Bloody Mary Gives Up Its Flavor Secrets

2011 is the International Year of Chemistry. So scientists at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim raised a glass. (Or a beaker.) And they celebrated as only chemists can—by carefully analyzing its contents. [Neil Da Costa, Flavor chemistry of the "Bloody Mary" cocktail]

The drink they dissected was the Bloody Mary, perhaps the world’s most chemically complex cocktail. A mix of tomato juice and vodka, along with lemon or lime, horseradish, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauces, black pepper and celery salt, the Bloody Mary packs a punch. And it lights up nearly our entire range of taste receptors, giving us sweet, salty, sour and savory.

To find out the Bloody Mary’s secret, researchers shared one with a chromatograph, which identified the various compounds that contribute to the drink’s flavor and bouquet. The scientists turned up plenty of antioxidants, as well as a few bartending tips.

First, make it fresh. The acids in tomato juice can degrade the drink’s other ingredients. Also, make it cold—ice slows the degradation. Use the best tomato juice—the major source of flavor. But feel free to cheap out on the vodka. Its taste gets lost in the complex mix. In other words, chemists say to save the Grey Goose for other experiments.

"App Store" as Generic as "Grocery Store"

Microsoft fired back at Apple this week in the on-going dispute over the trademark of the coveted compound term, "App Store." The dueling legal briefs shows the depth of the age-old rivalry and also reveals a fascinating look into the hair-splitting world of trademark. Microsoft's latest argument is, essentially, that Apple cannot own "App Store" anymore than a large food retailer could lay claim to "Grocery Story," since its the very descriptor needed to discuss what a group is.

The legal retort [pdf] comes on the heels of Apple's public denunciation of Microsoft'shypocrisy, namely, that "App Store" is no more generic than "Windows" is for describing an operating system. As such, it was contradictory to claim that a descriptive term couldn't be trademarked by its competitor.

We reached out to to Microsoft to rebut this seemingly devastating argument by Apple. In an e-mail, a Microsoft representative wrote:

"Although there is overwhelming evidence that the term “Windows” is not a generic term to describe operating systems, the term “app store” is widely used in the technology industry today as a generic term for stores that offer apps and not to identify a single company’s application marketplace."

In other words, 'operating system' isn't synonymous with 'Windows'; no one with a Mac would say "My laptop is running slow, I need a new a Windows."

However, Microsoft argues, 'app store' is an exceedingly common descriptor for an online database of applications. In fact, to even conceive of similar competitor databases, one has to search for the term "app store."

"What do people call Apple’s and its competitors’ stores as a group, or genus?" the brief asks. "To find that, you need to look where people talk about multiple stores, not just Apple’s. And when you look there, you find them called app stores.' "

Thus, Apple has trademarked the very descriptor of the concept. "We buy shoes at a “shoe store,” toys at a “toy store,” groceries at a “grocery store,” computers at a “computer store,” and so on."

Still, Apple maintains that plenty of competitors have found workable, intuitive alternative names without much sweat: Android Marketplace, RIM's App World, and the Palm App Catalog. Ripping away Apple's own trademark would punish success. Indeed, a previous court worried that disputes against a company that popularizes a product is dangerous because it "penalizes the trademark’s owner for his success in making the trademark a household name and forces him to scramble to find a new trademark."

Apple is already entrenched with the term: they own the Facebook page, the Wikipedia entry, and have displayed it countless advertisements that can't be retroactively scrubbed. Thus, Apple would take a substantial hit for something that competitors have already found a workable alternative for.

To this, Microsoft has a clever, if only somewhat convincing retort: fear of Apple's legal attack dogs forced competitors to find another name. Apple's market dominance doesn't give it the right to own the concept.

Unfortunately, to arbitrate the dispute, legal precedent isn't much help: courts have upheld brand names like Honey Baked Ham, yet rejected Screenwipe. Thus, the extended legal dispute may come down to the subjective perception of just how essential "App Store" is to the market.

Are Apple's Competitors Trolling the iPad?

With oddly simultaneous timing, a number of Apple's competitors have made bold statements alleging the iPad is poor in certain ways, not suited for particular uses, or even doomed to fail. You could be forgiven for thinking they're running interference because of fear. We marshall the evidence here.

Dell

Speaking to CIO Australia Dell's global marketing head (for large companies and public organizations) Andy Lark revealed his thoughts about the iPad. He "couldn't be happier" Apple's forged a whole new market, and has "done a really nice job" with a "great product." But Lark thinks Apple has a huge challenge ahead and "Android is outpacing them" because ultimately "open, capable and affordable will win, not closed, high price and proprietary."

Then Lark highlighted what he thinks is Apple's pricing and enterprise problem. "Apple is great if you've got a lot of money and live on an island. It's not so great if you have to exist in a diverse, open, connected enterprise; simple things become quite complex" he suggests, implying that iPads won't work in a business environment. Then comes the cost: "An iPad with a keyboard, a mouse and a case" will reach "$1,500 to $1,600; that's double of what you're paying," meaning it's too expensive for a business.

But that's just wrong. Why would you need a mouse with an iPad--hasn't Lark ever used one to realize its entire OS is touch-based? Gadget owners will also point out that no matter what device you buy, be it a Dell or an Apple, you'll need a case. Plus, the iPad case is just $40 and the plug-in keyboard unit is just $70--add in a $500 Wi-Fi iPad and you get to $610 or around $1,000 less than Lark suggests. 

HP

Speaking in an interview on Monday, HP's SVP of the Americas Solution Partners Organization Stephen DeWitt dissed Apple's enterprise business future: Its "relationship with partners is transactional, completely. Apple doesn't have an inclusive philosophy of partner capabilities and that's just absurd." DeWitt thinks HP's upcoming webOS efforts will "bring new partners to us because we are getting into the application space, which involves muscles that we haven't exercised in some time"--implying the firm will be delivering an enterprise support ecosystem that'll appeal to business more than Apple's efforts do.

DeWitt seems to be ignoring some recent efforts by Apple to address its business clients with its Joint Venture business Genius solution--a system that is aimed specifically at addressing technological issues inside enterprise customers, and even includes visits from JV Genius's to business addresses.

Microsoft

Ten years ago Bill Gates championed a new format of laptop PC he dubbed a tablet, driven by an adjusted version of Windows that relied on a stylus for touchscreen entry and which could be ideal for educational or business uses. The devices, a slight variation on standard Windows-based laptops, did sell but never really transformed the market. That all changed when the iPad arrived, spurring an entire new market and selling by the millions.

Now a Microsoft exec, the global chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie, has suggested the tablet PC game that Apple's inspired may be short-lived. "Mobile is something that you want to use while you're moving, and portable is something that you move and then use" he notes, remarking that "these [two uses] are going to bump into one another a little bit and so today you can see tablets and pads and other things that are starting to live in the space in between. Personally I don't know whether that space will be a persistent one or not." 

Mundie's theory is that the technology of smartphones could rapidly advance to make tablets irrelevant--despite MS's own theories about the future of mobile computing. Does this explain why MS seems to have been pretty slow in embracing the current touchscreen tablet genre with a touch-friendly makeover for Windows. 

Apple rolling ahead

Independent to all this seeming anti-Apple press, which conspiracy theorists may consider to have curiously coordinated timing, Apple's device just rolls on and analysts have estimated the firm has sold between 5 and 8.8 million units in the first quarter of 2011 alone. Considering that the international roll-out of the iPad 2 only began last week, these figures could easily be topped in the second quarter (assuming Apple's supply chain can cope). Some analysts have even increased their estimates for Apple's EPS figure--up a dollarto $23.25 for 2011.

Check This Out: Google's Very Own "Like" Button

You click on stuff that your friends like. It's a simple enough fact, but it's tremendously important. It's the insight behind the Facebook "like" button, wherein you can share with your social network what links interest you. And it's the insight behind a new feature launched by Google today, something it's calling +1.

In a blog post today, Google explained how it was building on its recent decision to include information in your searches about whether your friends liked a given link (shared it on Twitter, for example). With +1, which Google's Rob Spiro calls "the digital shorthand for 'this is pretty cool,'" anyone with a Google account can now opt in to publicly endorsing websites they like.

Google introduced the new feature with a video. The web is a big place, it explains, and we could all use some friendly pointers to help us navigate it.

If you want to get on board with plus-one'ing things ASAP, go to Google Experimental Labs, here. Be aware that anything you click is public--shared with everyone in your social circle, as determined by Google (essentially, for now, your Google Contacts--people you chat and email with--though Google has suggested it may add Twitter contacts and others soon).

+1's aren't broadcast across Twitter or Facebook, it seems--rather, they'll pop up when your friends conduct Google searches. They'll also appear next to ads, and soon, on other Google-affiliated pages. Says Google: "Initially, +1’s will appear alongside search results and ads, but in the weeks ahead they’ll appear in many more places (including other Google products and sites across the web)."

Bing Director Calls Google Copying Accusations "Crap," Appeals to Vatican Assassins

It was branded the Great Search Engine War of 2011, when Google launched an all-out attack on Microsoft's Bing, accusing its arch-nemesis of copying search results. After several months, however, it's unclear what impact the war has had on Microsoft. Has Bing been planning a response?

"Well, we have hired a team of Vatican assassins," jokes Stefan Weitz, director of Bing's search engine. "We had Charlie Sheen call his buddies."

For Weitz, who has witnessed the war first-hand, Google's accusations amounted to nothing more than a PR move, which he found both impressive and disappointing. "It was crap," Weitz says. "I'll give them ten points for PR. That being said, I was disappointed with [lead Google search engineers] Amit [Singhal] and Matt [Cutts]--both of whom I know very well--and how intellectually dishonest it was."

In particular, Weitz took issue with how Google handled its sting operation. Google had suspected Microsoft was collecting data from Google usage on Internet Explorer, and using that data to power Bing results. In order to test this theory, Google set up about 100 "synthetic" searches--fake queries that would be very unlikely to return any results, including random letter-strings such as "hiybbprqag" and "mbzrxpgjys." After manually planting irrelevant results for the synthetic searches, a team of Googlers began searching for the odd terms on Google via Internet Explorer to see whether the results might eventually show up on Bing as well.

Out of 100 tests, Google managed to produce similar results on Bing for about 7 to 9 of its synthetic searches.

"Their test was crap," Weitz says. "Only seven fired out of 100 tests? It's absolutely nuts. In any other research--research which Amit and Matt both came from--you would discard such results as erroneous. They know better."

Since the scandal broke several months ago, Bing-powered searches have ironically increased by 4%--any press is good press, right?--and now account for roughly 28% of the U.S. market. Google, on the other hand, has seen searches decline 2% since January, according to Experian Hitwise, although it still remains by far the dominant player with a 66% market share.

"I yelled at Matt when I saw him at SXSW, as we always do after a few beers, but it was one of those things where it was like, guys, seriously? I mean, good for your PR, bravo," Weitz says, chuckling and clapping. "But don't get too excited about this."

Weitz (pictured, right) understands the beauty of Google's accusations: incredibly easy to convey on the surface, while difficult to explain in detail. The initial news made for eye-grabbing headlines (Bing is copying Google's search results!); the longer explanation--involving clickstream data, Internet Explorer, the Bing toolbar--was less seductive and lost in translation.

"The average consumer probably still thinks Bing copies," Weitz says. "When it first happened, my mom called me, and she was very upset with me. She was like, 'I just heard from your father that you are copying Google. I want you to know that I do not approve!' I'm like, 'Mom, I'm not copying Google!'"

Weitz calls Google's actions a "great deflection move on their part" to distract from growing criticism that the company's results are "getting worse and worse." However, Weitz says he understands the game Google is trying to play.

"We took our lumps with this one--we probably should've handled it better than we did. But I know how this goes," he says, referencing Microsoft's dominant position with Windows and Internet Explorer. "When you're the biggest target, you get the most crap."

Is Apple Obsession Hurting Nokia Future???

Dissatisfied that in a provisional ruling a U.S. judge has sided with Apple in a patent case, Nokia has just filed a whole new complaint against Steve Jobs and company. In total, it's now saying Apple abuses 46 Nokia patents. Could this relentless pursuit actually be bad for Nokia?


Nokia's new press release starts with a complaint: "Nokia does not agree with the ITC's initial determination that there was no violation" of its patent rights, and "is waiting to see the full details of the ruling before deciding on the next steps in that case"--a reference to Friday's legal decision that upheld Apple's side of the complaint in just a handful of the patent cases Nokia has brought.
"Our latest ITC filing means we now have 46 Nokia patents in suit against Apple, many filed more than 10 years before Apple made its first iPhone," says Paul Melin, VP of Intellectual Property at Nokia, the release. Then the firm's press release gets bullish: "Nokia is a leading innovator in technologies needed to build great mobile products and Apple must stop building its products using Nokia's proprietary innovation."


Let's look at these claims, including this last one. To do so, we need to work out exactly what technology Nokia's saying Apple has "stolen."
The latest filing mentions "areas of multi-tasking operating systems, data synchronization, positioning, call quality and the use of Bluetooth accessories." In May 2010, a previous complaint was related to "technologies for enhanced speech and data transmission, using positioning data in applications and innovations in antenna configurations that improve performance and save space, allowing smaller and more compact devices."


In December 2009, Nokia complained Apple was violating seven patents that cover "key features ... in the area of user interface, as well as camera, antenna and power management technologies." In October 2009, a separate complaint alleges Apple's products (nearly all of them) violate Nokia patents for "technologies fundamental to making devices which are compatible with one or more of the GSM, UMTS (3G WCDMA) and wireless LAN standards" including "wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption."


These are just some of the patents concerned, but they serve as an excellent example. Nokia says the IP itself could variously let it build a "better user experience, lower manufacturing costs, smaller size and longer battery life for Nokia products," and "allow improved product performance and design."
If you add up the various technologies Apple is alleged to be in IP violation for, they relate to how the iPhone connects to cell phone networks and wireless Net over Wi-Fi, multitasks in its operating system, syncs data to a connected PC, locates itself using A-GPS, transmits and receives high-quality voice calls, takes photos, keeps user data safe, connects to third-party Bluetooth devices, and manages its power usage to ensure longer battery life. Whew: You get the point. Strip these systems from an iPhone and you'd essentially have a dumb, low power, disconnected music player that could also run apps--ones that didn't use location data.


Looking at this summary another way, Nokia's basically saying it invented the iPhone. One problem though, and this is a key point, it didn't.
Companies as big as Nokia, no matter what tech sector they work in, all build up extensive patent portfolios--Apple included. The secret behind Apple's success with the iPhone (and other devices that Nokia says violate its IP) is that they actioned their patent filings and innovated, and integrated them into a genuinely new device. So new, in fact, it basically overturned the smartphone paradigm that Nokia had been building since its Communicator device years ago, leading to a revolution in touchscreen phone design that was so surprising to Nokia that it took the Finnish firm two years to catch up.


So what's the firm doing instead of making its own iPhone? It seems to be trying to block a competitor that has outsmarted it, while it offers no successful product in the particular marketspace in question. The company's goal is clear--it wants cash, lots of lovely hard cash, in compensation.
But what would it do with this potential windfall? In its new press release Nokia mentions it's spent €43 billion in R&D over 20 years. Would another billion euros in fines obtained from Apple make any difference to company's position? Would it make Americans buy future Nokia smartphones by the million? Or could its patent suits actually hurt Nokia's public image?
At the very least, it's easy to imagine that the company's Ahab-worthy pursuit is distracting its executive team from the crucial task of helping to produce a decent smartphone.
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Amazon's Cloud Drive faces music industry backlash

While ostensibly beating Apple and Google to market with its music locker service, Amazon's new Cloud Drive online music streaming service was launched before licenses from music owners were in place, threatening a new legal battle.

According to a report by Reuters, Sony Music spokeswoman Liz Young said her company "was upset by Amazon's decision to launch the service without new licenses for music streaming."

"We hope that they'll reach a new license deal, but we're keeping all of our legal options open," Young said.

Sold before the deal was struck

The report cited a source "close to the discussions" between Amazon and the music labels as saying that "music labels were alerted of the plans last week," and that Amazon only addressed "the issue of negotiating licenses" after the fact.

Amazon's move was described as "somewhat stunning," leaving some media industry members to view the service as illegal.

"I've never seen a company of their size make an announcement, launch a service and simultaneously say they're trying to get licenses," the source said, who was described as a music executive requesting anonymity.

Amazon appears to have jumped the gun in a bid to get ahead of Apple. While Amazon entered the music download market in late 2007, offering both slightly lower prices on MP3s and bargaining with the labels to offer DRM-free music before Apple, its music service still hasn't significantly encroached upon Apple's dominant position with iTunes.

Online storage held up by music negotiations

Amazon's Cloud Drive provides users with 5GB of free storage (or 20GB for $20 annually) that can be used to upload music for playback via an Android app or through Amazon's Cloud Play website, which organizes music into playlists.

Since last July, Apple's iDisk feature of MobileMe has similarly enabled users to upload their music (and other files) to the cloud for streaming playback (even in the background) from mobile devices via Apple's free iOS iDisk app, but the company doesn't promote the feature due to ongoing negotiations with the labels.

iDisk is also not depicted as a music cloud service, and does not provide any special display of metadata; music files simply play in place from the online storage just as they would from any web server. Music files can also, like other iDisk documents, be shared with other users.

Music labels have long insisted on special "streaming licensing" for users that want to copy their own music to the cloud for their own mobile playback, something that has held up efforts by Apple, Google, and others to deliver legally legitimate cloud music services.
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from appleinsider.com

Online Shopping Just Got Easier With the Launch of Google's Commerce Search 3.0

Google's just improved its Google Commerce Search powers, giving online retailers a richer interface to offer online consumers trying find the right goods.

Google says it's "building on the capabilities that have proved useful to" its retail partners, with a new system that will "help create an even more interactive and engaging experience for shoppers and retailers." Google even toots its own horn a little, noting that when sites like BabyAge incorporated Commerce Search it resulted in a 64% increase in site searches--an indicator that customers are spending more time digging through the site, and have a better chance of actually buying products rather than bailing.

Google sees its Commerce offering as a powerful tool for online retailers, even an evolution of the way the entire shopping experience happens. Its new features include a variation of Google Instant, "search as you type" which provides "instant gratification to shoppers" because as they search for a particular product then different suggestions pop up underneath the search box. There's also a new local product availability facility, which means online retailers could inform digital shoppers that a nearby store has the product they're searching for. "Enhanced Merchandising" gives retailers the ability to pop up additional info alongside search queries--perhaps tempting consumers toward a particular product the merchant wishes to promote. Finally, there's an experimental recommendations engine which tells shoppers "what others viewed and ultimately bought."

It's clever stuff, and could easily boost sales for Google clients (and possibly deliver detailed data to Google to help it profile which type of consumer is habitually searching for and buying which products). We also sense that this could be the groundwork for a rich NFC-enabled shopping experience somwhere down the line. If shoppers in real stores had access to this kind of rich data, accessed via Google's engine through local NFC tags instead of online search parameters, then they'd also benefit from the same sort of assisted shopping experience.

Accent Trumps Appearance

The brain pays more attention to language when we gauge someone's background.


Accent matters more than looks when it comes to identifying a person’s ethnicity, according to a study published in the November Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Researchers at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena in Germany asked students to identify Italian- and German-looking men who spoke German with or without an Italian accent. The students were more likely to confuse two people who spoke with the same accent than two who looked liked they belonged to the same ethnic group, meaning accent was more of a distinguishing feature than appearance. The authors say their results emphasize the importance of language in how we judge those whom we meet.
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get rest of article on scientificamerican.com

Question of the Week: Why "Color"?

There's a simple but nagging question, and a simple answer, that went up at Quora over the weekend. Of the social photo app making a splash--nay, an explosion--over the past week, someone asks, "Why is Color named 'Color'?"


We get our answer straight from the horse's mouth (the post is tagged "Questions Where the CEO/Founder Answers Personally"). Writes Color CEO Bill Nguyen:


"A tribute to Apple's color logo from the Apple II. This computer changed my life when I was seven (also a reference to another company name I've used.)


My dad bought one from ComputerCraft run by Billy Ladin in Houston. He was one of the first computer resellers back in 1977. In an odd twist, I meet him in an elevator 15 years later and worked for him. He introduced me to the Web.


Working at Apple was a dream. Color's name is a tribute to Apple."


Another way, then, that Nguyen was influenced by Steve Jobs.
The answer is neat, but is it completely satisfying? We can see how the logo for Color might seem to be a more elaborate version of the Apple II's, and the logo itself is colorful. But if Nguyen wanted his app's name to echo Apple's, maybe he could have called his startup Granny Smith or Golden Delicious.

The Amazon Kindle's New, Old Threat: Barnes & Noble's Nook Is Coming on Strong

Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader is in the headlines for a number of reasons at the moment, and it's prompting a big question: With no competing device from Amazon, can the Nook steal the Kindle's throne?

The original Nook was the first e-reader to challenge the Amazon Kindle with a cleverer Android-powered device that one-upped the Kindle with a second color screen. Then B&Nreinvented the Nook into the Nook Color, an all-color touchscreen device that garnered a serious amount of attention because of its high promise, interesting design, and low price for a large Android tablet. Now this device is back in the news.

The Home Shopping Network has been teasing the Nook Color for a while now, but just recently revealed some inside information on a big update to the Nook due in April. Specifically HSN has been mentioning an OS upgrade that will add the ability to play Adobe Flash content in web pages (for video streaming and gaming powers), and the arrival of the new dedicated App Store--an event B&N has independently confirmed. There's also a new email app that runs outside the browser environment. According to B&N, the Nook App store seems to be a curated version of an Android App store, (superficially similar to the one Amazon's developed), that will include "exciting new apps" like Angry Birds and "Drawing Pad." The Flash movie abilities may precede Motorola's plans to add Flash to the much more expensive Xoom tablet.

Meanwhile, DigiTimes is reporting that far-East production partners have delivered three million Nook Color units to B&N already. Sales are estimated at 600,000 to 700,000 for the first months of 2011, following the million-unit fourth quarter of 2010, and Digitimes estimates that the Nook's $250 price point has let it capture "over 50% of the iPad-like market" in North America. We're assuming this figure includes the Kindle and all the competing Android tablets, no matter what their size, but that still seems like a bold assertion.

The question is: If Barnes & Noble really is ordering Nooks by the millions, is planning a big headline-grabbing update in a few weeks, and is leveraging the price of its Nook Color as one of the most affordable large-screen Android tablets that costs half the iPad's price... can the Nook actually corner the e-reader market?

The aging Kindle, after all, is beset by several technological weakpoints including its awful browser and slow-speed grayscale screen. Amazon is making moves to capture income from the Android market by having its own very Apple-like third party Android Appstore, but it hasn't got an Android device on sale of its own. The Kindle may appear to some consumers to look a little dull compared to the huge number of color touchscreen tablets that're coming on sale, despite it's lauded e-ink display (and if you doubt the consumer is that shallow, then remember phenomena like the megapixel wars in digital cameras and cellphones--where a shinier more-capable device garners more attention). And since Amazon expects to have sold around 8 million Kindles (of all types) in 2010, and B&N only launched the Nook Color in late October 2010, it looks like the Nook is definitely moving in on Amazon's turf.

Infographics: The great circle debate

If you're ever at a loss for conversation amid a group of information-graphics professionals, bring up the topic of pie charts or proportional circles. Then stand back and watch the sparks fly. At the World Infographics Summit in Pamplona, Spain, this past week, the love/hate relationship with circular data presentations was a common theme.

Purists, such as Stephen Few (founder and principal, Perceptual Edge) and John Grimwade (graphics director, Conde Nast Traveler) are wary of the functionality of circle-based charts. Indeed, the human brain is more adept at comparing lengths than areas. For example, the largest wedge in this pie chart is clearly identifiable (figure 1). But what is the second largest category? And the third? A bar chart--even without a background grid--is easier to read.



Others, such as Alberto Cairo (director for infographics and multimedia at Época-Editora Globo), worry that bar and line charts have become too familiar, and risk being overlooked or dismissed too quickly by the reader. These standard visualization formats are indisputably elegant solutions, but information-graphics professionals should not rest on their haunches and rely too heavily on a form established in the late 1700s. Instead, we should push the boundaries and explore new ways of presenting the data in an effort to better engage the reader. Perhaps it was in this spirit that the proportional circle chart was born.

Back in the July 2010 issue of Scientific American, proportional circles were used to provide prospective for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (figure 2).  But readers need to take a leap of faith when faced with these sorts of charts. Is the data properly represented in terms of relative areas of the circles? Or was the data used to inform the relative diameters of the circles? This representation would result in a dramatically different and misleading chart.



Part of the appeal in using proportional circle charts lies in their flexibility. The designer is released from using axis lines, and is given the freedom to use data points as design elements on the page. Although often visually pleasing, it may do a disservice to the data. Take this example (figure 3). The two central circles are the same size, but our perception is distorted by the surrounding elements. Chart makers can control exact measurements. But what about perceived measurements?



Yet readers of Scientific American magazine may be better served by more engaging and dynamic charts. The trick lies in approaching every chart thoughtfully, with the goal of allowing the data's story to outshine its container.
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Apple's Weekend in Court

Apple's legal team had a roller coaster of a weekend, winning against Nokia's attempt to block imports late last Friday, but could potentially lose to Kodak in an estimated $1 billion case. Nokia's rejected suit alleged patent infringement against a number of essential iPhone features, including the use of the familiar "wiping" navigation gesture. Mere hours ealier, the same court, the International Trade Commission, revived a previously rejected suit by Kodak, who is seeking massive royalties on patent related to low-resolution previews of still images. The upshot is that Apple is maintaining its King of the Hill status at 2-0 against its eager opponents, but it may drop to an even 1-1, if Kodak wins a reversal.

The ITC is a strategic arbitrator in these cases, for both the expeditious European court system and the ITC's ability to block imports of the offending technology (as it has done against Sony's Playstation). “In the United States, most intellectual property claims never reach court and are settled in advance,” German intellectural property lawyer, Peter Chrocziel, tells the New York Times. “But in Europe, it is the opposite.”

The Nokia-Apple ping-pong battle began in October of 2009, when Nokia claimed royalties related to essential iPhone features, such as 3G connectivity. As is typical in patent cases,Apple counter-sued, reaching into its grab-bag patent portfolio for any overlapping technology currently used on Nokia devices. On Friday, Judge James Gildea made an initial determination that Apple had not violated five of the patents (his decision can be read here[pdf]). Both Apple and Nokia will await a decision by the full commission around August 1st.

Just a bit earlier, the same ITC court agreed to review Kodak's suit against Apple and RIM. Kodak claims intellectual property ownership over the low-resolution image preview that's displayed while a camera phone is aimed at the capture target. Most users will know this as the constantly refreshing, blurry images that are shown on the screen as they steady the camera on what they want to capture. The resulting image, stored on the harddrive of the phone, is of a much higher quality. This process, of low-resolution preview/high-resolution capture is what Kodak claims it invented, something the previous judge struck down as an"obvious" invention (pdf)

Both cases are ongoing and portend potentially enormous sums in compensatory royalties

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Nokia Leads Ride Pimping Initiative With Apps, Smartphones, NFC, Wireless Charging

Nokia and a long list of car and consumer electronics firms just agreed to form the Car Connectivity Consortium--a global effort to harmonize the electronic magic that will power your future car, and which would fill K.I.T.T. with envy. [Ed: And Kit]

According to the press release, the newly minted Car Connectivity Consortium is an "open alliance focusing on cross industry contribution" that will release its first specification "within the next few months" with some of the "first commercial products" due later this year. But what exactly is it they're aiming at? It's exactly the kind of car-to-portable electronics standard that's needed to give us the same kind of super-clever car entertainment, navigation and information systems that we dream of from watching too much sci-fi.

Specifically it's all about connecting "high-performing mobile devices to vehicle-based systems" so that there's "new opportunities for business" and a "world of innovative applications for consumers."

Essentially, Nokia knows that future cars--be they EV editions, or next-gen conventional vehicles--will be rammed full of smart displays, in-car computer and wireless broadband powers, and that consumers would like their pocket-sized computers (smartphones, in other words) to interact with them all. Hence the Consortium is all about tightly connecting "in-car systems such as digital displays, steering wheel buttons, rotary knobs and car audio systems." In particular, there's a system dubbed Terminal Mode based upon established systems like IP, USB and Bluetooth, that could let consumers control their mobile devices via in-car systems for the purposes of convenience and safety.

Along with Nokia, Daimler, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, Volkswagen, Alpine, Panasonic, LG, and Samsung are involved--but it's an open consortium, so "further leading industry players will join over the coming weeks." It's an open question whether Apple and Google(two huge players in this market who're starkly missing from the initial list) will be among the latecomers.

Best of all among the plans, the Consortium hints that wireless charging for mobile devices is on the cards, and NFC too--which could have a host of uses from electronic "keys," to individual ID for automated seat-and-mirror adjustments, to automated data sharing between navigation apps in smartphones and in-car systems. BMW recently revealed its NFC car-key plans, which hints at some of the functionality the CCC may end up designing, and the exciting possibilities that NFC offers could well tempt Apple and Google to play along with their competitors. And to imagine the sort of super-smart in-car systems that may well result, take a glance at the recent news about the Tesla S EV which, it's just been revealed, will support third party app integration into its huge 17-inch multitouch system.

AT&T and T-Mobile: All About the iPhone 4G in 2012

AT&T's definitive agreement, for just shy of $40 billion in cash and stocks, has the entire tech world talking. There's speculation about what the alliance may achieve--and one big bonus may be better cellphone coverage for users in the key New York and San Francisco areas, since the linked cellphone network will contain more towers per square mile than before. Very soon after the news arrived, there was hot speculation that the deal was largely prompted by Apple's iPhone 4, and specifically by AT&T's desire to boost its network to compete with the new Verizon iPhone 4. This of course would enable many millions more U.S. consumers (folks tied to T-Mobile, or who prefer that network) to buy Apple's wonderphone. Those hopes were quickly quashed when T-Mobile said it will remain independent, albeit under AT&T's stewardship, for around a year, and it won't offer the iPhone to its customers in that time.


But here's the thing: The joining of AT&T and T-Mobile pairs the U.S.'s second and fourth biggest cell phone networks, creating a new monster company that would be the biggest by far--beating Verizon's approximately 300 million users by a large margin. And while AT&T and Verizon are busy pushing forward on its 4G long term evolution upgrade to bring about the next generation of mobile data phones, T-Mobile actually has the largest existing 4G infrastructure in the U.S. By buying into T-Mobile, AT&T is setting itself up to take the lead in the race to 4G coverage.


Which suggests that, yes, this acquisition all about the iPhone 4G.
Okay, maybe not all, exactly--the deal will cover a thousand different business arguments, and the resulting cell phone company would serve millions of users who couldn't care less about Apple's product. But the original iPhone revolutionized the entire smartphone business, and was an AT&T exclusive resulting in countless billions of dollars of income for the network. The initial phone wasn't a 3G edition, but AT&T was busy implementing its 3G infrastructure, and Apple knew the GSM standard the company was using was way more popular around the globe than Verizon's CDMA protocols. That made AT&T more attractive, from an economies-of-scale in manufacturing point of view, than the much bigger Verizon customer base.


Most thinkers are suggesting Apple's iPhone 5 for 2011 won't adopt 4G technology because, much as with the original iPhone, the network infrastructure just isn't in place yet. Instead the phone will be an evolution of the iPhone 4, with better features and one or two bonus "extras" (possibly including NFC) to keep the device at the cutting edge. But the iPhone 6 for 2012 may be a different affair. If Apple follows its habits, it'll be another design revolution, and it may well embrace 4G technology, which will be far more ubiquitous by then--and Apple will need to make its move precisely at this point, before Google's Android OS swallows up too much of the early 4G market (there're already rumors about the Nexus S 4G).


So, can we picture AT&T's executive team having a few quiet phone calls with Apple's management team right about now? They'd be able to say things like: "Next year we'll be the biggest network in the U.S., and we'll have a very mature 4G system in place. So...how about talking to us about a new exclusivity arrangement, eh?"
Think of it as a gold rush for the 21st Century: AT&T already knows the iPhone's gold status, and it can see the next-gen 4G one being even more valuable, what with consumers continuing to throng to Apple and increasingly using smartphones. The enhanced mobile Net experience on 4G would seem an ideal fit for the iPhone technology--it's exactly the kind of breakthrough change in a market that Apple would love to embrace, and PR the heck out of its innovative uses of 4G data.
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7 ways Larry Page Defining Googles Future

The Boy King: Larry Page served as CEO during Google's startup days. How new CEO Larry Page will lead the company he co-founded into the future.



It's not Helen of Troy or the assassination of an archduke, but this spelling-bee-worthy 10-cent word also launched a war, the Great Search Engine War of 2011, between Google and Microsoft. Over the past few years, one of Google's primary technical goals has been to improve its search engine for misspellings of unusual queries. It's relatively easy for Google to figure out that you mean "Obama" when you type "Onama." But what about something that people rarely search for -- and that they rarely spell correctly when they do? For a search scientist, that's the beautiful challenge of tarsorrhaphy, a gruesome-sounding surgical procedure.
When Google's search team figured out how to offer the results it would return for tarsorrhaphy after a user typed in "tarsoraphy," it was a quiet-but-important upgrade for the company's most important, and most-taken-for-granted, product. Best of all, it was something that Microsoft's competing and increasingly lauded search engine, Bing, couldn't do.
"But then we noticed something very puzzling," says Amit Singhal, the jovial head of Google's search-ranking team. Just a few weeks later, Bing seemingly had the same breakthrough with the same word:
It offered the identical top result as Google for "tarsoraphy." Over the following months, Singhal's team saw a pattern. "We'd log an improvement," he says when we meet in a pastel-colored conference room on the second story of Building 43, central command of the Googleplex, "and a few weeks later, our best result would start showing up on Bing."
Singhal authorized what's now known, in the blogosphere at least, as the "Bing sting," an algorithmic bit of cloak and dagger. Google engineers manually inserted meaningless results for about 100 nonsensical queries (things like "hiybbprqag" and "indoswiftjobinproduction") into their own search results. Then the engineers tested those terms in the search tool bar in Microsoft's search engine. A few weeks later, some of Google's fake search results began to show up on Bing. "I went from surprised to floored to infuriated," Singhal says, growing visibly angry in the retelling. As he viewed it, Microsoft had essentially stolen Google's best efforts. "This was unethical."
Devilishly, Singhal and his team set a trap, giving the scoop to blogger and search-engine guru Danny Sullivan to run on the day of a panel discussion featuring Bing and Google. It became the biggest news in tech, fanned by Microsoft's defense that Google's links are only one "signal" among many web patterns that it considers for its results. The kerfuffle just happened to drown out chatter (albeit briefly) about Google's own struggles to weed out spammers.
The event was a PR masterstroke from a company that's typically muted in criticizing rivals and responding to criticism. Coincidentally, it came less than two weeks after the company announced that cofounder Larry Page would become CEO on April 4th. Although Singhal insists that the sting was the search team's idea (he will admit that Page knew about it), the high-profile dig seems to exhibit all the hallmarks of the new CEO's approach to business. It was a creative solution to a sticky problem, it was rooted in data, it was ambitious -- and it was prankish to boot.
The company line on Page's ascension is that it does not mark any effort to "fix something" at Google. After all, the company reported stellar earnings the day it announced that Page would replace Eric Schmidt. It generated more than $29 billion in revenue in 2010 and 24% annual growth. Page has been part of what has been an unusual but effective ruling troika with Schmidt and fellow cofounder, Sergey Brin.
And yet Page is becoming CEO at a crucial inflection point in Google's history. The company is beset by rivals everywhere -- Apple and Facebook, both of which are closing off chunks of Internet activity beyond Google's reach; Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and others that compete fiercely against it in multiple markets; and even the U.S., the EU, and other governments that want to curtail Google's ambition. Lately, Google has had more and more public whiffs (see Google Wave, Google Buzz, Google TV).
It's true that Page is not stepping into a dire situation as Steve Jobs did at Apple in 1997. Page doesn't need to be a turnaround artist. Yet he has to do something potentially harder: make changes to a winning formula in the face of intense scrutiny, when momentum appears to be against him. To borrow a sports aphorism, winning your first championship is easy compared with trying to repeat.
To outsiders, Page might seem an odd choice to be CEO. He's personally reserved, unabashedly geeky, and said to be introverted. We won't be seeing him keynoting A-list conferences with grand vision statements or sitting down for intimate conversations with the press (Google declined to make him available for this article). But after talking to high-level Google executives who work closely with Page, as well as ex-Googlers and other outside observers, a picture begins to emerge of how the search company will change under him. Here's our seven-part guide to the Google of today -- and tomorrow.

1 A Little Top-Down Leadership Goes a Long Way
Every few months, an unmarked delivery truck rolls onto the Google campus and pulls up to Building 44, home to the team behind the Android mobile operating system. A couple dozen giddy engineers gather on the lawn to greet the van. As its cargo door rolls up, they use their company-provided Nexus One smartphones to photograph Android's next good-luck charm: an enormous plastic sculpture of a dessert. The first such creation, an SUV -- size frosted cupcake, was installed outside Building 44 in the spring of 2009 to celebrate the release of Android 1.5 (code name: "Cupcake"). Since then, the cupcake has been joined by a doughnut, an éclair, a bowl of frozen yogurt, and a 10-foot-tall gingerbread man. By the time you read this, a massive honeycomb may have joined the sweets brigade, each confection marking, in alphabetical order, a major milestone in Google's mobile-computing business.
One could chalk up the sweet-tooth sculptures as quintessentially Googley -- huge, quirky, and indulgent of employees' whims. Yet the fun-loving facade masks a quiet, surprising transformation within the company. For much of its early life, Google reveled in its bottom-up culture. The governing philosophy was "Let's hire lots of really smart people and let them do whatever they want," says Brian Kennish, a Google engineer from 2003 to late 2010. Employees -- especially engineers -- were given unparalleled leeway in deciding what they wanted to work on and encouraged to use 20% of their time to come up with new ideas.
The archetypal product of this era was Gmail, which was born when engineer Paul Buchheit hacked it up in a single day in the summer of 2001. He showed the prototype to his colleagues, and when they expressed interest, Buchheit pulled other promising engineers onto his team. This kind of thing happened time and again at Google; among other products conceived deep within the company's ranks were Google News, search suggestions, and AdSense, the contextual advertising system that accounted for nearly $9 billion in revenue in 2010.
Kennish, echoing several other former Googlers, adds, "This system worked really well until the company reached about 10,000 workers. After that, things started to break down." (Google now has 24,000 employees and plans to hire another 6,000 in 2011.)
Android represents a new order, one that Page, who has long played a role in product strategy, will accelerate. "We don't believe in 'Let a thousand flowers bloom,' planting seeds randomly all over and harvesting whatever pops up," says Alan Eustace, Google's head of engineering, in what can only be called a repudiation of the still widely held belief about how Google operates.
Page and Brin pushed Google into mobile, buying Android when the project was an eight-person startup in 2005. (Schmidt later joked that they didn't tell him about it until after the deal.) At the time, Google's mobile strategy was a hodgepodge effort to install its apps on lots of different mobile phones. Page realized that game would never scale. Eustace says it would have required "5,000 people, each one trying to port apps to all the different phones." For Google to truly benefit from the transition to mobile phones, it would need to shoot for something bigger. Page gave Andy Rubin, Android's indomitable chief, the resources to run the division as an autonomous unit. Their ambition helped Google settle on a course to release an entire operating system, rather than a single phone. What's more, Google made Android free and allowed phone manufacturers and carriers to tinker with the software.
Critics carp that this strategy hurts Android's usability: Android devices get gummed up with useless additions and inconsistent designs and hardware that make for a wide range in quality between various Android models. All this is true, but it misses the point. Android isn't about getting lots of people to use Google phones. The mission is to get lots of people to use smartphones and to make sure those smartphones run slick, fast, well-integrated Google products that serve up ads. Google is greedy in its quest for ubiquity, but surprisingly generous in not insisting, as, say, Apple does, on wetting its beak at each possible transaction.

Android's earliest phones were panned, but with each new version, it has come closer to matching the panache of the iPhone. Its newest incarnations offer several features -- including an almost magical capacity to decipher speech commands -- that Apple's devices can't match.

Indeed, by some measures, Android has already surpassed Steve Jobs's iPhone. According to comScore, Android's smartphone market share now lags only Research in Motion's BlackBerry, and Android's share is growing faster than that of all of its competitors, including Apple. Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, estimates that by 2012, there will be more than 130 million Android users around the world. Those teeming hordes will generate more than $1 billion in ad revenue for Google.
Android, then, is as much a marvel of management as it is of engineering. "It wasn't that Larry handed down his vision on stone tablets," Eustace says. (In other words, he's not Steve.) But Page had the founding idea that "what was necessary was an ecosystem," and Android wouldn't be where it is today if he hadn't pushed for Google to do something more ambitious.
Page has done this elsewhere. Google's recent success with YouTube in the face of an unrelenting stream of criticism can be chalked up to a similar management tactic: Page empowered YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar in much the same way he has Android's Rubin. And YouTube, operating as an autonomous unit, has begun to flourish (see "Blown Away," February).
As Page takes over, he'll still find product seedlings everywhere. Google's product lineup is replete with services that offer overlapping, needlessly duplicative functionality. Android's triumph should serve as a sweet reminder of the value in imposing just enough discipline before letting the kids chase the ice-cream truck.

2 Spur On Your Frenemies
Two years ago, Google sent a camera crew to Times Square, in New York, and asked passersby a simple question: What is a web browser? "A browser's a search engine," said one guy. Another respondent was pretty sure that "it's what I search through -- like, to find things." When asked which browser they use, most people said Google, while a few renegades stuck to Yahoo and AOL. None of these, of course, are browsers.
It's a funny YouTube video, but when your company makes nearly all its money through stuff people do using a web browser, you're laughing only to keep from crying. For many years the dominant browser, Internet Explorer, was left in a state of buggy disrepair by its creator, which just happened to be one of Google's main rivals. If people don't even know what a browser is, how would they ever know to ask for something better?
So if you've ever wondered why Google needed its own web browser, called Chrome, here's why: It needed Chrome to goad Microsoft, Apple, and other browser makers into reigniting innovation in what had become a moribund market. Everyone's efforts collectively improve the web as a whole, which is good for Google and its ad business. Even if its rivals merely copied Chrome's advancements -- superfast, stable, and, thus far, impossible to hack -- Google saw that it could achieve its larger goals. About 10% of web surfers now use Chrome, which is respectable, but not as important as pushing Microsoft to retire the decrepit IE 6 browser in favor of new versions with a string of great improvements.
Expect Page to launch even more initiatives that may seem futile when considered alone but that are, in fact, designed to wake up drowsy competitors. Think about such "puzzling" Google moves as releasing its own branded phones -- the Nexus One and Nexus S -- and competing against the handset makers and carriers that it's supposed to be courting. Or about Google's initiative to wire America with fiber-optic lines, as its plan to roll out superfast Internet to several cities suggests. Google really wants Verizon and others to pick up the pace. And when those rivals do, Google will benefit from the innovations that result.

3 When in Doubt, Check the Data
Deciding questions by data is to Google what eye-catching design is to Apple, or what global supply-chain management is to Walmart. It forms the spine of every major decision, and nearly every minor one. Data's preeminence in Google's culture helps prevent anyone at the company from pulling rank. It also wards off resistance to change. This will only become more important as Page takes over as the top decision maker at a company whose core search algorithm, PageRank, is named for him.
One telling example of how data work as an effective check against defending the status quo: Within Sean Knapp's first few months at Google back in 2004, he came up with what he confesses was a totally boneheaded idea. "Why don't we put five ads on the top of the search-results page?" Back then, Google ran no more than two. Knapp knew that showing any more ads would alienate some share of web searchers; at the same time, he wondered if it would generate enough revenue to offset the reduced usage. Knapp and a product manager approached Marissa Mayer, then Google's user-experience chief, with this puzzle: Was it possible that Google was running too few ads? Mayer and other execs were intrigued. After all, if there were a "definitive" answer for how many ads to run at the top of the search page, shouldn't Google find out what it was? (One gets the sense that Googlers know exactly how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.)
So Mayer approved an "experiment" in which for several months about one of every 10,000 search requests would return a page with more than two ads at the top. As Mayer had suspected, users seemed to shun pages plastered with five ads. But the test also proved that people would tolerate more than two ads, and Google now runs up to three ads at the top of its pages. "No idea is a bad idea until the data prove so," Knapp says, repeating what is likely the company's second-most-popular mantra after "Don't be evil."
Even Page has proved willing to reverse himself if the numbers don't bear him out. "Larry would wander around the engineers and he would see a product being developed, and sometimes he would say, 'Oh, I don't like that,' " recalls Douglas Merrill, who served as Google's chief information officer until 2008. "But the engineers would get some data to back up their idea, and the amazing thing was that Larry was fine to be wrong. As long as the data supported them, he was okay with it. And that was such an incredibly morale-boosting interaction for engineers."
Google's devotion to data isn't always an asset (as we'll explore momentarily), but there's likely no other way for the company to conceive of itself because that's how Page operates. "I was talking to Larry on Saturday," says Nikesh Arora, Google's chief business officer, when we sit down to talk the following Tuesday. "I told him that I'd gotten back from nine cities in 12 days -- Munich, Copenhagen, Davos, Zurich, New Delhi, Bombay, London, San Francisco. There's a silence for five seconds. And then he's like, 'That's only eight.' "

4 When in Creative Mode, Don't Start With Data
There is a dark side to Google's data-centric approach. "When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems," wrote Douglas Bowman, Google's first lead designer, on the occasion of his 2009 resignation. "Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data... . And those data eventually become a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions."
As Google grows into more arenas where engineering alone can't carry the day, most notably in social and handheld interfaces, Page will have to tweak this data-driven mind-set to embrace more creative types if the company is to thrive. Google has never invested heavily in hiring classically trained designers, and insiders say that due to a constant shortage of creative staff, engineers sometimes decide the look of their own products.
Page's own design sense, according to people who've worked with him, is in tune with Google's once-celebrated spare search-engine interface, and he reportedly can be flummoxed by more-sophisticated, subjective design decisions. "Once we were thinking of doing Google Kids," says Joe Sriver, the company's first user-interface designer who now runs a startup called DoApp. As part of the mock-up for the site, Sriver added a clip-art dinosaur graphic on the search-query page. "That seemed to catch Larry's eye," Sriver says. "He spent the whole meeting looking at the dinosaur and kind of giggling. He wasn't really looking at the design of it." Google Kids was never launched.
And yet, despite Page's personal inclinations, there are signs that Google is pushing itself to transcend its design deficiencies. Matias Duarte joined the company's Android team last year from Palm, where he was lauded for creating the well-regarded user interface for its mobile operating system called WebOS. Duarte admits that since signing on,he has come to rely on data as a tool in the design process -- but not, he insists, as a crutch. Whereas the look and feel of Apple's software and hardware are kept secret and revealed to just a few people, Duarte's designs are shared widely inside Google and with other partners and testers. (Google routinely tests products this way before sharing them with the world, calling the process "dogfooding," as in the company eats its own dog food. Or, in Duarte's case, "Droid-fooding.")
Duarte points out that this openness has led to novel insights into what users want. Honeycomb, Google's new tablet-specific version of Android, includes an eye-catching interface to show people all the recent applications they've been using. It's a feature that the iPad sorely misses -- and it came about only because of extensive statistical analysis of usage patterns. The lesson: Google can succeed in more creative pursuits if it pushes the limits of its data-centric culture but still relies on that culture to enhance creative solutions. "We don't design by committee; we don't design by focus group," Duarte says. "But we do verify everything we're trying to do with our design with stringent, large-scale user testing."
Google historically had a spirit of joy about it, from its clever Doodler riffs on the home-page logo to its role in transforming April 1st into a riot of web foolishness. Google can express that spirit in its products, too. And indeed, that may be happening. Hit the lock button on the Nexus S, Google's latest Android phone, and the screen zaps to black slowly, in the pattern of an old tube television. You'll smile the first time you see it, and when your Mac-head friends show off the iPhone 4's sleek "retina display," you can thrill them with your little lock-screen trick. Sure, it's small, but there's something engagingly warm and human about the effect. Someone at Google decided to put a gag in my phone. That's so cool!

5 A Social Life Is Overrated
Larry Page isn't on Facebook, he doesn't trade one-liners on Twitter, and if he has ambitions of becoming the Foursquare mayor of the Googleplex, he'll have a hard time unseating Ty Lim, a Google attorney who has racked up 32 'plex check-ins in the past 60 days. Page's apparent lack of personal interest on the web's major social sites creates a convenient narrative for Google's dreadful record in the space -- a string of failures that include Dodgeball, Jaiku, Lively, Buzz, and Wave. Orkut, the social network that Google engineer Orkut Büyükkökten launched in 2004, is still alive (it's big in Brazil), but few Googlers consider it a success. Meanwhile, Google has had several social-networking savants in the 'plex and let them slip away to found other companies, among them Evan Williams (Twitter) and Dennis Crowley (Foursquare).
Jamie Zawinski, one of the legends of the free-software movement, once famously quipped that the most important question for anyone writing social software should be, How will this software get my users laid? That query can't be converted into a data test, of course, and it's an open question whether anything socially compelling can spring from inside the Googleplex. (Spend a couple of days there and it's clear that Googlers don't lose a lot of sleep over their failures to help you get laid.) "There's an EQ -- an emotional intelligence -- around social software, and it just might be out of Google's reach," says Jason Shellen, who spent four years as a business-development exec at Google after it acquired Blogger and who now works at AOL.
Google insists that social-networking sites do not constitute a major threat to its advertising businesses. "Am I still going to be searching for products? Am I still going to be searching for travel deals? Am I still going to be searching for financial services? Yes, I am," says Arora, Google's business chief. And while Facebook may build a gangbusters business in display ads, people will continue to visit sites outside of Facebook -- and Google will continue to serve ads there.
But that's not to say Google is giving up on social. Far from it. Its success relies on understanding how the web works, and the web is getting more social all the time. Google has continued to acquire social startups -- most recently Slide for $228 million (not to mention its rumored interest in buying Twitter for $10 billion). According to sources, Google isn't planning a Facebook clone but rather it intends to roll out new social features across all its products. Its ultimate aim seems to be to collect and analyze the social activity that's going on across the web, beyond Facebook's walls.
In February, it unveiled the first of these changes, an update that ranks some results according to what your friends have shared online. It's a classically Pageian effort to solve a problem by attacking it from an unexpected angle (see Android versus iPhone): If Google can't compete with Facebook directly, perhaps it can render Facebook moot by making everything else on the web feel like Facebook. Still, building a fun web-based community turns out to be harder than building a great smartphone (witness the utter failure that is Apple's Ping). Don't be surprised if this is one arena where Page is happy merely to have a credible offering.

6 Listen Up: Talk Is Cheap
"Someone said 'Hell has indeed frozen over,' " tweeted Eric Schmidt the day before the 2010 Super Bowl. The occasion was Google's first major national TV spot. A simple love story told in close-ups of search queries -- from "study abroad paris france" to "impress a french girl" to "long distance relationship advice" to the surprisingly moving climax, "how to assemble a crib" -- it was perhaps the cheapest ad ever to appear during the Super Bowl. But it was a winner. The spot subtly drove home Google's centrality in our lives because of its search engine.
It's not entirely true that Google is an advertising company that doesn't advertise. Search for keywords related to Google products -- smartphone, email -- and you'll find Google has purchased the same search ads that it sells customers. It even advertises on Bing (it has the top paid spot for the keyword "search engine"). But with brand advertising, the company's resistance has been deeply cultural. Persuasion offends Google's -- and Page's -- meritocratic beliefs. The company became the biggest search engine in the world because it built a better product, not because it created better TV ads than Yahoo.
Google's build-it-and-they-will-come naïveté seems almost cute in the age of Apple. Many of Google's advances go unnoticed by the public because nobody hears about them. Do iPhone owners know that Android lets you dictate email by voice? Imagine the marketing fun Apple would have there. Or that Google Voice rings all your phones when someone calls you, and transcribes your voice mail to boot?
Google has a few innovative, Googley efforts to market itself. The Google Demo Slam, for one, is a site that invites people to submit videos showing how they use Google's best products. In one of the most popular spots, three brothers stuff their mouths with marshmallows, then try to see if their Android phones can recognize that they're saying "chubby bunny." But this effort is isolated: Google hasn't run the winning submissions on TV (unlike, say, Doritos), and online the chubby-bunny spot has been viewed only about 200,000 times.
With its new CEO an introvert, perhaps Google will never tap its inner Apple. But maybe, in the bigger picture, that's a trade-off worth making. Page is not a CEO out of central casting, despite the fact that Wall Street and the media tend to prefer extroverts as leaders: the superhero who puffs out his chest and delivers bold, motivating pronouncements. According to some surprising forthcoming research from management professors at Harvard Business School, the University of North Carolina, and Wharton, though, introverts can be more successful leaders -- particularly in dynamic, uncertain, and fast-changing environments like the tech industry. "They tend to be less threatened by others' ideas," says Adam Grant, a Wharton professor and coauthor of the study. "And they'll collect a lot of them before determining a vision." Because introverts spend more time listening than talking, they hear more ideas.

The hallmarks of Google culture, including the weekly TGIF sessions where Page and Brin take questions from employees, are precisely about creating dialogue. Even if the company relies less on 20% time for unfettered product development, Page's personal style is likely to keep new ideas flowing. The key for Page is to "surround himself with some extroverts," Grant says. "Extroversion and introversion are the only personality traits where you need a balance between the two to be an effective team." As the success of the Bing sting indicates, Page seems to be listening to his extroverts in embracing a bolder public profile -- not for himself, but for Google.

7 No Goal Is Too Big (And Some Are Too Small)
Franz Och works in one of the far-flung offices on the Google campus, a leisurely 10-minute stroll from the T. rex statue, beach-volleyball court, and other trappings of life at an absurdly successful web company. This is because he's in Google's research department, whose mission is to tackle problems that are far removed from the everyday pressures of the bottom line.
Och oversees Google's machine-translation system, a spectacularly ambitious effort that analyzes text found on the web to create statistical models that can transform one language into another. Machine translation is far from perfect, but Google's project, which began in 2004, has succeeded far beyond what most experts thought possible. Including Och. Google spent a year trying to recruit him; each time, he explained to Page and other execs that what they were asking for couldn't be done. "They were very optimistic, and I tried to tell them to be cautious," he says. "It's really complicated, extremely expensive, and you need very large amounts of data."
That audaciousness -- the ambition to tackle a seemingly unsolvable problem with deep reservoirs of money and data -- is the ultimate insight into what makes Google Googley. "When people come to Larry with ideas, he always wants it bigger," says one ex-Googler. "His whole point is that only Google has the kind of resources to make big bets. The asset that Larry brings is to say, 'Let's go and make big things happen.' " (This may explain why Page isn't interested in a Facebook killer: "With social, there isn't a problem for Google to solve," says the former Googler Shellen.)
The company hired Och despite his skepticism, and today, machine translation (along with speech recognition) is one of Google's best-known artificial-intelligence projects. It's also a key competitive advantage. Even on the iPhone, you'll use Google's software to help you read that French road sign or to transform your voice commands into text searches. Och now seems bemused by this success. Google, he says, simply had far more resources -- more data, more computing power, more money -- than he ever thought possible. Google can now translate 58 different languages. "When I started at Google, if you told me that five years later we'd be able to translate Yiddish, Maltese, Icelandic, Azerbaijani, and Basque, I would have said, That's just not going to happen," he says. "But [Page and Brin] didn't believe me. And I guess they were more right than I was."
Google is not always easily categorized. You can't shorthand it the way you can with, say, Apple (a consumer electronics company) or Microsoft (a software company). While minimizing the world-changing visions of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates seems unwise, making computers a utility and transforming their power into desirable objects cannot compare with the ambitions of Google's founders. Page and Brin's stated mission has been to catalog and analyze all of the world's information, and their larger, unstated aim is to reform all of the globe's inefficiencies. In addition to translation and speech recognition, the founders are obsessed with image recognition (Google Goggles), advanced energy solutions (Google Energy), and robotics (check out its self-driving car).
Page and Brin's big bets don't always work. Google has had to back off reinventing TV-, radio-, and print-advertising sales; its book-digitization project has become a protracted mess; and its initiatives to make wireless networks more open and to change the way cell-phone carriers sell their plans have failed.
Focus on the misses, though, and you risk overlooking its remarkable successes. Google persists in reforming modern communications networks. Google Voice has taken off. Indeed, in 10 years, we might look back on this moment in Google's history with surprise. While tech wags slagged Google for losing to Facebook, almost none of us saw it turning into the world's largest phone company.
That's what's thrilling about Page taking the helm at Google right now. You get the sense that under his leadership, Google could try its hand at anything. More than anything else during my interviews with people who know Page, one comment stands out: "I don't care what you put in the article," says David Lawee, Google's head of acquisitions. "To me, this is the real story: Larry is a truly awesome inventor-entrepreneur. My aspiration for him is that he becomes one of the greatest inventors-entrepreneurs in history, in the realm of the Thomas Edisons of the world."
Over the top? Sure. And yes, Lawee is talking about his boss. But he seems dead serious as he says this. He truly believes Larry Page's Google will change the world. Should we believe it too?
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from fastcompany.com