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Google officially announced the Nexus One today, and it seems pretty cool.  I haven’t had a chance to play with one yet, but by most accounts, it’s worth checking out.  I believe it will be a successful device, along with the Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris.  However, there seems to be a lot of sentiment that this is playing out like the PC vs Mac wars a decade or so ago, and that slowly app developers (and in-turn users) will all gravitate towards the more open Android platform.  The argument is that Microsoft excelled because it was hardware agnostic and did not control the ecosystem (thus allowing it to innovate), whereas Macs struggled because they controlled the entire experience (here’s a good take on this).  In the mobile marketplace, the argument continues, Android will eventually win out because it’s completely open.  Never mind the over simplicity (i.e. Jobs left, the hardware started to suck, etc.), there are some good parallels to make the analogy fit.

I, however, completely disagree.  This market is much, much more nuanced.  The reason is that there are two major differences between different phones that affect user behavior – input mechanism and screen size.  For example, here’s a list of the different screen resolutions for Android devices:

800 x 480
600 x 800
320 x 480
240 x 320
854 x 480
240 x 400
1024 x 600

And Android is only now becoming popular.  Some Android devices have keyboards, some are touch only, some have pointers, some have extra buttons, and some have sensors others don’t.  With the computer, everyone had a similar keyboard and mouse.  Users had different size monitors, but the big difference was that you could get away with cropping and not using the entire monitor for computer apps.  On a phone, where the screen is already so small, not using the entire space is much more significant.

This is the same issue that plagues Blackberry right now (well, that and terrible API implementation/documentation).  Whether it’s the Curve, Bold, Pearl, and so on, every device has a different resolution, and so apps need to be tailored appropriately.  I’m not the first to realize this is an issue (official Android documentation and another post).  The iPhone, on the other hand, has one screen resolution 320 x 480, and one input mechanism, touchscreen.

That all said, I believe that Android will thrive, but it won’t be the same way as Mac vs PC.  Bill Gurley’s piece (a must-read, in my opinion) begins to get at the nuanced differences, but Android is still a smartphone platform, which puts it head-to-head with the iPhone.   It is very lucrative for manufacturers and carriers to use Android instead of paying a licensing fee (they actually receive ad revenue share for using Android).  But for consumers and users of apps on both devices?  I still think the iPhone will be a better experience.

Two additional interesting factors to consider – if feature phones (i.e. non-smartphones) begin to adopt Android in full-scale, and the continued success of the iPod Touch and iTunes store (remember, you can’t use your iTunes music on a non-Apple device).

Google is a remarkable company.  They’ve flipped the business model in numerous ways, because they can.  But what’s happening in the mobile space is becoming a both exciting and troubling.  I love how they give away navigation data, or that they pay manufacturers to use their phone.  Soon they will subsidize your laptop, and maybe even your TV.  It’s giving folks who don’t normally have access to some of this technology a way to buy it.  And in the mobile space, with their new “phone”, they are trying to break the carrier-driven model (which I argue would come anyways once LTE rolls around, as most carriers will then be on the same technical platform).  To Google, it’s all about getting the accessing the world’s information and letting you search it quickly (and of course selling ads).

But soon, a single company could provide your software for your email, browser, OS, TV, and mobile phone.  That’s every single way I consume information, purchase products, and communicate with my friends and family.  A single advertising company.

Right now, they are a fairly friendly privacy company.  But what happens if growth slows, or there’s a change in leadership, and the company is pressured to seek alternate revenue streams.  I’m not sure I’m ready for a single company to own/control access to all this data.  I like convergence but not this much.  The question as a consumer is where do we draw the line?  Google has not made many major missteps with privacy (though last week’s comments were awfully close).  But what if that changes?

The thing is this – there should be a large competitor that’s challenging Google and trying to perform the same convergence, and there isn’t a clear one yet.  Yahoo tried with Connect TV/Digital Home, but they have been struggling.  Microsoft has been trying to push Media Center for awhile, and their mobile platform is confusing at best.

Apple seems the best poised.  Although no one has said it, the new Google device is their answer to the iPod Touch, a tremendous device that can be used for a variety of things, including as a phone (and I’m guessing an HD camera soon).  But Apple tends to attack verticals.  Regardless, I will continue to use my Apple phone, my Windows laptop, and my garbage software on my TV.

I hope some startups and incumbents come up with ways to challenge Google on all fronts.

FYI – I’m long Apple.

Last night, I was driving home from my sister’s place in the east bay, and after checking Google Maps and seeing all green roads (i.e. no traffic), I decided to take 880/Bay Bridge to get back to SF.  Little did I know it was green because there was no traffic on the bridge (due to the closure).  Had I known beforehand, I would have saved a full hour.  In a moment of tragic comedy (okay, it was not that bad, but good thing I had company), Caltrans decided to alert me after I passed the traffic-filled toll plaza on the San Mateo Bridge that the “Bay Bridge is closed, seek alt route.”  Thanks.

I’m not alone when I say I’m often running late to lunches and social gatherings.  Or oftentimes I get delayed when I need to travel out of the office for a meeting.  The one thing that’s constant in all these situations – my phone.  My mobile device always knows where I am.  My calendar always knows where I should be.  Why can’t these two merge?

Now, I know this is difficult on the iPhone since there are no background apps, making it difficult to keep updating location (though some folks have found workarounds) .  But on Android, this should be relatively easy.  With the proliferation of LBS, my phone knows where I am at all times.  It could tell, for example, that if it’s 8:45 AM and I am more than 15 miles away (or there’s traffic) from my 9 AM calendar appointment location, that I will be late.  It could then send a text/email to the other attendees (or at least the organizer).  Little late to dinner?  Perhaps an integration to OpenTable.  Flight late, meaning I can work later?  An integration to TripIt would be help.  Yes, many folks have admins to help with this, but it really should be automated.  Last night, my phone clearly could have known I was heading home to SF via the Bay Bridge, and alerted me of the closure (the news was all over Twitter, which I unfortunately did not check before leaving).

None of this is ground-breaking, or extremely tough to do.  Google is probably best positioned to do this, but perhaps there’s a startup already hard at work (I hope so).  I’m looking forward to the day when all these services are combined and I can comfortably know I’m being alerted.  In the meantime, good luck to Caltrans on the repairs, and all commuters who usually take the Bay Bridge daily.

Apple announced today that over 2 billion apps had been downloaded – quite an amazing feat in little over one year.  Since I started using an iPhone, I realize that my favorite part is the App Store.  The touch screen and slim profile are nice, but it’s really the store that makes me love the device.  Perhaps I’m unique.  As a kid, I used to love getting the Sunday newspaper, especially on a snowy day, when the newspaper was cold and crisp.  After perusing the sports section and the comics, I loved leafing through the CompUSA and Circuit City flyers, especially the clearance and sales sections.  I could never buy enough cheap peripherals or hard drives.

The app store has taken over my previous excitement that I felt about the flyers.  Now I download Waze or buy Snapture rather than a trackball mouse or screen cleanser.  Instead of waiting for Sunday, I can just load up the store on a whim and see if there are any cool apps.  I wish there was more turnover in top apps, but the fact is that it’s far and away better than Blackberry’s App World (and I hear also Android’s and Palm’s, though I have limited first-hand experience).  It has the instant gratification element.  I wish that the iPhone allowed developers more flexibility, but as long as people keep releasing great apps, I will be interested.  And that’s the key – the moment another platform’s app store gets more traction, and their apps become more innovative than the iPhone’s apps in terms of quality and quantity, I will most likely switch over.

UPDATE: As I was loading up my blog to post this, I saw a very relevant argument that Blackberry needs to step up their efforts in the app store.  Worth a read…

I gave a guest lecture 1.5 years ago to some juniors/seniors at MIT about career management.  It’s something I’ve spent some time on, so I thought I would attach the presentation below.  None of the information is ground-breaking, but I found it useful just to have it in one place, and it did help me land my current VC  job at Opus Capital.  I’m an especially big believer in the learning curve:

Essentially, after 9-18 months doing the same thing (whether it’s a specific job, function, etc.), our learning begins to taper off logarithmically.  That doesn’t mean we stop learning, it just means we slow down.  The lesson is that we should look for new challenges to keep ourselves learning in an exponential fashion.  Here’s the full preso, feel free to comment or send me your thoughts:

Career Management Rohit Gupta 04142008 Final

In the spirit of the playoff stretch, I thought I would briefly mention how awesome the MLB app on the iPhone is.  The MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) group has done a great job over the past several years.  Since I’ve moved to the Bay area in 2005, I have been able to watch or listen to nearly any Red Sox game through my computer with MLB.tv (though I barely take advantage).   The limitation is you can’t watch in-market games (so if you are in the Bay area you can’t watch the Giants/Athletics) or nationally televised games.  But the quality is superb.  MLB was clearly ahead of the pack, but now Hulu has made the internet TV watching experience more mainstream.  This year, the service cost $79.95 for the season (you can sign up now for the remainder for $14.95).

What is extremely interesting is their iPhone app.  The app costs $9.99 (slightly steep, but worth it if you are a baseball fan), and has game tracking, video highlights, live audio, etc.  But if you are an MLB.tv subscriber, it lets you watch games live, on your phone.  And it works on the 3G network (which is huge), without much choppiness.  In fact, here’s an image of a Sox game via 3G:

Anyways, I thought I would mention it on my blog because I love showing it off.  It looks like they are running a promotion, so if you download the app, you can buy individual games for $.99 (without being an MLB.tv subscriber).  It’s definitely my favorite app on the iPhone, just wish I had time to use it more!

There’s been a large movement online towards consolidating identity.  Single sign-on (SSO) online has been a goal for a long time, starting with Microsoft’s Passport and then the OpenID and Open Stack movement.  Facebook Connect, in its short life, has probably done a lot more to enhance the progress.  It’s not yet ubiquitous, but many sites support Facebook Connect to not only provide identity and authentication, but to let users interact with their friends through the site.  Google has a product as well, Friend Connect, which is a more open version (supports OpenID) though less popular flavor of the same thing.

What’s fascinating is how this movement is happening with the telephone as well, in a seemingly parallel track.  Convergence will happen sooner than we think.  I’m terrible at remembering numbers – but pretty soon we won’t need to.  That’s what makes Google owning GrandCentral (now Google Voice) fascinating – at some point, the phone number (at least the way we think of it today) will be superfluous.  The Palm Pre already connects to Facebook, Android phones to Google.  The phone number will essentially become the device ID.

This why owning the digital identity of the individual is so important to Facebook and Google.  At some point, reaching individuals via phone will be based entirely on a digital identifier, i.e. SSO will apply to phones, and our digital identity will be the conduit for communication.  It may be our email address (like it is with online payment), or our Facebook identity.  There are pros and cons of both, and clearly both companies want to be in the middle.  By being the broker of communication, they will become the telecom companies of the next generation.  A lot of this is obvious, but my hope is that it’s done in an open fashion.   I’m just looking forward to the day where all I will need is an online ID and that’s it.

Last week I attended an event here in the Valley with Aneesh Chopra, the CTO of the US.  Not too long ago, I was heavily involved in politics (worked on campaigns, etc), and technology was rarely talked about, so I was extremely curious about what he would have to say.  Turns out I learned a personal lesson as well.

As we all know, change can take forever in political organizations, as well as in large enterprises.  What struck me as refreshing from Chopra’s talk was the administration’s efforts to tackle short-term problems initially, with a broader vision in mind.  That way, at least some progress can be demonstrated.  The example he gave was that by September (90 days after they announced the idea), they would develop a new website that will allow immigrants to check their application status online.  While not fully satisfying his broader goal of immigration reform, it does represent a non-trivial first step to get there.

I took the lesson as something I should consider myself.  Oftentimes in our lives when we seek change, whether it’s personal or professional, we try to aim for the ultimate goal and get frustrated when we fail to achieve it quickly.  While I think we must have longer-term vision, I think having specific, short-term goals to get there is extremely helpful and helps us feel like we are making progress.

Anyways, I know this is off-topic, but I have been thinking about this recently, and trying to figure out different areas of my life where I need to define some short-term goals that will help me achieve my vision.

I blogged about this before, but I thought it was relevant to cover again after reading Paul Krugman’s brief post and listening to all the controversy (fear) on a single-payer system (please see the definition if you are not familiar – essentially single-payer means the government becomes the insurer, i.e. it pays the health care professionals).  Lost in all the arguments is how the government is already picking up nearly half the cost of health care already (46%), more than what insurers pay (41%).  Sure this is substantially less than most other countries, but it’s still relevant as part of the conversation.

Take a look at the two graphs below (I’m taking the top 22 countries by population that spend at least $1,000 per capita on health expenditures, which excludes BRIC and developing countries).  The first one compares (as a percentage) where the money for health expenditures comes from – government, out-of-pocket, or private/insurance.  The US clearly has the largest percentage coming from private/insurers.

The second graph looks at raw expenditures per capita.  The US doubles nearly all other countries in spending, as we all know (this is slightly self-selected as I only chose countries with over $1,000 in spending, see my earlier post for a more complete picture).  Yet it’s clear that the US government spends nearly as much or more than other countries spend combined (government, out of pocket, and private/insurers).   Correlation does not mean causation, but clearly the intricacies of our current employee/insurance-based model adds significant overhead to the overall system.  But are there other inefficiencies in the system that lead to the high costs?

Opponents of single-payer argue that our quality of care will be poor if we move that way, but what is the evidence of that?  Our health care as currently setup is not the best in the world (perhaps it’s in the conversation).  But only two countries listed here have insurer’s paying over 15% (US insurers pay 41%).

My personal hope is that we slowly begin to move away from our overly complicated system and begin to adopt a system that resembles other countries’ (albeit better).  This won’t happen quickly- half the “stakeholders” (or special interests) in these negotiations would be severely hurt by reducing costs, as inefficiencies to us mean profit to them.  The Obama administration is making progress (I would rather we do it right slowly than rush into a poor solution) but we must all continue to educate ourselves, keep an open mind, and avoid the knee-jerk reactions from phrases that opponents throw out to impede potential improvements.

Health Expenditure Split (by % overall)

Health Expenditures Overall

When Amazon announced its acquisition of Zappos yesterday, I was pretty excited.  Here were two of my favorite companies joining forces. I have become a huge advocate of Amazon (especially their Prime service) over the past couple years, as they continue to show innovation and reduce the pain of shopping (this doesn’t account for the Kindle and AWS, which I discuss here).  I’d say 90% of my online shopping goes through Amazon due to price/ease.

Zappos, on the other hand, is a more recent fad of mine.  I heard Tony Hsieh speak at TiEcon earlier this year, and it was the best keynote I can remember, especially given that I was able to stay awake (without coffee) on a Saturday morning with very little sleep.  And he was quite inspirational, though he didn’t talk just about Zappos or his background.  I actually bought a book on his recommendation – Happiness Hypothesis (which I will blog about sometime in the future), ironically on Amazon.

Their value prop is awesome (free unlimited shipping and returns) and their service is impeccable.  While they focused on shoes (competing with Amazon’s Endless.com), they had already expanded into apparel, and it was only a matter of time before they moved to other types of goods that Amazon offered.  I loved where the direction they were pushing the market in, and was hoping that I’d eventually be able to choose between Zappos and Amazon for that next gadget or toy.

The question I wonder is whether, as a consumer, is it good that these companies are now one and no longer competing.  As Hsieh colloquially put it in his letter (btw I like his sense of humor), this was less an “acquisition” and more like “Amazon and Zappos sitting in a tree…”  In my opinion, Zappos’ customer service cred kept Amazon honest, but now that they are “sitting in a tree” together, who is challenging them, and pushing even their vaunted reputation higher?  I’m sure there are smaller companies out there that are evolving, but to reach their scale it requires significant capital.  Perhaps Ebay can challenge them but given their CEO’s recent statement, it looks like they’re going to push their Paypal offering (which has a terrible customer service reputation, fair or not), which to me means they may be deshifting their focus against Amazon.

Anyways, I will leave you with the presentation Hsieh gave to TiEcon – it gets really interesting around slide 36 (though even the beginning is great):