Earlier today, Google and Mozilla renewed their deal to make Google the default search engine in the Firefoxbrowser for another three years.

This seems like Microsoft passed up a great opportunity to get more traffic to Bing. Right now, Firefox has about 25% market share and is used by more than 400 million people. According to Comscore, about 75% of the searches conducted from Firefox go to Google. (Users can manually select Bing or another search engine, but most don’t.)

Last year, Google paid Mozilla about $103 million for the right to be the default search engine. (That’s 84% of the Mozilla Foundation’s total $123 million, as per its 2010 financial statement, which were released in October — PDF here.)

That’s chump change for Microsoft. Even if the deal was much more expensive this time around as both companies bid up the price, Microsoft blinked first. Why?

Microsoft had no comment, but here’s one possibility: Microsoft has already reached its market share goal with Bing and is tightening the wallet to bring expenses under control.

The evidence:

• Microsoft said 30% market share was its goal. Back in 2007, the leader of the Online business, Kevin Johnson, talked several times about the company’s “10-20-30-40″ plan for Online. The “30″ stood for 30% market share for Bing. At the time, this seemed outlandish, but the following year Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo, and after that failed, it eventually managed to strike a search deal with the company. Combined, Bing and Yahoo have been at more than 30% share in the U.S. since spring. Mission accomplished!

• Microsoft decreased Bing’s marketing spend last quarter. The Online group’s operating loss decreased for the first time in ages last quarter. That’s partly because sales and marketing expenses for the Online group dropped 25% last quarter (compared with the year-ago quarter). That’s a big shift from the previous four quarters, where sales and marketing expenses for Online rose 5% from the previous year.

• It’s letting Bing talent migrate. Back in April, a former Bing engineer wrote that Microsoft was no longer spending big bucks to retain the best talent — instead, it was paying “far below market rates.” This year, two top Bing leaders — Satya Nadella and Yusuf Mehdi — took jobs elsewhere at Microsoft, suggesting that they saw more opportunity elsewhere (or that Steve Ballmer wanted to shift top talent away from Bing).

While Matt’s points are well argued he fails to address the fundamentals about why destop oriented browser based search may not be as appealing now, for Bing’s future. Businesses don’t make decisions like the size and scale of this one based on today’s conditions, they make them based on at least a 5 to 10 year window.

I’m not entirely convinced Microsoft is giving up on Bing at all. It could be that they’re recognising that desktop based browsers aren’t going as important in the future as it’s going to be – with the rise of mobile and tablet devices and growing search volumes, and it is because of Firefox that more people are willing to check out other browsers like Chrome, Opera etc.

It’s also worth considering that Google gave up it’s Twitter access a few years ago now, but no one seriously suggested that Google wasn’t taking search seriously. I wonder if they’re regetting that decision now?

Finally, it’s worth considering which search engine picked up exclusive access to Twitter, and also has exclusive access to Facebook – yep, that’d be Bing. Social Search – the seamless integration of arguably the world’s two largest Social media platforms and search data will be invaluable for both customer experience and algorithmic learning.

Perhaps it’s not that Microsoft didn’t want Firefox, perhaps it’s that they just think they don’t need it as much – because in the next few years social media sites are going to become even more important desinations than they are today and less people will use Search to get there.

Don’t know if you’re listening, assuming you are – you might want to spellcheck your Adwords homepage.

Small but very noticeable spelling error on it, see below: – Language, not langauge.

Got there by clicking on the CPC after Googling ‘Google adwords’ FYI. Link.

Cheers Google Team.

Manufacturers in India have announced a $35 tablet, designed to get computing power to the masses.

The developer of the world’s cheapest tablet, Datawind, is reportedly selling the tablets to the government for roughly $45 per unit, and $35 for students and teachers. Regular readers will know from my previous post, that I thought India would be the obvious growth path of the future for tablet growth. I also  mentioned that I believed that  Apple may not be successful with it’s higher price points, but cheaper rivals like Android may be more successful as they have cheaper price points.

By comparison the cheapest iPad is $499, or  14 times more expensive than Datawind’s tablet, and the cheapest Android tablet the KindleFire at $199 is nearly six times more expensive.

Will Datawind’s tablet have all of the features of the iPad? No, not by a long shot, but the question has to be asked “Will the majority of the (impoverished) Indian public really care?” Will they lament the fact they can’t play Angry Birds, or Fruit Ninja? Almost definitely not, although that doesn’t mean that developers like Rovio (the makers of Angry Birds) may develop for the tablet anyway.

From the Washington Post:

Datawind says it can make about 100,000 units a month at the moment, not nearly enough to meet India’s hope of getting its 220 million children online.

Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal called the announcement a message to all children of the world.

“This is not just for us. This is for all of you who are disempowered,” he said. “This is for all those who live on the fringes of society.”

Despite a burgeoning tech industry and decades of robust economic growth, there are still hundreds of thousands of Indians with no electricity, let alone access to computers and information that could help farmers improve yields, business startups reach clients, or students qualify for university.

The launch — attended by hundreds of students, some selected to help train others across the country in the tablet’s use — followed five years of efforts to design a $10 computer that could bridge the country’s vast digital divide.

“People laughed, people called us lunatics,” ministry official N.K. Sinha said. “They said we are taking the nation for a ride.”

Although the $10 goal wasn’t achieved, the Aakash has a color screen and provides word processing, Web browsing and video conferencing. The Android 2.2-based device has two USB ports and 256 megabytes of RAM. Despite hopes for a solar-powered version — important for India’s energy-starved hinterlands — no such option is currently available.

iPhone 4S

Most of what needs to be said about the iPhone 4S has been said by technology bloggers and writers around the world already. The only thing I’d like to add is that Apple no longer looks like it’s leading the innovation it kick started. With more agile competitors, and more competitors in general, Apple’s once a year, or longer, release cycle doesn’t seem like innovation and leadership so much as it looks like it’s playing catch-up.  Of course, this isn’t writing Apple off – not by a long shot – but it’s interesting to note that there wasn’t nearly as much fan-fare and media attention in general about Apple’s latest release once the details had actually been released. There was more hype and build up, than reality. Interesting times for Apple.

Juniper Research has released an interesting report predicting the sales and shipments of tablets – including iPad and newcomers like XOOM, KindleFire, and the seemingly stalled Samsung tablet offering – by 2016.

Western Europe and North America are the biggest predicted ‘one stop markets’ – but the really interesting take away is the size of predicted demand coming out of India. Small, as an overall market participant by 2016, it’ll be interesting to see how it grows by, say, 2020, or 2025 as demand grows and, presumably, for non-Apple products, prices fall.

Scarcity is a brilliant motivator. The threat of missing out. The joy and pride of being one of the privileged few. The extra value it builds. The tension. The drama. The onlookers. The watchers. The almost guaranteed positive media coverage which only serves to increase the hunger, desire and value of an access pass.

Everything about scarcity, or the illusion of it, is simply undeniably powerful.

Who does scarcity the best for ‘hard’ products? Undeniably, it’s Apple. Every September Steve Jobs, and other high-ranking members of Apple’s elite development and marketing teams roll out new products. The promises are always lofty, and words like ‘magical’, ‘amazing’, ‘gorgeous’ and ‘wonderful’ are used liberally.

But the products generally don’t come out until at least a month later – and even then there’s always a shortage of supply. Why? Because Apple knows that there is no extra value in having equal amounts of immediate supply and immediate demand. There would be virtually no reporting of people camping outside stores, because if everyone knew that they could get a new iPhone or iPad whenever they felt like it there would be far less incentive to camp out overnight, and the value of being one of the cherished few dedicated enough to hold the latest and greatest Apple product, would be decimated.

Translating the value of scarcity online is far harder than a ‘hard’ product however – I’d argue that there’s only a few companies globally that could get away with it on a massive scale.

Google+ is not only a fantastic service, but also an excellent example of building value by not opening up the social network to everyone immediately. Forget Google Buzz and Wave, they’re not even in the same league as what Google+ is. Much of the ‘value’ and free, and incredibly positive reporting and online interaction has come from the inability to freely get access and try it for yourself.

Now, lets look at this objectively – no one anywhere seriously thinks that Google+’s  systems aren’t built to deal with multi-millions of users. Of course they are. But when one page costs virtually the same to produce as 100,000 where and how do you build desire? Well, you build it by not making it automatically available to everyone. Similar to the Apple product scenario, there would be far less hype if it was freely and widely available to everyone. Additional incentive, value and pride is built by being able to invite select friends and colleagues to join, thereby giving the user power, and exclusivity – if only for a short while. The invitation system also, almost guarantees usage and positive experiences, as users initially are probably going to be interacting mainly with close friends and colleagues – why would anyone waste a precious invite on that person you barely know?

Facebook knows this all too well too. Facebook started in the dorms of Harvard, and then spread to Ivy League schools, and then other Universities, and then the US and then the World. It now reigns supreme as the planet’s largest social networking website. And one could argue that Facebook learned the value of limiting usage from the launch of Gmail, which also, for a long time followed the scarcity and access by invitation model of organic growth.

But why wait for Google+ to put on the pressure?  Even basic things, like sign out pages offer huge opportunities for mobile, tablet and other product and service adoption. In-fact Twitter and Linkedin have been doing something similar, but independent from each other, for over a year now.

Namely, they’ve been using their ‘signed out’ pages as ways of driving one final message: mobile and tablets apps and integration. It might sound like a small thing, but when you consider how many tens of millions of users each social network has, and how many times per day, week and month sign out pages would be seen globally, the reason for not using it to push a message is drowned out. The ability to push one last message during the customer experience before they leave is invaluable. Not using it for a purpose, other than to directly sign back in – as Facebook uses it – seems like a lost opportunity.

Even at just 1 percent of Facebook’s approximately 500 million users, seeing the ‘logout’ page everyday that’d equal 35 million page views per week, or 140 million pageviews over a four week period. That’d mean Facebook’s logout page alone would receive more/rival traffic volumes than even the largest media websites.

Three screenshots of Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin’s pages a user goes to once signed out, are below.

Twitter – signed out page

Linkedin – signed out page

Facebook – signed out page

UPDATE, as per a question: So just how many pages could Facebook’s ‘logout’ page be serving each day, week or month?

You wouldn’t have known about that new band/show/movie/funny video of a cat attacking a kid on a bicycle without someone in your network sharing it, right?

But that cool new band, or song, or video are invariably just the highlights. Whenever we talk about sharing, we’re really talking about the highlights – we don’t mention that we had to wade through 50 posts of absolutely useless information to get to the nuggets of truly useful and good information. We wash over, and marginalise, the impact and time it took to find the good stuff.

As social networks and users of social networks mature, I wonder if we’re not going to start to see a decline of some of the key metrics that have been lauded as signs of success and growth, and a more select use of them in the near future. And what would that mean for businesses like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin? Would significantly less time on site, due to less random browsing on behalf of the user really be beneficial for the company, even if the user gets a better experience in the end?

This isn’t to be pessimistic about social networking, I’m merely wondering if, as all content is dependent on the people and businesses you interact with in your social networks,  if users aren’t getting tired of reading and posting about trivial things? Are we exposed to oversharing? And as friends, followers and circles grow over time does that mean that we have to wade through more and more trivial content to get to the good stuff? I wonder if some of the new car smell, and showroom shine is starting to come off. I wonder if people might eventually spend less time sharing and interacting, but choose to share more valuable information and start or join more worthwhile discussions, when they do?

I’m on the fence on this one, no clear outcomes, just observing and pondering.

The second issue is transparency vs anonymity, and whether one is better than the other. Mark Zuckerberg the founder and CEO of Facebook directly profits from personalisation, conversations and interactions argues strongly that tying real life discussion to individuals is important. Christopher Poole, founder of 4chan.org , believes that there is value in anonymity and that it is an important right to be able to speak out without fear of long-term repercussion. I’m still on the fence for the majority of the arguments, but I’m siding with Chris Poole for the most part, and I have a few reasons:

- Anonymity is an important factor that can contribute for a more open discussion. If everything you ever said verbally was recorded and could potentially be brought up at any time, for any reason, out of context, from dozens of different parties with their own vested interests people would be reluctant to say anything at all. But this is precisely what happens on the internet. Every conversation, every discussion, everything can be stored forever, somewhere, and might just come back to haunt you when it’s least convenient. I argued this point on mumbrella about a year ago, using my real name, and in the interests of seeing if it was still available, found it via google in under a minute. Makes you think what else it out there about you, me and people you know, huh?

- Drinking the coolaid. If every conversation we have online is tied to our real lives, especially when it comes to individuals interacting with brands, then they might be more interested in telling the company what they think the company wants to hear, not what they actually want to say. And that doesn’t serve the company well, as a false sense of security develops.

- A common criticism of anonymity is that it quickly reduces to a slanging match and a farce. Not so. If you want to see one of the best examples of growing online discussion, head over to reddit, and check out some of the conversations between anonymous people in the Science, Worldnews or even ‘less sophisticated’ subreddits like the motorcycles or  sewing subreddits. And beyond anonymous thread boards and websites, some people simply don’t care that their real profiles are tied to feisty and downright insulting/racist/abusive discussion. In March this year a Bond’s baby competition almost immediately turned into a slanging match between parents over how ugly other children were and there were even racial slurs thrown around. Every one of those conversations was tied to real people and real profiles, civility wasn’t maintained despite being tied to real profiles.

 - Tying real life personas to casual interaction is a barrier to entry for some people, and that might be enough to turn off potential customers. When you buy products at the supermarket your name and details aren’t recorded next to the products and brands you purchase, and then put on display or held in a publicly available registrar for all to search. (There’s a side thought here that if they were we might all eat healthier, but that’s a different argument altogether). When you purchase from a supermarket, or Dan Murphy’s or a chemist there’s an expectation not necessarily of privacy, but certainly anonymity. Buying condoms, or two dozen candy bars, or three slabs of beer? Fine, no one cares, the person at the check out just wants their shift to end, and even if they do care a little it’s not like they know you anyway, so it makes little difference anyway. But, if everything you bought could be searched and sorted in seconds by anyone, how much of your shopping would you re-think? Would you really buy items that could look bad on you in the future, but were well-intentioned, harmless, or casual purchases at the time?

Anonymous interaction isn’t always better, but individuals can be more open honest with companies when their buying habits and other interactions are anonymous, or they are given the choice to do so.

Namesake.com has produced the great infographic below to drive home each sides argument further.

The first issue to tackle is the discussion around filters and personalisation. Eli Pariser, the former Executive Director of MoveOn.org, argues that more and more individuals and companies are wrapping themselves in ‘filtered bubbles’ of information, and that this is ultimately a bad thing. A ‘filter bubble’, is “A filter bubble is a concept developed by Internet activist Eli Pariser to describe a phenomenon in which search queries on sites such as Google or Facebook or Yahoo selectively guess what information a user would like to see based on the user’s past search history and, as a result, searches tend to play back information which agrees with the user’s past viewpoint. Accordingly, users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints. And according to Pariser, the filter bubble is “that personal ecosystem of information that’s been catered by these algorithms” which, based on past choices, reflect a person’s existing viewpoint.” Source.

I strongly encourage you to watch the video below as Eli draws out, but stops short of describing, some of the impacts of a filter bubble, and what that means for individuals, groups, collectives, societies and nations.

What Eli touches on, but doesn’t go into a great deal of detail about is what this means in the medium to long-term and about the implications of companies. political and social groups trying to communicate to a broader audience. In an era of ‘over-personalisation’ where your future search and online results are influenced by past decisions it becomes easier to be convinced that you are right, because Search Engines – both algorithmic and social – deliver what you want to hear, read and see, and are influenced signficantly based on what you’ve previously asked for. How does an individual grow sufficiently to take in broad opinion if the search results they receive cater to what they know, not what they don’t know? Over time, the delivery of this personalised information leads to more like-minded searches, which in turn deliver more like-minded results. Breaking out of that cycle could be very difficult – how do you for example tell algorithmic search engines that you want to be challenged, if you don’t know what some of the alternatives are?

The challenge for business should be plainly obvious: How do you talk to the unconverted where they aren’t getting the information they might need because years of search history indicates they don’t know and an algorithm doesn’t isn’t programmed to recognise that they might need it? How do you get to individuals that should be looking at you and considering your services but where you might be prevented from delivering that information to new groups because a search engine, or personalisation algorithms have decided that your message isn’t relevant, even if it is. In an online environment a future challenge (to start working on solving now) is how to get your message to those that aren’t already singing from the same hymn sheet.

This may not be a massive issue right now because the internet is still relatively young, and personalisation more so, but consider the current generation growing up now – next generations students, consumers and leaders – how will their lives be affected, and how will businesses talk to individuals who have never known any different?

Perhaps Donald Rumsfeld said it best when he posited this:
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

On to part 2.

For a video that cost $2000 to make, and has some of the blandest least provocative lyrics known to human existence that’s just incredible.

What’s more incredible about the popularity of this song is what it doesn’t talk about. “Friday” doesn’t reference sex, violence, drugs or drug taking, making money, stealing, crime, politics, inspire nationalism, or coming from a broken home and doing it tough. It is possibly the most innocuous song that has ever been written and yet has been this popular.

Just amazing what gets shared to such extreme volumes sometimes, and it’s worth standing back for a minute and thinking about that.

Also, worth mentioning that Rebecca Black has said she is donating all advertising revenues to her school and a Japanese Earthquake Relief fund, pretty humbling really.

Addendum: The lyrics aren’t that bad objectively speaking. The lyrics arguably are no more or less inspired than Daft Punk’s ‘Around the world’ for example. The title of the song also happens to be the only three words sung in the entire video.