The Apple co-founder worries the patent turf war will kill invention.
It’s no secret that patent trolls are a dangerto innovation, imagination, and a whole lot of other inspiring concepts that make the world a better place to live in. Pick any major technology company and you will without fail find them involved in some sort of patent litigation.
Steve Wozniak, the man who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, is familiar with patents in the technology world. When he designed the Apple II computer, he begrudgingly had to fork over some money to RCA because the company owned an unused patent that Wozniak unintentionally impeded upon. Speaking to the Australian Financial Times, Wozniak said, “We actually wound up paying them two bucks for every computer we shipped just for that simple idea.”
Given his experience with patent obstacles, it may not be surprising that Wozniak isn’t a fan of patent-mongering companies. Since most of the companies that are involved in the ongoing patent disputes, Wozniak shared his wonderment over the state of technological development.
Wozniak says that, while a growing number of technology specialists think the patent system should be scrapped, he still believes it is essential to encourage young inventors who aspire to do something new.
He can appreciate the argument that Apple has now come to represent to today’s entrepreneurs what RCA was to him, but Wozniak believes Apple’s record for continued innovation means it is less guiltx than any of the other large tech firms.
“Apple is the good guy on the block of all of them,” he says. “It is creating so much and is so successful and it is not just following the formulas of other companies – [Apple is] totally establishing new markets that didn’t exist.”
Well, that wasn’t exactly a surprising opinion, but Wozniak does make an interesting point in saying that Apple is the only company currently trying to shape new markets instead of simply trying to carve out a take from existing markets. As far as developing new technology goes, Apple has certainly been the industry flagship. Protecting that status is part of what drove Steve Jobs to famously declare that he would spend every cent in Apple’s coffers to crush Android, Google’s rival platform, which he claimed was a “stolen product.”
Think these companies should spend less time sniping each other and perhaps more time just focusing on inventing new technology? Agree or disagree, we want to hear what you think.
Google unveiled something awesome today, or at least the concept of something awesome. We’ve been hearing about the Google glasses for a while now, but now there’s a video:
On the Project Glass Google+ Page, Google says, “We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t. A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.”
Let’s remember, this is technology that is being worked on. You’re not going to be wearing these Google glasses anytime soon. But I can’t wait to see what they’re capable of when they become real. Hopefully they’re a little more impressive than Nintendo’s Virtual Boy:
Blogger loses about 3/4 of traffic after taking the brighter path
Much of the discussion in the SEO community of late has been related to Google’s efforts to “level the playing field” for mom and pops vs. those with bigger marketing budgets, and comments to this effect made by Matt Cutts at SXSW recently. He indicated that Google is working on things that would make it so people who “over-optmize” their sites don’t necessarily rank better than others who didn’t worry about SEO, but have great content.
To a great extent, Google has been working on these kinds of things for a long time. The Panda update was certainly designed to make content quality matter more, but Google also regularly gives tips about how to optimize your site better and releases lists of algorithmic changes, which practically beg webmasters to try and exploit them. Google, of course doesn’t take this stance, but when they release the signals, people pay attention, and try to play to them. Why wouldn’t they?
Google knows this, of course, which is why they won’t release their entire list of signals, let alone talk about how much weight certain signals have compared to others, although if you pay close enough attention, you’ll sometimes catch hints at this too.
The whole de-indexing of paid blog/link networks plays to the whole making over-optimization matter less concept, but based on Google’s webmaster guidelines, it seems like doing so would have always fit into the company’s policy.
When you play the black hat, or even gray hat game, you’re taking a big risk of being dealt a damaging penalty. Google didn’t even hesitate to penalize its own site for violating guidelines (at least after they were called out on it), which may have even cost Chrome some browser market share.
Going white hat after playing it at a darker shade in the past isn’t necessarily going to help your rankings either though, as one blogger indicated in a recent post at SEOBullshit:
I did paid links, paid reviews, and never, ever did any shit like “cloaking”, “spam”, or “stuffing.” Hence, the “grey” hat campaign type. I had awesome content. I had a crawlable site. It was perfect in every way. I used paid links and reviews to scream at GoogleBot, “Hey, notice me! I’m right here! I have killer content and reputable sites link to it.” The results were great. The money. Terrific. I left the competition scratching their heads since my site was HTTPS, it was hard to reverse engineer as most link-finding tools couldn’t really find my backlinks.
However, the stress of running a grey-hat campaign eventually wears on you and you long for the peace of a white hat campaign. So, I hatched a plan to wean my site from grey and pray that the results weren’t too bad. I expected a 15-25% drop in SERPS and traffic which I could then recover by getting a big relevant, content piece linked up to the pages where I removed the TLA’s.
Fucking failure. Total and monstrous failure.
He continues on saying his total traffic drop was -72.5%.
Every time Google makes big adjustments to its algorithm, sites pay the price. Sometimes that price is deserved, and sometimes it’s not. I find that often, people tend to think they didn’t deserve to lose their rankings. Even with the latest Panda refresh, we had sites telling us about ranking declines.
The intro of a recent Entrepreneur article sums up the conundrum of the small business perfectly: “As a small business owner using the web to reach customers, you’ve surely been implementing search engine optimization tactics to make sure your site turns up high in web searches. But just when you might feel like you’re starting to get the hang of this SEO thing, it appears that search giant Google might start penalizing websites that are over-optimized.”
We understand that there are plenty of white hat SEO tactics that Google not only is OK with, but encourages. However, most people simply don’t know what SEO even is. Matt Cutts himself shared results this week from a survey he conducted, finding only one in five people in the U.S. have even heard of SEO.
It’s not surprising that sites would be tempted to go for the darker hat techniques. But as Google continues on this new (same) path of leveling the playing field, however, it may be more playing with fire than ever. And once you start, engaging in SEO’s dark arts, you may have a hard time returning to the lighter side, should you ever choose to do so.
Have you ever been helped or hurt by using black hat SEO tactics? Let us know in the comments (you don’t have to use your real name).
Google may be bringing on bad PR by simply having "Do No Evil" as a policy
Is it just me or does Google seem to be getting a lot of negative press lately? There seem to be an irregular amount of stories about Google and whether or not it’s “evil” making the rounds. There is even a Facebook page named, “Google is Evil“!
First, let’s look at what Google actually says. Here’s the company’s code of conduct. The part about evil says:
“Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally — following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect.
The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put “Don’t be evil” into practice. It’s built around the recognition that everything we do in connection with our work at Google will be, and should be, measured against the highest possible standards of ethical business conduct. We set the bar that high for practical as well as aspirational reasons: Our commitment to the highest standards helps us hire great people, who then build great products, which in turn attract loyal users. Trust and mutual respect among employees and users are the foundation of our success, and they are something we need to earn every day.
The document takes the reader through the following sections: Serve Our Users, Respect Each Other, Avoid Conflicts of Interest, Preserve Confidentiality, Protect Google’s Assets, Ensure Financial Integrity and Responsibility, and Obey the Law.
The whole thing ends with the following line:
And remember . . . don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right — speak up!
It seems like that part about trust might be the biggest area of concern, considering all of the talk out there on the newswires, the blogosphere, and the social networks.
Gizmodo has an article called “The Case Against Google“. This is mainly about privacy, how people “don’t trust Google with their data,” which is “new”.
“Many of us have entered into a contract with the ur search company because its claims to be a good actor inspired our trust,” writes the article’s author, Mat Honan. “Google has always claimed to put the interests of the user first. It’s worth questioning whether or not that’s still the case. Has Google reached a point where it must be evil?”
The article goes on to proclaim that “search is dying,” basically implying that “Search Plus Your World” is making people not want to use Google search anymore. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s got it’s issues, and that Google’s results could be a lot better these days, but there’s no way SPYW is killing Google search. Sorry. It’s just not. For all of the media outcry about it, I don’t know anybody in my personal life that has stopped using Google to search the web because of it. Most people just don’t care that much.
Google’s “Search Plus Your World,” which is essentially the integration of Google+ (with some other things sprinkled in) into search results, is no doubt driven by that ad revenue addiction in the end. The better Google+ does, the more Facebook-like data Google can get about you, and potentially use to help advertisers better target consumers. Some may find that evil, advertising is how Google makes its money, which allows Google to do more things. Google is a business. It’s not a charity, though it does have some particularly un-evil charitable initiatives.
Danny Sullivan, who spends much of his time specifically writing about Google and the search industry, even told the New York Times recently, “I don’t think they were ever not evil,” though he did go out of his way to put that into greater context in his own article. He references another quote he gave the NYT: “They are a big company, and any big company is always going to have something happen that they don’t expect. But these things keep happening where you can’t even trust their word.”
“It pains me to say it, when I know so many people at Google truly and honestly mean for their company to be doing good things, to be trusted,” he adds in his own article. “It also pains me when I know Google has done many good things for the web as a whole. The fact that sites don’t have to pay just for the chance to be showing up in ‘free’ listings in search engines is largely down to the force of Google.”
The laundry list of the company’s violations and missteps has only grown in recent years, and you can find one for almost every area of interest. Regarding social networking, Google was caught rigging their search results to display items from their sources — Google+, for example — before those of their competitors, like Twitter and Facebook. So much fair and unbiased search.
Last year, Google was caught hosting ads from online Canadian pharmacies that led to illegal importation of prescription drugs. Google was forced to forfeit $500 million — a little slap on the wrist. But it was in the area of privacy that the company seems to have really blown it.
“Scientists from Berkeley spoke out on the dangers of nuclear war, on atomic proliferation and things like this. And it was the scientists that got people concerned. It was the scientists who spoke out to make the world a better place. And that’s a responsibility that I think I and others have.”
“Truthfully, the idea for writing this article was prompted by a conversation I had this morning about Stanford University. Specifically, we were discussing how the students have noticeably shifted alliances dramatically over the last decade,” Enderle writes. “A scant ten year ago they hated Microsoft and Google was the White Knight, yet it is truly amazing how those positions have reversed today.”
He talks about how ads at Google were initially perceived as “little more than a necessary evil to generate money and fund the firm,” adding, “The most fascinating aspect of all this? The apparent internal dislike for ads as something ‘unclean.’ Yet, the now conflicted company appears focused (perhaps a better word would be addicted) on the revenue the ads generate.”
Ads are still Google’s main driver of revenue, so it is still the majority of Google’s funding. Doesn’t it make sense that Google would want to be “addicted” to the thing that is not only driving its business, but funding for innovation and more ambitious projects. You know they have self-driving cars, right? Did you know these cars are even inspiring state legislation?
Ads are only part of Enderle’s story, as he goes into operating strategy, mostly as a comparison to Microsoft’s strategy, and the much-publicized privacy issues with Safari.
In a PCWorld article, Enderle (again) asks if Google is “facing the beginning of the end.” This was in response to that much-talked about post from the former Google engineer James Whittaker, who said, “The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.”
In the PCWorld article, Enderle does raise an interesting point: “Google should have worked to line up Microsoft and Facebook as partners, not competitors.” I’m not sure if it’s the right point, but it’s an interesting scenario to consider.
You might say Google brought this kind of discussion on itself, by simply making that “Don’t Be Evil” mantra a part of its code in the first place. Google has certainly grown a whole lot since that was created, but it does remain part of the company’s philosophy to this day, whether you think they’re honoring it or not. It may be the very fact that this is such a well-known part of the company’s founding and existence, which sparks a much heftier amount of criticism and stories with the words “Google” and “Evil” in the title together that other companies are immune to. It makes for catchy headlines, for sure.
It’s interesting that not a lot of the articles out there (at least the ones calling the company evil) are about how Google is changing the way it delivers its search results, which could greatly impact the traffic it sends to other sites. Given all the hoopla around the Panda update for the past year or so, which saw some companies having to layoff employees, it’s a bit surprising that there isn’t more focus on this part of the discussion in the more mainstream news. Google is increasingly finding ways to keep people on its own properties longer (which means less time on sites like yours). To be clear, I don’t think this is necessarily “evil” either, but it’s certainly significant to doing business on the web.
Steve Wozniak, the man who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, is familiar with patents in the technology world. When he designed the Apple II computer, he begrudgingly had to fork over some money to RCA because the company owned an unused patent that Wozniak unintentionally impeded upon. Speaking to the Australian Financial Times, Wozniak said, “We actually wound up paying them two bucks for every computer we shipped just for that simple idea.”
