Can't believe it's been two months since I last posted.  Things got busy, I got lazy, etc.  But lots of things coming up so felt it was a good time to get back on the saddle...

TechCrunch posted an article and the video below about a concept Google Tablet OS based on Chrome. My reaction? Eh...

 
A nice follow-up to my Microsoft Bing.com post earlier. Slowly and surely, Google Maps has become the best online map service to date. When they first started out, they were no better than MapQuest, Yahoo Maps, or even Microsoft's MapPoint. But just like the turtle, they've made slow and steady progress. Their latest addition is the "pancake" feature of the Street View tool which makes navigating through Street View so much easier.
 
I don't "root" for Google. I have no vested interest in whether they do well or not. In fact, I've argued that the overall web ecosystem would benefit from them losing a little search market share and Yahoo/Microsoft gaining a little more. However, it's tough to argue when one company is churning out great products while the other two flounder or put out irrelevant commercials.

Om Malik writes in a post that Google is great at search but bad at investments (in reference to today's earnings release within which was mentioned a $1+ billion write down for bad investments). I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment and might even take it one step further. In regards to making money, does Google really do well in any field other than search? For the record, I use a lot of Google services like Search, GMail, Google Maps, and YouTube to name the big ones. I think these are all awesome services but they don't come near to making the huge profits that are synonymous with the Google cash machine (do any of these products even generate some profits?). It's not a knock on Google by any means. They have afforded themselves the right to roll out any product they want regardless of its profit generating capabilities. It just makes me wonder whether they'll be in the same boat as Microsoft someday - a company that never really figured out a way to generate huge profits from anything but desktop software. But hey, if I generated the profits that Google does from search and Microsoft does from desktop software, who really cares?

UPDATE:  To further prove that no one cares, Google is trading almost 8% higher as of 11am the next day.

Back at Peet's. Here's a shot from another angle outside the store. The building that Peet's is at the bottom of is the American Presidents Line building in downtown Oakland. One of the nicer tall buildings around here. Check the facade out on Google Street View some time.