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Steve Rubel has written an interesting post comparing the transparency of Google with the cold, firm and closed approach of Apple.

He uses some great examples that show how the brands communicate online with their users and it clearly shows that Apple is from a very different era and hasn't quite grasped this whole 2.0 thing.

However, I don't really think this matters for Apple and don't believe it really impacts the brand.

Apple has always been about selling something shiny, new and enticing. Something you pay top dollar for and show off proudly to all around you. It sells the ultimate gadget and things that are truly magical.

On the other Google, doesn't sell anything, it's a free service, but it needs its users to keep coming back to it to view the pages that contain its valuable ads. It has to do everything it can to keep these people happy and content. Charmed in the knowledge that Google is the best "free" thing in their lives.

Apple could benefit from opening up, but let's face it, this is not the company's style. It's a one man autocracy and until he decides to open the floodgates and let everyone inside out and visa versa this isn't going to happen. I believe the lack of openness works in the brand's favor. It keeps things mysterious and interesting, you never quite know what they are up to next and it would a shame if they did anything to give that away.

As long as Apple keeps making products that amaze us, it can get away without opening up.

It doesn't have to do a Dell, until it becomes like Dell.

Apple sells us a dream and the more it becomes like real life, the less interesting it becomes.

Transparency is not for them...


Posted by Ed Cotton Some interesting scenarios from Blogscoped on Google at 20- including:

"At first it was impossible to imagine; in 2008, Google.com used to be the site you’d check when you weren’t sure you had internet (if even Google is down, it was surely your internet connection that was broken!). Things changed quite a bit since then. But when the World Senate forced Google Inc. to make available 90% of their server farm for the public good and progress of humanity, their speed and availability suffered. When people worldwide went online en-masse to research the green glow in the skies after the Even Larger Hadron Collider experiment in 2011, Google.com wasn’t available – and people started looking for alternative ways to access news."

Via Fimoculous


Posted by Ed Cotton Many strategists have complained about Google's lack of focus and its constant charge to invent or half-invent new tools and features, many of which never catch on.

Most see this as a failure and call the giant company a "one trick pony", an organization that has an inability to have a "second hit."

However, leave it Nick Carr to set the record straight with some smart thinking on why they are doing this and explaining how, in essence, Google can't not be measured or compared with other companies or other strategies because of it's scale and power.

It comes close to controlling the internet, so finding more cheap/free/affordable ways for people to use it, is the company's strategy.

"Because the marginal cost of producing and distributing a new copy of a purely digital product is close to zero, Google not only has the desire to give away informational products; it has the economic leeway to actually do it. Those two facts — the vast breadth of Google’s complements, and the company’s ability to push the price of those complements toward zero — are what really set the company apart from other firms. Google faces far less risk in product development than the usual business does. It routinely introduces half-finished products and services as online “betas” because it knows that, even if the offerings fail to win a big share of the market, they will still tend to produce attractive returns by generating advertising revenue and producing valuable data on customer behavior. For most companies, a failed launch of a new product is very costly. For Google, in general, it’s not. Failure is cheap."

Nick Carr- The Omnigoogle




Posted by Ed Cotton Google has been playing around with its marketing communication.

Clearly not wanting to be anything like the typical brand, it's done some obscure billboards and a few YouTube videos created by its product development teams.

Increasingly, it appears to be looking to external creative expertise to add some cool and credibility to the brand. In the last few months the Google Maps group worked with an improv group to create more viral films and its latest effort employs the comic book talents of Scott McCloud.

The challenge here is to get the message across in a compelling way without ever looking for feeling like it could be something Microsoft would do.



Posted by Ed Cotton Nick Carr rants in The Atlantic about Google because he fears it's making us all stoopid.

"I’m haunted by that scene in 2001. What makes it so poignant, and so weird, is the computer’s emotional response to the disassembly of its mind: its despair as one circuit after another goes dark, its childlike pleading with the astronaut—“I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m afraid”—and its final reversion to what can only be called a state of innocence. HAL’s outpouring of feeling contrasts with the emotionlessness that characterizes the human figures in the film, who go about their business with an almost robotic efficiency. Their thoughts and actions feel scripted, as if they’re following the steps of an algorithm. In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence."

Skimming has become the norm. Attention spans are in decline, but it's likely there's no turning back from this. In the end, real analytical thinkers will be prized and those who have the foresight to spend time to work out arguments and spend deep time thinking about issues. Great ideas and thought will still be needed and it will have to come from somewhere, there just might be fewer people doing it.

I am encouraged by the desire for live and virtual debate and discussion. I believe this is the area where analysis and thought is happening, not in the act of search. Conferences like TED and PopTech have never been busier or more widely distributed.

In the past 18 months, I've been astonished by the number of people who've told me they never heard of TED, but were inspired by the 15 minute films.

Thinking is still valued, it's just how it manifests itself that's changed. Ideally, it should be neatly packaged and collapsed into a nice televisual format that's snackable.


Posted by Ed Cotton Yesterday's Super Tuesday collaboration between Google and Twitter introduced us all to a new dynamic media form.

Google brought in all the results in real time on the left of the map and Twitter gave us commentary from people and media around the world.



It might not have been as arresting as watching Wolf on CNN, but it was pretty close.

The simplicity of the design and the real time dynamics created something that was interesting and fun to spend time with.

It showed us the mash-ups can have a role and Twitter has a use, after all.



Posted by Ed Cotton