The only thing that they are lacking is Apple’s branding finesse, but it is pretty hard to compete with “LESS-THAN-FREE” in the long run…

Why would Google “bare [almost] any burden” (including the $12B purchase of Motorola Mobility, in large part to defend Android in the #PatentWars) to buy their way into this? Because… “The Future Of Mobile Is The Future Of Everything”.

From Abovethecrowd.com - The Freight Train That Is Android:

…the more I wonder if I too may have underestimated the unprecedented market disruption that is Android.

One of Warren Buffet’s most famous quotes is that “In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable ‘moats’.” An “economic castle” is a great business, and the “unbreachable moat” is the strategy or market dynamic that heightens the barriers-to-entry and makes it difficult or ideally impossible to compete with, or gain access to, the economic castle. …

For Google, the economic castle is clearly the search business, augmented by its amazing AdWords monetization framework…and Google would clearly want to put a “unbreachable moat” around it. …

So here is the kicker. Android, as well as Chrome and Chrome OS for that matter, are not “products” in the classic business sense. They have no plan to become their own “economic castles.” Rather they are very expensive and very aggressive “moats,” funded by the height and magnitude of Google’s castle. Google’s aim is defensive not offensive. They are not trying to make a profit on Android or Chrome.

They want to take any layer that lives between themselves and the consumer and make it free (or even less than free). Because these layers are basically software products with no variable costs, this is a very viable defensive strategy. In essence, they are not just building a moat; Google is also scorching the earth for 250 miles around the outside of the castle to ensure no one can approach it…

Because they are “giving away” money to use their product, this creates a rather substantial conundrum for someone trying to extract economic rent for a competitive product in the same market.

This is the part that amazes me the most. I don’t know if a large organized industry has ever faced this fierce a form of competition – someone who is not trying to “win” in the classic sense. They want market share, but they don’t need economics. Imagine if Ford were faced with GM paying people to take Chevrolets? How many would they be able to sell?…

[First curated on Amplify.com]

Related -> This SiliconAlleyInsider Sub Headline Reveals Why You Must Move The Freeline

1) Windows Phone 7 isn’t really going anywhere, and Nokia’s new Lumia 800, etc. offerings don’t feel (price) competitive enough to make much of a dent in either that trend, or Nokia’s own downfall.

2) While Android tablets have failed to make any meaningful inroads against the iPad thus far, at least they have sold somewhere between 1-2 Million (U.S.), and shipped many more (sitting in inventories, waiting for drastic price cuts…).

But Microsoft won’t even be in the game until some time later this year (what will the actual date be? Q3? Q4?!), when tablets with Windows 8 are expected to ship in quantity. So Microsoft is starting from way behind in third place.

3) More importantly, there are no guarantees that the tablet/touch-centric bet of Windows 8 is going to pay off. In fact, it could well be that because the touch UI (User Interface) is bolted onto a relatively heavy-weight, resource-intensive Windows NT OS base, Win 8 will require too-expensive, high-end spec’d tablets, while as a standard desktop/laptop OS, few consumers and companies will see a true need to upgrade to Win 8 from 7.

It’s just a few years after 7 was introduced, and for all apparent purposes, it is running everything anyone would need on a Windows laptop/desktop just fine. So why spend money on 8 in a difficult/uncertain macro-economic environment?

4) Windows developers have been relatively unhappy about having to massively retool for writing apps for Windows 8, so there could be trouble brewing here as well.

5) While all of this still doesn’t spell immediate collapse for Microsoft’s business, legacy sales of Windows 7 upgrades, MS Office upgrades, and various enterprise software is not going to suffice in the long run.

6) It is also telling that Windows 8 was being completely overshadowed by… just about everything else thus far at CES, including Google’s Android 4.0 version “Ice Cream Sandwich”. Keep in mind that CES had until now been Microsoft’s showcase, even though it is now withdrawing from the event for the future.

(This apparently due to the timing creating a mismatch with Microsoft’s own internal launch calendar, which may explain the long history of relative vaporware coming out of Redmond at CES.)

But this has got to smart: Windows 8 is Microsoft’s major bet on a unified OS to run “on all three screens”, desktop/laptop, tablet, and smartphone. It is a bet so large, one might say Ballmer is betting the farm on Windows 8 being a hit, and that if it isn’t, Microsoft is in real trouble.

7) As Robert Scoble recently stated in the discussion on his Google+ thread here, Windows Phone might already be done:

…What matters is the PRODUCT THAT SHIPS TODAY. Microsoft is missing 450,000 apps TODAY and NOTHING you say can make that go away. Microsoft knows it’s in a deep hole. So do most consumers. …the problem is that THE MICROSOFT PRESS thinks it’s doomed. It’s not just one guy, either. It’s people who cover Microsoft for a living and live in Seattle and they think Microsoft Mobile sucks. So you’re on the wrong side of the line. It’s not getting better, it’s only getting worse. Android and iOS aren’t standing still, you know.”

So if Windows Phone (WP) isn’t catching, and Microsoft is actually indirectly telling developers with the Windows 8 unified strategy that WP (7 or higher) is going away sooner rather than later anyway, where are the Windows 8 prototype/show/reference phones at CES?

Even the CES-announced (promised for March) LG phone featuring the new Intel (!) “Medfield” CPU for smartphones will be running, wait for it… Android!?

8) The Q4 sales figures tell the tale that Microsoft is running behind on a PostPC Era that appears to be upon us (and them) a lot faster than just about anybody predicted:

From GigaOm’s Macs sales growing, but U.S. PC market stagnates:

Things were so bad, IDC has dubbed 2011 the “the second-worst year in history” for the U.S. PC market. The overall 5 percent contraction of the market since 2010 is second only to the 12 percent decline after the Y2K buildup and the dot-com bust of 2001.

Ouch!

This while Apple managed to sell about 300,000 more Macs and grow 18% to a U.S. market share of nearly 11%. But I consider that more of a Halo-Effect from the mindshare captured by the iPhone and iPad. Yes, the 2011 Macbook Airs were really sexy which is why everybody copied them since late last year and at this CES as (Wintel) “Ultrabooks”.

But that doesn’t explain how U.S. PC shipments dropped by nearly 1.4 Million in the quarter Y/Y, or even more with the Mac growth factored back out. Despite some macro-economic headwinds, the only thing that explains this is the “iPad effect”:

Apple has likely sold around 40 Million iPads in 2011 globally (just under 15M in 2010). Let’s say half of those are U.S. sales, so 5M per quarter on average. And the actual numbers for the Q4 Holiday Shopping quarter should be a good bit higher than say Q1/2011 where additionally the iPad 2 wasn’t even shipping yet, so 5M for Q4 is actually pretty conservative. [UPDATE: Apple announced 15.4M iPads sold globally in Q4 at their earnings call. So my 5M number for the U.S. sales estimate still feels conservative.]

That would mean that Apple has taken 5M of 23.5M (18.5M PCs + 5M iPads) = 21.2% share with the iPad alone! Add to that the 11% (of the 18.5M) Mac share and Apple is at about 29%. It’s not that COMPUTER sales are really dropping, it’s that a lot of iPads and other tablets are replacing a lot of new PC purchases for the mainstream user.

And this phenomenon is only expected to grow, analysts think Apple might sell 55M total iPads in 2012. One must wonder if there so much pressure on Windows 8 on tablets to be a success that it is setting it up for failure?!

GigaOM was quick to point out 5 Problems With Gartner’s Tablet Forecast, among them:

Apple’s iPad is poised to continue its overwhelming lead in tablet sales until 2015, holding 47.1 percent of the market according to research firm Gartner. Google’s Android tablets will slowly catch up to nab 38.6 percent of sales by then, while media slates built upon platforms such as MeeGo, QNX and webOS will barely be a blip on the radar, accounting for just a combined 14 percent of tablet sales four years from now. On the surface, these predictions may sound logical, but upon closer inspection, there’s more wrong than right here.

1) 2015 is at least two (or more) product cycles away. [...] While the iPad may not see monumental design changes each year, Apple is sure to evolve the device several times in the next four years. The same holds true for other tablet makers using different platforms. Simply put: It’s too early to predict what the tablet market will look like several device iterations from now due to powerful new processors on the way, faster mobile broadband in wider coverage areas and improvements in mobile software and apps.

While I agree that the Gartner study is making way too many assumptions overall, some of the rosier projections for Android (including Gartner’s own forecast of near 40% share by 2015) are probably having the same issue:

1) The only thing that we know with relative certainty is that Apple has put up a huge lead, and has become the uncontested category leader. If past experience is any guide (study your Ries & Trout on Positioning), that should put it on track to retain 50% share at a minimum, but quite possibly more (60-70%).

2) Especially since Apple went all out on pricing the entry-level $499 iPad so competitively, that the first few would-be competitors couldn’t even begin to catch up with Apple in that regard. Only now are e.g. Samsung rolling out an Android 2.2 tablet in a Wi-Fi model for $349 (April 10), which is priced below the $499 “price anchor” Wifi iPad/iPad 2.

But this is hardly a direct price beat, given that we are talking about a 7″ screen size tablet, not running the latest Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” OS optimized for tablet use (and it may not ever get the upgrade to it), and not fully up to snuff to the iPad’s build quality. So that consumers may well view this price in line with expectations for the different form factors.

3) That’s how strong Apple’s lessons learned from their iPod mass-market device manufacturing have been. Which brings up the legitimate question of whether the tablet market will turn out more like the MP3 player market than the smartphone one:

It all hinges on the question of how much Apple bungled things by staying with AT&T exclusivity for too long. What if there had been a Verizon iPhone (and Sprint and T-mobile as well) by the X-mas shopping season 2008? Would Android have even stood a chance? Would it have surpassed iPhone share as it did by now?

Since the carrier lock-in factor is almost a non-issue for tablets (the trend has been toward the Wifi-only versions anyway), Android has no such help in tablets.

4) Another thing missing: The ingenious “Droid” counter-branding to the iPhone’s own deep Archetype Branding that lifted the sale of all Android smartphones, whether intended or not, doesn’t appear to be crossing over into the Android tablet market.

Motorola created a brand with the Droid that was smartly capturing the few remaining archetypes that Apple had not employed:  Mainly “The Outlaw” (unrepentant, dangerous, bad) and “The Titan” (greatest strength, number, expanse) archetypes inherent in the allusion to the Terminator robotic eye, and to robots in general.

Symbols of “bad boy, take-no-prisoners machine”, combining within itself “the greatest strength”. To quote the original ads: “In a world that doesn’t, Droid does…”.

It appears that Motorola, Samsung, Acer, et al. are starting nearly from scratch in this regard in terms of the tablet market (which may be their biggest mistake yet, because they could have easily pushed the Droid branding into the tablet realm as well, it’s not too far of a brand extension), and so far I have not seen a break-out branding concept from any of them.

5) Much has already been written about the retail display advantage that the iPad currently has vs. the Xoom and other would-be competitors, another area that is quite different from the mobile carrier retail situation with smartphones:

Of course they are the only tablets on display at the Apple Stores, but they also visually dominate at non-exclusive retail outlets such as Best Buy, where the iPads sit on display with the rest of Apple’s shiny “tech-marvel” products, while the Xoom sits somewhere off to the side crammed in with a variety of netbooks and other cheaper fare…

All in all, those are a lot of advantages for the iPad. And any would-be competitors clearly have their work cut out for them if they are hoping to get even close to the 40% share predicted by Gartner for Android. Not to speak of the smaller challengers like HP’s TouchPad with its own WebOS (from the acquisition of Palm), or Blackberry/RIM’s Playbook, who’s only hope appears to be to make a play through entrenched enterprise computing relationships.

For more on my early predictions on iPad’s category leadership due to competitors missing the boat on getting their offerings out quickly enough, see: Is the iPad a fine young cannibal?

Why? Because the iPad, barely 6 months old, has already sold around 7-8 Million units, and is on track to break through 10M units for the year. That makes it the fastest electronic gadget sales ramp-up in history!

Still think that Apple’s deep Archetype Branding to create aspirational products is meaningless? Keep in mind that this record is being set as the wider economy is still largely suffering the after-effects of The Great Recession, and is at best in a tepid recovery.

And as Business Insider reports,

Apple is gearing up to sell 45 million (!) of them next year, says Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White who just chatted with supply-chain vendors in China and Taiwan (via Elizabeth Woyke at Forbes).

Sales are rising so quickly that according to BestBuy and other retail outlets, the iPad is beginning to truly “cannibalize” netbook and even laptop sales (by as much as 50%!). I had predicted the former in my Deeper iPad Intel post, but the sheer speed of the impact is surprising even to me.

How did this happen so quickly? First off, it turns out that the majority of people really didn’t need/want major creation powers with their computing devices, making the issue of “no physical keyboard”, etc. a moot point.

Sure, Bloggers and other writers are still going to need more powerful text input, image/video artists/designers/editors more finely grained image manipulation via a mouse, asf. But this “creative class” is only a fraction of everybody, and even they might enjoy some simple social media, video, reading, etc. consumption every so often.

And keep in mind that people are now able to edit photos/videos on their i- or Android Phones. Not super sophisticated, but I’ve seen some pretty impressive photo alteration results in recent months.

And people love the direct touch interaction, very long battery life (when compared to most laptops), and quiet/cool running with “rapid-ON” startup of the device.

Also as I predicted in that same post, Amazon appears to have successfully positioned the Kindle as the cheaper, and more task specific eReader. There even is a TV commercial out with a lady tanning/reading poolside, that makes fun of iPad’s outdoor glare problem. Smart positioning move by Bezos & Co.

And of course there are signs that the iPad will be sold at Amazon, Target & Walmart just in time for the Holiday shopping season. Somewhat related, Amazon is also coming out with its own App Store for Android smart phone apps. What it means is this: All mobile/tablets, all the time, everywhere…

Which brings me to another prediction of mine and a very important point about category leadership. As I said in the Deeper iPad Intel post, the longer that potential iPad competitors wait to get their products (hopefully actually competitive ones) out the door, the more Apple gains a head start that makes it the de facto owner of the entire category.

By default! Because the competition was asleep at the switch…as Nokia, RIM (Blackberry maker), et al. already were with the iPhone.

We are reaching an important threshold in the next few weeks. Whatever tablet competitors come out in time for the holidays (like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which is launching at all four major wireless carriers according to their own launch schedules, but which may end up being priced too high, possibly $399 WITH contract), will have a chance at competing with iPad.

Especially on price, as is being proven by Kindle. But the window is clearly closing, so it must be disconcerting to Microsoft that there are still no particularly good/credible Windows 7 based tablets on the market. Part of the problem is that Windows 7 isn’t really optimized for touch-based computing, even though it sort of works right now.

But the much bigger issue will be the build quality and power/CPU needs of the devices that try to run with Windows 7. A current entrant into the field shows the main problem: The CPU needs a fan and creates heat/noise, same as in a laptop, while having less battery life for more weight.

So it may be well into 2011 until Microsoft is geared up to compete on par, by which time Apple could control HALF the tablet market for the long haul (as predicted by Category Leadership).

Writes PC Magazine(!) in “Windows Tablets Can’t Match the iPad’s Magic“:

“The iPad has No Competition…Sure the Samsung Galaxy Tab looks cool. Dell has Streak in the wings. God knows, at some point HP will release the Slate that it has been teasing for the last six months. And Microsoft will almost certainly…well, I am sure they will do something… Nonetheless, right now, there isn’t a single tablet that can go head-to-head with the iPad. The product has been on the market for six months and no rival… By the time The BlackBerry PlayBook comes out next year, Apple will be releasing the iPad 2.”

BTW, that 2nd generation of iPads could easily include the 7″ screen form factor I’ve been clamoring for.

Will Apple be running away with it? And if so, how much will it ultimately cannibalize Windows, and how fast? Certainly Wall Street has been in the mood to punish Microsoft’s stock of late.

Opines Goldman Sachs, heretofore forever bullish on the company who’s IPO it once underwrote:

…investor sentiment on Microsoft’s core Windows and Office franchises is unlikely to improve until the company gains a firmer foothold in the growing migration to mobile devices – both smartphones and tablets. We don’t see this happening this year as Apple’s iPad and iPhone plus Google’s Android operating system are well established; a Windows-based mobile device could certainly begin to garner momentum in 2011, but the stock remains in show-me mode until at least then…

The bet seems to be that iPad and possibly Android-based iPad clones will be “fine young cannibals”…

And while everyone has predictably been falling all over themselves to get in a lot of general reporting about the debut, yours truly has been busy curating the less obvious, in order to get to the bottom of the question – to buy or not to buy…

The Form Factor Issue

After testing out the iPad at the Apple Store in Austin for about 20 minutes, and then again the following Monday at BestBuy for nearly 2 hours, I have to concur with the commentators that said it was a bit on the heavy side.

Not so much in the sense of the weight itself, but in the sense of being distributed in slightly too large of a form factor (kind of like overly large furniture making moving of it more awkward even if the item isn’t that heavy).

Not once did I think that that there wasn’t enough shown on the 9.7″ screen. Instead, it was almost too much. And watching various commentators such as Scoble et al. on the review by The Gillmor Gang wield theirs for the camera, they looked a bit too large as well. Wield is the right word for it come to think of it.

I said in January after the announcement that I had wished for the iPad to be “one size smaller”, about paperback size. Slightly smaller screen, less bezel instead, to keep it at about 4 x times iPhone size, rather than 6 x. If it had to be slightly thicker to fit batteries and other entrails, then so be it. No one seems quite as obsessed with (device) thinness as Steve Jobs come to think of it.

We’ll see if one of the other tablets planned for Android/Chrome OS or Windows will take advantage of this smaller form factor. [UPDATE: Looks like Dell is going to, with 5" and 7" screen versions of its Streak tablet. 5" seems a bit too small given that the current largest smartphones are already nearing 4.5 inch screens.]

Think about it like this: A 10″ screen held at 2 feet equates to a 50″ screen at 10 feet! (This is why no one thinks that hard about the little screens in the airplane seat backs being too small to watch many hours of movies on long flights.)

Right now I have my laptop on my lap, with the 15″ screen about 2 feet away. The iPad would have to be held with your arms fully out-stretched to create the same distance. At about 1/2 – 2/3 of that distance, the current iPad screen size will actually be the same (at 2/3) or even bigger than that (at 1/2 distance). I really think a 7-8″ diagonal screen would be completely sufficient.

And make the tablets much easier to wield…

The keyboard issue

There are several aspects to this:

1) There seems to be confirmation of what I suspected in my previous iPad post, that the keyboard dock is not as usable as it may first appear. The reason being that the whole thing is a bit unstable for switching from typing to touch-screen as Engagdet writes: “Our one complaint? It’s not that easy to interact with the touchscreen from this angle” (note that NO Bluetooth mouse is supported), and doesn’t transport well.

[While speaking of docks, an interesting fact that seems to be slipping through the cracks is that the VGA-out dock or adapter enables to output content that is DIFFERENT FROM what you see on your iPad screen for at least some applications that make use of this, e.g. Apple's Keynote presentation app.]

2) Given this reality, it is better to buy the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, IF you need a physical keyboard at times. It will work for other Bluetooth enabled computing devices in your house, etc.

Engadget in the same post shows a good quick video showing (at bottom of post) how fast it it to synch up the Bluetooth keyboard.

The question really is, is it needed at all?

The reports on on-screen virtual keyboard usability vary from good (some claim 50-words per minute, and a pre-launch reviewer from PC Mag wrote his entire detailed, multi-page review on it) to so-so, with the landscape view typing mode appearing to…ahem…win by a landslide.

But even in landscape mode, touch-typists who are used to resting their fingers on a keyboard have a problem, because the virtual keyboard will intermittently think you have begun typing.

The portrait view mode however seems to please next to no-one as far as typing more than a few keystrokes is concerned.

Why? Too far apart for thumb-typing or one-handed “hunt & peck”, too narrow for good two-handed typing. Bummer, if there weren’t an excellent solution that I hinted at in the comments on my last post:

3) Swype. One-handed gesture-based input by “swyping” the letters of a word. The application was unveiled at TechCrunch 50 last year, and is finding its way in private (?) beta onto some Android smart phones.

Why is it not on the iPad? That’s the $64k Question. Swype would appear to be a no-brainer, something that could have really pushed the iPad over the top beyond all doubt.

Fast input, aligned with the ergonomics of the device, seamless transition from touch-based navigation to touch-based Swype “typing”, workable and fast even for those of us who happen to be slowish 2-Finger typists.

This alone may make me wait for an Android tablet with Swype on board, with a slightly smaller screen as discussed above. Yeah, it’s that important.

.

Other stuff that is actually great

Somewhat under-reported has been the fact that the battery life is truly excellent, anywhere from 8 hours (non-stop, full-blast use with only the most resource-heavy applications), up to 12 hours or more with normal usage. Very few of the reviewers appeared to be able to get below Apple’s claimed 10 hours, which is a remarkable feat. Manufacturer battery life claims used to be notoriously…how do I put this…optimistic..

Also under-reported is another near miracle that instantly should make the iPad a couch computing favorite: It emits next to no heat, and has no fan, hence no fan noise. All while keeping the screen applications and video very snappy.

This may well prove huge, for business meetings as well, where Steve Rubel has already seen a more positive acceptance than either a laptop (creates distance) or a cell phone (makes people think you’re texting/checking your email).

Despite a variety of conspiracy theories for why Apple has it in for Adobe, THAT is the real reason why Flash is not being supported. Flash is a CPU resource hog. It’s why even a pretty powerful dual-core laptop starts to spin-up mightily when viewing most flash-based video. Have the thing on your lap, and the hot “exhaust” from your CPU is warming up your pants for you.

This is a HUGE DEAL. A literally cool and quiet computer. And just as I write that, here comes news that apparently iPad has issues with sitting out/being used in the hot sun, and can shut down pre-emptively to avoid overheating. Makes sense since it’s all glass and aluminum…

Also underreported: By way of a variety of apps such as Citrix Receiver, the iPad can run any remote computer and nearly any of that computer’s applications that might be too complex or large to run on iPad natively. This could be one of the killer apps for the iPad in settings such as hospitals. Steve Rubel’s point about meetings comes to mind again: Where a laptop would be inappropriate by a patient’s bedside, a tablet can be natural form factor.

About the iPad’s Kindle-Killing…

Much attention has been paid to the iPad’s impact on publishing, especially as a new entrant in the eBook reader category vs. Amazon’s Kindle device. So this area warrants some close scrutiny.

First, let’s point out that Apple is playing it pretty safe when it comes to anything that could smack of anti-trust worthy stiff-arming: The iBooks app is NOT installed by default, even though the iTunes Store is making a pretty obvious suggestion to install it. And Apple did not attempt to block the Kindle app, so they’ve learned from the iPhone Goggle Voice app brouhaha.

Apple has a lot of clout and likes to control everything, and yet, it doesn’t want to get into it with Congress if that can be avoided.

So how should Amazon play this?

Don’t try to take a shrill stand in a battle that can’t be won. Instead of carrying on about how the Kindle is still the superior eReader (e.g. in bright sunlight, which is probably true), Amazon should

1) drop the price for the Kindle immediately to below $200,

2) applaud the iPad for running the Kindle app so well, and so beautifully, pointing out that the Kindle really is a for-the-beach/pool type device, and

3) highlight the fact that ALL of your existing Kindle books will play on the iPad AND hopefully still on your Kindle as well.

The last point will make the Kindle a great hand-me-down device for kids who you don’t quite trust with a $500-900 iPad. And likely persuade prior Kindle owners to stick with the Kindle bookstore. Which is what Amazon should care the most about. There never was much use for them to get into a hardware race against Apple.

The Kindle will eventually simply be seen as a transitional device while Apple and others were still figuring out the new form factor. And meanwhile, Amazon has learned tons of valuable things about eBook economics. The business it should be in.

Given the various issues described further up, especially about the outdoor overheating, maybe it is too early to count the Kindle out just yet, and maybe it will fare better for longer than I first thought. Especially if Amazon further lowers the price.

More details on the iBooks app

One of the big issues that appear to be surfacing in regards to the iBook app is the bookmarking. Writes Gizmodo in “Hands On: Apple iBooks”:

Apple’s Bookmarking solution is perfect for highlighting a favorite line, but pretty lousy for just keeping your page. And, yeah, for a casual reader, this is a biggie.

And I would add to that that iBooks bookmarks are missing the capability to add your own commentary, a must for those of us who are used to heavily marking up our non-fiction books.

Here is another weakness Kindle could exploit for the time being, as relayed by PC World in “iPad as E-Reader: Glaring Problems, Promising Apps”:

By and large, in my reading, iBooks offered the slickest e-book navigation experience I’ve had on any device. Regrettably, however, iBooks makes a poor choice for anyone who wants to read e-book purchases on more than one device. Unless you plan to take the iPad with you everywhere, you’ll be without an e-reader much of the time. To make its bookstore more compelling, Apple needs to make desktop and phone versions of its reader. Until that happens, I won’t be buying any more books from Apple.

That’s pretty definitive, and may be a great life-line for the Kindle.

In summary, has the game just been changed?

I think we can safely assume that the ecosystem of iPad apps, accessories, and other add-ons will be a healthy one, see this example of people’s ad-hoc ingenuity… as the iPad as a design/art object is already spurring on a lot of further, often artistic ideas.

However during my tests one thing I realized is that there clearly is a learning curve for non-iPhone users as far as the basics of the interface are concerned. While that should help to rustle up Apple’s existing customers, it may prove to be a hurdle for very broad adoption. Then again, some commentators have already pointed out that very young users between say 3 and 13, are taking to the iPad like fish to water.

But plenty of adults are also ecstatic. Writes Michael Arrington in his “Unauthorized TechCrunch iPad Review”:

…the iPad beats even my most optimistic expectations. This is a new category of device. But it also will replace laptops for many people. It does basic computer stuff, like email and web surfing, very well. Applications load quickly and are very responsive – think iPhone 3GS with a 50% speed boost.

That’s what surprised me the most. The iPad isn’t just for couch computing…It’s a perfectly usable business device. And the form factor just happens to work far better for cramped places like airplanes than a normal laptop. I doubt I’ll ever open a laptop on a plane again after tomorrow…

The iPad will put significant pressure on laptop sales, particularly second device laptops.

Of course, here is the guy that was so desperate for the tablet form factor that last year he had his own tech blog delve into the device manufacturing business for a bit, and created his own Linux-based tablet prototype, dubbed “The CrunchPad”. (That project ended rather abruptly due to his overseas partners running away with the device under rather dubious circumstances.)

So, do we have a winner?

Someone on Gillmor Gang (see link above) intoned: “April 3 2010, the day the laptop died – or at least became the walking dead.”

I would concur that sub-12-13″ laptops and netbooks have just been dealt a considerable blow.

And Windows 7 based tablet PCs are just not really very far beyond a basic Windows PC with some touch features enabled, it’s as of yet not an end-to-end offering. Microsoft appears to indirectly be acknowledging this by basically ditching Windows Mobile 6.5, and going back to the drawing board:

The (still) unfortunately named (and just “renamed”) Windows 7 Series Phone is pointing in the right direction, but Microsoft won’t have it ready until the fall/X-mas, which means a tablet offering based on it is unlikely to be forthcoming until some time next year at the earliest.

That leaves many as of yet un-announced Android/Chrome OS based tablets, we will have to see if any of those materialize before the X-mas shopping season. Either way, that leaves a lot of room for Apple to run away with the entire category.

If everyone who can afford one and wants this class of device is buying an iPad now, then category leadership kicks in, and could well keep Apple in cruise-control and above 50% market-share from here. Until an entirely new category of device makes the iPad obsolete. Maybe it will be something like this Sixth Sense Technology TED Talk, for example.

Despite my overall positive views of the iPad and relative excitement about the tablet form factor, I for one decided to hold off for a bit longer due to the detail issues described above, which as you can tell are quite different from the ubiquitous and nearly reflexive complaints of “no multitasking, no Adobe Flash, no camera”.

None of those weighed very heavily for me. We will see if maybe Dell’s Streak in a 7″ version running Android and allowing the use of Swype for text input will end up being everything I ever wanted in a tablet. That such an Android device very likely would also support multitasking, Flash, and a camera (the “Big 3 Complaints” about the iPad) would only fall under the rubric “bonus” for me.

Please add your own iPad usage experiences and research in the comments below. Did you get one? Will you? How about an Android based tablet?

Predictably orchestrated with Apple’s ingenious Archetype Branding, the secrecy has continued unabated, with iPad app developers with actual units in hand apparently having to guard them in a set-up that sounds like something out of a Tom Clancy spy novel:

Blacked out windows, iPads chained to physical desks, no-one-leaks-nothing (unless we want them to), etc.

Yet the pre-sales that started a few weeks ago have been going briskly, with up to 240,000 devices pre-sold for pick-up at Apple stores come Saturday. The remainder (rumors around supply problems continue, but are they put out there by Apple deliberately?) is held back for live store sales, which Apple needs in order to generate the by now pre-requisite Apple Store “I’m getting my iXYZ” camp-out scenes.

Social proof you couldn’t buy with all of the ad money in the world…

Much of the immediate knee-jerk criticism, which was almost inevitable due to the massive pre-announcement hype, seems to have dissipated. Not too many left in the Beavis-and-Butthead gallery left to snicker…”it’s called iPad…hehe” either (no one ever complained about “notepads” or similar before).

Daniel Lyons of Newsweek, one of the early critics, even had a massive change of heart recently as he explains in the digital pre-release of his upcoming news-stand article “Why the iPad Will Change Everything”:

Jobs calls it “a truly magical and revolutionary device,” and supposedly has told people close to him that the iPad is the most important thing he’s ever done.

Which is why so many of us raced to San Francisco in January to get an up-close view of the miraculous tablet. Yet my first thought, as I watched Jobs run through his demo, was that it seemed like no big deal. It’s a bigger version of the iPod Touch, right? Then I got a chance to use an iPad, and it hit me: I want one. Like the best Apple products, the user interface is so natural it disappears.

Elsewhere, the discussion is raging as to if, and if so how much, the iPad will change the fortunes of the deeply troubled publishing industry, especially for magazines, but for e/Books as well. After all, among many other things, the iPad is being positioned, or at least talked up as, a “Kindle Killer” (referring to Amazon’s efficient, yet somewhat ungainly and black-and-white-only eBook reader device).

The opinions range from “god-sent”, to “it won’t do much”. Scott Rosenberg argues: “For The Media Business, The iPad In 2010 Is The Same As The CD-ROM In 1994“, i.e. a relative dud.

Do I want one?

So, with all of that said, here are some of my own thoughts on use cases for the iPad, and why I’ve come around to wanting one myself before long:

Having recently made a number of trips to my local Fry’s store for sound equipment related purchases, I couldn’t help but look around the laptop and netbook section each time, including both Windows and Mac devices. And what I found is that the iPad makes more and more sense to me as a transitional device.

Netbooks simply appear as clunky little things, even with Windows 7 installed. And the manufacturing is pretty poor on all but the priciest of them, at which point they get near the iPad $499 mark.

Keep in mind that no netbook has 3G connectivity unless you buy one with a carrier contract attached to it. So to compare apples to apples (no pun intended), the price comparison should be with the WiFi only iPad for $499 (the one about to ship, the 3G version will ship a month from now).

Typing on them is OK but far from great. And for slow typists like myself, the iPad may actually become a god-sent, especially if we soon see add-on apps that leverage multi-touch for custom gestures autocomplete, and even possibly handwriting recognition.

A decent sized keyboard can always be added via Bluetooth, or the iPad keyboard dock. Personally, for on the go I would much prefer the idea of using the iPad protective case that doubles as a stand, and then using one of the nice Apple Bluetooth keyboards. The dock just seems fragile somehow, and the docking cradle sticks out enough to make you wonder about damaging it in your backpack.

Which brings me to the second class of devices I was perusing at Fry’s, compact 12-13″ laptops. There are some decent devices available starting at around $500-600.

But here’s the deal: the lower end one’s truly lack in manufacturing quality, such as the otherwise pretty handy HP Pavilion DM3. I really wanted to like it, but especially the silver plastic rim appears rickety, as does the largish black bezel around the slightly oddly-sized screen.

And unlike the iPad, there really is no excuse for the bezel as you’re not meant to hold the screen with your hands. I also briefly looked at Tablet PCs, and none had the kind of responsiveness of the screen that inspired much confidence. Windows 7 STILL doesn’t really seem to be optimized for the tablet form factor.

Now the HP Envy 13″ is a major step up in manufacturing quality, really HP’s first attempt at getting to parity with Apple Macbooks. And they did a really nice job.

It’s just that those start at around $1,500. Which puts them in in a totally different league than even the priciest 3G iPads. Same is true for Apple’s Macbook 13 and Air by the way ($1,200-1,500 and up), which I also looked at.

The thing is, as a long-time Windows user, it feels like the adjustment to the Mac OS idiosyncrasies isn’t worth my effort at this point. And that is where the genius of the iPad comes into play: It’s a totally new class of device, with the multi-touch interface already proven on the iPhone. Not an iPhone user myself (yet), I’ve been playing around with plenty of them from my friends and family.

And it all works well, except that the screen size really wasn’t to my taste for Web surfing, or for entering stuff through the mini on-screen keyboard. Presumably the iPad fixes both issues.

While it likely won’t be used much for writing full-length blog posts, it can definitely serve as a great Web and RSS reader, or to curate web snippets in ways better than can now be done laying on the couch with a 15″ full-size laptop (I am hoping Amplify’s great clipping bookmarklet and similar tools will work in Safari out of the box).

Really if you think about it, despite all of the “Apple Walled Garden” talk, the Safari browser is the application that opens up the iPad to anything on the Internet, including, yes, Gmail and all of the other Google products. No Flash, yes, but I have to admit that I’m with Steve on this one: Flash video tends to slow down even pretty powerful full-sized laptops.

Typing a few words for Search, Facebook, Twitter, it should all work. The more auto-completions, pre-populating boxes, and buttons the better.

And of course all of the apps instantly available through the iPhone app store, plus any newly designed specifically for the iPad, are not to be underestimated. Already TechCrunch is crowing that “Instapaper For The iPad May Be [Its] First Killer App. And It Will Be Universal.” And by all accounts, gaming apps will be big, even though I am personally not particularly interested.

And who knows, with Skype or similar add-ons, even your WiFi-only iPad may soon double up as a phone!? Presumably a Bluetooth headset should do the trick.

By the way, for all those that thought the (current) lack of a camera in the iPad body was a major disappointment, there are of course Bluetooth video cameras available. And it would seem to be only a matter of time until someone comes up with a Video-conferencing dock or cheaper clip-on camera as well.

And of course, Apple may yet ship iPad 2.0 with built-in camera, the software does already have all of the necessary hooks. Speaking of which, wouldn’t it be right in line with Apple’s secrecy and techno triumphalism, if it turned out that your iPad will have a built-in camera on April 3 after all?

OK, maybe that one is too much to hope for.

I for one will be sorely tempted to go for iPad 1.0, even though we pretty much know that 2.0 will be improved, and likely cheaper. I think playing with one from your early adopter friends or at the store will be the deciding factor.

If the thing works well enough even now, and there aren’t any major blow-up stories coming out in the first 1-2 months, just having the first-mover advantage may be worth getting it soon.

Stop Whining About How Elitist And Expensive TED Is [Just Because] You Didn’t Get Invited
Feb. 15, 2010, 9:17 AM

>> Too bad you missed it! Larry Page gave everyone a free Nexus One.

.

via Silicon Alley Insider.

(Minor edit for colorful language.)

What is amazing about this (the subhead sentence after the headline), is not what it says about TED, but what it says about the future of content creation, and the question of charging for it.

Yes, Larry Page is a multi-billionaire who gave away free Nexus Ones created by his Fortune 500 (currently ranked #150) company, Google, to other well-to-do folks who were able to afford to pay $6,000 for the exclusive TED Talks experience. In doing so, he is following word of mouth (WOM) marketing model 101, of getting your product into the hands of key influencers, and hopefully winning them over, and getting them to evangelize your product.

But aside from all of that, he is showing what the future really holds: With ever cheaper reading & communication devices such as the Nexus One, it will become increasingly common to give those away to users, JUST to have SOME influence over what content (and thereby advertisements) they consume.

In essence, such a give-away represents A PAYMENT of the consumer for consuming content on the “gifters” platform. That is how important it is to get some, any slice of the attention pie. The getting of some of which implies that you will have opportunities down the road to do business with the “giftee” in the form of offers (ads or otherwise) that can be embedded with the content.

Note that it is taking for granted that a lot of content itself cannot be charged for. Why? …

…Because just like the devices it is shown on, much of that content is becoming commoditized.

There is an over-abundance of it, and certainly no scarcity at all. If the supply is going to infinity, and the demand is finite due to people’s limited amounts of attention, then the price is by necessity going toward Zero.

Now contrast this with the way that Old Media publishers have been trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and start charging for their content again, with so-called Pay Walls and other ill-conceived schemes.

Contrast it with Microsoft, which, when announcing the finally updated version of its mobile OS, made it clear that it intends to charge a licensing fee to handset makers, even though its market share in mobile has been languishing around 10%, and Google is giving away its Android mobile OS for free. All while Apple has built up a huge lead with its iPhone in the smart phone segment.

Silicon Alley Insider correctly points out that Microsoft’s stubbornness on this point is illogical, because even under the most optimistic scenarios, Windows Phone 7 won’t hardly be noticeable on their bottom line. It is however setting it up for failure in the race for market share and resulting mind share.

Microsoft’s question should be: How can we maximize our share of the attention pie for our mobile OS ecosystem? How can we catch, or better yet outflank, the iPhone?

Similarly, Old Media companies should be asking: How can we maximize our share of the attention pie for our news, opinion, and other content ecosystem?

Anything else is folly at this point. Once you have the attention, there WILL be opportunities to monetize, simply by virtue of people being in your ecosystem. Compare how street vendors benefit from people simply being at an event.

But you cannot choke off the oxygen and lifeblood of your ecosystem with Pay Walls, and other walls and barriers of any kind at the ENTRY point. If next to no one lives in your ecosystem, you won’t be selling very much to anyone.

And remember: The first sale is always the hardest. Why not make it much easier, and make the first sale…well…FREE. Someone taking your free offer still constitutes a sale, because they paid you with their valuable attention (time and energy).

Even better, PAY THEM to “buy” from you in the first transaction, as Larry Page has demonstrated with the Nexus One give-aways. Those cost real money, and yet it is still in Googles interest to be giving many more away.

Notice what Google has been doing all along, they have been giving away free copies of a lot more than just digital content (actually Google doesn’t create content at all): Google applications of all stripes and colors, including Gmail, Google “office” apps, Google Maps, Google RSS Reader, etc. etc.

Why? Because it keeps you on Google’s platform for a little longer, so that they might have SOME influence over what you are shown in terms of advertisements, and other offers that go along with the ecosystem.

Notice the deep misunderstanding by the parade of other companies, especially news and other Old Media companies, that have recently been trying to crucify Google over spreading their content through their search engine without reimbursement, not understanding that that content is typically lowest on the totem pole of usefulness:

The New York Times for example is still dreaming about charging for their news content, when it has about a 6 hour half-life (that’s why it’s called “old news”). Compare that to Google giving away productivity apps that can be useful to you for months and years.

What’s  your take away: Massively Move The Freeline, so that you may even have an ecosystem in which to sell anything.

iPad/iSlate/iTablet/etc., heir to the iPhone, destroyer of lesser technology gadgets?!

The name is not the only thing that has been a closely, and purposefully guarded secret:

The blogosphere and assorted Old Media outlets have over the last few months progressively worked themselves into a tizzy over the key questions surrounding Steve Job’s next mysterious, almost Grail-like product.

Like, how big will it be? How much will it cost? How many men died during its construction?

Kidding on that last one, though not by much…

All of this is of course utterly predictable in light of Apple’s tightly constructed Archetype Branding strategy that I’ve been writing about since the iPhone wave. Secrecy is such that the Tablet so far as only appeared indirectly, as a quasi digital ghost.

Pairing Steve Job’s “Wizard of Oz” character (The Wizard archetype, coming out from behind the curtains – i.e. secrecy – with the newest technological marvel), with The Enigma archetype inherent in this elaborate charade, is creating a launch atmosphere unlike just about anything else in current business, or show business for that matter.

Of Wizards, Grails, And Zeigarnik Effects?!

Not only does mystery draw on this powerful archetype, but, just in case you prefer more scientific approaches, the so-called Zeigarnik Effect also explains the draw of an unresolved, “open” loop that has entered your consciousness. Somewhat dependent upon personality, you are likely to feel a strong urge of just having to know.

This explains why even many months ago, bloggers and journalists alike could seemingly not help themselves but to write about the mystical Tablet. And of course from the very beginning, that is just how Apple wanted it.

Even now, well after midnight in the U.S., there are thousands of tweets on Twitter every few minutes expounding one rumored aspect or the next:

Some have even argued that Apple will deliberately sprinkle out little bits of information mixed with misinformation to stoke the fire.

Whatever Jobs will be presenting on Wednesday, and by whatever name it will be called, all eyes will be simultaneously oriented toward “The Great Unveiling”. Compare this natural feeding frenzy to the rather humdrum affairs that Google or Microsoft had given us of late.

Google’s Nexus One Android smartphone launch a few weeks ago was hardly the stuff of legend with its persistent minimalism. And by the time Windows 7 was finally officially launched, so many public Alpha, Beta, and minor tech celebrity testers had already rummaged through every nook and cranny of the operating system AND written about their findings, that it was hardly news anymore.

Now, a sheer endless parade of blog posts and articles has already been written about the Apple Tablet. But those have all been speculation, rumor, and innuendo! (“Will it be a Kindle killer?” “Will it be a Play Station Portable (PSP) killer?” etc. etc.)

The open loop was NEVER closed!

As if any more titillation were necessary, the issue of Jobs’ ongoing illness/recovery and speculation that this may well be his last new product launch as Master of Ceremonies… I mean CEO. And that he therefore will have brought all of his human and, some would speculate, super-human powers of invention, design obsession, and stage craft to bear in this his final Magnum Opus.

Even now we hear whispers: Did he really say that this Tablet “will Be The Most Important Thing I’ve Ever Done.” Did he? Would he? Can the poor computer thing possibly live up to this level of hype?

Robert Scoble indeed asks if the event can even still be covered in ways that news media, journalists, and bloggers have become accustomed to over the years. Or if we need an entirely new, “curated”, meta-experience to fully appreciate the unfolding of this new reality.

And therein lies the only drawback and potential danger of such a tightly choreographed affair:

All of the pieces have to be in place (when Jobs got sick and was absent from one of these launches, the magic was clearly lacking). And when they are, a deep connection and expectation is formed in people’s psyches that may prove difficult, if not impossible, to live up to.

Beware the pitfalls of this form of powerful Archetype Branding!

The MacBooks’ launch did contain the familiar elements of Steve Jobs’ magician stagecraft, though there was a clear attempt to build up several other high-ranking Apple managers in the process, due to recent concerns and rumors regarding Jobs’ health.

But the biggest overall focus in this difficult economic environment seemed to be expected price-cuts and the overall pricing strategy. Specifically, whether the lowest-end MacBook would go below $1,000, or even down to $899.

While the latter hope didn’t materialize, the most entry level "old" MacBook (in white) was indeed lowered to $999, but not the new line of anodized aluminum housing, all-around-upgraded MacBooks. However, you shouldn’t underestimate what Apple has done here:

1) They have now "Air-ized" (after the aluminum housing of the ground-breaking MacBook Air) the entire MacBook/MacBook Pro line except for the close-out model "MacBook White". As Steve Jobs said, they should see some cost reductions from ramping up the novel unibody aluminum frame production in the next few quarters. So taking the entry-level Alu MacBook to $999 might happen sooner than some think.

2) While the cost for the new entry-level MacBooks for now has been kept at $1299, there is a lot of new technology that got pumped into it: iPod Touch multi-touch glass touchpad, led-backlit screen and longer battery life from the MacBook Air, a high-end graphics accelerator, etc. etc. So they’re establishing it as the "must-have-this-thing" item FIRST, in line with their branding as "The Creator/Innovator" archetype among other things, plus their high-end image.

3) The new MacBook line thereby becomes "aspirational", so that even if you can’t afford one right now, you still know you want one (if you were ever open to it at all). Then, when the prices get dropped further (see the iPhone price point development), everyone will think it’s a bargain by comparison.

But to do this you have to first credibly build it up at the higher price levels. I would NEVER expect Apple to forgo their brand equity and introduce brand new technology PLUS lower prices for that new technology at the same time.

With a consumer recession already going on or imminent, the 60+% of people who are truly affected by affordability aren’t Apple’s primary target market. AND they would be likely to delay purchase of ANYTHING right now regardless of price point (ask yourself if they all would buy the new aluminum MacBooks at $999 this instant – I doubt it).

Apple doesn’t need to be in the $400-700 notebook market for now, and if they want to be down the road, it is still advantageous for them to have established the higher price point value proposition. The price "anchor" this creates in the consumer’s mind is worth the somewhat reduced volume now. Then when you "drop in" the price cut at the point of maximum desirability (again, as was done with the iPhone), you are likely to create a feeding frenzy.

1) I had thought the Nano might go to $99 from $149 in line with Apple’s new, more populist "recession pricing" ideas they applied to the iPhone. Then again, as the undisputed market leader (73%), you by rule have premium pricing power, although it seems like it could have put a permanent nail in the coffin of all competitors (Microsoft’s Zune apparently currently only has 2.4% marketshare).

2) Thought that the Touch (entry-level now priced at $229) might be put at $199 for the same reason, the psychological impact of going below the ‘2′ should not be underestimated, as recently proven by the strong iPhone 3G sales.

Then it hit me, the Touch in particular may be just the $229 comparison item, that could push people to look at buying the (long-term more lucrative and more important to Apple) iPhone for $199 as a no-brainer.

Dan Ariely’s excellent "Predictably Irrational" talks about such contextual "decoy offers" that can boost sales for the item the seller really wants people to buy. As an example he uses a past offer by british business magazine The Economist:

It had listed $59 for on-line access only, $125 for print-only, and $125 for print & Web combo subscriptions, and had thereby significantly boosted the number of the expensive combo subscriptions sold (vs. test offers that omitted the seemingly non-sensical $125 print-only option)!

Other similar set-ups in formal experiments conducted by the MIT behavioral economics professor had shown similar results. People make less-than-fully-rational decisions based on the context and comparisons provided.

So in essence, it is like saying: "Let a few technophiles buy iPod Touches, but really we want to indirectly boost iPhone sales." And even the $149 Nano pricing makes more sense that way, if you view it as yet another decoy offer to point to the iPhone as a no-brainer.

I wouldn’t put it past Apple, they can read New York Times Bestseller books on business psychology with the best of them…

In other Apple news from the launch event…

They clearly took a swipe at Microsoft by highlighting the Zune’s 2.4% market share, behind 8.6% for SANDISK, and behind "Others"!

I sent out a Twitter post Tuesday on how quickly Apple came out with the 2.1 Touch/iPhone firmware fixes for the most common complaints after the iPhone 3G launch (dropped calls, battery life), two months is a fast turn-around by any measure.

When was the last time Microsoft came out with a (non-security-related) significant update within two months from complaint? Usually it takes them longer than that to even acknowledge issues.

Apple is clearly showing off its capability to be hitting on all cylinders. And it also needed to show the markets that Steve Jobs was healthy, after recent rumors stemming from his gaunt appearance at the June iPhone 3G unveiling. There was even an accidentally published obituary in the mix…

Lastly, don’t underestimate the iPhone App(lication) Store. While many of those 100 Million downloads so far were of the free variety, real money is exchanging hands as well. Something that Facebook/MySpace/iGoogle/etc. app developers are still waiting for to this day.

In 2 months Apple has created a vibrant new market, using consumers’ familiarity with the iTunes Store as a base (such familiarity is a major advantage). A functioning market tends to grease the wheels more than anything else. I would predict a furious amount of development activity/innovation to come out of this corner.

But even more problematic than the apparently relatively poor search results and availability outages (Cuil had after all boasted of a larger search index than Google), were the crimes against branding it committed with its "Cuil" (they want you to pronounce it "cool" or "kewl") name:

1. It’s already been pointed out that there are at least 5 alternative pronunciations, misspellings, and… shall we say "problematic"… meanings of "Cuil".
2. Apparently the company decided to change the name from "Cuill" (with two L) very late in the game, with some of their press releases apparently still having the old spelling. While the old version did nothing to help with spelling or pronunciation, just the fact there would be such a late change does bode ill for their understanding of branding strategy (which would be to get completely clear on your branding first as an integral part of your Unique Selling Proposition – USP).
3. While "cuil(l)" supposedly means "knowledge" in Gaelic, and is in fact pronounced similar to "cool" in that language, such a play on words, while it might have seemed clever to people inside the company, violates one of the first rules of branding: That the name or message must pass the "Telephone Test" (remember the "message whispering chain" game you used to play in kindergarden?). If you have to explain the product, spell it, and explain the pronunciation all at once, it’s game over baby.

But the Cuil ex-Googlers aren’t the only ones cooking up cases of "too cute by half". Google itself has been hot on their heels with it’s new "Knol" offering, a sort-of competitor to Wikipedia, as well as Seth Godin’s Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com.

(Knol may actually become yet another case of Google ranking its own properties highly in its search results, thus making it a potential spam haven a la Squidoo. It has also elicited hand-wringing from Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis as the entry of Google into the content space.)

"Knol" is supposed to stand for "unit of knowledge" (whatever THAT means), and the name is plagued by almost the same level of confusion as "Cuil":

Too short to really carve out mental real-estate, oddly distasteful to say (yes, the underlying emotional state in saying a name does matter), and mixing it up with the real word "knoll" – a small, natural hill according to Wikipedia. As in "the grassy knoll"…

Google has a long history of producing very odd-sounding (Orkut and Froogle come to mind) or overly generic names, few of which work well as brands. Many of them also commit the cardinal sin of brand dilution (attaching additional, unrelated meanings to your core brand, as in "Google Checkout", which is predictably hardly a blip in the payment processing space).

Notice that Google’s brands other than its core search service have worked best when they avoided these pitfalls: Gmail, Adwords and Adsense – which were strong enough names to stand on their own and thus became detached from "Google Adwords", asf.

YouTube should have been another lesson to Google (and companies everywhere), that a unique name always works better than a brand extended/diluted one: Google Video, which is also a generic, never got any real traction vs. YouTube.

Of course Google "solved" that problem by acquiring YouTube for $1.6 Billion. Getting better branding advice for their own offerings from the start would almost certainly have been a lot cheaper…

At least they then got it, and resisted renaming YouTube. Had Microsoft bought it, with their branding track record, they would have likely renamed it "Windows Live Video Tube".