Allow me to go on record here in a true WinPhan blurb. I am very anti-anything-Google that it makes my own head ache. I went as far as deleting every single bit of ‘Google’ from my life back in February. Even to the point of moving my hosted sites off of Weebly, because they used Google services, to a new hosting site that did not. I don’t even use Google for search anymore at home. So todays I|O conference really did not interest me in the slightest, but from the headlines I’ve seen around the web, I will offer my thoughts and how it compares to Microsofts movements!
How about we start with that Nexus 7 tablet!
I won’t deny the fact that the price for this thing seems ‘right’. But what about this device screams differentiating? Looking at images of the Nexus 7 I think of any other 7” Android tablet out there. Google had an opportunity here to do what Microsoft did with their Surface. Set a new bar. The surface looks unique and will be a design that other Microsoft partners now have to challenge themselves against. Some people say this was a bad move, but I think it was rather genius. Microsoft knows they are competing against Apple and Google, and had to make a move to set that new bar. Aside from releasing with the Jelly Bean OS and the Nexus branding, what sets this apart visually from, say, a 7″ Samsung Galaxy Tablet or even the Kindle Fire for that matter?
Second, what is up with these Google Glasses?! I for one used to wear REAL glasses and hated them. I hated contacts. It’s why I had Lasik 5 years ago. I didn’t want to have to wear anything to see anymore. To me it was worth the risks. Fast-forward to NOW and we see (no PUN intended) these technologies, I’m looking at you too 3D movement, coming out that require one to wear glasses to utilize. What real world applications do these glasses offer? How does someone who wears glasses take advantage of these technologies if they truly wanted a pair? They also make me think of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Game”. An episode where these ‘goofy looking glasses’ make it on to the ship in the form of a game that ends up being nothing more than mind control. I can certainly see Google trying to beam their beliefes in to the minds of eager folks who snatch these up!
Lastly, Jelly Bean and Project Butter. These names are giving me a stomach ache and putting me in a food coma! From what I’ve read though, it may have been more appropriate to call this an ‘ICS Refresh’ instead of placing a new totem on their lawn and making it seem like a major jump. The one feature that looks good to me is the offline voice typing. Being able to speak and type a message without a network connection would be a very good thing to have. It also appears that they have ‘revamped’ the notification system. Now apps will ‘post’ messages to the notification bar. While there still seems to be some debate over wether or not WP needs a notification ‘hub’ the JB implementation ultimately is no different that the live-tiles in WP displaying their message counts. It just took the concept another step further. I, for one, do think that MS needs to group toast messages within the message hub.
I love competition and think it’s healthy in the mobile world. We have three, sorry RIM, good OS’s out there now playing the ‘one-up’ game and attempting to improve upon the successful pieces of the other platforms and making it their own. While my opinion on Google will probably never change in this lifetime, I’m glad that they exist for the competition piece. It leads to innovation and the expectations of the other players to take what works, and make it better or implement it in a way no one thought of.