Apple vs. Google, with Microsoft in there somewhere too maybe

(via The Tech Lunch)

In a recent Apple Town Hall company meeting, Steve Jobs reportedly lashed out at Google for its aggressive competitive behavior in the past year. An article today in Mashable quoted some of his alleged statements:

When it comes to Google, Jobs is mad at them for trying to “kill the iPhone.” “We did not enter the search business,” he said. “They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.” Finally, his most interesting quote is about Google’s “don’t be evil” mantra. According to Daring Fireball, Jobs simply said: “It’s a load of crap.”

For the past year, Google’s Android handsets have been the iPhone’s greatest threat, with the word “threat” being a matter of perspective. But a threat is still a threat, and while the rivalry is nothing new, it’s certainly growing. A recent article in BusinessWeek points to the rising tensions between the two giants:

Now the companies have entered a new, more adversarial phase. With Nexus One, Google, which had been content to power multiple phonemakers’ devices with Android, enters the hardware game, becoming a direct threat to the iPhone. With its Quattro purchase, Apple aims to create completely new kinds of mobile ads, say three sources familiar with Apple’s thinking. The goal isn’t so much to compete with Google in search as to make search on mobile phones obsolete. “Apple and Google both want more,” says Chris Cunningham, founder of the New York mobile advertising firm Appssavvy. “They’re gearing up for the ultimate fight.”

Here’s a great “big picture” breakdown from Nick Bilton of New York Times Bit Blog:

While Apple succeeds in creating nifty hardware, Google holds strong domination over the information segment. How strong? Apparently strong enough to bring the fat exec and Justin Long together, as word on the Segway states that Bing may oust Google as the default search engine on the iPad. Alexander Vaughn, a blogger for AppAdvice, commented on this news:

If BusinessWeek is right on this one, we might be witnessing soon the next stage of the “Apple vs Microsoft” to “Apple vs Google” paradigm shift. Indeed, according to people “familiar with the matter who asked not to be named” (classical), Apple would be in talks with Microsoft to replace Google by Bing as the iPhone’s default search engine. It’s rumored not to be exclusive and users would still have the possibility to select Google if it suits them more. On the other hand we all know that users tend to usually stick with what they get. It would make sense, in the mobile market at least, Apple’s real rival is Google and its Android, not really Microsoft. Furthermore Apple hasn’t been reluctant to collaborate with Microsoft in the past, think of the iPhone’s Exchange support. While I don’t think we should get concerned that our iPhone will get stripped of Youtube or Gmail any time soon, the Apple-Google battle is definitely heating up.

It appears Microsoft has become the old man on the side. This is especially true as Google just released a mock-up for their very own tablet. The heat is on.

The Realtime Web Just Keeps Gettin’ More “Real”

A recent TechCrunch article analyzed the actual increase in Twitter usage over 2009. While use on Twitter.com itself remained relatively flat, usage of third-party sites and applications utilizing the Twitter API had grown significantly:

For example, the rate at which bit.ly links are being clicked on is growing at a steep ramp, with more than 500 million clicks (or bit.ly “decodes”) per week. [John Borthwick, betaworks/bit.ly CEO] writes that “last week was the largest week ever for clicks on bit.ly links. 564m were clicked on in total. On the Jan 6th there were a record of 98m decodes.” On January 8, 2009, TweetDeck surpassed 4 million updates in a single day. And Twitterfeed now supports more than 800,000 feeds from more than 400,000 publishers.

Throughout human history, technology has made living more convenient. But it wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution that the influx of innovation permeated every facet of everyday life. This phenomenon is as relevant now as it was then, with Twitter-related technologies tracking and describing our very movements.

For example, the recent announcement of the Yelp.com iPhone upgrade allowing for location check-ins was widely discussed over the past few days. While tech bloggers discussed its direct threat to Foursquare, another popular location check-in application for the iPhone, one couldn’t help but wonder how the market became so saturated with just this one type of service (we still have Loopt, Gowalla for Android users, and already bade farewell to Google’s Dodgeball earlier last year).

It’s valuable market data that consumers are more than willing to freely provide. And this is just a small segment of the vast network of Twitter-related technologies available. Businesses (and friends) are now more able to track a number of our explicit preferences in realtime. Hopefully this proliferation of personal information means they’re listening, and more willing to provide relevant products and services.