This video was originally recorded in 2008 and I watched it way back when it was first done but I think it is a very good presentation that pushes through the shit and gets down to the basics – which is to start a business that provides a product that is useful and you can actually charge for – yeah charge for! In the web world that may seem crazy but it’s what myself and Carl have been banging on about forever now it would seem. People will and should pay for something that is useful for them.

Anyway, find the time to watch this presentation from the Startup School 08 by David Heinemeier Hanson. For those that don’t know him he created the Rails framework and has some very successful products (basecamp) over at 37Signals. It is also quite a funny presentation.

The Time Has Come To Regulate Search Engine Marketing And SEO

If your work or business depends on Search (which is almost everyone) then have a read of the above article. It just goes to show that there may be something in what he says and it backs up what I have been saying about Google for a while now. Google are not bad (no worse than any other company out there to make money) its just that they have too much of a hold on commerce on the internet. Microsoft did (and does) hold a monopoly on OS’s etc but we don’t actually need their software to conduct business (in the strictess sense). You can get other software that does the same job. Google though is the gateway of the internet for the majority of users and through their dominance of search and paid listings they basically have the power to do what they want and guide users in whichever way they see fit. They also have the power to punish those players that do not play by their rules – I am not saying that they do this but they are certainly in a position to be able to. Anyway, read it and see what you think.

Just read on the grapevine that a new fund is being setup specifically targetting tech companies in Europe (although the founders tend to be predominantly British)

“Leading the fund will be Michael Birch, the founder of Bebo and BirthdayAlarm; Brent Hoberman, the founder of Lastminute and Mydeco; Peter Dubens, the founder of Oakley Capital and Freedom4 Group; and Jonathan Goodwin, the founder of LongAcre Partners.” – techcrunch uk

It would seem that Bebo founder My. Birch is the predominate funder of the fund and it is very much a fund “by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs” which may come as a delight to many tech savvy people here in Britain. They also plan on not performing any of the standard tricks played on new Entrepreneurs by VC’s such as “double dipping” which means that the VC’s put in the contract that they have the option of taking a bigger stake when the next round of funding takes place diluting ownership quite significantly for the founders.

Well I hope that it works out for them (and the companies they fund) and it’s good to know that I may have a place to go in the future if I ever require funding. It is really nice to know that it is localish and being run by people who have been in the same boat themselves and know the many pitfalls that most fall into first time around.

As you must know by now Google have announced that they are going to release an OS aimed at the netbook market built around their Chrome browser. It’s a good move because netbook’s are one of the fastest growing segments of the computer industry at the moment. The thing is though I don’t see how Google would hope to beat Microsoft at their own game. If you remember, netbook’s were meant to be Linux machines and at first they were. Cheap and cheerful is what people wanted they said. Figures now say that ~94% of netbook’s have Microsoft Windows. Microsoft managed to completely grab this market from what is a free OS. How did they do this? Because users are more familiar with Windows. People will obviously pay a premium to use an OS that they recognize and can run their apps on. So if they managed to do this how will Google manage to grab those users back with what is afterall just another interface on top of Linux? So this leads me on to what I think is Google’s actual plans.

Google dominate the web. Microsoft dominate the desktop. But Microsoft also have a pretty strong foothold on the web as well and their newly rebranded Bing search engine is gaining more users – no where near Googles but it has still been gaining and is receiving a majority of good reviews. But what happens if Microsoft manage to gain a large enough percentage of the web? What do Google have then? They dont have a major dominance in any other software area, which is another reason why I think they created Android when they did. I believe they are just trying to distract and pee off Microsoft, just enough for them to take their concentration away from the web for a while. Just remember that while you may have all the market the only way forward is to loose users, when you have no market share the only way forward is to gain users. All the while this is chipping away at Google and they need time to sort something out properly. It’s a clever move because it may distract Microsoft’s attention and/or it may work out and they get a foothold on the desktop. The same applies to Android. Microsoft certainly are not dumb and I guess they are fuming at the news, so I am interested in what they can and will do about it.

Also remember that if Google has a cash cow, then Microsoft has cattle.

Update: Google announces hardware and Software Partners

I have just read on el’ Reg that Google has announced who they are going to work with for the hardware to run their new OS. It appears that they have all the big names on the list including Acer, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba. Strangely Dell are missing from that List. They have also announced that Adobe will be a software partner.