My interpretation of the Google Talk story, from this morning’s Observer. Summary:

Since its inception, Google has stuck to three basic principles. The first was to build and maintain the most powerful computing cluster ever seen. The second was to employ smart engineers and marketers to figure out revenue-bearing services that could be provided with such a system. The world knows Google for search, but that merely happened to be the first application that came along. The third (and perhaps the most important) article of Google faith is that the internet will in the end become the world’s operating system – the hub of everything (including telephony), with the web browser the dominant user interface.

History repeats itself, said Marx, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. There are two competing standards for the next generation of DVD disks. One, Blu-ray, developed by Sony, stores 25 GB on a disk. The other, HD DVD, created by a consortium led by Toshiba, stores 15 GB. Needless to say, they are incompatible.

The commercial madness of this is obvious to all concerned, but nobody wants to give way. And now, talks about a possible compromise have apparently been abandoned. Rational consumers will sit on their hands until a clear victor emerges — which could take a while. (At a time when sales of DVDs seem to be stagnating.) Sony’s Betamax was technically superior, but lost out to VHS. Blu-ray is technically superior to HD DVD….

More… And I’d forgotten about the daft DRM technologies proposed for the new formats. Fortunately, Ed Felten hasn’t.

This morning’s Observer column on the perennial mystery of why people continue using software that causes them so much grief. Sample:

When friends and family tell me their woeful stories of viruses and worms, I have learnt to bite my tongue and make sympathetic, but incoherent noises. This was not how I used to react. Once upon a time I would say, in a smugly superior way, that if people would insist on supping with the devil then they should expect to get scorched; and if they wished to get off this torture-rack then they should move to a different – Apple or Linux – platform.

But I rapidly learnt this was not what these wretches want to hear. They do not want to be told that they should abandon their Microsoft-ridden machines and worship in a different church. So in the end, I stopped telling them about Apple and Linux and began mouthing the soothing bromides favoured by vicars when dealing with terminal cases.

En passant… This religious dimension brings to mind Umberto Eco’s wonderful essay on the difference between the Apple Mac and the IBM PC, of which the nub reads…

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can achieve salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: Far away from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

What is Google up to? Interesting speculation in Business 2.0. Excerpt:

What if Google wanted to give Wi-Fi access to everyone in America? And what if it had technology capable of targeting advertising to a user’s precise location? The gatekeeper of the world’s information could become one of the globe’s biggest Internet providers and one of its most powerful ad sellers, basically supplanting telecoms in one fell swoop. Sounds crazy, but how might Google go about it?

First it would build a national broadband network — let’s call it the GoogleNet — massive enough to rival even the country’s biggest Internet service providers. Business 2.0 has learned from telecom insiders that Google is already building such a network, though ostensibly for many reasons. For the past year, it has quietly been shopping for miles and miles of “dark,” or unused, fiber-optic cable across the country from wholesalers such as New York’s AboveNet. It’s also acquiring superfast connections from Cogent Communications and WilTel, among others, between East Coast cities including Atlanta, Miami, and New York. Such large-scale purchases are unprecedented for an Internet company, but Google’s timing is impeccable. The rash of telecom bankruptcies has freed up a ton of bargain-priced capacity, which Google needs as it prepares to unleash a flood of new, bandwidth-hungry applications. These offerings could include everything from a digital-video database to on-demand television programming.

Why would Google want to do this? Answer, it could save it lots of money — especially as it rolls out bandwidth-hogging services.

Every time a user performs a search on Google, the data is transmitted over a network owned by an ISP — say, Comcast — which links up with Google’s servers via a wholesaler like AboveNet. When AboveNet bridges that gap between Google and Comcast, Google has to pay as much as $60 per megabit per second per month in IP transit fees. As Google adds bandwidth-intensive services, those costs will increase. Big networks owned by the likes of AT&T get around transit fees by striking “peering” arrangements, in which the networks swap traffic and no money is exchanged. By cutting out middlemen like AboveNet, Google could share traffic directly with ISPs to avoid fees.

Hmmm….

More…From today’s Good Morning, Silicon Valley

A $79 billion market value, nearly $3 billion in cash on hand, and Google needs more money? Apparently so. As the first-year anniversary of its landmark IPO approaches the wildly successful Internet bellwether is planning a secondary offering. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it plans to sell up to 14.8 million shares. Based on Google’s closing price on Wednesday of $285.09, the company could raise $4.2 billion — roughly 5% of its current market value. The move left analysts scratching their heads. “Exactly what they want the cash for will be a big, big question,”

So what do they need the money for? Something Very Big, obviously. Costing, well, about $6 billion. Stay tuned.

Interesting (and perceptive) CNET post on the impact of MP3.

MP3 made it possible to put ALL of your music in one place and thus made it easier to access. You no longer need to dig through tens, hundreds or even thousands of CDs, tapes or records to listen to that one tune that decided to run through your head at any given moment. Just find it in the jukebox player of your choice and let the music play! You’re also spared the expense of CD jukebox players that, even in the 100 disc capacities, you’d still need to change out discs to hear all of your collection. Now you just click shuffle and play and you’re good to go.Finally, and most obviously, you can bring that huge collection of tunes with you wherever you go via an MP3 player. Again, no digging through and changing out CDs or tapes, just whatever you want, whenever you want and wherever you want. Liberation in the truest sense of the word!

If, like me, you find Google Mail indispensable when away from home, then you will find this collection of Gmail Tips very useful.

I now copy all my mail from my mail server to my Google account, which then becomes a highly accessible back-up archive. It’s proved unbelievably useful in the last few months.