Larry Page talks about standards
Unfortunately, I couldn’t be at CES to see this in person, but Podtech has the podcast. Larry Page’s keynote on the Consumer Electronics Show 06 is a call to opening standards and its implication on innovation. Specifically, he mentions the interoperability of consumer electronics, and how stiffled real development is because of the lack of a specific set of standards.
Some of the examples given were computer to HID connections (If converting everything to USB is $20, why do we have all sorts of connections on the back of our computers?), power adapters, etc.
Larry’s speech was above everything else, an eye opener. And if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. If it wasn’t for standardization of data fluxes between web applications (much due to XML), we wouldn’t be where we are today on the web. It follows that we need the same thing to happen with consumer electronics to speed things up. Or we’ll still have one thousand adapters lying across the house, keeping us away from productivity.
If you haven’t heard the keynote, I highly recommend it. Click here to stream from the web or download.
Funny considering that most of Google’s webpages are not standards compliant, even though they could be made so with very little effort.
Thats true, google’s pages are not standards compliant (and to be honest, I don’t think they’ll make them compliant any time soon). Still, the effort for standardization at a higher level (especially in the area he was talking about – consumer electronics) is extremely important, and inexistant.
…such a searching_mechanism like Google is at a very high level. So standardization must apply to them too, dont you think ? Mainly because all the “smaller” and wide-spread consumer_electronic producers’ll have to follow the steps to be accepted in market.
Difficulties: take an example: which could become a standard in the case of processors: intel or powerpc ? Is this “the level” ? Higher ? Lower ? Is it even questionable for standardization (hope not…g)?
I’ll listem to the cast (41% now…) and be back here.
Apple tried to do that with firewire, but had to include USB and others… but it’d be great (seems firewire is faster than usb).
Standard is such an heavy word, but tremendously necessary (not in a dictatorial sense, since “creation” is another heavy and necessary word).
The call for standards is interesting. Does this mean that Google is willing to standardize it’s mapping API with Yahoo and Microsoft?
It would be really nice to see Google join the microformats efforts. I believe that microformats are the Nanotech of Web 2.0, and they will be particularly important as Web Office develops. Microsoft Live and any Google office solution are not going to be a rebuild of MS Office on the web, they are going to replace it with enterprise blogs, enterprise wikis, etc. It would be really nice if Google components of Web Office and Microsoft components of Web Office actually worked together right out of the gate, and gave smaller players an opportunity to integrate extra functionality.
I know that Web Office isn’t consumer or electronics, but just as MS Office has had a big impact on everything else, so will Web Office.
Highly unlikely, even though they talk the talk a lot of these companies can only walk where the advantage for their company is.
Instant message has been around for ages. Yet the closest any one of these great companies has gotten to interoperability is AOL -> Google (and that only after a $1 Billion dollar investment). If a small company like trillian (multiple IM clients work in a single interface) can make it work, these big 4 companies (aol, yahoo, ms, google) can’t? Or they just don’t care to unless there is something in it for them?
Standards work, standards are great. At the end of the day standard will have a lot to do about competitive edge than what benefits the end-users.
[...] Enquanto eu escrevia este texto, eu vi chegar no meu Bloglines uma nova entrada no WeBreakStuff com o título “Larry Page talks about Standards” (Larry Page fala sobre Padrões ). Para quem não sabe Larry Page é um dos donos do Google e você pode ouvir o podcast dele falando sobre a necessidade de padrões. Em inglês é claro! [...]
…innocence ? Listening to Page, is like listenning to Gates asking the same to competitors. You won’t ear Steve Jobs asking this for sure. Not so long ago, Gates repetedly complained about Netscape not opening the courtain about its tags. After flooding the world with IE, he made standards seem a kids matter, not to be respected by grown people. So these guys need others to follow standards to know them plus their products better. Consumer electronics ?? C’mon Larry, you can connect a camera to anything sharing usb “protocol”. Most gadgets are bluetooth/wifi/”wire” enabled. Even DVD drives make the effort to read as much as possible other formats. You known the worst cases are in software.
Larry, that Google Pack is such a piece of crap. It’s just like TWiT’ers said, a way for them to spread Google Bar with the ultimate objective os selling ads! Standards ? Google Pack ? Larry, go to work!
I dread the day usb ever gets any further ratification as a standard, its a kludge of a standard if ever i saw one, have you ever tried doing audio work with usb audio devices professionally, dont even bother 1 month down the line it begins to dawn on you that usb and audio are in know way compatible > synching problems > latency issues > audio feedback loops, noise > forget it usb maybe mainstream but it should never be used as a poster boy for standards, its one of the worst. any professional computer based recording musician will use either pci or firewire. The logitech usb headset i bought randomly decides to start clicking when connected via my logitech usb2.0 7 port hub(one of the better ones on the market!), if your not carefull all standards mean is that those companies who sign up to it, have many other companies they can blame for it not functioning, after all who do i blame ? Apples OS drivers, Logitech, Kensington, the manufacturers of the usb interface chips ? or the standards body that invented it ? Standards are important less connection types are important, but only quality organised ones.
ancient