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I had always assumed the most intense fanboys in the realm of tech were the Apple fanboys who would camp out on line to get the latest Steve Jobs goodie — well I was wrong! Upon playing with Google+ I’ve come across a growing legion of Android fanboys who are obsessed with the Android mascot. And shown here is the proof of this devotion — I present the Droid_Robot font created by Natsumi Kawashima.

Found via hitmit and Hitoshi Mitani.

It’s funny I somehow assumed that the rock stars who had conquered Twitter would move onto Google+ and do the same exact thing — but that simply isn’t the case. From my small time playing with this new service I’ve noticed a few folks who are really going the extra mile to use the site to say something interesting and to really make their mark. This isn’t by any means a scientific or comprehensive list, but here are some of the more interesting folks I’ve come across on Google+ so far:

Geeky Bloggers and Websites

Peter Sciretta
Blogger at SlashFilm.com

Scott Beale
Blogger at Laughing Squid

Comic Books and Illustration

Scott McCloud
Comics Artist

Danny Hellman
Illustrator and Cartoonist

Leif Peng
Illustrator and Cartoonist

Matthew Inman
The Oatmeal

Anime

Deb Aoki
Manga Journalist

W. Kaijyu
Anime Blogger

Daniella Orihuela-Gruber
Manga Editor

Tech

Kara Swisher
Tech Jouranlist

Jason Calacanis
ThisWeekIn.com

Om Malik
Tech Journalist

Loren Feldman
Tech Humorist and Videographer

Chris Brogan
Social Media Marketing

Interesting People and Digital Curators

Lorraine Hopping Egan
Game Designer

Reagan H
Digital Curator whos posts interesting pictures

Kenichi Ishibashi
Digital Curator who posts interesting pictures

こいたろう
Digital Curator who posts interesting pictures

Homebaby Wen Orz
Digital Curator who posts interesting pictures

And of course here is where you can find me:

Michael Pinto
Publisher Fanboy.com

As an old time BBS user I tend to be cynical about every new site that comes along, but not only did Google+ impress me — but it passed the ultimate test: It just ate most of my weekend. On the surface the program seems like a slightly updated version of Facebook, but as you begin to explore and really live with the program you start to realize that it’s so much more than that.

The one thing i always hated about Facebook is that while it made you use your real identity, it forced you to share your entire world with everyone that you know. So something that might be appropriate for your personal friends might not be something you want to share with say co-workers or family members. In fact you might not even want those two groups to meet each other. Google+ solves that by allowing you to create circles — so for example my anime pals don’t need to meet my tech buddies (although I can overlapping members in both groups if I want).

My prediction is that this won’t be the end of Facebook — but it is the beginning of Facebook turning turning into AOL. Like MySpace before it the cool kids will move away from Facebook — in fact some people already feel that the cool kids have left Facebook. And what’s interesting is that the people I see playing with Google+ are most of the early adopters from the tech scene that made Twitter take root in the early days of of those SXSW festivals before Ashton Kutcher and CNN took over the place.

In fact I think if Google+ is an immediate threat to anybody it is Twitter. Unlike Facebook Twitter has been slow to innovate and can still produce a fail whale every now and then: What’s amazing to me about Google+ is that it’s in closed beta and felt 1000% more stable and responsive than Twitter. And then added to that Google+ is a great canvas to share photos and the like with your friends — in fact you can just drag and drop images onto the browser. Google+ starts to almost feel like an app while everybody else feels like your living in an static html page.

In fact once you start using Google+ Twitter feels like a mess because your stream of friends feels like they lack a context. Twitter added lists after a while, but they were kind of late to the game and that addition feels like a hack — especially when you can add someone to a list but not follow them. By starting with a blank canvas Google+ really gives your many social circles context. And as social media evolves context is everything.

I have to admit that I was very cynical about Google+ until I tried it. Google has had such a bad track record with social media be it Orkut or Buzz, but it looks like this time that the third try was the charm. And what kills me is that I’ve been looking a beta, if Google is smart (and they’re filled withs mart people) we’ll see features roll out over the next few months. In fact as they start to integrate their existing offerings into Google+ like Gmail their platform will be unstoppable.

In the 80s the Amiga was eons ahead of everyone else in the PC market: They had everything from the ability to play full color animations to multitasking. However this amazing platform just never took off. Why? Because the user base took advantage of the first generation of floppy disks and BBSs to pirate pretty much every last bit of software that was written for the platform. Because of this Microsoft never created a version of Word for the Amiga and WordPerfect lost a great deal of money thanks to cheap users. In fact the only winner that came away from the Amiga was the NewTek Video Toaster which was pretty much dongle protected due to the hardware aspect of the product.

And so you may ask what this has to do with Android? Well history is repeating itself:

“Google has made great strides with Android, and a ton of developers have flocked to the growing mobile platform. Not everything is rosy, though. One major concern among developers is that piracy levels are very high on the platform.”

The above article defers the piracy issue to an unwillingness for users to pay for apps, but the same thing could be said about Amiga users. If you have a culture surrounding a platform that expects everything for free you can’t really change it. Unlike Blackberry users who have their phone paid for by corporations, Android users are regular consumers. And like most consumers they really don’t want to pay for anything that they could get for free.

Thanks to iTunes Apple has trained their consumers to expect to pay for things: Be it music, video, an app or an ebook. However Google lacks this experience, in fact you could say that Amazon has a much shoot at monetizing mobile users than Google ever will. Google does know how to sell ads which may help them give some money to their developers, but the stark reality is that major media players and videogame companies just won’t get excited about getting a few AdSense dollars.

What this means is that anyone with a major consumer brand would be foolish to spend much time with Android: And what that means is that most of the apps for Android will feel like shareware. Add to this the fact that the battery life won’t be as good and you could see consumers noticing the difference. Frankly the quality of the apps is just as important the quantity: If you look at history that’s one of the main reasons that Palm killed the Apple Newton back in the day.

The biggest problem for Google may be that once you let the genie out of the bottle you can’t put him back…

I believe very strongly that Google has an unhealthy monopoly on the internet, so for the past week or so I’ve switched all of my browsers to use Bing as the default search engine. For the most part Microsoft has done an amazing job of going from nothing to something to create a great search engine in a short amount of time, however there are still a few things that they need to beat Google. Having been born with dyslexia one of the things I love about Google is that their spell checker is amazing — in fact often when using Microsoft Word I’ll pop out of the program when I can’t get the spelling of a more obscure word. And this is the very sort of feature that not only does Bing need badly, but something that should also be incorporated into the online version of Microsoft Office.

Shown above and below is an example of what I’m talking about: As a comic book fanboy I was trying to figure out the spelling of Bill Sienkiewicz, and of course I knew upfront that I couldn’t remember the spelling. Trying Bing got me no where, however Google seemed to know from my search that I might be looking for Bill Sienkiewicz and politely suggested it to me:

I think if Bing could add this feature it would keep me from going to Google for the 10% or so of my searches that don’t work well, and my guess others might do the same…

La Carmina is one of my favorite subculture bloggers, so I was a bit upset to see that YouTube had censored one of her videos by claiming that it violated their community guidelines. But I’ll let you be the judge — shown below is her video. Now before you watch this clip I will warn you that there is some fetish footage at the end. However some of you may be a bit disappointed as the model in question is clothed (she’s wearing underwear), and that may be hard to see as the scene is shot in a low light situation:

I was never given a warning, so I was upset to suddenly try and log into my YouTube account to see that it had been deactivated. Of course I have my theories: I used the account to post many clips for this blog featuring everything from movie trailers to Japanese commercials. So I suspect that the copyright gods might not have been on my side. Although in the past when that was the case YouTube would do anything from yanking the video, to removing the soundtrack to keeping the video and inserting ads. Of course this is just a guess, I was never sent an email so I don’t know.

Above: RSS turned out to be my friend — illustration by Matt Forsythe.

However most of what I used the account for was to subscribe to other feeds on the site — which was the real data that I had valued above everything else. And now without a backup all that info was gone. Of course I was lucky in that I had bookmarked an RSS feed — so I was able to find the most popular YouTube accounts that I liked and then bookmarked their RSS feeds. Now I could create a new YouTube account just for those feeds, but I realized that my trust with Google had just diminished a great deal.

Not only had I decided not to re-start a YouTube account — but it made me question switching my ancient copy of Outlook that was downloading my email for a Gmail account. My email is critical to my business, so why would you a trust your most precious assets with a company that you had no recourse with? If they can take down your YouTube or Blogger account (which I’ve seen happen to many other folks) then how long until they start doing that more and more with Gmail accounts?

I think most of us trust the Google brand because of their “do no evil” motto — and to be fair they do back that up from time to time in the real world. For example that move out of China wasn’t a cheap one, and censoring their search engine results would have made it a lesser product. However that still doesn’t take away the fact that they are a business that needs to make money. However the flip side of the freemium model that’s so popular in a post web 2.0 world is that there is no customer service.

Of course to a certain extent I’m picking on Google and I’ve seen this behavior in other companies. For example I’m a long time user of Flickr which is still my favorite photo website. However from time to time I’ll see them delete an account without any warning to a user. Overnight someone that has uploaded thousands of photos can find themselves without a backup or a recourse to get that data. Of course Yahoo! has been bad about this in other aspects of their business. There was a soldier killed in the Iraq war and Yahoo! was determined not to let the next of kin get the email from their son. That case was resolved through legal means, but it paints a good lesson.

That lesson is that whenever you use a third party service really think about what data that they have which is valuable to you should that service go down. Take for example Facebook — at first glance it’s a very casual service that most folks are only using for social interactions. However if you think about it your social circle (i.e. your social graph) itself has a real value. If you think about it Facebook is in fact a rolodex for many of of our long lost friends who we have reconnected with. Facebook makes it very hard to move that data off of their service as it’s the lifeblood of their site — however that’s all the more reason to make it a point yo make sure you have the contact info of anybody you want to stay in touch with duplicated off their website.

Some sites are better and worse than this than others. So I would suggest that everybody take a good look at each service that they use: social media, email, photos, video, blogging, etc. and do audit of each site and have a plan. Some of the better sites allow you to use third party tools to store your info. For example there are several utilities that allow you to download all of your photos from Flickr. Granted when you do that you may not keep all of the comments and tagging associated with a photo, but you may find that it’s better than doing nothing if you wake up one day and Yahoo! goes out of business.

In the wake of the Flash is doomed movement I’ve noticed quite a few Microsoft developers who are rooting for Silverlight. Silverlight has two amazing advantages going for it: Firstly Microsoft loves their developers more so than any other company that I’ve ever seen — and then add to that it will become a key tool for making apps for Windows mobile devices. But there’s one major catch to this which is that smart mobile is now dominated by Apple and Google, and that there’s a good chance that they won’t let Silverlight onto their platform.

At first I’d be tempted to say that you’d think that Google would be open to letting Silverlight run on Android — after all they’ve been very good about letting Flash play well with what they’re doing. However I suspect that they’re really doing that to deflect Microsoft which doesn’t bode well for Silverlight. Microsoft has started do wake up to the fact that their real competition is Google, my shock and awe moment when I realized this was when Steve Ballmer announced that Microsoft was in fact a cloud computing company.

Earlier this year when Jobs announced the iPad he made a similar ground changing statement, that Apple was now really a mobile company. Think about it for a minute: Both Apple and Microsoft are the poster children for the personal computer revolution that occurred in the 70s which has dominated the market for the last thirty years. So here you have both companies in the year 2010 walking away from the revolution that they help create which challenged giants of the pervious era like IBM and DEC.

But I’d say that the new Apple or Microsoft in this new world is in fact Google. Google is the operating system of the world wide web — and in that way they remind me of what Microsoft and IBM use to be back in the day. The way that I see it Google is an actual monopoly: If you don’t believe this just think what would happen to any company that would be delisted from their search results. In fact even the phrase that “Google will do no evil” feels like it’s lifted from AT&T from that golden age of telephony where they went out of their way for decades to avoid being broken up.

When you see Google as a monopoly you start to realize that Microsoft could be at a disadvantage. The one thing going for Microsoft is that if Google doesn’t allow Silverlight to run they’ll look evil. However there are other ways of saying no — for example owning their platform Google can put quite a few barriers in the way that might tax any potential success. In fact if you think about it the fact that Flash runs on the platform is already the first tax that Microsoft would face.

Another possibility is that Microsoft may do a deal with Apple. Least we forget Steve Jobs owes Bill gates big time for helping him rescue Apple when he came back. Back when everyone was writing off the Macintosh it was Gates who pushed a badly needed refresh for Microsoft Office onto the Mac. That vote of confidence may have been one of the things that rescued Apple in the late 90s.

Above: Steve Jobs talking about meaningful partners — Microsoft.

But at the end of the day it comes down to the same thing for Silverlight: Unless Microsoft can get onto a second platform in the mobile space there will be limited appeal for new mobile developers to play with Silverlight. In fact the ideal goal of any developer in that market would be to have an easy to use programming language which would allow you to port you app to all three platforms. If Microsoft can position their tools to do that they’ll have a real winner, but to do that they need a second platform.

While I haven’t played with it yet the screenshots I’m seeing of the Windows Phone 7 look great. I’m an Apple fanboy at heart but it’s a wonderful surprise to see that Microsoft didn’t just do an iPhone clone. This isn’t enough to make me switch from my iPhone, however it is enough to make me have second thoughts about switching to Android and it also convinces me now more than ever that Palm won’t live to see the end of the year. From what I’ve read the Windows team has been working on this for 18 months and they decided to focus on the app side of the phone which is their core strength:

Look at that: Office looks sexy! Office hasn’t looked sexy to me since I first encountered it on the Mac eons ago as an alternative to what was out there in the DOS world. A common complaint about Microsoft is that you can get some great products like the Xbox but you can also get some clunkers too. Here it looks like Microsoft put the Xbox team to work, and this screen hints that they understand that games are important on mobile (something they have been sky about in the past):

Now I’ll grant you that this is just the demo, and I’ve seen a few ugly interface screens. However if the actual phone is anything close to this video it’s going to be worth checking out:

This next screen shot which shows the HTC HD2 (available in the US in “early 2010″) looks a bit too Apple like to me, however that said it looks much better than any Android interface that I’ve seen:

And lastly it’s just a superficial thing but even the idea of Microsoft hiring Isaac Mizrahi to design an opening screen if brilliant. Suddenly you have Microsoft becoming “cool” while Google looks geeky (and in bad way):

My only gripe as a designer is that once again Flash is locked out of another mobile platform. What makes me depressed about this is that Flash use to work on Windows Mobile, so it’s clearly not an oversight that Microsoft is out to screw Adobe. Like Apple with video it seems that Microsoft wants to push Silverlight which bodes ill for those of us who are good at Flash. My understanding is that Adobe is working on having AIR on every platform but the iPhone, but that misses the point of using Flash in the first place: The idea of write once, run anywhere.

Update: According to Gabriel Tellez the interface for Windows Phone 7 is based upon the Zune.

Kevin Rose is famous for Digg, which has lost a bit of steam to Google when it comes to breaking news. However any illusions one might have had that Rose was on a siesta can’t be dispelled when you watch his take on why Google integrated Buzz into Gmail. To sum up Rose has the following interesting insights:

• Gmail is the main product for Google so they see this as a core part of their business.

• You can tell this because they’ve been carving a huge part of each search page for Twitter.

• The catch: Twitter isn’t for sale, but all of this info is pouring into it.

• By controlling the real time web also means that you control search = bad news for Google.

• So Google must destroy Twitter or the core of their business will die.

To this I’ll add my own observation: I think what Google is doing is also aimed at the heart of Microsoft Outlook. As much as I hate the idea of kitbashing email with tweets, the reality is that it puts Gmail a step ahead of Outlook. Also as Rose points out this is a new way of creating documents which goes to killing off Microsoft Office.

Of course the one thing that I hate about Google Buzz as a designer at heart is that it makes Gmail quite messy to use: This is alright for techies, but it would make me think twice about setting up grandma with an account. The strength of Twitter, Outlook and yes even Digg is their ease of use for everyday users. Also frankly I don’t buy into the “Google Does No Evil Camp” — they’re already a monopoly and if they control real time they’ll become even worse.

To me it will be interesting to see how Rose takes these lessons and applies them to the pending relaunch of Digg. I’m an old time Digg fanboy and was heartbroken when they eliminated shouts which for me killed the social media aspect of the website. I’ve heard rumors that he’ll push for more categories, however also being a Reddit user one can see how this can lead to chaos and water down Digg.

When everyone started talking about the cloud my first thought was “isn’t this a throw back to mainframe computers from a pre-PC era when dumb terminals always needed to dial in?” So I was blown away to watch this video of Vint Cerf (who has been credited as the father of the Internet) suddenly mention mainframe time-sharing in the middle of a chat on cloud-to-cloud operability. It’s also interesting to hear that Cerf feels that it will take about five years for real standards to occur that allow one cloud to share data with another. By the way it’s interesting to note that Google now employs Cerf which is quite a coup.

Below: The ASR-33 teletype — note the Tymshare logo in the lower right hand corner!

I’ve seen tons of iPod themed goodies on Etsy but as far as I can tell Google has beaten Apple to the punch in the urban toys market with this set of Android Mini Collectibles Series 01. Frankly the thing that find heart warming about the Android logo is that it’s so darn cute which makes it an ideal collectable, and mind you that this is something that Tux the penguin logo for Linux could never pull off (it was the far body and eyes that made it look so doofy). This set was designed by the artist Andrew Bell and there are a dozen different designs each of which stands at three inches tall and features a rotating head:

This set will be available for sale at deadzebra.com later this month.

Found via nerdapproved.com.

On paper it was a good week for Palm — they announced at CES that they’ve struck a deal with Verizon and the next day their stock price ticked up. However the whims of the stock market can be a poor predictor of how a company does in the long run and can miss the big picture. Frankly the company that owned this week was Google with the announcement of the Nexus One: And that spells the death knell of Palm.

Frankly you knew this day was coming a while ago: In retrospect palm had a small window of time to work in — that period between Apple introducing the iPhone and Google entering the marketplace. And to Palm’s credit at first they did a great job by brining over many folks from Apple and being willing to reinvent themselves. But sadly that alone enough to be a disruptive force in the marketplace which was what was needed to succeed. It wasn’t enough for Palm to be just a little bit different than the iPhone, it had to give you a killer reason why it was better or open up some niche that wasn’t there before.

Above: The palm Pre zen ads were pretty, but they didn’t give you a reason to switch.

The lackluster pretty advertising that followed told the story: Like Vista copying OS X the Palm was a great clone, but there was no good reason for an iPhone user to switch brands. In fact the only innovation was the cat-and-mouse game Palm played to open up iTunes. But that missed the entire point: What was needed was a reason to make you sop using iTunes in the first place.

And Google was the one company that can give you that reason. While they didn’t have a lock into entertainment (in fact it’s a weak point) their software on the net is the killer reason to get an Android phone. At this point so many folks are using Google software (from Gmail to Google Maps) that there are multiple things that Google does better than Apple. In fact I would argue that Google has a monopoly on search, which makes anything that Palm has to offer seem non-existent.

Above: In 2005 Palm switched to Windows with the Palm Treo 700w — my bet is that you’ll see history repeat itself with Google.

So what will happen to Palm? My gut tells me that they’ll take a page from their own history. Back in the good old days Palm was the company that owned the PDA space. In a bit of historical irony they took that title from Apple by making a disruptive product that was just better than the Newton. They managed to ride that into the first era of smartphones, but then they let their software age poorly and had Microsoft eat their lunch. I’ll never forget the result: There came that one sad day where Palm introduced a smartphone running Windows, which was then followed by them selling off their operating system. And at that point there was no point in being a Palm user.

So here we find ourselves in the year 2010 and you’re about to see Google playing the role of Microsoft this time. The Droid did well on Verizon, but with the Nexus One they’re a steamroller on steroids in the marketplace. And when you add to that they’re getting into the OS game means that now Apple and Microsoft are on red alert — which means that Palm is already finished before they started.

Frankly Apple won’t be licensing the iPhone to anyone and it’s questionable if Microsoft seems like a good bet at this point in time — so Palm will be forced to go with Android thus repeating history. It’s that or they’ll be out of business or be acquired by the likes of a Microsoft or RIM if they’re lucky.

A little bit over a year ago I purchased my iPhone — I was slightly late to the party so just a little bit after getting my first generation phone, Apple rolled out the next version. For the most part it was a speed bump so I didn’t resent AT&T for the two year contract lock in at that point. However by the end of 2009 still being stuck on the Edge network was wearing a bit thin for yours truly, but I still hadn’t entered “the hate club”.

My reason was that I had originally moved from Verizon. The wireless branch of Verizon never left me with an venom, however the landline division made me a man of wrath. In NYC Verizon has a monopoly on land lines which post-9/11 I came to believe in for reasons of safety. However getting Verizon to deal with a landline is like a short trip to hell: Granted the million year old hacked infrastructure may not be their fault, but Verizon’s “customer service” is terrible when put next to cable companies.

So I didn’t mind the move to AT&T, but like all deadbeats I should have known that there was no such thing as a good one — and in my humble opinion at this point all mobile carriers are bums to me at this point. And it’s with that in mind that today I joined the loyal order of AT&T haters. Here’s why:

So if you’re any type of geek you know that Google just rolled out their shiny new toy the Nexus One. If you’re working in the furthest reach of the tech space having a working knowledge of the latest is simple survival — so even having the option to play with a new toy can in fact be make-or-break at some point in he future. And when it comes to Android you want to make it a point to look at the official Google phone because unlike everything else it’s a good case study on how Google envisions their operating system to be used.

Now I knew upfront what the deal was: There was no way in hell that Google would be rolling out their flagship goodie with AT&T. Or at least that’s what I first thought — but then things seemed to slowly change. I then discovered early this week that the Nexus One came in two flavors: Locked to T-Mobile or Verizon, or better yet unlocked! Granted that the unlocked version is over $300 more, but that’s a small price to pay to get your hands on one.

But alas there was one catch: Even unlocked the phone wouldn’t play well with AT&T. For some reason AT&T has a different flavor of network, so you;d be out of luck. Well that was that I thought until CES today: AT&T had announced an end to the Cold War — they in fact were going to ship not just one but several Android phone.

I thought that I was in luck until I started to look at all of the phones listed: It seems like they’re rolling out every Android phone except for the Nexus One. It almost seems like they’ve done everything in their power to get as close as they could to carry the official Google phone but just couldn’t be bothered to go that extra inch. It was at this point I joined the AT&T hate club.

Of course the entire notion of be married to a carrier because of a hardware purchase seems to me to be a bizarre notion. Imagine if you would if your purchase of a new computer was somehow tied to your ISP contract. So you’d be sitting there thinking “I’d like to buy a new Mac, but I don’t know if I want to be stuck with my RCN contract in case I want to move to TimeWarner Cable”.

To me this is a sign of just how backwards the mobile carriers are — it seems like there’s a reverse in who should be the dominant players. To me as a techie the cell phone makers should be the dog and the carriers should be the tail, or they should be two different creatures that don’t depend on each other.

Perhaps this is a sign of the clash of cultures as computer companies move into the mobile hardware space and bump into the sleazy Soviet style of the mobile carriers. You quickly realize that there are no goof mobile carriers, only ones that are slightly less worse than the other one for the moment. As a consumer I’d hope at a future date this would sort itself out, although that may not be a good bet by what I’ve seen so far.

I’ve got to say that when Google wants to they can be very creative, even doing things that are more interesting than Apple. This video is an example of this: It’s a stop motion animation to promote their Chrome operating system and it’s fun to look at even if you don’t care about the technology.

Found via scottkellum.net.

This beautiful video was done by the London office of Google — it does an amazing job of showing off the last 11 years of Google. Two things are striking to me about this video: First the quality of the animation is great, I don’t associate beautiful art direction with the stripped down geeky look of Google. Second it’s shocking to see that Google really has defined the net for the last few years, things they only introduced a few years ago like maps are found everywhere. Although you look at other aspects of the company like Blogger and see that they don’t always hit the mark over time.

Above: The original prototype of the Google homepage from November 1998.

The stop motion animated spots above and below are for Google Japan and I’m just blown away by the quality of craftsmanship and creativity shown here. The spots are explaining how Google street maps will help ensure privacy by blurring out people’s faces and the like. In my humble opinion Google should tap the creative team behind these ads to enliven their branding in the United States which is a tad too dull for such an innovative company.

Recently I’ve seen tech fanboys Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington raging at Apple for having the nerve to not let Google put Google Voice into the Apple app store. Frankly not only should Apple have every right to do this — but they should be doing this. The reason? Not only is Google their direct competition, but the reality is that they’re the only company in this environment that you could call a true monopoly.

The notion that Apple has some sort of monopoly on the iPhone is bizarre to me: The iPhone is one of many mobile phones out there in the universe. Maybe for this minute they have the largest share of smart phone, but that’s a weak claim when we see other platforms which are very strong in the same space like Blackberry. In fact the cult of Blackberry is just a strong as any fanboy love for the iPhone, and once more it has a much stronger hold in the corporate world. Yet I don’t see anyone arguing that the doors should be kicked open for the Blackberry.

Next the harsh truth is that everyone is still drinking the “Google Can Do No Evil” Kool-Aid. The fact is that Google is a very closed company, in fact I’d venture to say that in some ways they’re more closed than Apple or Microsoft. By the fact that Google owns search means that they own the internet as we know it. But it’s much more than search, they really own cloud computing in a way that makes Apple and Microsoft look like amateurs.

That’s why I’m surprised that Jason Calacanis is siding with Google: With a snap of their fingers they can put Mahalo out of business within seconds. Don’t believe me? Look what happened to Squidoo a while ago when Google knocked them off the map, frankly they’re lucky to still be around. The other thing is if you look at Google Knol they have a product waiting in the wings if Mahalo does too well. Yes on one hand Google Adsense made it possible for Jason to build up Weblogs Inc., but what Google gives it can take away.

But getting back to Apple, frankly Google is much more their direct competition than Microsoft when it comes to the iPhone. And when you start to realize that Apple is working on some sort of tablet device the idea of Google having both Android and Chrome OS means. To look at having Google Voice in the app store is short sided at best — both companies have product coming down the pipe that will take square aim at each other.

Above: A scene from Pirates of the Valley. Dear Steve: Do NOT let this happen again!

You also have to look at where Steve Jobs came from and the lessons that he’s learned so well. If you turn back the clock to the 80s Microsoft was where Google is now, Jobs would be an idiot to let history repeat itself. We forget it now but back then Microsoft first shipped Word for the Macintosh before there even was a Windows: In fact it was based on that direct experience that Bill Gates was able to create Windows and own the field. But before that Microsoft was helping Apple work against IBM. When you see the dance of these huge tech companies over the years you’d have to be crazy to think that any industry alliance could or should last forever.

Now let’s look at the real facts: Can Apple put Google out of business? No way! Can Apple keep Google out of the mobile phone business? No way! Can Google destroy something like MobileMe with Chrome OS? Hell yeah! Could Google become the Microsoft of netbooks with Chrome OS? Hell yeah! Is there any reason to think that in five years time that Google won’t be a major player in the smart phone market? Hell yeah!

I also don’t buy in my heart that “Google Can Do No Evil” any more than one should say the same thing about Apple. Also frankly the notion that mobile phones should be open is a rather new idea which has never been done before. In fact I don’t know of any other mobile phone company that has been as open as Apple at this point in time. Also if you look at other industries like videogame hardware you’d never see open platforms: You have to ask for Microsoft’s permission to write and market a game for the Xbox and the same goes for Nintendo and Sony. And if you look at the Nintendo DSi it’s becoming very much like an iPhone — there’s nothing to stop them from making a great device in that space.

Above: The The Nintendo DSi now features Facebook, you can tell that they’re gunning for the iPhone if you explore their other features.

The job of Steve Jobs needs to be to destroy Google before they pull a Microsoft 2.0 and own the space. Frankly Apple is the underdog in this market, it’s not the other way around. As a consumer I don’t see this as a bad thing either, if Google comes out with a strong product that will force Apple to keep innovating. And a giant monopoly like Google has the ability to wage a war in this space for decades to come. So my thinking is that Apple needs to get a divorce from Google isn’t from the viewpoint of a fanboy but comes from being a shareholder. If Calacanis and Arrington were sitting on Apple’s board I don’t think they’d be giving good advice to Jobs by telling him to play nice.

P.S. My calling Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington should be taken as a loving compliment (especially given the title of this blog).

Year-after-year I’ve watched the usual suspects make their tech predictions, so this year I’ve decided as a fanboy that it was my right to make a fool of myself as much as the next guy. Most people are in a doom and gloom mindset right now, but I’ve always felt that there are opportunities when the going gets tough. In fact my one ambivalent prediction is that somewhere in 2009/2010 someone will start a new company which will become the next big thing. But here’s what I think will be happening with the current cast of characters in the tech scene:

Sun is Acquired or Sells Off MySQL/Java Assets
Sun Microsystems stock tanks and the company becomes an acquisition target for the likes of IBM or HP — or the company goes back to their hardware roots and they sell off the valuable software assets to stay alive.

Microsoft Announces Silverlight Office & Outlook
This will be the point where people realize that not only is Microsoft serious about going after Google, but they’re in it to win it by doing what they do best: By being the upstart underdog.

Mahalo Acquires About.com from the New York Times
In one fell swoop Jason Calacanis takes on Wikipedia while Google quietly closes down Knol. Calacanis uses the opportunity to open an advertising network out of NYC thus firing the opening shot of Silicon Alley 3.0.

Apple Rolls Time Machine into Apple TV
It’s sink or swim time for Job’s hobby and one sure way to make Apple TV make more sense is to add further functionality.

Yahoo! Will NOT Be Acquired
Yahoo! always made money and with a recession this will seem like a virtue once again.

Pixar Announces a 2D Styled Feature Film
With everyone doing yet another 3D film Pixar will zig while everyone zags and will reinvent classic animation while doing it.

Technorati Shutters Down
I’m sort of surprised that this didn’t happen in 2008 — I’m still trying to figure out what this site is good for anymore?

Amazon and/or eBay Will Announce an iTunes Like Desktop App
(or Embrace a Silverlight or Flash Interface)
As Flash and Silverlight embrace accessibility you’ll start to see more high end commerce sites become more like desktop applications as ease-of-use will bring in more sales.

Google Acquires Twitter
Like Blogger and YouTube our friends at Google love to buy the best-of-breed dynamic websites. In many ways Google will also do this as a checkmate against further investment in Facebook by Microsoft.