Puffbox

Dave Winer is the godfather of RSS. His blog won’t be to everyone’s tastes. You might find it too personal, too stream-of-consciousness. But he has a habit of hitting nails square on their heads. Written yesterday:

Microsoft wins by doing the 2.0 upgrade to their competitor’s meat and potatoes. It happened with Digital Research, Lotus, Apple, WordPerfect, Novell and the most famous of them all, Netscape. They all forgot about their users. It’s happening again with Google.

People seem genuinely gutted that Google didn’t announce an own-brand PC / ‘cube’ / operating system at the big CES event in Las Vegas last week (although DW rightly notes that it was a ‘non-denial denial’). So many people wanting a touch of the Google magic in the hardware department. A ‘bundle’ of seen-them-before software products, a video download service, a new copyright-protection headache? B-o-r-i-n-g!

It’s a sign of the underlying goodwill towards the brand, that so many people came away disappointed. We wanted them to come riding over the horizon, a ‘white knight’ to challenge Windows. But Google is a big corporation now. Perhaps it’s impossible to maintain that revolutionary spirit when your shares hit Wall Street. The market would rather see a steady stream of mundane announcements, than an occasional flash of genius.

We may look back at this as the start of the backlash.