My AT&T contract is up, and I’m trying to decide what to do to replace my iPhone 3G. The iPhone 4 beckons, but there’s a 3-week wait, and Android is very appealing as well. Notifications on iOS suck, and how long will it be before I can use Priority Inbox on my phone? In fact, [...]
Tags: Android, Apple, bad taste, Google, iPhone, Scoble, Siegler
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On the technology sites I frequent, TechCrunch and Hacker News, there has been an uproar over Google’s joint proposal with Verizon, in which traditional Internet service providers would be subject to net neutrality regulation and wireless providers would not. I think the outrage over Google’s alleged betrayal of Internet users is ill founded. Most of [...]
Tags: economics, Google, industrial organization, Internet, net neutrality, Rothbard, Varian, Verizon
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A lot of pixels have been spilled in the last week about how Facebook has seized control of the Internet with their new API initiatives. This is supposedly troubling: unlike Google, Facebook might be evil, the hand-wringers say. But even if Facebook is able to monopolize a large segment of our time on the Internet, [...]
Tags: economics, Facebook, Google, monopoly, natural monopoly, network effects
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Why does Google give out so much cool stuff for free? I have a simple theory, based on the concept of double marginalization. Double marginalization is pretty easy to understand. Imagine that people travel by boat down a river from point A to point B. There is nothing useful in between these points; the only point [...]
When Google Buzz came out last week, most of my friends spent the first day messing with it and then promptly turned it off or ignored it. Everyone is already using Facebook, and some of them are on Twitter; the last thing we need is another social network to check. Nevertheless, I think there are [...]
Tags: Buzz, Facebook, Google, PubSubHubbub, Salmon, social networking, Twitter, WebFinger
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