It cannot even access facebook?
Google Buzz
171–176 of 176 posts
Re: Google Buzz
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
What did Microsoft ever give away to sell more Windows? (Serious question.)
IE, Silverlight, Express editions of Visual Studio off the top of my head
I'm curious if Silverlight or VS actually caused any Windows sales. IE too, really; would someone who's not already running Windows actually switch to it for IE? Seriously?
But point taken; that it worked (or not) doesn't negate the fact it was done. Thanks!
Re: Google Buzz
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has always been this way as far as I can tell. They're basically using Microsoft's old strategy of "clone it and give it away so we can sell more of Windows" only with Google it's ads. The difference is everyone still loves them. Microsoft was seen as ruthlessly destroying their competition. Google is seen as innovative. Bizarre.
Depends. GMail was fundamentally innovative - do you remember what webmail was like before it launched? GMail gave us a gig of storage and Google search over your inbox and threaded conversation view and keyboard shortcuts and a UI that didn't require page refreshes between each message. Similarly, Maps was fundamentally innovative. If you went to GMaps c. 2005 and then went to MapQuest, there was absolutely no compa…
Google Maps wasn't the first tiled draggable online map. That honor belongs to Bernhard Seefeld and map.search.ch, launched in October 2004:
Re: Google Buzz
#174Re: Google Buzz
#175Yo dawg, I heard you like web 2.0 so I put a web 2.0 in your web 2.0 so you can web 2.0 while you web 2.0.
That was both funny and witty. Come on, HN, lighten up!
Ok, listen up, HN. I love this community because you're smart and ambitious, but we need to have a talk.
The Winter Olympics (& World Cup) are coming up. If we're lucky and live beyond our life expectancy, it's one of maybe 20 we could possibly see. 20. That's how short life is.
A long time ago I was getting into film direction and saw a contest in town for 8mm film shorts. So I wrote a screenplay, gathered eight of my friends together, and in one long day, we shot it. Weeks later when it came back from the labs, I took it to a guy I knew (who was also involved in putting the contest on) who had a projector. I was so excited. I was so proud of what I had done. I began rehearsing, in my mind, answers to such questions as, "How did you achieve such genius with so little background in film?", "What was your inspiration?", etc. The projector spun the film; I held my breath. We couldn't see anything; I hadn't used enough light. (In all my books on film direction, lighting an 8mm didn't come up.) The guy said, as he walked me out, "But you had fun making it right?" I took it almost as a taunt. I thought, "Fuck fun. I didn't want fun. I wanted that fucking film to turn out."
So you're on Hacker News because you like technology? That technology is going to be obsolete in at most a few Winter Olympics from now. You're on HN because you have a startup? If you have a great idea and you execute well with a great team... the odds are not even remotely in your favor. Ask anyone in the business. Not even remotely.
Today when I think back, do you know what I remember from that 8mm film I made? How much fun my friends and I had making it. We had a blast. That day is a wonderful, glorious memory. Whether or not the film turned out was always irrelevant.
Everything you think and love and see and know has an expiration date on it. 20 Olympics -- at most -- if you're lucky. And when you're old and smoking that last cigar (because fuck it) and you close your eyes, what will you remember? Do you know? I'll tell you. Not the film. You won't even remember what the film was about. No, you'll remember the day you shot it. "But you had fun making it?" Did you? It can sound like a taunt, but it's not. It's everything. God, be ambitious. Be smart. Good for you. But have fun. Most of all, have fun.
Laugh, HN. Let your hair down. Have sex. Drink wine from the bottle. Dance like madman. Have fun. For the love of God. You have 20 and it's all you'll ever have. Have fun.
Re: Google Buzz
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't? You're on this site so I imagine you dream of having your own start up some day, no? How would you like it if every single idea you have ends up with you working it to 80% completion only to have Google release a free version of it. Every time. Not freemium, not pay-as-you-go. Totally free. Would you like that? If you say yes then I think you need to take a step back and consider the possibility that you'v…
Open-source has created more clones than any single company, and it keeps on cloning. And yet software companies that actually provide value aren't going out of business any time soon. If Google really starts cloning everything, the way Microsoft is trying, they'll start losing the focus on their core values. As a result, their products will be inferior ... their resources are limited after-all. Don't believe me? The…
>Open-source has created more clones than any single company, and it keeps on cloning.
Well, it takes more than simply dumping a free product on the market. It has to be comparably usable.
>do you see it competing against Facebook?
Facebook is also free.
>They also have a Wikipedia competitor ... knol.google.com ... do you see it overtaking Wikipedia?
Again. Two free products competing with each other.
>But I do remember what my online-life was like before Google Search / GMail / Google Maps
People and companies are not static. Yes, google did a lot of good things for us (as did MS and various other places before them). No, they wont continue to do so forever.
>
This seems to back up my point. You're using all these free things instead of buying something from an aspiring new start up.
>I don't really think it's debatable whether Google provides value or not ... they clearly do.
Perhaps, but it's not a zero sum game. Them providing valuable services for free means that I will have a much harder time making a start up to provide those things for even a small cost.
>But if you're fear-mongering about freebies, it means you're not providing enough value to justify your sales.
With google the threat is two fold: a huge company with vastly more resources than any start up will have who gives away most of their stuff for free.