Here Come the Giants

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: October 13, 2005 12:20:08 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Here Come the Giants
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com


[Note:  Blog entry from 'Participatory Culture', the developers of  
DTV, the Internet TV application.  Worth reading!  DLH]
Here Come the Giants

<http://participatoryculture.org/blog/2005/10/here-come-the-giants/>

There was lots of thunder this week as giant corporations make moves  
to capture the online video ‘market’. Apple, which dominates digital  
music, just introduced an iPod that plays video and an iTunes video  
store. They don’t have a ton of content right now, but they have some  
exclusive TV shows, beautiful electronics, and enormous momentum.

Earlier in the week, Microsoft and Real announced that they will work  
together to promote a music store that will likely grow to include a  
video store. Microsoft will, of course, aggressively push this on  
Windows users. And don’t doubt Microsoft’s ability to push mediocre  
services– Alexa ranks 3 Microsoft web sites in the 10 ten most  
popular english language sites: MSN at #2, passport.net at #4, and  
microsoft.com at #6. Those sites don’t really attract visitors as  
much as they get visitors delivered to them by the Windows monopoly.  
The same could easily happen for video, despite Apple’s big headstart.

Yahoo and Google are also in the battle and so are electronic  
companies like Sony, movie studios like Sony, and video rental  
companies like Blockbuster and Netflix. Online video looks like a  
multi-industry convergence point / competitive explosion. Everyone  
knows video will be a big pie. Probably the big pie.

But let’s step back for a second. Imagine if 25 years ago the US  
government licensed some key internet technologies to companies and  
what we call the ‘internet’ developed into a private, expensive  
research and telecommunications network. It’s not a far-fetched a  
scenario, it could have made a lot of sense at the time. A few years  
later AOL would have come along and built their exciting, high tech,  
‘online’ service with simplicity and good features at a price that  
individuals could afford (this is exactly what AOL did, actually).  
Without the internet to compete, AOL would have grown and grown until  
Microsoft eventually builds a competing, service called ‘MSN’ that,  
like AOL, would give users a nice batch of tools and services to dial  
in to. Both AOL and MSN would have had chat rooms and celebrity  
photos and auctions and then music and video too. And they would, of  
course, be distinct and incompatible, vying for marketshare and  
making exclusive deals with different news services and entertainment  
companies– perfect competitors. Everything would have seemed fine.  
Better than fine, in fact; both services would have represented an  
amazing new use of technology, connecting people instantly in ways  
previously imagined by science fiction. Who could complain?

But instead of closed online services we got the internet. Thank God.  
AOL’s private enclave, where companies had to pay giant amounts of  
money just to get a ‘keyword’, eventually succumbed to the torrential  
force of wild, wonderful internet openness. What’s scary is how  
easily we could have been happily trapped in a world of crappy online  
services– the scenario above sounds great if you’ve never seen the  
internet. But now that we’ve all lived with the internet for a few  
years, it’s obvious to everyone what a disaster it would have been if  
‘online’ meant connecting to a closed corporate service.

[snip]
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>



-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/