VORTEX Digest
John Gallant Spotlights Top Network News and Issues
Comments to: mailto:jgallant@vortex.net
Oct. 7, 2005
Volume 7, Number 3
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In This Issue:
* Google: What lies beyond?
* Google dancing around growing speculation about its plans
* Google/Sun deal: A tepid affair
* VORTEX 2005: Charting the Future
* Subscription information
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"Danger is the spur of all great minds."
George Chapman
Dear Vorticians,
A couple of issues back, I talked about Google's growing
influence on the tech industry. The company's name keeps popping
up all over the place and in conjunction with all kinds of
projects and stratagems, most recently with a proposed free Wi-Fi
network for the city of San Francisco, a joint research effort
with NASA and a new partnership with Sun.
These days, Google is something akin to the alien in "The Thing,"
seeming to take the shape - if not the personality - of whatever
hosts it can infect. Google is a media company. It's a telecom
provider. It's the next Microsoft.
Actually, a better analogy would be to the Boggart, a creature in
the Harry Potter novels that takes the shape of whatever the
viewer fears the most. But "The Thing" reference lets me gently
recommend, as we approach Halloween, that you check out John
Carpenter's 1982 remake of the story. It's the rare horror movie
that is actually scary.
All this hubbub is quite remarkable because Google is so tight-
lipped about what its long-term strategy actually is. The company
does a wonderful job of dancing around the growing industry
speculation about its plans, enjoying the limelight while
refusing to be pinned down. (Much like a great horror movie
director - say, Ridley Scott with "Alien" - Google only teases
the audience with a glimpse of the ghost or ghoul, letting the
viewers' own imaginations fill in the blanks and building the
intrigue and suspense.)
Nowhere was this technique more apparent than in this week's
joint announcement with Sun. The pundits and analysts were
drooling in anticipation, expecting the Google/Sun confab to be
the jumping off point for the first wave of a massive assault on
Microsoft. But what we got was pretty tepid fare. Sun will
include the Google toolbar as an option for consumers downloading
the Java Runtime Environment and the two will jointly promote the
OpenOffice open source productivity suite. Yawn.
That's hardly what people itching for a Google/Microsoft tussle
were hoping to hear. It was anticipated that Sun and Google would
announce plans to compete with Microsoft on the desktop by, for
example, providing consumers with a network-based application
suite to compete with the expensive, monolithic Office. (Given
that OpenOffice is actually a more traditional, desktop-based
offering that would have been a tall order. See those two good
stories on the Sun/Google announcement and on Google's software
aspirations:
http://www.networkworld.com/nlvortex100405 and
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/100605-google-apps.html?rl.
)
But it would be a mistake to be misled by the seeking
innocuousness of the partnership. Google and Sun are among the
strongest champions of the network-based app concept and this
initial photo-opp was the equivalent of the Soviet Union quietly
placing nuclear missiles on Cuban soil. Google CEO - and former
Sun CTO - Eric Schmidt said of Tuesday's joint briefing that,
viewed in one light, "we're not announcing anything." Sun CEO
Scott McNealy, licking his lips and grinning, said: "You can
speculate all day long on how we can work together and they are
all legitimate speculations, but we can only talk about what you
are hearing today." Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Your wife sir, is
she a goer?
Bill Gates, like John Kennedy, cannot like what he sees, and you
and I, out in the audience, can only wait eagerly for the
director to reveal the next glimpse of the monster.
Those of you attending VORTEX 2005, which is only a couple of
weeks hence, will get glimpses sooner than most. I'll be
interviewing Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos and Google's top IT
executive Dr. Douglas Merrill and you can be sure that I'll try
to haul the monster out of the closet. (If you're a
procrastinator, you shouldn't wait much longer to sign up. Go to
http://www.vortex.net.)
As always, I'd love your thoughts on what's behind the curtain.
What is the long-term plan at Google? Who's most at risk? Share
with me at mailto:jgallant@vortex.net.
Bye for now.
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Special Program: Charting the Future
VORTEX 2005: Setting the IT Agenda
Breakthrough to Value
Oct. 24-26 at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco
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A centerpiece of VORTEX 2005, "Charting the Future" immerses
attendees in an interactive strategic-planning session aimed at
revealing the future shape of the enterprise IT market. Based on
surveys completed by participants and lively discussion and
debate, we'll identify the most likely outcomes to the key
questions and issues facing CIOs and vendor executives, and we'll
determine how to prepare for - and profit from - those inflection
points.
Register today at http://www.vortex.net/V5E1VD
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ABOUT VORTEX DIGEST
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VORTEX Digest is a weekly summary of the VORTEX Blogs written by
Executive Producer John Gallant and offers an ongoing dialogue
on matters raised at The VORTEX Conference, and within the VORTEX
Community.
VORTEX is an exclusive, invitation-only event for senior
executives that brings together all the key elements: leadership,
thought, funding, and regulatory expertise, to shape the future
of the network business and the technologies that drive it.
VORTEX shakes off the hype and helps you understand where you can
win new customers, and find new revenue in a time of dramatic and
seemingly unpredictable change.
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Copyright: Network World, Inc. 2005
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