How Microsoft Missed The Disruptive Innovation In Paid Search - fascinating tale with a moral #innovation #search

say what you will about the (acknowledged) naivete of this, but seriously - do you know anyone who loves their bank?

some mistrust from within the Google user ranks

"We starting working on Gmail in August (or September?) 2001. For a long time, almost everyone disliked it. Some people used it anyway because of the search, but they had endless complaints. Quite a few people thought that we should kill the project, or perhaps "reboot" it as an enterprise product with native client software, not this crazy Javascript stuff. Even when we got to the point of launching it on April 1, 2004 (two and a half years after starting work on it), many people inside of Google were predicting doom. The product was too weird, and nobody wants to change email services. I was told that we would never get a million users."

this focuses more on approach than specific recommendations in direction, but i'm in agreement with nearly all of it. and as for the question of direction, everyone knows where i think GNOME should go: online, with all possible speed.

"The best programming team is a "telephone call," which is two people, you and I, programming together. The second-best programming team is, everybody fits into a single room. All other variants are bad."

solid interview with a Google engineer

"We’ve adapted what we do from the Indians, who have been doing it for about 10 years. We’re not ashamed to say we’re trying to model some things after their player-development system." - you have to love the lack of NIH in the Sox front office righ

"In other words, the very development that wireless carriers feared for so long may prove to be exactly what they need. It took Steve Jobs to show them that." - a sad, but necessary observation of the state of mobile here in the US

"Telcos are once again painted as the lumbering, wary giants who are being dragged kicking and screaming toward innovation, and believe that consumers really just want voice calls." - mostly because that's the case, methinks

"New...wireless services will arise in the future, but not..because telcos want them. Google...are pushing telcos--which move slowly and...operate closed networks as a form of quality control--to open their networks..., and...spur innovation..."

"If there is a technology realm that could have a larger impact on today's society and yet has been less funded and had slower growth, I haven't seen it." - amen

"We don't have even a fraction of the entrepreneurial interest, no where near the innovation, in the mobile space that we have on the web, which is open, flexible...imposes minimal entry barriers, despite mobile being a larger and more lucrative market."

"People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us" - here we go again

Microsoft's Integrated Innovation argument in Adobe clothes: while there are grains of truth to the argument, i think it overemphasizes the advantages and underemphasizes the costs

"The answer is easy: Find where the smart people are and hang out with them. I'm serious. The smart people have a lot of ideas" - the premise on which our business is built

pmueller is frustrated with the state and pace of innovation in the Java world

“Every company innovates until it finds a cash cow. At that point only innovation that supports the cash cow is promoted. Further, any innovation that threatens or does not support the cash cow languishes or is actively killed." +1

i'm a bit skeptical of Zoho's ability to threaten Google here simply because i'd rather have a vendor focus heavily on 2 or 3 apps i use most, but no question that Zoho's innovating: Notebook is terrific

all my decks ever have in them are questions ;)

awesome news, and a great pick - congrats to Josh

interesting SLED / Gimmie like rethinking of the application menu

someone remind me to send this over to the folks at the Supper Club

some great tips on how to use Google Calendar - doesn't solve my multi-calendar problem, but it's still useful (via Chetan)

i'm with Luis on this one; there is substantial precedent for major rearchitecting of applications - it's not easy, but is usually beneficial; here's hoping someone makes a leap of faith

i can't try this b/c i'm on Verizon; can someone out there who's not give it a whirl and let me know if it works?

Jeff's right; this represents real innovation, rather than the no win game of feature matching

Christensen on Apple: almost totally agree, and one of the reasons i think OS X and iTunes may plateau in the near future

an MIT CIO on innovation. worth a read

the new features are sweet ;) - loving FL

for the record, i was one of the folks involved in this conversation, and while i agree with many of the points i bet the opposite. i'll claim that dinner yet :)

interesting interview with Boulder's own Brad Feld

some interesting commentary on Google and its desktop efforts

thx for the credit, Richard, but i suspect they were far more concerned about Russell and Richard's comments than mine ;)

''Anytime companies get big, they innovate less," - a bit extreme, but there's a lot of evidence to support this

had the same conversation with someone just the other day; bring on FL

an MIT perspective on Microsoft, innovation and Vista

Dare and i don't agree all the time, but we're in lockstep on this one: "The primary way this manifests itself is integrated innovation, a buzzword that translates to more dependencies among shipping products, less control of one's product destiny and lon

a post of mine, but if you haven't read it, be sure to check out the comment (which is several hundred words long :) from Gary Edwards. brilliant as usual, and thanks for contributing Gary

i don't buy this at all; it's like saying that Microsoft stifled innovation by introducing features into Windows - there's a kernel of truth, but lots of evidence to contradict it

bold statements, especially from a Googler

check out the comments on this one...

"Lawsuits are killing innovation." - amen brother, amen (via Tanglao)

harsh critique of Microsoft's innovation ability - some good points, if a bit overdone (via Orablogs)

talk about a hockey stick growth curve; highlights for me the tremendous need for alternative (and sustainable) forms of energy

moving on from the famous Moneyball; good organizations don't sit on what works, they keep looking for the next new innovation

one of the great news.com crew: martin lamonica on open sourcing Solaris; check the comment from the Dartmouth rep in there on Red Hat - i was there, and can confirm that this was not taken out of context at all