharing their adventures from a first-person POV—except doing it with Glass."

Imagine having to click on a dozen copyright notices and pay for each image you see on Google/Facebook because the image they just took is owned by $ACTOR in europe, but $STUDIO in USA and $AGENCY in Japan but a blank page because Facebook doesn't have a right to use it in Canada.

drostie• 14 years ago

That's pretty much true, distribution for content will be a nightmare -- but that's due to the content-distributors being crazy and not so much due to the device being crazy.

So, like, just to be totally clear, the business which doesn't have this problem with videos is porn. I don't know how interested they are in Project Glass in particular, but if Project Glass becomes a way to shoot amateur porn, you can bet that there will be web sites which cater to it. Distribution rights problems will not be a main concern because it's just not a general concern in that industry -- at least, it doesn't get in the way of the day-to-day transmission of the vast amounts of data.

27182818284• 14 years ago

Why is this different than say Instagram by a celeb which happens all the time?

excuse-me2• 14 years ago

People don't "follow" images on Instagram by actors - the google glasses example is proposing a twitter-like system where users follow an actor's view live.

Imagine a system where Napster had a musician bugged and could stream what they were playing in the studio - think there might be right's issues ?

JonnieCache• 14 years ago

Every day I become a little more scared I will live my adulthood in an episode of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWN9WEU2NP8

EDIT: I see it has been mentioned downthread. Charlie Brooker is indeed a genius.

swayfm• 14 years ago

Show me google glass embedded in a pair of contact lenses, and then we'll talk.

jianshen• 14 years ago

In short, the most important company in our lives will be the one that best looks after our memories.

chintan• 14 years ago

Old Google = GoogleX (try outrageous things, see what sticks)

Current Google = Google+ (a beautiful bouquet of socially unified product experience)

Future Google = ??

duaneb• 14 years ago

GoogleX is still there.

dkarl2• 14 years ago

Facebook as a photo sharing app is a fascinating example of the service being generic and the context for the service being the main focus of competition. A bar sells drinks, but providing a competitive lineup of drinks is much easier than providing a competitive context in which to consume them. Coffee shops sell coffee and wifi, but they compete against each other as contexts within which to consume coffee and wifi. As a photo sharing app, what distinguishes Facebook from its competitors is the context it provides.

The context is nothing by itself, of course, and this is what is rarely mentioned about social networking. A bar without drinks would be dry and boring: a Boys and Girls Club for adults. Similarly, the essential, defining factor of social networking -- the network, the web of connections between people -- is lame and reductive by itself. But it's the perfect context in which to share photos.

Social networking is also a good context for non one-on-one communication. (For one-on-one communication, it offers nothing except a convenient way to initiate a conversation with other Facebook users, a small advantage that can't make up for the fact that it isn't as universal as e-mail or texting.)

I suspect the growth of Facebook as measured by users and usage will depend on discovering other services for which social networking is the perfect context.

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

>a small advantage that can't make up for the fact that it isn't as universal as e-mail or texting

Well, I'm a teenager, and sadly Facebook is far more universal as a means of contact than texting or e-mail, personally. I don't have the email addresses or phone numbers of most of the people I know (often because I don't know them well enough), but I do have them friended on Facebook.

jes51992• 14 years ago

Yeah, that's true for a lot of people who don't realize it. It's much easier to Friend somebody you met at a party than it is to exchange email addresses - and then you never have to ask "is this address still good after all this time?"

I have over 400 facebook friends. I only have 200 contacts in my email address book, and most of those are probably stale.

dkarl2• 14 years ago

By sheer numbers I may have more Facebook friends than phone numbers or emails, but a significant proportion of the people I communicate with regularly aren't on Facebook anymore or never were. So I agree that Facebook is more inclusive in the sense that people friend a lot more people on Facebook than they share their email address and phone number with, but when it comes to real friends and family, I can reach all of them through email or texting but only some of them through Facebook.

solnyshok• 14 years ago

I always felt that facebook is nothing more than a glorified address book for the internet generation. That's why I am keeping it, just to have all those contact sync to my phone's address book.

nooneelse• 14 years ago

Interesting angle. I suppose this illuminates how best they could go about the things they are rumored to be considering

For example, the payment processing system. This angle says they should focus most on the non-one-to-one transactions like group dinner and movie outings, splitting the rent, etc. If me paying for such things through FB helps me settle the bills and get repaid (or get to mark someone's timeline with a cheapskate whuffie point), then I have an incentive to start paying through FB, and encouraging others to do the same. Lots of other apps and services have tried to capture these transactions, but they seem to usually suffer from needing all/most of the people in the transaction to sign-up for yet another account. That is the hurdle that FB has already crossed for 4/5 of the last movie outings in my anecdotal experience.

Cell phone... well I don't see how this social context angle helps with that, since phones are already well into that context. But browser, sure. Social web-browsing has also been tried before, also seemingly always failing to overcome the hurdle FB has cleared.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

Two things:

Both facebook and google are playing catchup on social. Facebook with monetization, google with popularity. This leaves them wide open to disruption from companies that nail the fundamentals from the get go and bring significant value-add to the table.

Second, both companies view users like cattle. Just headcount to convert to dollars.

Overall my hunch is that there's a 50/50 chance that neither google nor faceebook will be king of social in 2020. There's a lot of potential for disruption right now and both of these companies are so focused on each other I doubt they'd even notice a successful upstart until it was too late. The real risk to both, I think, is small companies which don't have billion dollar obligations on their backs already.

mangoman• 14 years ago

While I agree that both Facebook and Google have those respective problems, I think social is an area where user base is not easily portable. It would be tough to convert all the moms and dads to switch from Facebook to another platform...It was difficult enough to get them on Facebook.

Steko2• 14 years ago

Ultimately he's making a pretty big claim about Google's future here that isn't grounded in reality. This is the same sort of talk that crowned Microsoft the tablet king over a decade ago while reality waited for Apple to actually build a consumer viable version.

Whether it's the usual suspects like Google, MS and Apple who we know are already spending R&D here or a new entrant like Instagram which came out of nowhere with a handful of user friendly features, or some China anointed alternative it should be obvious that it's way to early to start counting chickens.

robinsloan2• 14 years ago

Author here: You're right that it's a big claim, and I think it requires a lot of imagination & even some suspension of disbelief. It's safer to be skeptical.

But specifically re: competition of all shapes & sizes, I do think that two of Google's long-term investments give it a pretty strong position:

1. Google Maps & Street View, which together comprise an amazingly detailed model of the real world. There are alternatives like OpenStreetMap of course, but there's a lot more going on in those products than just navigation.

2. The technology embedded in the self-driving car. I mean, a system that can interpret a live feed of the chaotic world around it and make important decisions based on what it sees? It doesn't feel to me like you can Instagram your way into that capability. (But, I don't know: maybe it's more commodified than I realize.)

apu• 14 years ago

To lend some credence to these claims: other than the well-known Sebastian Thrun, Google also has at least a dozen world-class computer vision researchers working on a variety of different products, from Maps to the self-driving car to Goggles and others. This is some serious fire power, and in so far as the technical problems are unsolved (which they mostly are right now), no other company can touch them in the near future.

Of course, there is always the important step of making something that consumers will use, but that's only possible if the technical problems are solved first. And perhaps Google is learning how to make more consumer-friendly things...

dxbydt• 14 years ago

to gauge marginal positive externalities, invert the principal component & see what remains.

as an example - suppose you wake up tomorrow and google search stops working. never mind why - some random bug impossible to figure out, so it just stops working. Then what are the positive externalities that remain ? Well, gmail. youtube. android. gdrive. maps. picasa. blogger. reader. googledocs. googlecheckout. etc etc etc... and that's not counting a single api / framework / language( gwt, go , dart, chromium, etc etc...)

now suppose you wake up tomorrow and facebok stops working. Then what are the positive externalities that remain ? Well, ???

confluence7• 14 years ago

Reminds me of a Charlie Munger quote:

that to get closer to the right answer, scholars should "invert, always invert."

You have a strong point there. Most top 100 websites I see are just frontends to databases.

I kid you not.

Their competitive advantage is proprietary data holding and network effects to get more data.

  Google - search + database frontend.

  Facebook - database frontend.

  YouTube - database frontend.

  Yahoo! - search + database frontend.

  Baidu.com - search + database frontend.

  Wikipedia - database frontend.

  live.com - database frontend.

  Twitter.com - database frontend.

  QQ.COM - database frontend.

  Amazon.com - database frontend.

Most of the stuff is just a front end to a database.

Their positive marginal benefit derives from holding that data, using it as leverage to get more data, and then serving it back to their users in a tight loop.

mkinsella• 14 years ago

Interesting point. However, I'll disagree with Amazon.com. Purchasing real world products is much more than just a database frontend.

jawr2• 14 years ago

I don't think that's a just argument; a database is just a means of storing information which is parsed data, the important part there is the transition from data to information, not the fact that they use a database to store the information. The reason that they are all top websites is because of their first stakes, ingenuity, pioneering, etc.

benburleson• 14 years ago

What's a good example of a site that isn't a db frontend?

alan_cx2• 14 years ago

Given that really the only thing a computer can do is store, manipulate and present data, what else would make sense to store that data? Aren't RAM and hard drives pretty much databases?

rockmeamedee• 14 years ago

This begs the question. Websites are basically databases connected to servers through some controller logic.

And isn't that the point, that now we're in an information age?

dsirijus• 14 years ago

Great thought.

Though, there's always a single choke point at which you could deny ANY number of services, including all the externalities. Even if that point is a little worst-of-the-worst case scenario.

nodawg• 14 years ago

Saw this on reddit yesterday. Hacker News is the new Digg.

jwallaceparker2• 14 years ago

re: Google Glasses

I can never wear a pair of glasses that has a 3G connection.

For better or for worse, I experience heightened ElectroSensitivity to the point where a 3G device that's operating within a few feet of me gives me a headache.

Most mobile carriers are already starting to deprecate their 2G networks.

Wearable wireless devices like Google Glasses will be a hazard for me, and many others.

Within the next few years, I won't even be able to use a cell phone.

ori_b2• 14 years ago

I find that hard to believe. Have a friend put a box beside you. Ask him to flip a coin every day for a week. If it comes up heads, he will put a 3g phone in that box. Otherwise, it should be empty.

I will bet you that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

jwallaceparker2• 14 years ago

And why would make that up?

I've done experiments like that plenty of times to prove it to people. I can tell whether my iPhone is in 2G or 3G mode with my eyes closed.

It's well-documented. Search for "ElectroSensitivity."

Phones with a high SAR value cause headaches for a subset of the population - I'm one of them.

guelo• 14 years ago

I'm not sure I understand this article. What is it that he imagines actors and athletes doing that they don't do with Twitter now? People hold up their phones pretty close to their face when capturing photos and videos so it is already the first person POV. And it is pretty easy to do, I'm sure it will be harder taking pics with Glass than a phone, it is more flexible taking pictures with your hands than your face. The only successful consumer head-mounted cameras that I know of are the Go Pros which are used mainly for niche action shots. If the main advantage of Glass is just that you can take pictures in situations where both your hands are busy that does not seem like the huge use-case that is going to take down Facebook.

fennecfoxen• 14 years ago

He imagines that the feed from, oh, say, a baseball player? (football is too violent) will, someday, be wearing one of these, and then you'll get to see the game from their perspective while they're doing other things, and it'll be awesome.

... I'll believe it's awesome, with copious amounts of editing. If you're just watching it raw, it'll be disorienting and shaky and distracting. :P I'm also dubious exactly what baseball team would bother to wear these things in the general case. Presumably they would just be a distraction to the players. Maybe someone like, oh, downhill skiiers would have a better time of things?

czr80• 14 years ago

Serious question - how is that different from this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNMyj2ftuZA

waterlesscloud• 14 years ago

Go to youtube right now and watch any number of first person downhill skiing videos. What does Glass add to that?

philwelch3• 14 years ago

I think you're underrating just how cool things look in first person sometimes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZA-57h64kE

brudgers2• 14 years ago

Here's the thing I see, Google has no meaningful history of monetizing things like self driving cars or video glasses or anything else except for via advertising. Yeah, they sell some web services, but that's a lot different from going head to head with companies that know about manufacturing like Toyota and BMW or those that know about consumer electronics like Samsung and Sony.

I guess they could create an advertising sponsored self driving car or vision glasses that pop up ads (ala Walter Williams recent novel "The Fourth Wall" ISBN-13: 978-0316133395). But how is either going to be more profitable than their current model given the fundamental retooling of their business which would be required and the radically different cost structures associated with making real stuff?

That's not to say Facebook is destined for significant innovation. As an advertising platform, they may be Yahoo 2.0 over the long term - too profitable from advertising to pivot and not growing fast enough to get love from analysts.

hk_kh• 14 years ago

Why stick to ads if you can sell / license software for cars?

It could both work from a manufacturer or a personal POV.

    Buy my car, it comes with Google.

philwelch3• 14 years ago

Hopefully they'll be smart enough to actually license the software. I half-suspect they'd do something stupid, like open-source it on the assumption that it would increase the demand for web advertising (since you could just use a tablet or laptop during your commute instead of driving).

brudgers2• 14 years ago

Can you think of an example of Google successfully licensing technology to manufacturers on a scale sufficient to noticeably change their bottom line?

albertzeyer• 14 years ago

Google needs to have some sort of brain interface to project glass. I.e. control it via your mind.

The speaking out loud is distracting. It wont work. It's too complicated. And nobody wants to talk with his glasses (like noone wants to talk to Siri in public). People will not use it.

saraid2167• 14 years ago

None of the demos I've seen have involved any speaking. They've involved tapping something and what might be eye tracking or head movements, but all the speaking was pretty obviously superfluous.

femto• 14 years ago

I view Google as a simulation company. The end game will be a real time whole earth simulation, with predictive power, and the associated opportunity for massive profits in any field where being ahead of the competition is an advantage.

shpoonj• 14 years ago

Naive question:

The author says image views are a subset of page views. Is this accurate when the photos are shown in a light box capable of cycling through thousands of photos without leaving the initial page?

r0s2• 14 years ago

Good question, I'd like to know the answer too. Javascript abstracts the whole theory of a "webpage" but I'm sure the image viewer reports back metrics and they have some system to track it all. In the end I'd guess it's probably treated similarly for marketing purposes.

trebuch3t• 14 years ago

Smart. Facebook nailed photos and now they need to nail mobile. No wonder they bought Instagram.

thescorer• 14 years ago

This guy is reaching with a few of his statements

tysont• 14 years ago

I still think that the future of Facebook is data (not specifically picture data, that's just one piece). Advances in hardware and cloud computing have kick started an era where data mining and machine learning are pervasive in every field from pharmaceutical research to banking to sports and everywhere in between. Facebook is the single authoritative source for a whole bunch of personal data. People have started thinking about the basic applications for that data when it comes to things like online shopping (you're a 31 year old white male with an 8 month old daughter who likes rock and roll, so you probably want to buy diapers, zinfandel, and a radiohead album), but I think that lots of new interesting applications will emerge over the next several years that don't violate user privacy and will monetize well.

h84ru3a• 14 years ago

Google is really good at seamlessly integrating the companies they acquire to give the appearance to users that Google develops much more than they actually do. The Google brand becomes synonymous with development that they actually did not themselves do.

systematical• 14 years ago

The only reason I don't delete my facebook is because of the pictures...and im not alone.

ocirion2• 14 years ago

Google has a huge revenue generating machine in search, and adwords. This allows them the opportunity to spend massive amounts of money on a lot of projects that will mostly fail. They're hoping, at some point, one or more of these projects will turn profitable. But they're burning millions doing it.

The problem with this approach is that they end up neglecting their core search product, which I don't think has evolved much in the past decade. If someone else comes along and disrupts search, its goodbye Google.

maked00• 14 years ago

Some trust fund kid spouting off, blah blah blah.

Farcebook is of grannies and prole working moms.

Most of farcebook's income is from games. The rest is just the internet with training wheels for morons, just like AOL was a few years ago, and we all know how well that worked out.

The Google glasses thing is beyond stupid. Any fool can stream video from a strap on mini cam hat, have been able to for years. Ever wonder why that has not caught on?

Nice try at topicality and posing as someone in the know.

startupfounder• 14 years ago

What is interesting is that we think of Facebook as a social networking company, but they are mostly a hacker company whether it is hacking social networks, photos, servers, phone, etc. They have a similar culture to Google except coming at it from a DIY, teach yourself, pull it apart to put it back together again better angle and not a academic PhD research angle.

Facebook is a global company and if they come out with a phone it is most likely not going to be pointed at the US market alone. They will be developing a phone aimed at the developing country markets where they have much of their traction. My guess is that the phone will have a low price point so that it is affordable to anyone in the world who wants it who currently doesn't have a smartphone. This included with mobile payments is what Facebook is after, they want to own the global mobile market.

zerop• 14 years ago

Despite of all innovation Google does, still past several years nearly 90% of their profit comes from online ads.

The futures of Facebook and Google are embedded in these two images

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