Category: Links

Matthew Yglesias:

>And so once the basic business proposition is “this company will make the most amazing Web services available and give them away for free in order to sell you to advertisers,” plummeting levels of privacy become inevitable.

Very true, he also asks the million dollar question:

>The business question is that if we assume some other firm or set of firms could come up with comparable quality products to Gmail, Youtube, Google Search, etc., how many people would be willing to pay a premium for privacy-respecting ad-free versions of them and how much would they be willing to pay?

[I would](https://brooksreview.net/2011/03/fragility-free/), but I am not the majority.

Marco Arment:

>The books available on the iBookstore are just called books.

I had no clue, but this seems *more* clumsy.

With this method (as I read it) this statement would not be correct: “I own the *Steve Jobs* iBook.” Instead it seems the correct statement would be: “I own the *Steve Jobs* book, from the iBookstore.” That’s far more clumsy in my mind.

You could, technically, leave out the “from the iBookstore” bit, but in doing so you would have no way of indicating that you purchased a digital version instead of a dead tree version.

MG Siegler on Android’s money making ability compared to Apple’s iOS:

>Google’s best shot to turn Android into a business with iPhone-like profits would be to create an Android-powered oil rig and get drilling. 

As Siegler states, it doesn’t seem silly to think that one day Android will make Google money, but it does seem silly to even imagine them making iOS like profits from Android. I think this is going to become a major problem for investors as they sit and watch Apple rake in the cash. Moreover it will be hard for Google to show a direct link from Android to profits — Android seems to be set up to indirectly profit Google and I think that will make it pretty hard to justify to Wall Street.

Super short episode and the first recorded with us in the same room.

Brought to you by: [Verses](http://kepner.me/versesapp).

Tim Bray has an interesting post on cellphone screen size, where he says:

>I noticed right from the start that I was always using the bigger one whenever there was a choice […]

He carries one work phone and one personal phone, but they are different sizes and he likes the bigger screen. Again, Bray:

>Yeah, there are a few occasions where I have to wiggle the phone around in my hand to reach some part of the screen. But the huge display and the soft buttons just make the Nexus S feel dinky and stupid and clumsy.

That’s the part I find interesting because I read that as: “Yes the larger phone is more cumbersome to use, but I like that.” I get one phone dwarfing another, but is wiggling a phone around in your hand really the less clumsy option?

Bray again:

>But unless I’m weird, big-screen phones are going to be appealing to lots of people.

Define “lots”…

Speaking of MG Siegler he has a great post up about Motorola’s performance in Q4.

MG Siegler on Apple’s financial results:

>A new iPhone plus holiday shopping season is apparently like gasoline on a fire.

That’s why my bet is that Apple keeps this ‘new’ release schedule of a new iPhone every fall.

Jim Dalrymple on the iBooks EULA:
>That doesn’t mean Apple owns the content of the book. You are free to sell the content of the book on Amazon or any other digital bookstore — you just can’t use Apple’s tools to build the book.

If *The Beard* says it is so, then I believe it.

Matt Drance:

>Hollywood continues to completely ignore that lesson. It continues to punish the people who play by the rules with an insufferable customer experience. This is the sole reason piracy is up and profits are down: because *doing it right totally sucks*.

Sarah Lacy:
>Put another way, is Google moving from being a company that organizes the world’s information to one that organizes the information of “your” world?

Yes. And I don’t think that’s good — it’s certainly not what I want.

An interesting point from Dan Frommer:

>If the next generation of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming system will be designed to bring us well beyond 2020, why would it still rely on last century’s technology – spinning discs – for games?

Of course the challenge, as Frommer points out, is the increasing size of games. It will be interesting to see how video games consoles cope with the instant demand that iOS users have when they want games as the games keep getting bigger.

Nick Douglas:
>Daring Fireball: You know three ways to tell Helvetica from Arial.

I’d add: *at least*.