June 15, 2011 • 42 mins
Google's a lot more than a search engine. Their business interests are tremendously varied and continually expanding -- meaning they've become involved in more than their fair share of rivalries. But who are Google's rivals, exactly? Tune in to find out.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poett and
(00:20):
I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Sitting across from me as usual and you don't even
have to search for him, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
You know, I feel so dirty when they started talking cute.
I want to tell her that I love her, but
the point is probably moot. Okay, well, I'm going to
try to puzzle out what that is actually doing with
(00:42):
this subject. Absolutely nothing. Sorry I spoiled it for you,
But today we're gonna talk about we decided we're gonna
do another kind of series. And if you if you're
if you're aware of our series, you know that we
do these sporadically. Um, but we we like there's certain
series we like to do where there's a lot of
stuff on a particular kind of sub topic in tech
(01:04):
and we think, oh, that'd be great to tackle that.
But there's no way we can do one episode that
covers the whole topic, right, It's just too big. Right.
And and for those of you who have been with
us for a long time and you you hear us
launch series and you go yeah, but you don't come back.
It's because we we think of these lists of stuff
like this, and then we go, oh, we just didn't
(01:25):
two on that, we should wait a while. Yeah, and
then so so we'll have to get back to like
the two series we need to get back to sooner
rather than later, our our electronic series, in our medical series,
because we've had requests for both of those, so we
will go back to those. But in this case, we're
talking about tech rivalries. And we've talked about some tech
rivalries recently in the podcast, Like we've had podcasts that
(01:46):
were recently talking about Edison and Tesla, and that's one
of the most famous rival reason technology in all of history. Yeah.
The funny thing about when we talk about companies, which
we're going to do today, is that in a lot
of cases, uh, some of these companies are sort of frenemies,
you know, friends and enemies. They might have a history
(02:07):
of working together as well as working at cross purposes. Actually,
come to think of it, I guess Edison and Tesla
did work to them for a little while. But anyway,
but yeah, they were more enemies than front of me. Yes, yes,
so yeah, so we're going to talk today. The tech
rivalry were specifically talking about is Google versus pretty much
everybody else. In fact, in a way, this could be
(02:28):
a part one of google rivalries with other companies, because truly,
Google has had it Scott's finger in a lot of pies. Actually,
the funny thing is that the one will probably end
with is the rivalry that just sort of popped up
and made us think of this, And it's not somebody
we necessarily would have thought of as being or at
least I would have thought of as being a competitor
(02:48):
with Google. So let's start with the obvious. So from
a consumer standpoint, like a customer, like an end user
like me or or like Chris. To us, Google is
a search engine. Yes chiefly. I mean there are all
the other things that Google does as well. But if
I say I'm going to Google something, that means I'm
going to a search for it, and uh, and I
(03:09):
mean there is a verb now for googling. So that
shows that Google really has dominated this whole section of
the internet. You know, the marketing department will probably their
marketing department probably disagree that it's a verb, but they
probably secretly are going, yes, yeah, I wouldn't imagine so
the so the the first rivalry we wanted to talk
about was with Yahoo. You know, another big search engine
(03:32):
and in fact was a huge search engine back in
the nineties. Yes, well sort of it, I would argue,
it was enormous. It was only after the dot Com
crash that it started to really have to it really,
it took that hit pretty hard. Although it survived obviously
as opposed to some of the other companies now, it
(03:53):
then built up quite a bit again, only to start
suffering again in the late two thousand era. Why, I
don't want to, uh to put it down as a
search engine, but I don't think um okay y'ah, whose
existence predates Googles by a few years. Yeah, and when
when Google made the scene, Yahoo was at least one
(04:14):
of the search leaders. There were others like Alta, Vista
and Umu hot Bot, which actually used a different engine
deemed Yeah, and so there were a lot of them,
but Yahoo, um at the time they were uh, you know,
I'm pretty sure they were using a lot of human
based power. But the thing is they were sort of
(04:34):
leveraging that. Now, if you think about Yahoo right now,
it's sort of a content engine. Uh. They have a
lot of material that they create, editorial content or a
license from other people, and they were sort of doing that.
They were sort of contextualizing search, like if you were
looking for something in particular, they might tell you, uh,
you know, promote somebody that they had worked with and
(04:56):
say why it was that you might want to pick them.
It wasn't necessarily as search result, although you would get
search results. Yeah, the uh that sounds weird. They were
kind of a web portal. Yeah, they really were. So
you think it was sort of a combination of the
the the search engine, the the Internet search engine, and
so almost like the online service providers we talked about
(05:16):
in previous episodes. It's like the old days of all
l and Prodigy. It kind of had its own sort
of portal into the Web that wasn't all inclusive, but
gave you a good spread of information across various topics,
so that you know, you you could at a glance
on one page see some interesting headlines and that might
be that might be the extent of your experience using
(05:39):
the Internet. Back in those days. Well, people didn't necessarily know.
I worked in a an I s P and Internet
service provider in the mid ninety nineties, and there were
a lot of people who would who would call our
phone number. I've worked in sales for a bit and
people would call and ask, you know, my son or
my daughter told me I need to get an Internet
account so I can send mail messages. What is this
(06:01):
internet thing? And and what do I do? And the
thing is, people didn't really know what a u r
L was back then because they were being introduced to it.
It was a sort of a new concept. The Internet
had been around, but it wasn't always a consumer uh
you know service, and it wasn't necessarily user friendly. I
mean this was built by engineers. Yeah, and so I
(06:21):
love you engineers, I love you all. Yes, but that
doesn't necessarily mean that people knew where they were going
on the World Wide Web. I mean Worldwide Web was
only you know, a few a couple of years old
at that point, a few years old. Yeah, yeah, who
you know who launched officially as a company in n
Now it actually grew out of a service that had
existed before that, but in became Yahoo and then they
(06:45):
launched Yahoo Mail in nineteen. It sort of became a
web portal. They purchased Geo Cities in nine, which was,
you know, a web page hosting service which now no
longer exists, but was. It was big for a while,
and it it organized web pages into neighborhoods, so it
was it was an attempt to make the web more uh,
(07:07):
user friendly and understandable to the common consumer by by
relating it to concepts that the consumer would already be
familiar with. So yeah, I was really doing a lot
of work in this area. Uh. And then they had
the dot com bubble burst in the two thousand two
thousand one era. Right around two thousand, Yahoo began to
do something interesting. Yahoo began to use the search algorithms,
(07:30):
licensing them from another search engine company, and that search
engine company was Google. Google h they registered Google dot
com in the company itself officially launched in night, so
it was late to the game compared to Yahoo. But
Google's service was considered to be one of the best
(07:51):
on the web. For one, Google was able to index
millions and later billions of web pages and had a
very stripped down simple user interface. I mean it's the
same as it as today in the sense that you
go to www dot Google dot com, you're gonna see
the Google logo, you're gonna see the search bar, and
then you just type in your query and you hit
(08:12):
search Plus. There's other stuff there too, but it's not
much right. They kept it really stripped down and simple.
And so that was Google's philosophical difference between you know,
from Yahoo's point, like Yahoo strategy was web portal, throwing
as many services there, try and be as useful as
possible and be the destination for the people on the
(08:33):
web that they will get their web content through Yahoo.
Didn't you write an article about that about what the
Google algorithm? Yes I did. I wrote an article about
what makes the Google algorithms so important? And in fact
y'ah who recognized how important the Google algorithm was, And
so again in two thousand they started to work with Google.
They began to use the Google search engine technology on Yahoo. Now, Yahoo,
(08:56):
of course was really concentrated on building up that web
portal aspect of their business at the time, and they
used the Google algorithm till about two thousand four, and
that's when Yahoo ended that relationship with Google and switched
to an in house developed search algorithm. Uh, so they're
back doing their own search at that point, because then
(09:18):
you've got another element that comes into play a little later. Um.
But yeah, so you then you have started to have
this this rivalry in search between Google and Yahoo, a
true rivalry as opposed to the kind of weird semi
rivalry when you have one company competing against another company
that's using the first company's technology. That's just kind of
(09:39):
you know, it's hard to get get your mind wrapped
around that. Well. In two thousand three, Yahoo bought a
company called Overture Services. Now, then in two thousand four,
Yahoo levied a huge patent lawsuit against Google that said
that Google was was used being technology based on patents
(10:02):
filed by Overture Services, which yeah, who now owned in
purchase the year before. It all hinged on online advertising,
which is the way Google makes most of its revenue. Yeah,
and Yahoo also has quite a lot of revenue. If
you ask, if you ask an entrepreneur what Google's businesses,
they're not going to tell you it's search engine. They're
(10:23):
going to tell you it's online advertising. So uh and
and the you know, you, yourself, you the user, are
the commodity. Then the advertising is the way it generates revenue.
So this was a big deal. I mean, Google depended
on and still does depends on online advertising for money.
(10:43):
So a lawsuit that could potentially, ah, we'll throw a
monkey wrench into the works as far as online advertising goes,
was a huge problem. Well, eventually they settled that lawsuit
and Yahoo was granted a perpetual license to use these
these technologies to Google, and Google in turn gave some
(11:04):
stock to Yahoo, Google stock to Yahoo. Actually the two
companies own stock in each other. Um, it's kind of interesting,
but one wonders if perhaps Yahoo may be folded a
little too easily, because since then, Yahoo has had some
problems to the point where they've had massive layoffs and
(11:24):
the company itself has been devalued massively over the years.
And there's been some very highly publicized political struggles within
Yahoo over the last couple of years as well, and
and a lot of struggling at the executive level at Yahoo.
And so then you've got a point in two thousand
eight where Google and Yahoo had reached an agreement in
(11:46):
which Yahoo could use Google advertising on Yahoo pages. So
again you've got like this weird relationship with they're kind
of competing against each other, and then they're kind of
you know, who wants to depend on this? Well, I mean,
this is all good news for Google because they're gonna
get money using their you know, licensing out this this
advertising technology. But there was one little tiny problem. Oh yeah,
(12:07):
the United States Department of Justice said that this smacked
of monopoly as far as advertising on the web goes,
and so they struck it down through antitrust laws. So
this agreement never came to fruition. Uh. And then eventually
you get to the point where you rereach today a
coint to Business Insider, the most recent figures I could
(12:29):
find for the market share for search has Google with
sixty five point seven percent of all online search all
the world around. Yeah, okay, and Yahoo fifteen point seven.
So and then you've got you know, he's in third place, yes,
being being nine percent. Now, Google is more or less plateaued.
(12:52):
It hasn't really gained or lost a significant percentage of
that market share in quite some time. It's it's kind
of lost a little bit, but not a whole, not
a lot. Yahoo has been in a very very slow,
gradual decline, Bing has been in a climbing pattern, and
Being is starting to steal some search traffic, our search
(13:14):
market share from both Yahoo and Google. Yes, um, more
Yahoo than Google really at this point. And that actually
kind of is another interesting point because you know, Microsoft
and Yahoo entered into a ten year agreement not too
long ago in which Microsoft gets full access to Yahoo's
search engine for the ten years. This was related to
(13:35):
uh to bing to be able to use the technology
that Yahoo had developed to help bolster the Being search engine.
It doesn't mean that Being is completely based on Yahoo's
search engine technology, but it may partially be based upon it, right,
And if you run a search in Yahoo now, if
I'm not mistaken, you will get uh bing Yahoo powered search. Yeah.
(13:56):
So ten year partnership that was signed by the way
in two thousand nine, So that would end, of course
in another few years. Yeah. Microsoft's Live search product had
been floundering, uh compared to some of its competitors, most
notably Google. Um, you know, you wouldn't necessarily think that
Microsoft and Google would be competitors. I mean, Microsoft makes
(14:18):
operating system software, productivity software. You know, some electronic devices,
the Xbox Zoom. Hey wait a minute, what so does
Google Google creates an operating system called Chromos, and Google
has a suite of productivity software called Google Docs. Yeah,
this is this is a rivalry I think is heating up. Yeah.
(14:40):
And this wasn't around. I mean when you were talking
about just a couple of years ago that it wasn't
necessarily a rivalry. This is something that's cropping up now.
There was a rivalry as far as search goes because
of Coach. Microsoft have Microsoft Live Search. And then there
was a rivalry in web based email as well, because
you had hot mail and live mail accounts through Microsoft.
You had the Yahoo Mail accounts through y'all who by
(15:01):
the way, y'all who actually totally redid their their mail
system after Gmail launched, because then that's the other one.
You've got Google's Gmail. So you've got these three different
or technically four if you talk about live mail versus hotmail, uh,
four different web email based services. Uh. I know, just
anecdotally talking with other people who are in the tech industry,
(15:24):
tech journalists and and such, they get surprised when they
see an email from a hotmail account at this point. Yeah,
because everyone thinks of that, at least when I say everyone,
like all of the people I talked to think of
that as like the spam account, um, and my my
spam box filled up pretty quickly and hot mail and
I hadn't even given it out to people, so I
(15:46):
guess they're just blanketing everything there. Um. So yeah, being
launched in the summer of two thousand nine, so it's
really not even all that old as the time when're recording,
is this less than just less than two years? Yeah,
it feels like it's been forever. Yeah, it does actually, um,
And I think a lot of people were skeptical. I mean,
Google's had a sort of an iron grip on the
(16:09):
search market for years, um, but then Being started eating
into Google's market share. When you think about it, two
years to go from nothing to thirteen point nine percent
of the market share of search. That's enormous now. Granted,
you could also argue that Being is sort of the
the step child of Live Search, in which case you
(16:29):
would have to look at the market share that Live
Search had and compared to what Being has now. But that,
you know, beside the point. Yeah, I've heard generally when
I've used it, it's been a pretty good search engine,
and um, a lot of other people seem to feel
that way too. I have seen critical, critical praise for
being um but yeah, all of a sudden, now, uh,
(16:51):
Microsoft is completely retooled at search, and not every company
has the pockets deep enough to just go, let's start
a new one from scratch. Microsoft of beviously does and
uh you know, now they're competing on that front. And then,
as you pointed out, um, Google decided it wanted to
get into the productivity software business as well. And this
(17:11):
has caused Microsoft to react because we actually Google sort
of acquired a series of they had their own, and
then they sort of acquired a series of independent cloud
based tools and a cloud of courses the internet. Um.
You use these these pieces of software in your web
browser online. The documents are stored online in general, although
(17:32):
with Google Docs you can upload uh files and you
can also have with Google Gears you can have offline
capability as well. Yeah. But yeah, at the time, it
may not have looked like it was an indirect competition
because that functionality wasn't there. You had Microsoft Office, which
as many of you know, is a well well entrenched
productivity suite that includes presentation software and a spreadsheet document creator,
(17:55):
and uh in an email client, the word which is
the word processing software, and depending on the package you buy,
it will include other different pieces of software, but those
are the big ease UM and Google Docs. Google acquired rightly,
they acquired uh UM, Presentation program, Um and and several others.
(18:18):
And then you wouldn't necessarily Okay, so you've got the
one that's based on your hard drive, which is Microsoft,
and you've got the one that's based online, and they're compatible. Uh, well,
you know, not such a big deal. Well then Google
up the anti They said, let's go ahead and add
offline functionality. So now you can download document or you know,
work on stuff offline, you can upload it back to
(18:39):
Google Docs. So Google counters, but you know with Microsoft counters.
I'm sorry. Microsoft counters with its own online version of
the Office Suite, which has actually again gotten some critical praise.
I've seen some reasonably positive remarks on it. And the
one of the big benefits of the Google app, which
(19:00):
was that it really created new opportunities for collaboration because
you could share documents across multiple users and then collaboratively
work on projects without having to create new copies of
a document. That was the big problem with the old
offline system was that if I wanted to work on
a document and I wanted Chris to be able to
(19:20):
work on it too, I would have to I would
have to send him a copy of it, and I
would work on one instance of that document on my computer.
He would work on another instance of it on his computer,
and then we'd have to recombine the two, which was
always kind of a messy way of doing things. And
it could mean that perhaps we both made changes to
the same section, and then how do you incorporate two
(19:41):
different sets of changes for the one part of that document.
Sharing it online meant that everyone was working for the
same master document and that you know, you still have
issues that you run into there if you have two
people trying to edit the same section at the same time,
but you can see it in real time or or
close to real time and h and tell the person, Hey,
(20:01):
knock it off, I'm working on that right now. Yeah,
then you can review it and you can make changes.
So it made that a little more of a smoother process. So, yeah,
there's definitely a rivalry between Microsoft and Google, and it
does go beyond just the the productivity software and even
the operating system, because like we said, Google's launching Chromos,
and that's really starting to look kind of interesting. I
(20:22):
don't know, I don't know that's going to get widespread adoption,
but Google is putting a lot of muscle behind it. Now,
keep in mind, we've seen Google push other products really,
really hard, only to have to eventually give up on them.
So there's no guarantee that Chromos is going to be
a huge success. But they're not sparing any expense and
trying to make it one now, and they're not above
(20:43):
defending their turf as we saw earlier in two thousand
and eleven with the accusations flying back and forth between
who's stealing whose search results between Google and being But
there's another front too we hadn't talked about. You know,
Windows has been making an operating system for PDAs and
later phones smartphones for years. Um. You know, Windows just
(21:05):
came out with a new version of its operating system
for phones, which again, UH seems to be getting some
reasonable success. But it's hard because they already have UH.
Google already has its Android operating system, which is on
millions of phones worldwide, and they're also competing on another
front with that, which is with another company that creates smartphones, yes,
and that would be Apple. Yes, there are other companies,
(21:28):
of course that do create smartphones. We're not forgetting BlackBerry, BlackBerry,
and we're not forgetting some of the other players, Nokia
with the Symbian. Yeah, although Nokia is now doing Windows Phone.
Isn't that interesting? Yeah, So you've got Google battling Microsoft
multiple fronts, including the smartphone. Then you have Google battling
Apple on multiple fronts, including the smartphone. Now, and here
(21:51):
here's an interesting point. If you were to look at
the Google versus Microsoft part of this picture, you would
say that Google was the one who got there first
for smart phones in that Android was more of a
smartphone operating system than the old Windows Mobile operating system. Now,
uh so Android was able to get established in that
market before Windows Phone showed up because Windows Mobile Windows
(22:14):
Phone or two different operating systems for phones, and Windows
Mobile would be the more primitive version. Windows Phone is
really snazzy. But Android already had a foothold there. So
that in that case, you're talking about Microsoft trying to
take down a giant. But really Google faced that same
problem because in two thousand seven, uh the iPhone launched
(22:34):
in in June, and it wasn't until November of two
thousand seven that the Android phone launched, so Apple had
a big jump already. You might say, well, that's just
a few months, that's not a huge deal. It was
an enormous deal because Apple was able to do something
that no one else had done up to that point.
Apple was able to create a market for smartphones among
(22:54):
general consumers. Right. Of course, BlackBerry already had a pretty
big presence, you know, in the in the in the
enterprise market forces for companies corporate users. Yeah, because I mean,
you know, you might have a p d A, but
you'd use it for your personal appointments and things you
don't really necessarily need a smartphone for. And and they
were expensive at the time too, so you don't you
(23:14):
don't necessarily need one for your own personal use, right sure.
And it wasn't until Apple was able to show it
as a consumer device, not just a corporate device. Now,
the key there was to make sure that you still
showed it as something that you could do productive work on,
but at the same time show it in a really
sleek and sexy and fun way. So it had lots
(23:35):
of games and the animation was beautiful, and the graphics
were gorgeous, and the apps that they developed were really
really compelling apps. For the most part, they were couple
clunkers in there. But and then opening up the app
Store was a brilliant move because now you just created
a market for all this kind of software. It was really,
you know, a great, a great strategy on Apple's part,
(23:57):
and they could not have done a better job with
their launch. Whether you love the iPhone or you hate it,
you gotta admit that their launch of that product was
a complete success. Yeah now, and I'm sorry, no, please
go ahead. I was going to point out I'm amused
by this because, uh, you know, a couple of years ago,
I was asked to write an article. I don't write
many articles for How Stuff Works dot Com only have
(24:19):
a small handful. But on this this um column by
technology writer Nicholas Car Do you remember this? And I
have to uh have no of him, I don't actually
know him. I have to laugh at this because the
name of this article is how the Google Apple Cloud
computer will work. Because you know, the idea was and
(24:41):
Car suggested, and at the time it was brilliant because
you know, he said, Google can supply the cloud infrastructure.
Apple can supply the software and the hardware, which would
look amazing WHI would look amazing and work does Yeah,
Apple makes stuff that works, and they make stuff that
looks really really sleek. On the front end. Apple's got
you know, got that. On the back end, Google's got
(25:02):
the infrastructure. They know infrastructure, they know cloud computing. Except
that that was right around the time they became enemies,
and and and and we had Eric Schmidt on the
board yeah Apple, Eric Schmidt, who at the time was
the CEO of Google. Yeah, he was on the board
of director for director for Apple. Because originally you would say, like,
well that there's not really a conflict there. Yes, Google
(25:24):
is a huge technology company. Apple is a huge technology company,
but they both serve different markets, and everything changed. Yeah,
and then once they both entered that smartphone market, that
really made things complicated. And there were some pretty nasty
kind of digs going on, although you could argue on
the surface that they weren't necessarily digs, that you know,
everyone had sort of valid excuses for what they did,
(25:46):
but you felt that deep down there was really more
of a how can we get these guys kind of
thing going on, and I should also say that even
if this smartphone thing had not happened at that time,
I still find it hard to imagine at Google bowl
cloud computer. And the main reason for that is because
I think that Apple and Google have fundamentally different philosophies
(26:07):
when it comes to the openness of technology. So Apple
is all about creating a really lockdown, closed system, the
benefit of which is that you know what's going to
work because you've locked it down and you're not allowing
people to come in there and mess with it. And
Google is not totally open and free. It's not like
(26:28):
it's Lenox or something, but it's there's like that less
there is a perception that Android is completely open, which
is not true. It's not true. No, it's not true.
Android is more open than other smartphone operating systems out there,
or most of them anyway, but it is not truly open. Yeah,
and the Mac os is also somewhat open, but not
(26:49):
as it's not as closed as Windows. It's not black
and white, it's not black and white. But Apple is
definitely further along the closed part of that spectrum, and
Google is closer to the open. And so yeah, you've
got uh two thousand seven. That's when both the iPhone
and Android phones launched. Now, Android at that time was
it had a huge uphill battle, which eventually it managed
(27:10):
to to wage uh successfully to the point now where
you depending on whom you read, you'll see that the
Android has the dominant market share in smartphones right now. Um,
there's some reports that say that goes back and forth,
and it all depends on how many consumers you have
who are using old smartphones and how many of them
are still Android versus Apple, and etcetera, etcetera. But the
(27:33):
main argument is that Android and Apple are the two
big players in this space, and everyone else is kind of,
you know, on the boundary. Yeah, and and the other.
The other interesting thing to note is too in the
world of apps, Google had difficulty breaking into Apple's app store. Yeah,
that was one of the digs I was talking about.
The you know, Google Voice app. Yes, took forever to
(27:54):
come out. Well, it was originally rejected by Apple and
then the and Trust's two thousand nine July two thou
Apple rejects the Google Voice app from the app store.
In September two tho nine, Eric Schmidt steps down from
the board of directors from Apple, which some said what
might have been at least partially in response to the
(28:14):
app being rejected. Now Google and Apple both say that
that's not the case. There were there was the antitrust
concerns and things of that nature that we're really playing
into it. But you know, people will talk, right. And
then in November of two thousand nine, Google purchased a
company called ad Mob, which a mobile advertising company. Right,
so you've got this mobile advertising company and no one
(28:38):
argues that mobile is the next really, I mean, it
is the big thing. It's not the next big thing,
it is the current big thing in web based technology.
Everyone is grabbing onto mobile devices to access the web,
whether it's an MP three player that has WiFi capability,
a smartphone, a tablet, uh, you know, the that's or
(29:01):
where it's really going. Even netbooks, you could argue, kind
of fall into the mobile category just because they're small
enough that people take them everywhere. Um. So, yeah, the
mobile web is really a huge, huge thing. So purchasing
this this ad mob mobile advertising platform was like a
shot across the bow. And and plus Apple had been
(29:21):
interested in ad Mob and had made an offer to
purchase the company just before Google actually did purchase it, Yes,
then they countered with another purchase their wireless yes. So
and and now, as anybody who has seen both in
uh an Android device and an Apple iOS device, they
have similar styles of advertising in the applications that you
(29:44):
see on there. So they are they're turning that into
a source of revenue. And now you know, I've seen
the bing app show up, and I don't remember there
being any controversy about Apple and Microsoft, uh, you know,
putting a bing app in the app store. The It's
just funny to me after all the years of Microsoft
versus Apple. But we'll talk about that later. We should
(30:05):
talk about let's just take this up plus one plus
one plus one, Google's plus one right where you can
like anything on the web. Well, before we get to that,
I mean, I know we're running out of time and
we're gonna have to rush through this last one, but
there's still some other stuff I want to talk about
really quickly about Apple on Apple and the reason is
that there are a couple of other fronts where they
are they are competing. Again, You've got the chromos coming out,
(30:28):
so you've got Google potentially competing against Apple products. And
when you talk about that that's a huge thing because
Apple does these high end computers. Right. They're expensive, but
they're gorgeous and they work and they're you know, but
it's it's almost like a boutique kind of purchase, right,
because they're there. It's almost like an exclusivity sort of thing.
Google is doing the Chromos where all the hard heavy
(30:51):
lifting is going to be on the the the back
end side, so you don't need a really powerful machine.
So in theory you can buy a pretty cheap computer
running the Chrome os. So that's an opposite approach from
what Apple takes, so that they're going to compete in
that space. You've also got Google where they launched the
Chrome web browser, yes versus Safari, right, and Chrome already
(31:12):
has I think, depending again upon whom you read, Chrome
has a higher market share than Safari does in web browsing.
I mean, I know people who have Matt computers who
they were so happy when Chrome came out for the
Mac because they were not huge Safari fans. I'm one
of them. And then then you also have YouTube that's
renting movies now, which looks like it's competing against Apple iTunes.
(31:34):
And then there's Google Music, which will be competing with
the Apple Music Service as well as the Amazon Cloud Player.
So yeah, you've got we We're not going to talk
about Google versus Amazon. We could. We can also talk
about Google versus Netflix. We can talk about Google versus
just about anybody. We only have one other company we
want to talk about. We're gonna go really fast because
this episode's going long. Yeah, it was. It was earlier
(31:56):
this year, not so far before we recorded this. Yeah,
when they announced the well, I was thinking about the
plus one feature, and this is I think this sets
up what we're about to talk about because suddenly, you
know how Facebook a few years ago one because it
was maybe a couple of years ago, came out with
the ability to use their APIs, their application programming interface,
(32:18):
and you could install it on your web browser and
have people like stuff on Facebook on your own web
page if you wanted to. Well, that was pretty cool, right,
So if you had a Facebook account and more than
five million people do um probably more than that. Now
I might be able to make that six million, But
you incorporate that into a web page and then suddenly
someone from Facebook says, oh I like this, they like it,
(32:41):
it shares it on their wall and then all of
their friends can come and read your page. It just
meant that there was an additional way to funnel people
in to see your content, which is interesting because previously
the way that people would come and see content there
are two main ways. Right, they would come to some
sort of homepage to a site where they visit over
over and over again, or they would use search. Well,
(33:03):
now you've got a third way, which is socially driven
of avenues to get to content. So either you share
it on Facebook where you say, hey, there's this great website,
go here, or you go to a website that has
that incorporated like button and it does it for you,
and then your buddies all say, oh, well, Jonathan liked
this one website, we should check that out and see
what that's all about. So, in a way, that was
(33:24):
a shot across the ballot, across all the search engines,
because now you're saying, you, guys, used to be relevant,
but now we're going to take that away from you,
because we're going to have it where people find information
organically through their their social connections, not through just going
to a search engine and typing in some words. So
that was a yeah, that was a wake up call UM,
(33:45):
and Google answered, you know, you can do that when
you have deep pockets and your employees can all spend
their time working on UM with the plus one system.
Uh So suddenly now Google was competing because you can
you know plus one basically me, Hey, I like that too, Yeah,
that link, that link is really useful. So I'm going
to say that out of all the search results I
(34:06):
got for this particular query, this is the one that
I think is the best. I'm gonna plus one that.
And then when one of your friends comes on, someone
who has a you know, who's one of your contacts,
comes on and does a similar search, they're going to
see that if they get their search result page up,
they're going to see the search results that got the
most plus ones from their friends. And again it's kind
(34:26):
of like a socially driven thing, and they can even
see like which of their friends plus one did, so
they'd say, oh, what, you know, Jonathan was searching for
uh fluid dynamics and so that this one video on
non Newtonian fluid was really cool, So I wanna I
want to check this out, and then you could plus
one it and then it again it's socially. Yeah, it's
(34:48):
socially driving up the search is Now someone else coming
in and searching that same query may not see that
because they're not your contact. So it's it's it's not
it's not like wild wet out there. It's not gonna
completely uh game the system for Google search results, because
that's one thing Google does not want to do is
mess with their algorithms so much that it becomes useless.
(35:11):
But it did. Um you know, people were saying, some
of the tech journals were saying, look, this might be
uh something that will play into Google's maybe possibly finally
announced social networking tool. I mean, you had or Cut,
but it really didn't take off like you thought, and
people have been waiting for this thing for I don't
(35:32):
know years. I would say, yeah, Ork it was a
social network like Facebook. Actually it is a social network.
It's not gone now. ORC It's very popular in places
like Brazil and India, but never got widespread global adoption
like Facebook did. So. Google has already had a history
of competing with Facebook with things like orch It, but
it was Ork. It was such a tiny blip on
(35:53):
the radar from most of the world that we don't
even really think about them competing because there was no competition, right,
you know, if you've got someone who has the followers,
you don't think of it as competition. Well I didn't,
but apparently Facebook did because there again, as as Jonathan mentioned, right,
not right before, but shortly before we recorded this, a
(36:13):
scandal came to light. Yeah. Facebook, Um, it turns out
Facebook hired a PR firm called person Mars Stellar, a
very well known and and pretty well respected firm. Yeah, well,
used to be respected. Yeah, it was still well known,
might be even better known now. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, the
PR firm. Facebook hired this PR firm in order to
(36:35):
pitch stories to bloggers and newspapers that would put Google
in a bad light, specifically with this socially motivated um
search and social circle services that Google's pushing. Uh. They
wanted specifically respect to privacy and how Google handles privacy
and talk about pot calling the kettle black. We've got Facebook,
(36:56):
which is not known for being a great protector of privacy,
saying hey, Google's really you know, putting your privacy at danger.
We want these stories to get out there. So this
PR firm started to approach various people. One of the
people had approached was Christopher. Uh uh, oh gosh, I
don't even know how to say his last name. I'm
gonna say Safoyan, but it could be totally wrong. It's
(37:17):
s O G H O I A N. So that's
an interesting Chris, if you're out there, let me know. Anyway,
the Christopher had received a request from the PR firm
about this, and instead of running the story that the
PR firm wanted them to run about Google's uh social
(37:37):
uh social circle invading privacy, he ran the email that
the PR firm sent him. He published, he published it
on his blog, showing that this PR firm was trying
to engineer this this smear campaign USA Today, same sort
of thing. USA Today got a request for a story
pitch about a similar kind of thing, and instead they
(38:00):
decided to publish a story about the smear campaign. And
that's when the story really broke across all channels. And
uh then later on the PR the PR firm itself
was caught removing negative comments from its own Facebook page
and that helped spurn the the scandal even further. And uh,
(38:22):
you know, if you're wondering about the social circle thing,
it's kind of this way that Google shows the people
you're connected to through various means like Twitter and and
Google Contacts and all this kind of stuff, and then
it shows the larger circle that you're connected to from
people who are connected to the people that you're you
that are in your your social circle. So, for example,
(38:43):
one of the people in my social circle, and it's
only because I follow her on Twitter as far as
I can tell, is Felicia Day or actually Google Buzz.
I think it's because I follow her on Google Buzz
is Felicia Day. But because it's Felicia Day, that means
that that extra that next step in the social circle
is enormous. But has lots of people follow Felicia Day,
So that means that my information is also on display
(39:07):
for all those people. But this is information that is public.
It is information that you have willingly shared and allowed
to be public on whatever network like Google Buzz or whatever.
So in other words, it's not like it's digging up
information that is behind some sort of security. It's just
stuff that's already out there. So that that's the argument
(39:27):
that other people have against uh Facebook's approach was that, well,
Google is just sharing stuff that you've already opted to share.
It's not like it's sharing information that you didn't you know,
you said do not share this. So um, yeah, it's
definitely a big, big, explosive problem. And you know what,
Facebook and Google have had a long history of struggles.
(39:50):
I mean there's none of them were direct struggles like
open i D. Yes, Google backed open i D and
open i D was this idea of creating a single
log in kind of account and you would use that
across multiple websites. Facebook at the same time was pushing
Facebook Connect, which is similar except it wasn't based on
(40:12):
open standards like open i D and it was into Facebook. Yes,
so it benefited Facebook, but it would also benefit any
site that used Facebook Connect because it meant that you
were tapping into a social network that had over five
hundred million users. So it's there's no there's really no
(40:32):
surprise when Facebook Connect came out on top, because even
if you argue that open i D was the better
choice from just a consumer safety standpoint or from a
kind of a disinterested objective standpoint, from a let's get
business done standpoint, Facebook Connect made all the sense in
the world. Alright, Well, we have gone forty minutes with
(40:55):
this podcast, so I suggest we wrap it up now.
We again, we could have talked about lots of other
rivalries Google has going on, and we probably will do
another episode at some point just about Google, although I
would suggest our next tech rivalry episode, b face, you know,
focus on a different company entirely. Um, and we we've
talked about similar rivalries in the past, like I said,
not just Tesla and Edison, but things like you know,
(41:16):
we've done Microsoft and Apple, and we've done a few others.
But I think that this is a fun kind of
thing to talk about, really look at the two sides
and kind of see what their strategies were and their
their motivation for acting the way they did. Yeah. I think,
well it's one of those central points in uh in
any story, as you need some kind of conflict. So
I think that's one of the reasons that we find
this so fascinating. Yes, now that we've reached the Danu law, Yes,
(41:38):
let us conclude. Here is our epilogue. If you would
like to hear about a specific tech rivalry, let us know.
You can send us an email. That address is tech
stuff at how stuff works dot com, or contact us
on Twitter and Facebook are handled. There is tech stuff H.
S W and Chris and I will talk to you again,
possibly about a rivalry really soon. Be sure to check
(42:03):
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works iPhone
app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
(42:24):
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poett and
(00:20):
I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Sitting across from me as usual and you don't even
have to search for him, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
You know, I feel so dirty when they started talking cute.
I want to tell her that I love her, but
the point is probably moot. Okay, well, I'm going to
try to puzzle out what that is actually doing with
(00:42):
this subject. Absolutely nothing. Sorry I spoiled it for you,
But today we're gonna talk about we decided we're gonna
do another kind of series. And if you if you're
if you're aware of our series, you know that we
do these sporadically. Um, but we we like there's certain
series we like to do where there's a lot of
stuff on a particular kind of sub topic in tech
(01:04):
and we think, oh, that'd be great to tackle that.
But there's no way we can do one episode that
covers the whole topic, right, It's just too big. Right.
And and for those of you who have been with
us for a long time and you you hear us
launch series and you go yeah, but you don't come back.
It's because we we think of these lists of stuff
like this, and then we go, oh, we just didn't
(01:25):
two on that, we should wait a while. Yeah, and
then so so we'll have to get back to like
the two series we need to get back to sooner
rather than later, our our electronic series, in our medical series,
because we've had requests for both of those, so we
will go back to those. But in this case, we're
talking about tech rivalries. And we've talked about some tech
rivalries recently in the podcast, Like we've had podcasts that
(01:46):
were recently talking about Edison and Tesla, and that's one
of the most famous rival reason technology in all of history. Yeah.
The funny thing about when we talk about companies, which
we're going to do today, is that in a lot
of cases, uh, some of these companies are sort of frenemies,
you know, friends and enemies. They might have a history
(02:07):
of working together as well as working at cross purposes. Actually,
come to think of it, I guess Edison and Tesla
did work to them for a little while. But anyway,
but yeah, they were more enemies than front of me. Yes, yes,
so yeah, so we're going to talk today. The tech
rivalry were specifically talking about is Google versus pretty much
everybody else. In fact, in a way, this could be
(02:28):
a part one of google rivalries with other companies, because truly,
Google has had it Scott's finger in a lot of pies. Actually,
the funny thing is that the one will probably end
with is the rivalry that just sort of popped up
and made us think of this, And it's not somebody
we necessarily would have thought of as being or at
least I would have thought of as being a competitor
(02:48):
with Google. So let's start with the obvious. So from
a consumer standpoint, like a customer, like an end user
like me or or like Chris. To us, Google is
a search engine. Yes chiefly. I mean there are all
the other things that Google does as well. But if
I say I'm going to Google something, that means I'm
going to a search for it, and uh, and I
(03:09):
mean there is a verb now for googling. So that
shows that Google really has dominated this whole section of
the internet. You know, the marketing department will probably their
marketing department probably disagree that it's a verb, but they
probably secretly are going, yes, yeah, I wouldn't imagine so
the so the the first rivalry we wanted to talk
about was with Yahoo. You know, another big search engine
(03:32):
and in fact was a huge search engine back in
the nineties. Yes, well sort of it, I would argue,
it was enormous. It was only after the dot Com
crash that it started to really have to it really,
it took that hit pretty hard. Although it survived obviously
as opposed to some of the other companies now, it
(03:53):
then built up quite a bit again, only to start
suffering again in the late two thousand era. Why, I
don't want to, uh to put it down as a
search engine, but I don't think um okay y'ah, whose
existence predates Googles by a few years. Yeah, and when
when Google made the scene, Yahoo was at least one
(04:14):
of the search leaders. There were others like Alta, Vista
and Umu hot Bot, which actually used a different engine
deemed Yeah, and so there were a lot of them,
but Yahoo, um at the time they were uh, you know,
I'm pretty sure they were using a lot of human
based power. But the thing is they were sort of
(04:34):
leveraging that. Now, if you think about Yahoo right now,
it's sort of a content engine. Uh. They have a
lot of material that they create, editorial content or a
license from other people, and they were sort of doing that.
They were sort of contextualizing search, like if you were
looking for something in particular, they might tell you, uh,
you know, promote somebody that they had worked with and
(04:56):
say why it was that you might want to pick them.
It wasn't necessarily as search result, although you would get
search results. Yeah, the uh that sounds weird. They were
kind of a web portal. Yeah, they really were. So
you think it was sort of a combination of the
the the search engine, the the Internet search engine, and
so almost like the online service providers we talked about
(05:16):
in previous episodes. It's like the old days of all
l and Prodigy. It kind of had its own sort
of portal into the Web that wasn't all inclusive, but
gave you a good spread of information across various topics,
so that you know, you you could at a glance
on one page see some interesting headlines and that might
be that might be the extent of your experience using
(05:39):
the Internet. Back in those days. Well, people didn't necessarily know.
I worked in a an I s P and Internet
service provider in the mid ninety nineties, and there were
a lot of people who would who would call our
phone number. I've worked in sales for a bit and
people would call and ask, you know, my son or
my daughter told me I need to get an Internet
account so I can send mail messages. What is this
(06:01):
internet thing? And and what do I do? And the
thing is, people didn't really know what a u r
L was back then because they were being introduced to it.
It was a sort of a new concept. The Internet
had been around, but it wasn't always a consumer uh
you know service, and it wasn't necessarily user friendly. I
mean this was built by engineers. Yeah, and so I
(06:21):
love you engineers, I love you all. Yes, but that
doesn't necessarily mean that people knew where they were going
on the World Wide Web. I mean Worldwide Web was
only you know, a few a couple of years old
at that point, a few years old. Yeah, yeah, who
you know who launched officially as a company in n
Now it actually grew out of a service that had
existed before that, but in became Yahoo and then they
(06:45):
launched Yahoo Mail in nineteen. It sort of became a
web portal. They purchased Geo Cities in nine, which was,
you know, a web page hosting service which now no
longer exists, but was. It was big for a while,
and it it organized web pages into neighborhoods, so it
was it was an attempt to make the web more uh,
(07:07):
user friendly and understandable to the common consumer by by
relating it to concepts that the consumer would already be
familiar with. So yeah, I was really doing a lot
of work in this area. Uh. And then they had
the dot com bubble burst in the two thousand two
thousand one era. Right around two thousand, Yahoo began to
do something interesting. Yahoo began to use the search algorithms,
(07:30):
licensing them from another search engine company, and that search
engine company was Google. Google h they registered Google dot
com in the company itself officially launched in night, so
it was late to the game compared to Yahoo. But
Google's service was considered to be one of the best
(07:51):
on the web. For one, Google was able to index
millions and later billions of web pages and had a
very stripped down simple user interface. I mean it's the
same as it as today in the sense that you
go to www dot Google dot com, you're gonna see
the Google logo, you're gonna see the search bar, and
then you just type in your query and you hit
(08:12):
search Plus. There's other stuff there too, but it's not
much right. They kept it really stripped down and simple.
And so that was Google's philosophical difference between you know,
from Yahoo's point, like Yahoo strategy was web portal, throwing
as many services there, try and be as useful as
possible and be the destination for the people on the
(08:33):
web that they will get their web content through Yahoo.
Didn't you write an article about that about what the
Google algorithm? Yes I did. I wrote an article about
what makes the Google algorithms so important? And in fact
y'ah who recognized how important the Google algorithm was, And
so again in two thousand they started to work with Google.
They began to use the Google search engine technology on Yahoo. Now, Yahoo,
(08:56):
of course was really concentrated on building up that web
portal aspect of their business at the time, and they
used the Google algorithm till about two thousand four, and
that's when Yahoo ended that relationship with Google and switched
to an in house developed search algorithm. Uh, so they're
back doing their own search at that point, because then
(09:18):
you've got another element that comes into play a little later. Um.
But yeah, so you then you have started to have
this this rivalry in search between Google and Yahoo, a
true rivalry as opposed to the kind of weird semi
rivalry when you have one company competing against another company
that's using the first company's technology. That's just kind of
(09:39):
you know, it's hard to get get your mind wrapped
around that. Well. In two thousand three, Yahoo bought a
company called Overture Services. Now, then in two thousand four,
Yahoo levied a huge patent lawsuit against Google that said
that Google was was used being technology based on patents
(10:02):
filed by Overture Services, which yeah, who now owned in
purchase the year before. It all hinged on online advertising,
which is the way Google makes most of its revenue. Yeah,
and Yahoo also has quite a lot of revenue. If
you ask, if you ask an entrepreneur what Google's businesses,
they're not going to tell you it's search engine. They're
(10:23):
going to tell you it's online advertising. So uh and
and the you know, you, yourself, you the user, are
the commodity. Then the advertising is the way it generates revenue.
So this was a big deal. I mean, Google depended
on and still does depends on online advertising for money.
(10:43):
So a lawsuit that could potentially, ah, we'll throw a
monkey wrench into the works as far as online advertising goes,
was a huge problem. Well, eventually they settled that lawsuit
and Yahoo was granted a perpetual license to use these
these technologies to Google, and Google in turn gave some
(11:04):
stock to Yahoo, Google stock to Yahoo. Actually the two
companies own stock in each other. Um, it's kind of interesting,
but one wonders if perhaps Yahoo may be folded a
little too easily, because since then, Yahoo has had some
problems to the point where they've had massive layoffs and
(11:24):
the company itself has been devalued massively over the years.
And there's been some very highly publicized political struggles within
Yahoo over the last couple of years as well, and
and a lot of struggling at the executive level at Yahoo.
And so then you've got a point in two thousand
eight where Google and Yahoo had reached an agreement in
(11:46):
which Yahoo could use Google advertising on Yahoo pages. So
again you've got like this weird relationship with they're kind
of competing against each other, and then they're kind of
you know, who wants to depend on this? Well, I mean,
this is all good news for Google because they're gonna
get money using their you know, licensing out this this
advertising technology. But there was one little tiny problem. Oh yeah,
(12:07):
the United States Department of Justice said that this smacked
of monopoly as far as advertising on the web goes,
and so they struck it down through antitrust laws. So
this agreement never came to fruition. Uh. And then eventually
you get to the point where you rereach today a
coint to Business Insider, the most recent figures I could
(12:29):
find for the market share for search has Google with
sixty five point seven percent of all online search all
the world around. Yeah, okay, and Yahoo fifteen point seven.
So and then you've got you know, he's in third place, yes,
being being nine percent. Now, Google is more or less plateaued.
(12:52):
It hasn't really gained or lost a significant percentage of
that market share in quite some time. It's it's kind
of lost a little bit, but not a whole, not
a lot. Yahoo has been in a very very slow,
gradual decline, Bing has been in a climbing pattern, and
Being is starting to steal some search traffic, our search
(13:14):
market share from both Yahoo and Google. Yes, um, more
Yahoo than Google really at this point. And that actually
kind of is another interesting point because you know, Microsoft
and Yahoo entered into a ten year agreement not too
long ago in which Microsoft gets full access to Yahoo's
search engine for the ten years. This was related to
(13:35):
uh to bing to be able to use the technology
that Yahoo had developed to help bolster the Being search engine.
It doesn't mean that Being is completely based on Yahoo's
search engine technology, but it may partially be based upon it, right,
And if you run a search in Yahoo now, if
I'm not mistaken, you will get uh bing Yahoo powered search. Yeah.
(13:56):
So ten year partnership that was signed by the way
in two thousand nine, So that would end, of course
in another few years. Yeah. Microsoft's Live search product had
been floundering, uh compared to some of its competitors, most
notably Google. Um, you know, you wouldn't necessarily think that
Microsoft and Google would be competitors. I mean, Microsoft makes
(14:18):
operating system software, productivity software. You know, some electronic devices,
the Xbox Zoom. Hey wait a minute, what so does
Google Google creates an operating system called Chromos, and Google
has a suite of productivity software called Google Docs. Yeah,
this is this is a rivalry I think is heating up. Yeah.
(14:40):
And this wasn't around. I mean when you were talking
about just a couple of years ago that it wasn't
necessarily a rivalry. This is something that's cropping up now.
There was a rivalry as far as search goes because
of Coach. Microsoft have Microsoft Live Search. And then there
was a rivalry in web based email as well, because
you had hot mail and live mail accounts through Microsoft.
You had the Yahoo Mail accounts through y'all who by
(15:01):
the way, y'all who actually totally redid their their mail
system after Gmail launched, because then that's the other one.
You've got Google's Gmail. So you've got these three different
or technically four if you talk about live mail versus hotmail, uh,
four different web email based services. Uh. I know, just
anecdotally talking with other people who are in the tech industry,
(15:24):
tech journalists and and such, they get surprised when they
see an email from a hotmail account at this point. Yeah,
because everyone thinks of that, at least when I say everyone,
like all of the people I talked to think of
that as like the spam account, um, and my my
spam box filled up pretty quickly and hot mail and
I hadn't even given it out to people, so I
(15:46):
guess they're just blanketing everything there. Um. So yeah, being
launched in the summer of two thousand nine, so it's
really not even all that old as the time when're recording,
is this less than just less than two years? Yeah,
it feels like it's been forever. Yeah, it does actually, um,
And I think a lot of people were skeptical. I mean,
Google's had a sort of an iron grip on the
(16:09):
search market for years, um, but then Being started eating
into Google's market share. When you think about it, two
years to go from nothing to thirteen point nine percent
of the market share of search. That's enormous now. Granted,
you could also argue that Being is sort of the
the step child of Live Search, in which case you
(16:29):
would have to look at the market share that Live
Search had and compared to what Being has now. But that,
you know, beside the point. Yeah, I've heard generally when
I've used it, it's been a pretty good search engine,
and um, a lot of other people seem to feel
that way too. I have seen critical, critical praise for
being um but yeah, all of a sudden, now, uh,
(16:51):
Microsoft is completely retooled at search, and not every company
has the pockets deep enough to just go, let's start
a new one from scratch. Microsoft of beviously does and
uh you know, now they're competing on that front. And then,
as you pointed out, um, Google decided it wanted to
get into the productivity software business as well. And this
(17:11):
has caused Microsoft to react because we actually Google sort
of acquired a series of they had their own, and
then they sort of acquired a series of independent cloud
based tools and a cloud of courses the internet. Um.
You use these these pieces of software in your web
browser online. The documents are stored online in general, although
(17:32):
with Google Docs you can upload uh files and you
can also have with Google Gears you can have offline
capability as well. Yeah. But yeah, at the time, it
may not have looked like it was an indirect competition
because that functionality wasn't there. You had Microsoft Office, which
as many of you know, is a well well entrenched
productivity suite that includes presentation software and a spreadsheet document creator,
(17:55):
and uh in an email client, the word which is
the word processing software, and depending on the package you buy,
it will include other different pieces of software, but those
are the big ease UM and Google Docs. Google acquired rightly,
they acquired uh UM, Presentation program, Um and and several others.
(18:18):
And then you wouldn't necessarily Okay, so you've got the
one that's based on your hard drive, which is Microsoft,
and you've got the one that's based online, and they're compatible. Uh, well,
you know, not such a big deal. Well then Google
up the anti They said, let's go ahead and add
offline functionality. So now you can download document or you know,
work on stuff offline, you can upload it back to
(18:39):
Google Docs. So Google counters, but you know with Microsoft counters.
I'm sorry. Microsoft counters with its own online version of
the Office Suite, which has actually again gotten some critical praise.
I've seen some reasonably positive remarks on it. And the
one of the big benefits of the Google app, which
(19:00):
was that it really created new opportunities for collaboration because
you could share documents across multiple users and then collaboratively
work on projects without having to create new copies of
a document. That was the big problem with the old
offline system was that if I wanted to work on
a document and I wanted Chris to be able to
(19:20):
work on it too, I would have to I would
have to send him a copy of it, and I
would work on one instance of that document on my computer.
He would work on another instance of it on his computer,
and then we'd have to recombine the two, which was
always kind of a messy way of doing things. And
it could mean that perhaps we both made changes to
the same section, and then how do you incorporate two
(19:41):
different sets of changes for the one part of that document.
Sharing it online meant that everyone was working for the
same master document and that you know, you still have
issues that you run into there if you have two
people trying to edit the same section at the same time,
but you can see it in real time or or
close to real time and h and tell the person, Hey,
(20:01):
knock it off, I'm working on that right now. Yeah,
then you can review it and you can make changes.
So it made that a little more of a smoother process. So, yeah,
there's definitely a rivalry between Microsoft and Google, and it
does go beyond just the the productivity software and even
the operating system, because like we said, Google's launching Chromos,
and that's really starting to look kind of interesting. I
(20:22):
don't know, I don't know that's going to get widespread adoption,
but Google is putting a lot of muscle behind it. Now,
keep in mind, we've seen Google push other products really,
really hard, only to have to eventually give up on them.
So there's no guarantee that Chromos is going to be
a huge success. But they're not sparing any expense and
trying to make it one now, and they're not above
(20:43):
defending their turf as we saw earlier in two thousand
and eleven with the accusations flying back and forth between
who's stealing whose search results between Google and being But
there's another front too we hadn't talked about. You know,
Windows has been making an operating system for PDAs and
later phones smartphones for years. Um. You know, Windows just
(21:05):
came out with a new version of its operating system
for phones, which again, UH seems to be getting some
reasonable success. But it's hard because they already have UH.
Google already has its Android operating system, which is on
millions of phones worldwide, and they're also competing on another
front with that, which is with another company that creates smartphones, yes,
and that would be Apple. Yes, there are other companies,
(21:28):
of course that do create smartphones. We're not forgetting BlackBerry, BlackBerry,
and we're not forgetting some of the other players, Nokia
with the Symbian. Yeah, although Nokia is now doing Windows Phone.
Isn't that interesting? Yeah, So you've got Google battling Microsoft
multiple fronts, including the smartphone. Then you have Google battling
Apple on multiple fronts, including the smartphone. Now, and here
(21:51):
here's an interesting point. If you were to look at
the Google versus Microsoft part of this picture, you would
say that Google was the one who got there first
for smart phones in that Android was more of a
smartphone operating system than the old Windows Mobile operating system. Now,
uh so Android was able to get established in that
market before Windows Phone showed up because Windows Mobile Windows
(22:14):
Phone or two different operating systems for phones, and Windows
Mobile would be the more primitive version. Windows Phone is
really snazzy. But Android already had a foothold there. So
that in that case, you're talking about Microsoft trying to
take down a giant. But really Google faced that same
problem because in two thousand seven, uh the iPhone launched
(22:34):
in in June, and it wasn't until November of two
thousand seven that the Android phone launched, so Apple had
a big jump already. You might say, well, that's just
a few months, that's not a huge deal. It was
an enormous deal because Apple was able to do something
that no one else had done up to that point.
Apple was able to create a market for smartphones among
(22:54):
general consumers. Right. Of course, BlackBerry already had a pretty
big presence, you know, in the in the in the
enterprise market forces for companies corporate users. Yeah, because I mean,
you know, you might have a p d A, but
you'd use it for your personal appointments and things you
don't really necessarily need a smartphone for. And and they
were expensive at the time too, so you don't you
(23:14):
don't necessarily need one for your own personal use, right sure.
And it wasn't until Apple was able to show it
as a consumer device, not just a corporate device. Now,
the key there was to make sure that you still
showed it as something that you could do productive work on,
but at the same time show it in a really
sleek and sexy and fun way. So it had lots
(23:35):
of games and the animation was beautiful, and the graphics
were gorgeous, and the apps that they developed were really
really compelling apps. For the most part, they were couple
clunkers in there. But and then opening up the app
Store was a brilliant move because now you just created
a market for all this kind of software. It was really,
you know, a great, a great strategy on Apple's part,
(23:57):
and they could not have done a better job with
their launch. Whether you love the iPhone or you hate it,
you gotta admit that their launch of that product was
a complete success. Yeah now, and I'm sorry, no, please
go ahead. I was going to point out I'm amused
by this because, uh, you know, a couple of years ago,
I was asked to write an article. I don't write
many articles for How Stuff Works dot Com only have
(24:19):
a small handful. But on this this um column by
technology writer Nicholas Car Do you remember this? And I
have to uh have no of him, I don't actually
know him. I have to laugh at this because the
name of this article is how the Google Apple Cloud
computer will work. Because you know, the idea was and
(24:41):
Car suggested, and at the time it was brilliant because
you know, he said, Google can supply the cloud infrastructure.
Apple can supply the software and the hardware, which would
look amazing WHI would look amazing and work does Yeah,
Apple makes stuff that works, and they make stuff that
looks really really sleek. On the front end. Apple's got
you know, got that. On the back end, Google's got
(25:02):
the infrastructure. They know infrastructure, they know cloud computing. Except
that that was right around the time they became enemies,
and and and and we had Eric Schmidt on the
board yeah Apple, Eric Schmidt, who at the time was
the CEO of Google. Yeah, he was on the board
of director for director for Apple. Because originally you would say, like,
well that there's not really a conflict there. Yes, Google
(25:24):
is a huge technology company. Apple is a huge technology company,
but they both serve different markets, and everything changed. Yeah,
and then once they both entered that smartphone market, that
really made things complicated. And there were some pretty nasty
kind of digs going on, although you could argue on
the surface that they weren't necessarily digs, that you know,
everyone had sort of valid excuses for what they did,
(25:46):
but you felt that deep down there was really more
of a how can we get these guys kind of
thing going on, and I should also say that even
if this smartphone thing had not happened at that time,
I still find it hard to imagine at Google bowl
cloud computer. And the main reason for that is because
I think that Apple and Google have fundamentally different philosophies
(26:07):
when it comes to the openness of technology. So Apple
is all about creating a really lockdown, closed system, the
benefit of which is that you know what's going to
work because you've locked it down and you're not allowing
people to come in there and mess with it. And
Google is not totally open and free. It's not like
(26:28):
it's Lenox or something, but it's there's like that less
there is a perception that Android is completely open, which
is not true. It's not true. No, it's not true.
Android is more open than other smartphone operating systems out there,
or most of them anyway, but it is not truly open. Yeah,
and the Mac os is also somewhat open, but not
(26:49):
as it's not as closed as Windows. It's not black
and white, it's not black and white. But Apple is
definitely further along the closed part of that spectrum, and
Google is closer to the open. And so yeah, you've
got uh two thousand seven. That's when both the iPhone
and Android phones launched. Now, Android at that time was
it had a huge uphill battle, which eventually it managed
(27:10):
to to wage uh successfully to the point now where
you depending on whom you read, you'll see that the
Android has the dominant market share in smartphones right now. Um,
there's some reports that say that goes back and forth,
and it all depends on how many consumers you have
who are using old smartphones and how many of them
are still Android versus Apple, and etcetera, etcetera. But the
(27:33):
main argument is that Android and Apple are the two
big players in this space, and everyone else is kind of,
you know, on the boundary. Yeah, and and the other.
The other interesting thing to note is too in the
world of apps, Google had difficulty breaking into Apple's app store. Yeah,
that was one of the digs I was talking about.
The you know, Google Voice app. Yes, took forever to
(27:54):
come out. Well, it was originally rejected by Apple and
then the and Trust's two thousand nine July two thou
Apple rejects the Google Voice app from the app store.
In September two tho nine, Eric Schmidt steps down from
the board of directors from Apple, which some said what
might have been at least partially in response to the
(28:14):
app being rejected. Now Google and Apple both say that
that's not the case. There were there was the antitrust
concerns and things of that nature that we're really playing
into it. But you know, people will talk, right. And
then in November of two thousand nine, Google purchased a
company called ad Mob, which a mobile advertising company. Right,
so you've got this mobile advertising company and no one
(28:38):
argues that mobile is the next really, I mean, it
is the big thing. It's not the next big thing,
it is the current big thing in web based technology.
Everyone is grabbing onto mobile devices to access the web,
whether it's an MP three player that has WiFi capability,
a smartphone, a tablet, uh, you know, the that's or
(29:01):
where it's really going. Even netbooks, you could argue, kind
of fall into the mobile category just because they're small
enough that people take them everywhere. Um. So, yeah, the
mobile web is really a huge, huge thing. So purchasing
this this ad mob mobile advertising platform was like a
shot across the bow. And and plus Apple had been
(29:21):
interested in ad Mob and had made an offer to
purchase the company just before Google actually did purchase it, Yes,
then they countered with another purchase their wireless yes. So
and and now, as anybody who has seen both in
uh an Android device and an Apple iOS device, they
have similar styles of advertising in the applications that you
(29:44):
see on there. So they are they're turning that into
a source of revenue. And now you know, I've seen
the bing app show up, and I don't remember there
being any controversy about Apple and Microsoft, uh, you know,
putting a bing app in the app store. The It's
just funny to me after all the years of Microsoft
versus Apple. But we'll talk about that later. We should
(30:05):
talk about let's just take this up plus one plus
one plus one, Google's plus one right where you can
like anything on the web. Well, before we get to that,
I mean, I know we're running out of time and
we're gonna have to rush through this last one, but
there's still some other stuff I want to talk about
really quickly about Apple on Apple and the reason is
that there are a couple of other fronts where they
are they are competing. Again, You've got the chromos coming out,
(30:28):
so you've got Google potentially competing against Apple products. And
when you talk about that that's a huge thing because
Apple does these high end computers. Right. They're expensive, but
they're gorgeous and they work and they're you know, but
it's it's almost like a boutique kind of purchase, right,
because they're there. It's almost like an exclusivity sort of thing.
Google is doing the Chromos where all the hard heavy
(30:51):
lifting is going to be on the the the back
end side, so you don't need a really powerful machine.
So in theory you can buy a pretty cheap computer
running the Chrome os. So that's an opposite approach from
what Apple takes, so that they're going to compete in
that space. You've also got Google where they launched the
Chrome web browser, yes versus Safari, right, and Chrome already
(31:12):
has I think, depending again upon whom you read, Chrome
has a higher market share than Safari does in web browsing.
I mean, I know people who have Matt computers who
they were so happy when Chrome came out for the
Mac because they were not huge Safari fans. I'm one
of them. And then then you also have YouTube that's
renting movies now, which looks like it's competing against Apple iTunes.
(31:34):
And then there's Google Music, which will be competing with
the Apple Music Service as well as the Amazon Cloud Player.
So yeah, you've got we We're not going to talk
about Google versus Amazon. We could. We can also talk
about Google versus Netflix. We can talk about Google versus
just about anybody. We only have one other company we
want to talk about. We're gonna go really fast because
this episode's going long. Yeah, it was. It was earlier
(31:56):
this year, not so far before we recorded this. Yeah,
when they announced the well, I was thinking about the
plus one feature, and this is I think this sets
up what we're about to talk about because suddenly, you
know how Facebook a few years ago one because it
was maybe a couple of years ago, came out with
the ability to use their APIs, their application programming interface,
(32:18):
and you could install it on your web browser and
have people like stuff on Facebook on your own web
page if you wanted to. Well, that was pretty cool, right,
So if you had a Facebook account and more than
five million people do um probably more than that. Now
I might be able to make that six million, But
you incorporate that into a web page and then suddenly
someone from Facebook says, oh I like this, they like it,
(32:41):
it shares it on their wall and then all of
their friends can come and read your page. It just
meant that there was an additional way to funnel people
in to see your content, which is interesting because previously
the way that people would come and see content there
are two main ways. Right, they would come to some
sort of homepage to a site where they visit over
over and over again, or they would use search. Well,
(33:03):
now you've got a third way, which is socially driven
of avenues to get to content. So either you share
it on Facebook where you say, hey, there's this great website,
go here, or you go to a website that has
that incorporated like button and it does it for you,
and then your buddies all say, oh, well, Jonathan liked
this one website, we should check that out and see
what that's all about. So, in a way, that was
(33:24):
a shot across the ballot, across all the search engines,
because now you're saying, you, guys, used to be relevant,
but now we're going to take that away from you,
because we're going to have it where people find information
organically through their their social connections, not through just going
to a search engine and typing in some words. So
that was a yeah, that was a wake up call UM,
(33:45):
and Google answered, you know, you can do that when
you have deep pockets and your employees can all spend
their time working on UM with the plus one system.
Uh So suddenly now Google was competing because you can
you know plus one basically me, Hey, I like that too, Yeah,
that link, that link is really useful. So I'm going
to say that out of all the search results I
(34:06):
got for this particular query, this is the one that
I think is the best. I'm gonna plus one that.
And then when one of your friends comes on, someone
who has a you know, who's one of your contacts,
comes on and does a similar search, they're going to
see that if they get their search result page up,
they're going to see the search results that got the
most plus ones from their friends. And again it's kind
(34:26):
of like a socially driven thing, and they can even
see like which of their friends plus one did, so
they'd say, oh, what, you know, Jonathan was searching for
uh fluid dynamics and so that this one video on
non Newtonian fluid was really cool, So I wanna I
want to check this out, and then you could plus
one it and then it again it's socially. Yeah, it's
(34:48):
socially driving up the search is Now someone else coming
in and searching that same query may not see that
because they're not your contact. So it's it's it's not
it's not like wild wet out there. It's not gonna
completely uh game the system for Google search results, because
that's one thing Google does not want to do is
mess with their algorithms so much that it becomes useless.
(35:11):
But it did. Um you know, people were saying, some
of the tech journals were saying, look, this might be
uh something that will play into Google's maybe possibly finally
announced social networking tool. I mean, you had or Cut,
but it really didn't take off like you thought, and
people have been waiting for this thing for I don't
(35:32):
know years. I would say, yeah, Ork it was a
social network like Facebook. Actually it is a social network.
It's not gone now. ORC It's very popular in places
like Brazil and India, but never got widespread global adoption
like Facebook did. So. Google has already had a history
of competing with Facebook with things like orch It, but
it was Ork. It was such a tiny blip on
(35:53):
the radar from most of the world that we don't
even really think about them competing because there was no competition, right,
you know, if you've got someone who has the followers,
you don't think of it as competition. Well I didn't,
but apparently Facebook did because there again, as as Jonathan mentioned, right,
not right before, but shortly before we recorded this, a
(36:13):
scandal came to light. Yeah. Facebook, Um, it turns out
Facebook hired a PR firm called person Mars Stellar, a
very well known and and pretty well respected firm. Yeah, well,
used to be respected. Yeah, it was still well known,
might be even better known now. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, the
PR firm. Facebook hired this PR firm in order to
(36:35):
pitch stories to bloggers and newspapers that would put Google
in a bad light, specifically with this socially motivated um
search and social circle services that Google's pushing. Uh. They
wanted specifically respect to privacy and how Google handles privacy
and talk about pot calling the kettle black. We've got Facebook,
(36:56):
which is not known for being a great protector of privacy,
saying hey, Google's really you know, putting your privacy at danger.
We want these stories to get out there. So this
PR firm started to approach various people. One of the
people had approached was Christopher. Uh uh, oh gosh, I
don't even know how to say his last name. I'm
gonna say Safoyan, but it could be totally wrong. It's
(37:17):
s O G H O I A N. So that's
an interesting Chris, if you're out there, let me know. Anyway,
the Christopher had received a request from the PR firm
about this, and instead of running the story that the
PR firm wanted them to run about Google's uh social
(37:37):
uh social circle invading privacy, he ran the email that
the PR firm sent him. He published, he published it
on his blog, showing that this PR firm was trying
to engineer this this smear campaign USA Today, same sort
of thing. USA Today got a request for a story
pitch about a similar kind of thing, and instead they
(38:00):
decided to publish a story about the smear campaign. And
that's when the story really broke across all channels. And
uh then later on the PR the PR firm itself
was caught removing negative comments from its own Facebook page
and that helped spurn the the scandal even further. And uh,
(38:22):
you know, if you're wondering about the social circle thing,
it's kind of this way that Google shows the people
you're connected to through various means like Twitter and and
Google Contacts and all this kind of stuff, and then
it shows the larger circle that you're connected to from
people who are connected to the people that you're you
that are in your your social circle. So, for example,
(38:43):
one of the people in my social circle, and it's
only because I follow her on Twitter as far as
I can tell, is Felicia Day or actually Google Buzz.
I think it's because I follow her on Google Buzz
is Felicia Day. But because it's Felicia Day, that means
that that extra that next step in the social circle
is enormous. But has lots of people follow Felicia Day,
So that means that my information is also on display
(39:07):
for all those people. But this is information that is public.
It is information that you have willingly shared and allowed
to be public on whatever network like Google Buzz or whatever.
So in other words, it's not like it's digging up
information that is behind some sort of security. It's just
stuff that's already out there. So that that's the argument
(39:27):
that other people have against uh Facebook's approach was that, well,
Google is just sharing stuff that you've already opted to share.
It's not like it's sharing information that you didn't you know,
you said do not share this. So um, yeah, it's
definitely a big, big, explosive problem. And you know what,
Facebook and Google have had a long history of struggles.
(39:50):
I mean there's none of them were direct struggles like
open i D. Yes, Google backed open i D and
open i D was this idea of creating a single
log in kind of account and you would use that
across multiple websites. Facebook at the same time was pushing
Facebook Connect, which is similar except it wasn't based on
(40:12):
open standards like open i D and it was into Facebook. Yes,
so it benefited Facebook, but it would also benefit any
site that used Facebook Connect because it meant that you
were tapping into a social network that had over five
hundred million users. So it's there's no there's really no
(40:32):
surprise when Facebook Connect came out on top, because even
if you argue that open i D was the better
choice from just a consumer safety standpoint or from a
kind of a disinterested objective standpoint, from a let's get
business done standpoint, Facebook Connect made all the sense in
the world. Alright, Well, we have gone forty minutes with
(40:55):
this podcast, so I suggest we wrap it up now.
We again, we could have talked about lots of other
rivalries Google has going on, and we probably will do
another episode at some point just about Google, although I
would suggest our next tech rivalry episode, b face, you know,
focus on a different company entirely. Um, and we we've
talked about similar rivalries in the past, like I said,
not just Tesla and Edison, but things like you know,
(41:16):
we've done Microsoft and Apple, and we've done a few others.
But I think that this is a fun kind of
thing to talk about, really look at the two sides
and kind of see what their strategies were and their
their motivation for acting the way they did. Yeah. I think,
well it's one of those central points in uh in
any story, as you need some kind of conflict. So
I think that's one of the reasons that we find
this so fascinating. Yes, now that we've reached the Danu law, Yes,
(41:38):
let us conclude. Here is our epilogue. If you would
like to hear about a specific tech rivalry, let us know.
You can send us an email. That address is tech
stuff at how stuff works dot com, or contact us
on Twitter and Facebook are handled. There is tech stuff H.
S W and Chris and I will talk to you again,
possibly about a rivalry really soon. Be sure to check
(42:03):
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works iPhone
app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes, brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
(42:24):
are you
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