Thursday, November 04, 2010

Google Needs To Reinvent Gmail

Image representing Gmail as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBaseI have heard this over and over again over months from many, many people. Gmail has slowed down to a trickle. Email continues to be a massively popular program. Google might have tackled the web over a decade ago, but no one has been able to tackle the inbox. The inbox is ripe territory.
TechCrunch: Hey Gmail, 1994 Called, It Wants Its Dial-Up Level Performance Back
TechCrunch is a blog that mostly talks about which startup got funded. But today it has been talking about the slowness of Gmail. Fast is a good reason to be in news, not slow. Slow is no good.

Zuckerberg Interview: Scoble's Recording


(Source: Robert Scoble)

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Andy Bechtolsheim: 100K To 1.5 Billion Through Google

This is a remarkable story. A hundred thousand dollars turned into a billion and a half dollars in a decade: that is utmost remarkable. There is no lottery, no Vegas that can give you that kind of a return.

A lot of people could cough up the 100K if they had to. The question is what was Andy doing at the right time at the right place? What was he doing at that Stanford faculty's home that particular morning?

Facebook: Mobile, Social, Local, Deal, Check, Deal

Watch live streaming video from facebookinnovations at livestream.com

(Via Rachel Sterne)

Facebook's Aggression

Facebook Blog: Making Mobile More Social
Search Engine Land: Big Deal: Facebook Emerges As Major Player In Mobile And Location-Based Services
TechCrunch: Facebook Revamps The Mobile Log-In Process With Single Sign-On
BGR: Facebook has 200 million active mobile users, improves iOS and Android applications
TechCrunch: Facebook Gives All Developers Access To Full Set Of Places APIs (Including Their Venue Database)
Inside Facebook: Facebook Launches Local Deal Service for Places

Animation of the structure of a section of DNA...Image via WikipediaFacebook's out to conquer the web. Facebook is the biggest competitor that Google ever had. It is not Microsoft. To compete with Google, you needed to be online, and Microsoft is not exactly online. And this competition did not come from search, it did not come from the government stepping in with some anti-monopoly lawsuit.