A discussion thread about the lack of SSL on AppEngine, and some ways to work around that.

I got into (an interesting) discussion of a proposal to store encrypted data only on the server with no private server key - and how secure that may be.

(Roy, this reminds me of your project last year - I'm sure you've thought about all these same issues).

A scathing analysis of all the anti-shareholder actions Jerry Yang has taken in the last few months. I think Joe Nocera is right on here - when your company goes public, you can no longer treat it as your private plaything. Neither can it be run for the benefit of the employees....it's the owners of the company, the shareholders, who's interests must be paramount.

Arrogantly, Mr. Yang appears to ignore this fact, and is now being sued by large shareholders, pension funds, and Carl Icahn.

How can he NOT be forced to step down (much less cost Yahoo many tens of millions in defending against these suits)?

Quoted: Since Yahoo went public in 1996, the company has had new owners — its shareholders — but it is unclear whether Jerry Yang, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, knows this.

RescueTime gets TechCrunch coverage using aggregate data they've collected (proving they not only have a great application, but are masters of developing content with high link-bait).

I've personally worked on products that account for 22% of total desktop usage (Outlook, Excel, Messenger). I wonder if the other product I co-founded (SharePoint) would also make the chart if RescueTime could recognize the various URL's as all being SharePoint web sites).

Microsofts answer to Amazon Web Services - a very rich offering based on SQL Server as a hosted service. In free Beta right now - so not sure how the pricing vs. S3 or (eventual) Google Big Table will work out.

Quoted: SQL Server Data Services

This site is the original Wiki. After I retired from Microsoft, I posted this link to Wiki's and the development of SharePoint. Now, we have come full circle, where Google's new Wiki project is claiming to be a "Sharepoint Killer".

The "Team Collaboration" category will continue to have many variations and spin-offs. I find it interesting that, on the internet, we have a very rich ecology of competing products across many categories. Compare to the relatively stagnant competition for desktop application software, where 90%+ of the market is held by the category leaders.

It may come to pass on the Internet eventually as well, but with the barriers to entry so slow, the competitive landscape may remain quite rich.

Quoted: SharePoint is, in some ways, a descendant of WikiWikiWeb. I think it was in 1995 (maybe 96), that I found WikiWikiWeb and was fascinated by the potential to have a Web-editing interface using a Web browser. I created a simple CGI program of my own, which I called QuickWeb. I was the Microsoft Outlook development manager at the time, and I created a QuickWeb Web site internally, that we could use in the development group. We ended up using it for status information, updating info about the current day's build, etc.
...
When I was ready to move on from the Outlook team, I set off to create something more extensive, as an extension of the QuickWeb idea. I wanted to incorporate something with a richer data model; something with a real database behind it rather than as a collection of flat Web pages. I worked on my own for a couple of months, creating a prototype of what I called "TeamPages?".
...
In order to make this a real Microsoft Product, I focused on integration with both Front Page and other Office applications, realizing that in order to be a success, TeamPages? would have to be a great way for teams to share their Office documents, as well as be an add-on to the standard Front Page Web editing tools.
...
Eventually, my small team merged with the Front Page and OfficeWebServer? teams, and we became the SharePoint Team Services team. Our first product shipped with Office XP. Internally, at Microsoft, SharePoint has become a huge success. There are many thousands of internal team and project Web sites that have been created with SharePoint. It has all but entirely replaced the dumb File Share, as the de facto center of group collaboration.

Wow. This is a remarkably harsh comment on the MS/Yahoo merger by Google's Chief Legal Officer. This is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Quoted: "Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies"

This borders on the slanderous. It's one thing to seek a competitive advantage - I don't think MS seeks to use illegal means to establish a monopoly ... the Justice department did not rule that MS's monopoly in Operating Systems was illegal - only that it used that monopoly to restrain trade in other markets (e.g., browsers, media players). And subsequent events showed that it was all moot - innovation has more to do with market share - in the age of the internet, MS was in no position to limit distribution of competitive products.

You could argue that Microsoft's success also relied to a great deal on the openness of their platform. Everyone in the world was invited to create applications for the Windows platform without the need to pay licensing fees of any kind. Compare this to Apple and Nintendo - who each ship entirely closed systems w/o any 3rd party access. And both have created near-monopoly markets (in music players, music download, and portable video games). Where are all the screams of unfair competition for these companies?

Contrast Mr. Dummond's complaints with the secretiveness of Google in their dealings with the only product that makes them money - their AdSense platform. The don't even reveal to advertisers what % of revenues they are sharing with content partners vs. taking for themselves. Nor are their "competitive" search advertising bids disclosed by Google, who has the ability to arbitrarily and unilaterally increase advertising fees.

Google has created a monopoly in Search. Shouldn't the Justice department step in to prevent Google from using that dominance to route traffic to web properties they favor to the determent of their competitors? Search is far from open with a great deal of secrecy in how search rankings are computed. Should Google not be forced to be more open?

In contrast to MS, who only had control of your "start page" on the Internet, Google truly controls which sites will be winners and which will be losers, since virtually all traffic is in-practice sourced via search.

While some people may "like" Google more than Microsoft, it's pretty clear that the greater potential for abuse lies with the Google Monopoly.

The attachments are really interesting in this article - especially the Word document here which contains Microsoft's explanation of the online Advertising market and how the Google DoubleClick acquisition would harm competition.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/other/technology/bitsantitrust.doc

Quoted: Bits is a blog about technology, innovation and society from The New York Times.

Google is setting itself up to play "Microsoft" to Apple's "Apple". In a replay of 1984, Apple has produced an exciting new product (the iPhone), and made it proprietary (no third party hardware, no open platform for developers, not open to multiple phone networks).

Google, is "pulling a Microsoft" by taking all that is good about the iPhone and making it open (any network, any hardware manufacturer, any phone network).

Has Apple learned nothing? I guess they only want 10% of the phone market, while Google and it's partners take the rest.

Excellent review of Firefox and Mozilla's financial relationship with Google. Mitchell Baker is both the CEO of the for-profit Mozilla Corporation and charwoman of the non-for-profit Mozilla Foundation. While the foundation has managed to give away less than $300,000 of it's $74 million war chest, it paid Mitchell $500,000 per year in compensation.

This all seems rather incestuous.

Quoted: Mozilla has come to resemble a Silicon Valley start-up more than a scrappy collaborative underdog.