Answering an age-old question

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? What is the sound of one hand clapping? And what happens when you give 16 Googlers ice cream, two limousines, two hours and no agenda?

Why, they go to Microsoft, of course. :)

Google Kirkland recently held an office decoration contest to celebrate our expansion into a new building in Kirkland (we Googlers are fond of office decorations). The Webmaster Tools team won by a landslide. Our prize? A limo ride to the local Ben & Jerry's shop, and ice creams all around. But we had the limos for two hours, so we decided to use the extra time to swing by Microsoft's Redmond campus to see if we could get a sneak peek at the beta version of their Webmaster Portal.

In the end we didn't make it much farther than the lobby (due to not knowing the last names of any of their team members), but good times were had all 'round.

Have a funny story about a team outing? Photos of your quirky office decor? Share them with us!

Marc Andreessen rips on SteveB

I was going to compose a post about how social networking is not just a fad for "younger" people (which of course means it's not going anywhere once we all grow up, right?). But after Marc ripped on Steve's quote (above), he wrote the post for me: Social networking and the Geocities fallacy.

But there's always more to say when some "older" person (which of course means irrelevant and out of touch, right?) rips on something new. I don't mean to offend (I don't believe either assertion about age), I'm just pointing out the arbitrariness of SteveB's statement. And wasn't he a "younger" person once? And wasn't there something that appealed to him that made him and Microsoft what they are today (have you seen the explosive revenue growth for the latest FY?)

That aside, the feature list comparison between Geocities and Facebook (and Ning too) only points out that part of the comparison is wrong (the feature equivalence). What's more interesting is that the idea behind social networking a la Facebook/Ning is both new, and more importantly, useful to society. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that contact with friends is not a fad, and that technology supporting that, facilitating that, enhancing that is relevant, valuable, and sustainable. I wouldn't say I'm an expert in social networking, but I think staying in touch with friends and colleagues helps me achieve my potential. And that reminds me of someone's mission statement.

By the way, I just joined Facebook :) It's pretty cool so far. I'm pretty pleased with my 27 friends in under 24 hours. I've actually chatted with (good) friends I haven't been in touch with in years. Some of them are married, god forbid ;)

Keep It Web Based, Even If You Don't Trust the Servers

John C. Dvorak recently wrote a scathing commentary of web based applications. He makes some great points, specifically about WGA having serious issues beyond technical difficulties, and the problems with single point of failure. But he goes on to declare that web based applications are flawed and that we could be at least as successful if we reversed the trend toward online services and returned to client-only applications. I think this conflates the issues, and I disagree with this attack on the vision of web based applications.

The problems due to single point of failure are caused by a failure of implementation. I want to focus on the vision aspect of Dvorak's article. The benefits of web based applications are due (among other things) to powerful, inherent concepts: available always, available anywhere, and available with anyone.

Available Always

Dvorak writes,

What happens if the system fails? The damage wouldn't be too bad if you backed everything up, but then why use the online system in the first place?

System failure, backup, and recovery are details which any software product should handle by itself, rather than Dvorak's model of "control your own data". Putting aside privacy issues for a moment, as a user I don't want to have to maintain my own data.

Consider the automatic save feature that's been built into Microsoft Office apps for a long time, and since then copied by many others. It's automatically saving everything you do, so you, as the user can focus on your work. However, even this just punts the issue to your hard disk which might fail at any moment. I have to confess, I don't back up my hard disk (who does?). Instead, I try to use systems which handle this piece for me as well. Web based systems are very well placed to do this, better even than client applications because the implementation and maintenance are completely in the hands of the service provider, rather than the user.

Available Anywhere

Dvorak also writes,

What happens if the timeline goes the other way? In this instance, you'd start with server-based online applications, and then suddenly a new technology—the desktop computer[appears...] "Now control your own data!" "Faster processing power now." "Cheaper!" "Everything at your fingertips." "No need to worry about network outages."

I believe that "everything at your fingertips" means I don't have to carry my own computer around with me everywhere. I love having my email client anywhere. I love having my blog writing software just a URL away. And my goal tracking software is available to me, no matter what computer I'm using. And I get consistent performance (nearly) every time for all of them. I don't need to worry about carrying my data on a memory stick. I don't need to worry about buying proprietary, licensed software. I just need the only thing I ever should: me. I need nothing else to be productive and get work done.

Available with Anyone

At one point Dvorak writes,

Easier to share files? So how hard is it to attach a doc file to an e-mail anyway?

Smooth collaboration goes beyond packing up your bytes and handing them over to someone else. Susan and I planned our whole wedding using Google Docs and Spreadsheets. If we had done this in a client-based spreadsheet app we would have ended up with at least 5 copies of the spreadsheet, all out of sync. The synchronization and collaboration features of web based applications were key to our success.

Back to the Failure

Towards the end of his article Dvorak writes,

What is often lost in individual analyses of how to proceed with your data-processing needs is the concept of "being at the mercy of a single company." It's something that you need to avoid at all costs.

He makes a really great point! We don't want to end up with single point of failure (through software or policy). However, and I won't dive into details, I believe that you don't have to "be at the mercy of a single company" to use "cloud computing". This is admittedly non-trivial, but there's a great start-up idea hiding here. In any case online service providers better get on board with this, since Dvorak is correct in this point.

In the end, I would argue that being at the mercy of a single computer, and, worse, at the mercy of a single person (i.e. yourself) is no better, if not worse, than being at the mercy of a single company. And that particular issue is surmountable itself, as I predict we will begin to see in the near future.

They're not biased at all...

Later, reading more that the internet has to offer, I came across this quote from Microsoft Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin. I thought I'd add it to be fair and balanced

Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs

It seems like politics and meaningless rhetoric is endemic. No way around it, everywhere I turn someone is trying stab someone else when they're not looking. It's demoralizing at best. Outrageous at worst and unethical somewhere in between.

What happened to looking to the future? What happened to "Think, Innovate". What happened to a focus on quality and customer satisfaction? Have we already done all there is to do, leaving us fighting over a fixed pie of market share? I'm very disappointed.

Read more in the article.

Open Letter: Interoperability, Choice and Open XML

Here's an interesting read from Microsoft.

the campaign to block consideration of Open XML could create a dynamic where the first technology to the standards body, regardless of technical merit, gets to preclude other related ones from being considered.

That's an excellent point. Seems like Microsoft is actually doing a good thing by opening it's document format.

On December 7th, Ecma approved the adoption of Open XML as an international open standard. The vote was nearly unanimous; of the 21 members, IBM’s was the sole dissenting vote. IBM again was the lone dissenter when Ecma also agreed to submit Open XML as a standard for ratification by ISO/IEC JTC1...The IBM driven effort to force ODF on users through public procurement mandates is a further attempt to restrict choice.

Sounds like IBM may be in the wrong on this.

We have listened to our customers. They want choice. They want interoperability. They want innovation. We and others believe that Open XML achieves all these goals, and we look forward to supporting Ecma as it works positively with national standards bodies throughout the ISO/IEC process. See OpenXMLDeveloper.org for an indication of some of the support for Open XML and for more information on the rapidly growing community that is developing with the Ecma Open XML standard.

Seems as if Microsoft owns this site (they own the copyright, NS1.MSFT.NET is the authoritative name server). So I don't know if I buy this quote. And I think this lack of independent support community is a systemic problem for Microsoft.

In the end, I guess I don't have all the info, but maybe supporting Microsoft opening it's formats, protocols, and processes is a good thing.

IE hates Apple

I was just watching the latest Apple ad and went to close my browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer 7). And look at what happend: Coincidence? I think not.
What does this even mean? I work here and I can't decipher it...

Hotel near home

I know everyone thinks it's really funny that Nick and I work for Microsoft and Google, respectively, and assume that we must be incorporating NDAs into our wedding vows or heckling each other every day about our competing features and services. But I think we're generally pretty good about it. We'll rib each other when we have company over, since it's sort of expected, but we have enough perspective that we don't feel the need to spend our personal time promoting our employers to each other.

But today I just can't help myself, this is too good. :-)

I'm working on adding hotel recommendations to our wedding website, and I got a list of three hotels within minutes of our reception site, but I had no idea where the nearest hotels were to our home. So (of course) I went to Google Maps and searched for "hotel near home" (since, I might add, Google Maps is smart enough to know our home address, so I don't have to enter the whole address each time I search, I can just enter the keyword 'home').

Anyway. The search returns me four pages of results, but the first few listings include corporate housing, travel agencies, and a resort timeshare company; the first real hotel is the fifth result, and it's 1.5 miles away from our place, which isn't very convenient for people from out of town who might not have a car. So I complain about the results to Nick, and he suggests I ask Live Search (the Microsoft equivalent of Google). So I search for "hotel near 15667 NE 102nd Way, 98052" on Live Search.

First of all, the page takes nearly 10 seconds to load (an eternity in internet time), showing me nothing but a little circle going around and around. Then it pops up a security warning:

After I accept the security certificate, I get this message:

No results were found. Are you looking for the location of hotel near 15667 NE 102nd Way?

I wonder if I misspelled something... I compare this query to my original query... I find that they're exactly the same... I'm confused for a few minutes... but I decide Microsoft must know what they're doing, right? So I click their suggestion.

I get a map of central Poland, and this message:

The closest match for 'hotel near 15667 NE 102nd Way' is 'Hotel [Chotel], Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland'. If the closest match is incorrect, enter the complete address including country name and commas, and try again.

And I thought 1.5 miles was far away...!

Most Annoying Ad Ever (today)

Maybe you've seen this guy edit his word document in an elevator full of snakes before real video content plays on the internet:

He's the spokesman for a product line from a certain large unnamed company. And his ad is confusing at best (an elevator full of snakes? what's the joke?). I think it's supposed to be cool, or forward looking. I just find it annoying.