Fred Destin

Vista: will the onslaught be enough ?

In New York it was impossible to ignore the mounting media wave supporting the launch of Vista. You can tell it is a defining moment for the giant of redmond by the sheer breadth of the campaign.  $500M ...

Take this discrete billboard as an example:

Whilst Vista undoubtedly makes Windows somewhat sexy again, I wonder if this is the moment when MS really stumbles as a consumer product under the combined pressures of:

• The disapperance of apps: I don't know about you, but apart from Excel I very rarely use any of the office suite anymore, and I would gladly move off Outlook tomorrow if you gave me a good alternative.  Internally we stopped using any kind of complex templates for presentations.  More and more we can survive on the very simple collaboration apps of the kind provided by 37 Signals.
• The XUL Brigade: so Vista is finally starting to look like iLife.  But is this enough? Can they cath up with these fast moving targets:  Look at Mozilla / Flock for browsing, Songbird for Music, VeniceProject / JOOST for TV, as a few examples of XUL based applications that are picking up steam and building up to a significant competitive threat.  If IE7 is anything to go by, I would really worry.
  
• The Consumer: Vista is very secure, great, but you the choices made by MS are without a doubt designed to please the embattled media industry, not consumers. 
  
• Its own weight: I can't believe the hardware replacement cycle required by Vista will happen at the speed required to meet the forecasts of the Microsoft financial planners.

I have no doubt that most mainstream users will embrace the simplicity, security and sexiness.  I question the ROI of the media campaign and wonder how much market share can be taken away from the mighty MS in each of the core apps of the digital lifestyle. Gates himself seems to be nervous and resorting to tactics more usually seen in election campaigns...

technorati tags:vista, microsoft, songbird, flock, 37signals, joost

Google.be gets a legal makeover in content row

I almost missed this, but the Google Belgian homepage looked like an equity research disclaimer for a week.  After its condemnation by the Belgian Courts for violation of copyright, Google was forced to publish the court's decision for a week on the homepage.

 

Google being Google they immediately dereferenced the plaintiffs from the search engine, such that all the leading French-language newspapers are not available on Google.be anymore.  Users need to force a switch to google.com to get Le Soir to show at its rightful #1 spot.  Typing Le Soir in google.be does not deliver a hit as far as the eye can see, but ironically typing "condamnation google" on .com delivers a LeSoir.be hit at the #3 spot.  You gotta love the web !

I have always thought it was fascinating to see the New York Times running Google Ads and essentially giving away much of its CPM value, whilst at the same time Google was garnering traffic with its own news offering.  Great strategy, provide more cash to the guy who is putting you out of business.  Whilst there is no disputing that papers are fighting a losing battle, isn't it time the publishers (be they blogs or newspapers) got together with a credible ad platform that would serve their needs ?

Battelle suggests alignment exists, referring to David Eun's post.  I think he is right, however what really matters is where the money flows to and the question is whether Google News and its ilk are overly commoditizing the business of producing good content  and not paying enough margin back.  I think that newspapers need to work hard towards a further "deportalisation" of information consumption so they can syndicate their content as they see fit, to targeted audiences, with CPM economics that they can influence.

technorati tags:google.be, lesoir, newyorktimes, davideun, battelle, belgium

No entrepreneur envy here

I met with an entrepreneur with a fellow VC the other day and the investor was painfully trying to convince the founder that he too thought about being an entrepreneur  (once) and that he really understood what it was all about (I feel your pain).  I think he was confusing having had a business plan in his back pocket in 2000 with having had to explain to his wife that, yes, there really was a light at the end of tunnel in December 2002.  It was almost as bad as some VC's telling you they are entrepreneurs because, really, they manage their own fund and have to pay the GP commitment...

It reminded me of a nice contrasted view by none other than Danny Rimer.  He was on the panel of a great CEO-centric event called Technology Futures Network that we founded (UK CEO's please mail me !!) and someone asked him what he would do if he was not at Index Ventures and whether he would use his ill-gained cash (not nice to destroy telco twice over) to start a company.

With typical humillity he replied "I would look for a job".  I like people who know themselves and recognise what they are good at like that.  Having said that, I do have the itch to start that coffee shop cum music and comics store every now and again ;-) ...

technorati tags:venture, danny, rimer, index, entrepreneur, TFN, technlogyfuturesnetwork, capital