broadstuff

Well, that was predictable - no sooner does Apple announce an iPad than a plethora of others break out of the long grass - Forbes:

Asus is about to roll out its own iPad rivals. In an interview with Forbes, Shih revealed that Asus is planning to release "at least two" tablet PCs in the coming months. The Computex trade show in June is a good bet for the debut. Asus has long used the Taipei conference to unveil significant new products, including its original Eee PC netbook in 2007.

I doubt they will be the only ones.

There are 2 main strategic questions for the iPad, firstly Economic:

(i) Does Apple's end to end proprietary supply chain game that has served it so well for iPod and iPhone work here - ie the iPad is closer to a Web device so can access far more open content and services, so clones get a lot more content from the get go.

(ii) Does it capture a market big enough to justify its existence at a mass market price - the Fanboi's will buy, but will this jump the chasm - plenty of "good enoughs" surround it - netbooks, e-Readers, smartphones.

Secondly, it may well be let down on comparative ergonomics, never mind economics. I was kicking this around yesterday with a friend from the BBC who asked some good questions:

- how do you actually use one? You can't type on it like a laptop, you can't hold it in one hand like a smartphone, and holding it all the time will be fatguing

- its not light like a smartphone, but hasn't got the ooomph of a laptop or even a netbook. The standard behaviour today is that the smartphone handles email, web and social media monitoring but you carry a small laptop for the heavy lifting, You can't drop the laptop (yet), nor the smartphone (its a phone too remember), so will Joe or Joanne Average you really lug an expensive 3rd piece of kit around?

Moore's Law solves all these things, but over time - which implies that devices coming in a year, 2 years later may be much better and make it hard for the first mover to gain advantage.

If it were anyone else but Apple I'd say the fast followers will win in a 3 year horizon, but this is the one consumer gadget company that can possibly carry it off.

Update - typical of the hype spiel is this post from Walt Mossberg. First, the standard "iPad is a laptop Killer" schtick from the fanboi glossies:

For the past week or so, I have been testing a sleek, light, silver-and-black tablet computer called an iPad. After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades.

Fainting with damning praise Give him his due, though - he also sees some of the issues we do too:

But first, it will have to prove that it really can replace the laptop or netbook for enough common tasks, enough of the time, to make it a viable alternative. And that may not be easy, because previous tablet computers have failed to catch on in the mass market, and the iPad lacks some of the features—such as a physical keyboard, a Webcam, USB ports and multitasking—that most laptop or netbook users have come to expect.

If people see the iPad mainly as an extra device to carry around, it will likely have limited appeal. If, however, they see it as a way to replace heavier, bulkier computers much of the time—for Web surfing, email, social-networking, video- and photo-viewing, gaming, music and even some light content creation—it could be a game changer the way Apple’s iPhone has been.

As discussed above, I think this is a bigger "if" than Walt (and the rest of the Breathless Club) do in the short term.

Harvard Business Review article on "Eight reasons why managers hate IT" - it doesn't half play to the gallery! But amusingly, it really is just what you'd expect a Pointy-Headed Boss (see above) to say. In Italics I have therefore added "Why IT people hate managers"- tongue in cheek, but you get the point.

1. IT limits managers' authority

IT's bureaucratic processes rival the tax code in complexity. When challenged, IT justifies red tape as necessary because the business makes half-baked requests and is clueless about enterprise impact.

(Wrong target Bozo - its Managers - especially you middle managers - who tie up companies in red tape, political fudges, poorly thought out committee based policies etc etc. The reason our processes are so convoluted is due to your predecessor's Six Sigma Total Corporate Co-Evaluation policy, which then got inflicted on the IT departments - its a sort of Garbage In, Garbage Our process)


2. Consists of condescending techies who don’t listen

The CIO may be impressive, but he or she is also totally unavailable. When you have questions, your only option is someone a few rungs down, who lacks the breadth of expertise to advise senior executives. The irony is, these “techies” often feel just as frustrated by managers who treat them like servant-genies.

(Its called a heirarchy. The IT staff wish they could all just talk to your VP, who can make things happen and fund it without bozos like you and your colleagues squabbling like 2 year olds over a half sucked lollipop and you squeaking about how you just couldn't live without the thingummy button )

3. Doesn’t understand the true needs of the business

IT nags you for requirements and complains that you always change your mind about what you want from your systems. Why doesn’t IT understand that change should be expected in a dynamic business environment where nothing is static?

(Why don't businesspeople understand that a complex system with many linked users cant just be switched around like that?. You can't adjust the position of your clutch and brake on a car, or decide to change which road signs to obey, for good reason - so why should you have the those rights on a computer program? )

(For what its worth, I have been consulting to and working in and around corporates for 20 odd years, in my experience the number of people - IT or no - who really understand the business is very, very small.)

4. Proposes “deluxe” when “good enough” will do

Your “simple” request requires a boatload of specialists and weeks (if not months) of analysis. Yet you wanted a timely, cost-effective solution, not an expensive panacea.

(Oh Boy - and when will managers ever get it that their "simple" often request isn't that simple, and then the toads change their mind once you do build what they said they wanted anyway)


5. IT projects never end

It’s not just that IT projects are never completed on time…it’s that they never feel completed at all. They’re perennially 90% done. "Finished" projects don't have the agreed-to functionality.

(We build the "simple thing" the buggers said they wanted. Then they change their mind, but they don't have the budget to do any more work. And then their own VP tells us that isn't a priority and tells us not to go further but says nothing to his troops so we get the cr*p)


6. Is reactive rather than proactive

When you need help, you feel like a technology pauper, going door-to-door begging for help from functional specialists who complain that you didn’t get them involved early enough.

(The buggers never involve us early enough, they try and do some bodge themselves, then f*ck it up, scream for us and try to pretend they never touched anything. And boy, we should leave them to fix all the viruses they bring in themselves)


7. Doesn’t support innovation

When you try to brainstorm with IT about new technologies you could use to innovate – like 2.0 tools, for instance – they patronize you by dismissing your questions and noting that your people aren’t properly using the systems already in place.

(If IT people had a dollar for every person who now wants some shiny thing they have just read about in some over-the-top blog post hyping the virtue of the new new thing, they'd all be millionaires and living in Florida. Just because some evangelist says X is the new best thing doesn't make it true. And your people aren't using the existing stuff - the last New New Thing you wanted - properly. So, what are the chances they'd use the New New stuff properly, or not be wanting the next New New Thing in 6 months time when you are 90% done on this now Old New Thing (see point 5 above) )


8. IT never has good news

No matter how much you spend or how hard you work, the promise of technology seems perpetually beyond your reach. Even the “successful” launch of new systems is accompanied with the inevitable onslaught of bugs, crashes, and change requests.

(No matter how much you spend or how hard you work, the promise of rational management seems beyond possibility. Even the “successful” launch of new systems is accompanied with the inevitable onslaught of cr*p data, the resultant crashes, and "new features we hadn't thought of" change requests.)

I've worked on both sides on this one, and in my experience both sides are as guilty as each other. If you've never seen "The IT Crowd" sending this whole issue up, you're missing a huge treat.

But I'd expect to see an article like this in a tech hype blog, not the HBR. In my opinion it cheapens HBR considerably - and there is not even anywhere to respond there on the site.

Good thing I have a blog eh

This weekend The No 1 Son asked what the best Science Fiction books were. Umm...dunno says I. A quick check on teh InterWebz brought about a number of unsatisfactory sources (as in I don't know what the best 10 are, but I know that book isn't in it). In short, you wind up with one of two problems when you look at these sorts of lists - they are either:

- Lists by Critics/Journalists etc and thus are not representative of what most people actually like

- Crowdsourced by people who are not YOUR crowd.

So, a quick poll on Twitter - crowdsourcing from my crowd, as it were, revealed that the following are the Top 10:

1. Foundation Series (Isaac Asimov) - 3 recommendations
2. Accelerando (Charles Stross) - 2 recommendations

3 - 14 (One Recommendation each)

- Time Machine & The Country of the Blind (H G Wells)
- Makers (Cory Doctorow)
- Counting Heads (David Marusek)
- Snowcrash (Neal Stephenson)
- The stars my destination (Alfred Bester)
- Neutron Star (Larry Niven)
- Cities in Flight (James Blish)
- Dune series (Frank Herbert)
- Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
- 2001 (Arthur C Clarke)
- Ubik (Philip K. Dick)
- HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

So there we are - if you disagree put your Top 3 in the comments and I will live update the list.

Admob reports on where the growth in mobile traffic is coming from:

- Smartphones accounted for 48% of AdMob’s worldwide traffic, up from 35% in February 2009, fueled by heavy application usage on iPhone and Android devices.

- Although the share of feature phone traffic in AdMob’s network declined from 58% to 35%, the absolute traffic from feature phones still grew 31%. This means that while the overall traffic from feature phones is growing, traffic from smartphones and mobile Internet devices is growing faster.

- The mobile Internet device category experienced the strongest growth of the three, increasing to account for 17% of traffic in AdMob’s network in February 2010. Although the vast majority of traffic in this category comes from the iPod touch, the category also includes devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi.

The full report PDF file is over here.

Given that the world and its wife are now building Location based services for Smartphones (hype grows eternal in the human breast) or iPhone and Android apps, this is surely another argument for a bit of contrarian thinking?

Today is Ada Lovelace day when we celebrate, well, female geeks. Tonight is the Finding Ada Unconference, where people talk for about 5 minutes on a heroine of their choice. Mine is the Byzantine princess Anna Komnene (Comnena in Latin), who lived in "interesting" times and was a serious polymath to boot.

Finding Anna

Anna was born in 1085, into the purple (ie into the Byzantine royal family) in Constantinople (now Istanbul, for the real tech geeks among you). To recap, in 1071 Byzantium fought and badly lost the battle of Manzikert, which resulted in them losing most of their Asian provinces to the Turks. To recapture them, the Byzantine Empire decided to take the very risky step of writing to the barbarous (by Byzantine and Arab standards of the time) Western nations for military assistance. Thence starts the Crusades which kicked off in 1091.....

I first met Anna via The Alexiad, the history she wrote at age 55 of the efforts of her father (the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I)'s attempts to rescue Byzantium from the results of Manzikert, reconquer their Eastern provinces from the Turks, and to "manage" the Crusaders to ensure they fought the Turks (Saracens) and didn't pillage the still wealthy Byzantine Empire instead.

Educating Anna

Although, she was carefully trained in the study of history, mathematics, science, and Greek philosophy, Anna’s parents banned her from studying ancient poetry (whose glorification of lustful gods and unchaste women they deemed inappropriate and even dangerous for a young woman of her class to study). Despite her parents' attempts to restrict her, Anna furtively studied the forbidden poetry with one of the imperial court’s eunuchs. Thus, Anna received an extraordinary education that undoubtedly made her one of the most educated women of her time. (From Wikipedia)

A Byzantine Plot

In her youth Anna took part in the standard Byzantine plot and counter plot to get her husbands (both of them) onto the Throne as her father aged. Her knowledge of medicine was of a level such that she was choosing the treatments for her father when he died. She was finally sent to a nunnery when her second husband withdrew from one of her plots to depose her brother for him. Anna said that "nature had mistaken their sexes, for he ought to have been the woman." Today we'd probably say she had balls, whereas her husband....wanted to live (failed emperor pretenders lives were generally nasty, brutish and short)

Get thee hence to a Monastery - Anna as Nun

Take one very intelligent and high energy woman and give her not a lot to do, and what do you get?

Firstly an excellent history of the times - the Alexiad - which is accurate, insightful, gossipy and human at the same time and also gives you an excellent insight into women's mindset then.

Secondly, in the Alexiad she writes a lot about the technology, science and medicine of her day - it is invaluable firstly as a record, but also its clear she had a very good grasp on how it all worked. Take her views on Astrology (she was very interested in Astronomy ).

The discovery is fairly recent, and the science of it was not known to the ancients. For this method of divination did not exist in the time of Eudoxus, the greatest of all astronomers, neither did Plato have any knowledge of it, and even the astrologer, Manetho, had not brought it to perfection. Now these (astrologers) observe the hour of the birth of the persons about whom they intend to prophesy, and fix the cardinal points and carefully note the disposition of all the stars, in short they do everything that the inventor of this science bequeathed to posterity and which those who trouble about such trifles understand. We, also, at one time dabbled a little in this science, not in order to cast horoscopes (God forbid!), but by gaining a more accurate idea of this vain study to be able to pass judgment upon its devotees. I do not mention this for the sake of boasting, but to prove that during my father's reign many of the sciences made great progress, as he honoured both philosophers and philosophy itself, but towards this teaching of astrology he showed some hostility, I believe because it tended to make people of a guileless nature reject their faith in God and gape at the stars.

Anna and the Crusaders

Anna's views on the corruption, depravity and rapacity of the Crusaders is a joy to read and a good counterpoint to received Western views, she was deeply sceptical of the wisdom of involving the West and the Pope in the fight against the Turks. (Though there is a clear subtext that she fancied the Norman leader Bohemond). She was eventually proved right as in 1204, 50 years after she dies, the 4th Crusade decided to sack Constantinople rather than fight Turks, which did far more damage to Byzantium than Manzikert did

There is a very approachable book on Anna Komnene called "Anna of Byzantium" by Tracy Barrett, that's the picture above.

It would appear that 1/3rd of all mobile searches pertain to local information:

Speaking at a Mobile Marketing & Advertising event in Las Vegas to coincide with CTIA Wireless 2010, Diana Pouliot – director of mobile advertising at Google – revealed that one-third of all Google searches via the mobile web pertain to some aspect of the searcher’s local environment.

Not quite in the "whoddathunkit" bucket, but the interesting thing - to me - is the actual proportion. If I were making an hypothesis, I'd have thought it would be higher. This is all quite interesting, as to my mind only 1/3rd of searches being local militates against the hype-huged location based market. Interestingly, the article also notes that:

......some analysts now project that location-based mobile spending will top $4 billion in 2015. That’s a mind-blowing increase from the relatively paltry $34 million spent just last year.

The $4bn by 2015 estimate intrigues me, as just the other day estimates of $13bn by 2014 were being thrown around - we pooh poohed them at the time, and using our "half the amount estimated in double the time" rule for Planet Mobile we concluded the market would be more like $7bn by 2018* - which $4bn by 2015 is more-like than $13bn by 2014!.

The thing is, usually it takes 2 years for Planet Mobile to halve their heady early day forecasts. This has taken just 2 months. Clearly the Planet Mobile krew have already reacted to the new data. Planet Mobile meets Internet Time

I just hope somebody has told all the location based startups crowding onto the ground floor.......

*You'd be amazed at how accurate its been in the past

Here are my slides from my talk about Measuring Conversations at Enterprise Social Media Event last week the notes below serve as a commentary:

Its just another Channel

Social Media is just the latest medium that companies will use to get their message across. If you watch Mad Men, there is a great subplot as the "New Boys" in TV grow in a tradition Ad agency


The Same Old...but Different

Like every new channel, its has some new features. Social Media has:

- a feedback loop - and it is not buffered, and is often real-time, unlike Web 1.0 systems where you ave more time to react

- you are not the "start" - its not star configured, its a small world networks, ie there are links in the network that you cannot mediate. it is an influencing, not a broadcsating, game.

- they can watch you too - Social Media is too way - users get as much of an insight into you as you do into them. Customer bulsh*t is easy to spot.

Where is the Value?

The Big Point I wanted to make is that Direct Measurement of Social Media is a second order thing, you need to deploy it where it gives bang for the buck - and to know how many bucks are banging is the First Order of business - get that right and accurate SM measurement is less critical. We are old school, and believe that ROI is a real number. There are only 3 ways of creating value in a company:

- Increase revenue

- Decrease Costs

- Utilise capital assets (including people) more effectively

Long term, Social media will only succeed in Enterprises if it does this


Increasing Revenue

Revenue is more predictably increased the closer to a sale one goes - the corollary being that a customer is worth far less the more they are just a prospect. Social Media today is mainly about prospect recruitment, so the value per customer is still very low.


Reduced Costs

So far Social media has been best at talking to existing customers and potentially reducing churn, which is a high impact area if churn is high (as it is in say mobile telecoms). Direct cost reduction/efficiency increase activity has been far harder to make work so far.

Capital Expenditure Saving

By and large the most immediate returns can be made in increasing utilisation of existing assets, then increasing efficiency, and only then decreasing future spend. in many service businesses (the ones Social media is most likely to be used in) a lot of the capital assets are the "wetware" - the people.

For both Opex and Capex reduction it depends on a company's cost structure to understand where the highest bang for buck is - its more variable than revenue. Using Social media to increase communication, teamwork, customer contact etc are all good things, but at least if you set it against a hard financial background you can calibrate what you can afford to spend on Social Media for a particular effect


Now, on to actual Measurement of Conversations

Not all Conversations are Equal

As well as understanding where value is created in a business, ite worth going therough the age old science of segmenting customers into "A" class - those who are high potential and spend, "B" class - those of average potential but higher proclivity to spend, and "C" class - the long tail - who you can waste a lot of time and money serving. Understand teh value of these different classes and resource assets accordingly. (Our experience is that treating high value clients well with Social media gives very good results fast, using it to cover Long Tail far less so in the short term)


Meme Machine

We (and doubtless others) have found that measuring snapshots and linear conversation trends ("buzz") are not particularly illuminating - what you need to do is find how different trends interlink and change over time. The way to do this is what we call memetic monitoring, trying to interlink the various topics and see how they shift over time.

We also like to monitor memetic differences between the client and the competitors to see who is impacting what differently


Social Capitalists

Understanding social capital online is at a very rudimentary pahse right now, and I think a lot of what is written is frankly new-age hope and dreams over harsh experience. If it sounds fluffy, it is probably bollocks. From a business point of view the most interesting argument si between the Gladwellian view (a small number of very infleuntial nodes) vs the Wattsian view (a much more dispersed environment) - see this earlier post


Measuring the Metadata


Metadata (data about the data) is a key to measuring conversations - a lot is predicable about any one person by the links and activities they partake in. "Serious" data mining only takes place once good metadata analysis is put in place

The diagrams in the last 2 slides are courtesy Mat Morrison aka @mediaczar). The "Social Capitalists" slide shows that the contacts between US Democrats and Rebublican Congressmen on Twitter is architected such that communication between the 2 groups is mediated through 2 main nodes. It would be a mistake however to deduce that they are the most "influential", as Twitter is a tiny subset of the communication transactions between all these people.

The "Metadata" slide was where mat showed you could predict which party a particular person belonged to very well by looking at their network.


Algorithms vs People?

Our experience is that if there are huge volumes, algorithms are necessary. If there is a lot of variety, people are necessary but if its low volume then its not worth heavy investment in algorithms. If you have both, you need both (cf Techmeme which started as an algorithm system but has increasingly had to use human editors)


The Software

There are a huge range of solutions/packages/etc on the market, but there is no end to end solution so one way or another you will wind up sticking them together. A typical solution will include the following operations:

Identify - Market Segmentation, Online vs Offline, User Data required etc

Search - Medium (Blogs, Twitter, Search Engines, Databases); Speed (Real time, most popular, discrete event search etc)

Aggregate - including Sources (eg Feeds, Platforms) and Subjects (eg a meme across multiple platforms)

Track - Trends over time (eg Buzz, Traffic) and making Comparisons (eg positional shifts vs competitors, meme shifts etc)

Analyze - Statistics packages (First level analysis) and Data Sifting (2nd Level – Pattern Finding)

The Wetware

Because of this range, the market is still in the phase of "stitching together" solutions for any one company that wants to measure "the conversation". What we can say is that, in increasing order of cost:

- You can go quite a long way on open source / share ware / freely available software

- Beware “freeware” from providers that then require you to hand over your data. I include Google in this as their motivations are increasingly worrisome

- Existing Software packages – most don’t integrate to give a total picture, and it is costly to knife and fork them

- System design houses – build and integrate solutions - get what you want but costs a lot of money

At any rate, MeasurementCamp (measurementcamp.wikidot.com) is an excellent resource - it was founded precisely because of the confusion in the space - offers Case Studies, a Wiki and other resources - and meets at least monthly in London

Was reading this piece on TechCrunch about location services at SXSW:

At first, I was using all of the services I had on my phone to check-in when I arrived at a place in Austin. This included: Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Brightkite, Burbn, MyTown, CauseWorld, Hot Potato, Plancast, and (at certain places) Foodspotting. Even with great AT&T service, this would take a solid 10 minutes or more to check-in to all of them. And it took even longer when I’d have to pause to explain to my friends what the hell I was doing on my phone all that time.

This was at every venue we stopped at. The situation simply wasn’t tenable.

Indeed. And there are even more location based startups coming.....

I love that all these startups are emerging around location right now (at least a dozen more have emailed me just since I’ve been back from SXSW). But I’m starting to worry that this is going to turn into a repeat of the social wars, where we all have 15 different profiles we constantly have to update across a range of networks.

The outcome of the social wars are well known - concentration into just a few players. This will happen with location based services as well.

In fact I don't know why any startup after the 4th or so in a space bothers, the chance of success is miniscule and the chance of funding is minimal. Better by far to be contrarian and do something that the maddening crowd is not.

There was a piece on Daring Fireball about the increasing rivalry between Google and Apple - commenting on an earlier NYT article he notes:

That last bit, regarding a general belief that Apple is gearing up for war against Google, echoes what I’ve heard lately from several sources who work at Apple. I know that conflict between companies — particularly big companies, and even more particularly big interesting companies like Apple and Google — tends to get played up in the press, often to the point of sensationalism, because conflict is interesting. But I’ve got the growing sense that there’s nothing sensational about it. I think Steve Jobs genuinely sees Google as threatening Apple’s core business. It doesn’t really matter whether he’s right (although the more I consider it, the more I think he is). Jobs believes it, and so Apple is going to war.

Hence the patent suit against HTC. That’s all about Google — about creating a situation where Android is no longer a free operating system for handset makers in the U.S., because the cost of using it is an expensive legal defense against Apple.

The article is called "Hope You Enjoy the Smell of Napalm in the Morning", and I thought it may be worth extending the military analogies.

At the same time as this, we have been following the rattling of virtual sabres as Google, via its proxy YouTube, squares off to Viacom in the hot/cold war between Olde Media and New. And then there is Buzz, aimed as other Social media players, there is Chrome and Google Docs aimed at Microsoft, there is a scrap brewing on data storage, handling and privacy with the European Union. Then there is the spat with China, the increasingly messy campaign against the Book Publishing industry, the start of a scrap with the ISP industry.

And all this against a backdrop of continuing skirmishes with Yahoo in the traditional battlegrounds of Search.

So what can Hitler teach Google? Quite simple - that it is possible to take on too enemies at once, over-reach oneself and the resulting implosion is not pretty. A quick recap:

(i) Germany is far better prepared for the "New Ways" of fighting than its opponents, and builds more modern equipment, infrastructure, methodologies etc. In Googleterms, they came into the New Media game later than many of their major opponents and are arguably one of the best equipped and smartest (in hired IQ terms) than any company before.

(ii) Initially, Germany took on fairly weak opposition that was on its borders - in fact the first forays were more "power diplomacy" into Austria and Czechoslovakia than actual warfare - these Anschlussii were almost "acquisitions" in International Relations speak. In Googleterms this is the purchase of various assets that help bolster the search advertising business at the expense of competitors. Major players like Yahoo (cf France, England) cede assets to it because they don't see Google as a particular threat in their space

(iii) Germany's first major military escapade is to agree to partition nearby territory between itself and other great powers, and the invasion as such (Poland) is relatively bloodless, In Google terms this is the ripping into the early search advertising market, partitioning it with the major players of the time (Yahoo, Microsoft)

(iv) Germany then invades the low countries and France in a rapid campaign, deploying its new weaponry and approach (Blitzkrieg) and rapidly outmanouvering the major opponents. It takes one major opponent (France) out the war and inflicts major reverses on another (Great Britain). In Googleterms this is the taking on of Yahoo, the ceding of the rich Alsace Lorraine area has its parallels with Google helping itself to Overture (a Yahoo company)'s, technology. Microsoft's MSN is a small part of this fight and is outmanouvred.

At this point it all looks very sustainable - Germany with its conquests has the economic resources to fight Great Britain and her empire to a standstill, and the access to the French resources gives it a major advantage - over time it will be the major power, all it has to do is exert continuous pressure over time and it will achive European hegemony. But it is still worried, as it knows that over the horizon is a great fight that will eventually emerge, with Soviet Russia. This is winnable, but there is a risk with letting the Soviets re-arm, It is very tempting to attack them now, while they are weak (Stalin having shot many of his senior officers), comparatively ill equipped (their military technology is one generation earlier).

Translating this into Googleterms, this is the fight vs Microsoft - steady pressure will give Google hegemony in its area. They are economically comparable. Over the horizon is the Olde Media empire, who are still woefully disorganised and poorly equipped. All the visionaries within it have been fired or sidelined after dotcom One, and their assets are all of that era. Attacking them now is very tempting.

But the hubris and arrogance of all the easy wins pushes Hitler to greater and bigger dreams, and he starts to make strategic mistakes:

(v) The last thing Hitler should have gone for at this point is a diversion, but he does - he fights the Battle of Britain and loses, and props up Italy as it's African empire collapses to the British Empire's counterattacks. Propping up Italy is a major diversion of Germany's energy, and it finds itself having to fight all sorts of small actions against a major power.

In Googleterms, this is the opening up of the Google Docs front against Microsoft. The Googlepanzers start to park on the Microsoft Empire's lawns, but this is home turf and much more comfortable ground for Microsoft. This is a high cost fight.

(vi) The decision is taken to fight the Old Empire is taken, and Russia is invaded - it is a huge play, a massive invasion, and initially things go well as the opposition is scattered, dispersed, poorly prepared - but the sheer size of the enemy terrain starts to tell on their resources. Winter, an enemy that starts to learn how to fight better, and their embrace of equal technology is a massive drain on German resources.

In Googleterms this is the acquisition of YouTube - a massive play into the heart of the video Old Media. Initially it sweeps all before it, but they start to get better and better at countering Google, and their resources to fight with are immense.

These were the 2 major strategic mistakes Germany made, and were in themselves enough to doom it's expansion plans - there is no ways it has the resources to fight against Great Britain and Soviet Russia at the same time. But this is still a Good Old European War, and the likely outcome - arguably - can still be penning Germany back into its own historic boundaries and re-establishing the status quo until the next time. Europe has been doing this for 400 years, after all. This is not the time to get the USA to fight you too......

So, here we have Google fighting the TV/Movie industry and ViacomGrad is looming, the Microsoft fight is see-sawing back and forth, but at El AlaBing, Microsoft lands the first tanks on Google's turf. Google does not have the resources to take on Microsoft and the whole Entertainment industry, but it could still negotiate a reasonable settlement by ceding the more controversial terrain back to the major opponent industries, and coming to terms with them.

So why, at this point, do you want to then also go to war against huge powers from far way - the whole Apple spat, pushing Android panzers into the Mobile/Telecoms/ISP industry, trying to outfight the Social Media industry with Buzz-bombs and taking on the European Union over data privacy?. This is overexpansion of resources at a level that even Hitler would probably have admired.

From 1943 to 1945, an alliance of powers that were only the most uneasy of allies first got even and then surpassed German technology and methods, but their sheer economic size made eventual victory certain even if they only had "good enough" stuff, as this war was one of attrition which Germany could not win.

From 2010 to 2013, its is predictable therefore that this ring of opponents facing Google (see picture above) will be able to equal and then surpass them - and the threat that Google has posed will drive all of them to want a fairly terminal solution. Besides, the wealth that is up for grabs within the Googlereich is too, too tempting to be passed over.

Here endeth the (future) history lesson.....

Update - bit of backchannel conversation and a few additional thoughts around "So what should Google Do"?. Clearly they have been putting a lot of ooomph behind a wide range of strategic options, and at some point you have to cull. My thoughts would be:

Firstly, get out of unnecessary conflicts and try not to fight on more than one major front at a time .

(i) Make peace with the EU, they have history on their side - and recapture a bit of te "don't be evil" dust as well

(ii) Does Google really want to be an ISP and a Telco? It is not their game, they are downstream players.

Secondly, try and create alliances where they cannot win:

(i) Social Media - is this really Google's bailiwick? They have been cr*p at nearly everything they have done in this space. Better to make alliances than enemies out of the existing players

(ii) WebTV - the TV Freeconomics play is over, the regulatory pendulum is swinging against rampant piracy globally, and YouTube is a major drain on resources. Make your peace and make alliances. They overpaid by a stupid amount, but its a sunk cost - make sure it doesn't sink the rest of the opportunities.

Thirdly, decide where your One Front will be

(i) Is it really SaaS for Microsoft Office? Is that the highest value they can obtain for their effort? If so, prepare for a major scrap, Microsoft will go for their weak spots, and has the resources to do so.

(ii) Is Planet Mobile where they are headed? If so, they need some allies - like Russia, this is too big to take on, on their own, They are competing with their own supply chain, have no distribution, and no after sale customer care capability. Do Google really want to fight Apple, Nokia, all the Mobile telcos?

I don't have Google's internal economics so its hard to know the ROI of these various areas, but I suspect none are profitable right now. The question is which will return the greatest return and cost least to fund in the next 3-5 years

*Keith McMahon has pointed out that Google now taking on Apple is akin to Germany deciding to declare war on Japan.

I've been following the "YouTube Roolz" blogfest with extreme boredom, its clearly pre-emptive posturing before the Viacom court case - but this response shot from Viacom piqued my curiosity as its sets out the Viacom position:

YouTube was intentionally built on infringement and there are countless internal YouTube communications demonstrating that YouTube’s founders and its employees intended to profit from that infringement. By their own admission, the site contained “truckloads” of infringing content and founder Steve Chen explained that YouTube needed to “steal” videos because those videos make “our traffic soar.”

Google bought YouTube because it was a haven of infringement. Google knew that YouTube’s popularity depended on infringing materials with several senior Google executives warning that YouTube was a “rogue enabler of content theft.” Instead of complying with the law, Google willfully and knowingly chose to continue YouTube’s illegal practices.

Google and YouTube had the technology to stop infringement at any time but deliberately chose not to use it. They would only offer to protect Viacom’s content if Viacom agreed to license those works, effectively holding copyright protection as ransom for a license.

The law is clear that Google and YouTube are liable for their infringement. The Supreme Court unanimously held in Grokster that a service that intends infringement is liable for that infringement. No case has ever suggested that the DMCA immunizes rampant intentional infringement of the sort Google and YouTube have engaged in.

These facts are undisputed. The statements by Google regarding Viacom activities are merely red herrings and have no relevance on the legal facts of this case.

Its interesting because it is in essence implying that even adopting the piracy business model is a de Jure illegal act. It has a huge impact - if you go back to our work on the evolution of the Web TV world, you will see that we assume that the very turbulent "Pirate World" holds sway in the next few years, and quite a few of the winners longer term are effectively the corporates bankrolling these Pirates (what we call Privateer Plays as a more accurate term here than Pirates). Google and YouTube being the prime example.

This is significant - when we build scenarios we add in "milestones" or "signposts" you have to watch for, and one of them that signals a shift back to The Olde Worlde media is important.

This is such. One of the conditions in our "Pirate World" and "New Model Media" scenarios was that the regulatory regimes did not shift to the side of existing rightsholders (when we did the work in 2008 the regulatory regime was fairly hands off, but its behaviour globally has been by and large increasingly "for" the rights of the rightsholder since then as country after country has become unwilling to lose the revenues from these large industries).

Thus, a 2 year refresh of our work would be to increase the probability of Olde Media doing better, and if Viacom wins this - with significant enough damages - it may put the kibosh on Privateer plays completely.

Arrr, so the winds be a-shiftin, Jim Lad. That'll send a shiver down the corporate timbers at Social Media Central.....but the pure Pirates, it seems, will be forever with us.