Of course.

Just like "free" television programming, "free" web services absolutely need to be paid for.*

It may be worthwhile for Google to offer some things that are truly free if it means that there's more money coming in overall, but in general, Google definitely wants to offer attractive services that can pay their own way via subscriptions, advertising, or something else we haven't thought of yet...

* I offer Twitter as a temporary counter-example to this. I still have no idea how they're going to make money.

He doesn't, actually.

I do, actually.

My experience was with Sharepoint in 2005 (before I started at Google). Small company (about 100 employees). Over the previous two years, the project team had created an extensive development info repository with TWiki, but the new VP Dev thought that we should switch from mixed Linux/MS to MS only. So they asked all of the developers to move everything over to a new Sharepoint deployment, under the guidance of a MS certified Sharepoint consultant (never knew exactly what certification they guy had).

This basically meant taking each page from the Wiki, creating a Word doc that said something similar (without the effortless linking of a wiki), and uploading it into the Sharepoint knowledge base. There was a very cumbersome checkout/edit/checkin process which seemed to take the worst of the issues from VSS and bless them with new life. The whole thing was awful and ended up being abandoned in favor of the old wiki within a year. We were also trying to take the core product (contract management) and move it so that it could be accessed via a Sharepoint interface. The API's were worse than the document management system, and this architectural 180 was also abandoned within a year as completely untenable.

I never did see an useful/informative definition for what Sharepoint was, so a document store that couldn't quite be a wiki and several attempts to improve the collaborative interaction, was what I experienced. It wasn't very impressive.

BTW, I'm not anti-MS, just have nothing good to say about Sharepoint. I really like .NET (even though I don't get to use it at Google). Some very cool stuff in there. The internationalization support I found particularly shiny.

Commodify everything the customer needs to use your product. This is taught in business school 101. That Google is pursuing such a strategy is not newsworthy. It would be newsworthy if a company stacked with this much brainpower wasn't aware of such a strategy and making sure that their competition was on it's toes. Microsoft, for their part, argues quite correctly that Windows and Office have many more features than the oversimplified little trinkets that Google is putting out. We'll just have to wait and see what the market really wants (which is the whole point).

Is Google using our current dominance of search to distort other markets? I don't think so. Linux was already free and being used by netbook makers, and nobody will be coerced into using Chrome OS. Firefox and Safari and Opera are all free so Chrome is just another free browser. Even search is a pretty precarious monopoly. Someone comes out with a better search (and Microsoft is trying very, very hard: look how fast Bing changed from sucky to pretty interesting) and the masses will shift just as quickly as everyone abandoned altavista back in the day.

Ultimately, the question of whether Google is levering an arguable search monopoly into other markets is a question for lawyers to answer. I certainly don't see it. Google really is trying to make a profit in Apps and Gmail and will move in that direction for Chrome and Chrome OS as they mature.

First of all, it's very difficult for corporations to not be sociopathic, but in my experience, Google management does try to avoid most of the pathological problems of modern corporations. "Don't be evil" has been getting pretty rough treatment in the press, but from my inside perspective, the whole company perks up and pays very close attention if it looks like the company might be reneging on that statement. Upper management keeps on trying to be transparent, which also helps a lot.

In this case, the behavior is a rational response to an aggressive competitor known for doing underhanded things to eliminate competition. I don't mean to make excuses, as Google's behavior is not defensive in nature, but in the (sometimes, occasionally) free market, competition is rough business and Google is willing to step up, even if our culture does put some big ethical boundaries around what we will do. Microsoft has been famously big on much shadier tactics. Starting acquisition talks with competitors to get strategic information, then screwing them over. Google won't do that.

The value of Google's behavior is a situation where the consumer spends less and less for more capabilities until they only have to pay for the marginal value of the hardware to do just about anything a computer can do.

Next sub-question: who's at risk? Without needing to ask anyone inside Google, any organization who can throttle or put a toll on Google's services is at risk. Speculatively, telecommunications companies, mobile carriers, governments, etc. are all vulnerable to various tactics intended to minimize the chance that they'll be able to cash in on or otherwise interfere with how Google makes money.

What you're not seeing is Google's strategic intent (I work for Google, but this stuff is public).

Google's goal is to commodify (reduce the marginal profit to zero) of everything that they don't make money on. The hardware is pretty much commodified already. Plenty of competitors and the profit margins are razor thin. Next levels are the OS and the applications. These are not yet commodified due to Microsoft's aggressively maintained monopoly. Contrary to common knowledge, Microsoft's real monopoly is in the Office file formats. From that, they've levered a monopoly into basic individual productivity applications and then (with Apple's cooperation) the operating system. They are also a serious player in second-generation collaboration tools (extensions to basic email).

In order to reduce Microsoft's war chest and eliminate their competitiveness, Google seeks to lower the profit margin on everything Microsoft currently produces at a profit (Windows and Office). So they produce a cheaper operating system, cheaper productivity applications, and cheaper collaboration tools (ideally free to the typical user). Google doesn't need to make money (though breaking even would be nice), Google just needs to apply pressure to Microsoft to cut their revenues/profits and the strategic goals are being met.

Writing apps that run on Windows? Doesn't help Google very much (though SketchUp and Picasa and a few other things are native apps).
Writing protocols that run on any machine? Helps Google a lot.
Writing web applications that use those protocols and run on any machine? Helps Google a lot.

Look at the bigger picture. Google is acting extremely rationally here.

As for whether Wave is innovative or not, I don't think you've tried it and are speaking without informing yourself. Wave is to email as email is to snail mail (single addressee, no broadcast, etc.). Wave tackles the problem of a widely CC:'d email with an attached Word or Excel document (two threads of changes: one in the email thread, one in the document) (multiple obsolete copies of the document available) (possible confusion and delay as people are added to the thread and have to re-read the history duplicated in most of the recent emails). Wave creates a "place" for this discussion/collaborative authoring to happen and then let's everyone bring whatever they want to help out. Wave is not email++ (which is what Outlook and Gmail are).

Sharepoint is a way of "sort of" sharing Word >=2003 documents to "sort of" make a wiki.

Other than that (which isn't much that twiki can't do), it's basically a gigantic waste of everyone's time.

(I do work for Google)

Assuming that a solution was properly engineered, this should not have been a surprise.

Cheap. power efficient, performance. Pick two.

Actually, Google got all three of those in their system-level design (when cheap is measured per CPU). What they didn't get was per CPU reliability. That's pretty miserable by the standards of commercial servers. Luckily, all Google software is architected, designed, and written to work around frequent hardware failures, so that's ultimately covered.

When your math teacher only cares about "feelings" and not objective laws of mathematics

Oohhh... you're really going to be disappointed if you ever RTFA.

BTW, I completely agree that teacher's unions are a huge part of the problem, but for a different set of reasons than you mention. My issue is that unions strongly resist any effort to pay teachers differently based on ability and have successfully negotiated contracts that make teachers essentially impossible to fire once they've successfully completed two or three years of teaching. The same contracts dictate pay scales based on degree level and seniority. Being an excellent teacher pays no better than being a seatwarmer, and probably pays much worse, since most of the seatwarmers have seniority.

If you're looking for a completely screwed up incentive structure for educators, look no further than any school with a teacher's union contract. Sadly, that's 99% of public schools in the US.

The problem was progressives wanted to scrap it and start over with fascism/socialism yet lacked the votes to do so. They got the bright idea to just start ignoring the limits and use their control over the mass media to blur ths issue.

s/progressives/those in power/

If you honestly think there's a substantial difference between the Demublicans and the Republicrats, I've got some beautiful seaside land in Kansas for sale, cheap!

Cheney/Bush and the neocons did a huge end-run around the US Constitution and your civil liberties by simply asserting that whatever the executive decreed was legal. Anyone who thinks that the Dems won't try to slide a few things past the people now that they're in power is simply deluded.

The real problem is that politicians want to stay in power, and they do that by fulfilling the interests of those who put them in power. The party label means almost nothing. This is why I'm for term limits. One term and that's it. Go to Washington, do your best to do the right thing for everyone, go back home and get a real job.

but here's a parting cluebat for you: maybe your numbers are WRONG you hallucinating fuck?

geee just maybe A LITTLE FUCKING OFF? maybe ORDERS OF FUCKING MAGNITUDE?

See, here you've made a specific claim. But you haven't backed it up. Where are your numbers which back up this assertion? Can you find me a link to these numbers? I don't need "proof". That's the request of the religious who don't understand argument and debate. Some evidence will do. I've provided you mine. A link to thirteen studies over the past thirty years which backed up my numbers in depth.

I say that guns are used in self defense on the order of one million times per year in the USA. You say that's orders of magnitude too high. Okay then. Show me a single published study which estimates the number of times guns are used in self defense in the USA is at or under 50k/year. Just one. Should be trivial if my numbers are that far wrong. Google should make it trivial to find a reference that shows the falsehood of my claims.

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

(Of course, this is a trap since I've loaded the deck against you pretty steeply. My numbers are not only reasonable, they're pretty darned conservative. 750k-3.6m was the numbers in surveys from 1975-1995. There are even more guns and gun owners in the past 14 years and the numbers for successful defensive uses have gone up as well.)

I have debated with creationists/ID'ers on multiple occasions. I didn't devolve into name-calling and vulgarity to make my arguments with them. I don't think I managed to convince any of them that the solar system and earth is ~4.5b years old, but then you don't really expect to.

and of course, if i won't sit here and gently hold your hand and keep a straight face while you vomit bald faced lies and pure shit, i'm the party in the wrong

Is that what you think a debate is? You've been misinformed.

You honestly believe that all gun owners who think that you should be able to legally 1) own and 2) carry and 3) use a firearm in self defense New York City are so malicious as to just make up "bald faced lies" to substantiate their argument?

Wow, dude. I've heard of people with trust issues, but I think you just might be the poster boy for my "fear of self" and "fear of neighbor" paper about what's gone wrong in modern American culture. You must have had some really bad experiences there in NYC.

An old saying, "You can take a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." seems to apply here. You've been told a bunch of simple truthful facts that are very easy to verify in this age of Google, including multiple academic studies showing that guns are not pure evil. However, you're going to have to get to a point in your life where you trust yourself and strangers that you see on the street before any of it makes any sense to you.

Whatever has gone wrong in your life to make you this way, you have my sympathies.

This qualifies me as a slashdot stalker? Well, there's always a first time for everything. Pretty low threshold, IMHO.

I was looking through your posting history to see what kind of a poster you were and your comment in this article was just too ironic to let slip. You look completely reasonable and rational here, if a little opinionated, but as we both know, there's no learning to be done by you, it's all about informing the rest of us poor sods how we're wrong...

You remind me of one of my favorite quotes: "People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who do."

Don't get apprehensive about any more "stalking". I've found out what I wanted to learn and based on your (lack of) response in the other thread, it looks like you've conceded the argument and we're done.

I am not saying that GPS on child = fascism, you fucking window licker.

Give up. He's not here to discuss. He's here to tell you (and me) what the TRUTH is. He's already figured it out and has absolutely no interest in understanding your argument or forming a cogent counter-argument. Your carefully-explained arguments cannot reach their intended target.

I got stuck in a tangential thread discussing another aspect of personal freedom and societal utility regarding gun ownership and it went nowhere. Lots of effort from me, lots of cussing and "big lie" assertions from him. Now I'm feeling sheepish for wasting all of that time.

At least his arguments are utterly and completely trounced for the few who will come after and bother to read the thread.

99% of the people in your life are full of shit ideas. 99% of what you yourself say is incomplete and ill thought out

the whole point is, only through communication do we develop better ideas. [...snip...]

don't lament that so much of humanity, including yourself, is so unenlightened. rejoice that so many strive to be better. how do i know they strive to be better?

because they go online, and communicate. this is the first step towards becoming a better person

Physician, heal thyself.

if i were 100% certain of my beliefs, i would sit in smug condescension and talk to no one. what would be the point?

That's not your only choice as you've so eloquently demonstrated elsewhere.