That's the headline you'll read about soon, just as I predicted when it was first pitched and I still stand behind it. Its a clash, a clash of cultures that would end up sucking too hard for both companies.
The Google Yahoo search deal will go through, its in Google's and Yahoo's best interest to work together vs Yahoo being owned by Microsoft.
I dunno why I know I just figured as much. Microsoft's biz model is changing, they have to change because change is afoot for them. Vista wasn't the big splash they thought it would be and Apple's market share grows more every day. Its pretty sad when our diehard IT guy buys a mac laptop just to put Vista on it, you could say, hey thats a win for Microsoft but its not. Its a loss for Dell for one, because they are losing share to Apple as well, and the IT guy still stays with Microsoft for the Vista action, he's pretty much sleeping with the enemy to do it. Everyday in his use of the branded Apple box to do Vista stuff, he gets the continual nudge that yer using a mac man, even if its not a mac. Either way Apple still wins, at least you bought a Mac, you gave the money to them, the nudge went to them, you approved them, not dell and not any other PC laptop manufacturer.
Back to Yahoo. Microsoft is desperate for a play on the current scene of the web, Yahoo knows this as does Google. It makes more sense for Google to bend Yahoo to its will then to let Microsoft get Yahoo.
Take a leap, 3 years in time, where we at? 2011. Where does it all stand? Microsoft, still there, some new OS varation still around, marketshare still slipping, they've branched out into their own phones, and tablet pcs. Apple still alive, also has their own tablet, and iphones and more. MacBook AIR's are more robust, more donimant than ever. Wifi FREE zones spring up, big backlash on wifi happens. Google fights off a dozen or so other engines that gets to whats hot faster and faster. They're in newspapers now with QR codes. Most phones are google enabled. IM is dying off and turning into twitter like conversations. Yahoo is a big developer now, taking cues from Amazon, they open up everything. Amazon opens up all the doors, acquires Esty and begins to make a play for Craigslist and starts to push aside Ebay.
Green energy agendas are nuff said. Sustainable design is infused into the emotional requirements of the brand and or experience. Innovation is dead because we do it everyday, its oxygen as the oil continues to climb and at the pump we're all spending $4 bucks plus for our gas. Most are driving hybrids now. Many of us are wired to so many subscription based services that we don't how to live without them. Dell is dying off as Samsung becomes universal for goodness in phones, washers, plasmas and anything else with a faint glow or hum to it. Latin America is rockin, its the new gravy train, the supa bling the striking offset of extreme rich and extreme poverty all with a radius of a few hundred miles. The obsession with China development is tapering off. China has growing pains, things are getting expensive. Japan is rocking out to big wins in space, and nano tech.
Still bluring the realities of the now online and now realtime Google maps and earth begin to engulf everyone, early signs of now where ever you are a matrix to be begins to unfold. People laugh about their days in Second Life, an old nearly dead 3d world. Google Maps/Earth connect and infuse into everyday search, location based content and peoples patterns online through blogs and networked spaces. Its hard to think of not using Google as you're platform to do anything online, but people still do. Smart recognition systems are all the rage. The web's been with you for so long its starts to tailor its every waking moment to what you'd like to see. Newness is still easy to find, but the tunnel gets refined and filled with answers faster and faster. People pay to get lost, to get stuck to get folded into something completely different. Gardening is big. DIY trends still popular with people, but more folks are enabled with insta-now video taking abilties than ever before.
The stock market is a roller coaster based not on what companies make but what impact they'll make in the future. Hot design isnt just about fixing the now, its fixing the next. Research goes big into figuring out the next and deeply linking it into the primal past making concepts intuitively connected with consumers the minute they get just a whiff of the idea. Big money is being spent on data mining the collective output of the web, more than ever before. Some rally against the idea of harvesting the web, but the cat is outa the bag, the signal will not be stopped.
We still talk about ideal experiences, but everyone is swimming in design. Market research is our friend, marketing and branding still hold the cash reserves, but we'll all sleeping in the same bunk house, still pillow fighting on methods but share common ground on end goals. The consumer is armed to the teeth with knowledge, some good, some skewed, some we'll never know where they got that notion from but they are empowered and alive. Big brands open up all the doors to connect, small brands try and co-create, and make their customers their partners. Cold brands, staples in our everyday consumption pattern do minimal changes and mostly corner us in alleys where we know we'll give in.
Access to the signal is parmount. We don't know life without the signal, yet we love the minimal touches of asthetic clean goodness around us. We're in steampunk era rebirth. We love the finer hand crafted touches yet we're wired as all get out. We still sled on the weekends with our kids, but we know the exact angle that slope is at and the wind temp at all times.
Our mobile devices are self aware, patterns being recorded constantly, informing a larger hive mind somewhere, where we of course, have access but ultimately lack real control over it. We measure everything. Air posting is big, you walk into a space at certain angle and your mobile device, your device, your only device, informs you of an advert, or note just for you.
We still pray, but god is skewed into a new more gentle light, he's more forgiving now, he sees our connected payload of pain easier. He's online of course, ask him anything as countless engines predictively spell out his thoughts and postitions on topics based on colletive intelligence and current known text.
The book is still a book. Book readers are everywhere. It is the last artifact of the past. A bound book signifies more than just reading material, its a staple of present and remembernce to the past, a legacy that continues on and on and on. Book posers are the big thing, they get books to be seen with books but rarely read those books but they got the books.
Doing a simple search on each other is too easy now, people embrace old school methods of a dinner date or coffee chat as a wildly new way to talk to people. Email is still a bread and butter medium for communication, sadly so, some fight it and favor social networks or more search and tag infused collective sharing tools but many battle it out and few take root.
2011 sounds pretty average to me, i can see it, and parts of it are here now in this very moment, the seeds are here, will they come to pass, ask me in three years.
Powered by Qumana
