Technology Cold War

Google's almost simultaneous announcement of its open platforms in both the mobile and social network spaces was no coincidence. From 100 year old telephone companies to web start ups the message from Mountain View is very clear--be open or be prepared to be opened. Just as AOL learned how dangerous it is to live in a walled garden, Google--in alliance with a massive worldwide open source developer community -- is virtually demanding that the days of proprietary systems and bundled technologies come to an end.

Already Google has won over major allies to its cause. News Corporation has hardly been a beacon for openness and sharing--in fact the old News Corp. newspaper culture is about as protective and inward as it gets. But there was the name of News Corp.'s MySpace as a founding member of the Open Social coalition.

Will Facebook join or risk seeing its business vaporize as social networking just becomes another set of utilities--email on steroids if you like? But for the telcos the question becomes far more problematic. Sprint and T-Mobile have signed up to be part of the open mobile platform, but to date the two U.S. giants, AT&T and Verizon have not.

Both aggressively lobbied against Google's open platform when the FCC was deciding how to divvy up the 700 MHz spectrum. Both have business models which seek to tightly control their network and any device that seeks to connect to it. Both have Washington in their pocket. And of course virtually every country has a dominant incumbent carrier that acts and behaves like AT&T and Verizon, and none of which are presumably going to sit back and let the prospect of rich revenues from new data services evaporate.

If you like, it is the technology version of the Cold War--Google promoting open competition, the carriers protecting their controlled networks. And with at least one analyst predicting a dramatic switch to IP-based mobile telephony--Google may well be swimming with the historic tide. Tom

P.S. Thursday is Thanksgiving--our next newsletter will be Monday.