Dave Winer says…
Love him or hate him (I am as likely to be annoyed by him as I am to admire how much he annoys people), web pioneer Dave Winer comes up with plentiful gems. He’s one of those people - like many newspaper columnists and, yes, other bloggers - who you know will always be worth reading and, often, heeding, even if your blood pressure goes up when you read some of what he has to say. Here are some of my recent favorites, from posts worth reading in full.
On Viacom and other content owners putting so much time and effort into beating down Google:
As I’ve been saying all along…it’s a negotiation with users, not a war with Google. Forget Google. The users want something you aren’t providing. So provide it and stop arguing so much.
On the Silicon Valley hype machine and the complicity of publications like the New York Times in fueling it:
It reads like a corporate press release, not even one naysayer, not one qualification, not even a competitor, though there are many. This is the greatest stuff ever, period. Fluff. How that made it through the Times editorial process is a question for another day….There’s nothing substantial about any of this, if there were, you’d be able to use the software today and some of the benefits it promises would be visible, today.
On why Microsoft is the IBM of our age, like a puffed-up contestant on Deal or No Deal who has the odds against him yet believes his brain’s going to nab him a win:
[W]hen you boast of how smart you are, when smarts has nothing to do with winning or losing, you look pretty fcuking dumb. Microsoft isn’t in it to win because Microsoft can’t win, any more than the guy with just one big number on the board can. Sure there’s a infinitesmal sliver of hope, but not enough to bet your future on.
Filed under: Business, Life, Technology, Treating Customers Well