“Napoleon, ruler of France from 1803 to 1815, rose to power by conquering most of Europe, creating an imperial monarchy and fashioning a set of laws that for the most part still stands in force today. He formed alliances and partnerships with dozens of countries and established France as the empire of the era. And then he made the mistake of invading Russia in 1812,” Gene Marks writes for Forbes. “With supply lines stretched and his forces weakened, Napoleon suffered a humiliating series of defeats and was eventually forced to retreat. His reputation broken and his enemies strengthened, Napoleon eventually found himself, at the age of 46, sentenced to exile.”
“Like Napoleon’s obsession with the resources of Russia, Google continues to fall in love with the potential riches of the consumer market. They’ve been investing millions in their YouTube channels. They recently expanded Google+ to take on FaceBook and announced a new version of their Google Hangouts services where users can broadcast their videos to unlimited viewers,” Marks writes. “The other week they unveiled a re-design of their ads to allow for even more eyeballs. At their last conference, they showed off a special pair of Internet friendly glasses.”
Marks writes, “But the Napoleonic moment is the latest announcement of the Nexus 7. It’s a $200 tablet aimed directly at Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. I can understand the temptation. It’s a big market. With a lot of potential. But there’s too much risk. If Napoleon had just settled down and focused on exploiting his core client countries he would likely have ruled for many more decades. If Google were to focus on just the business market, they could do the same. But instead they’re reaching, perhaps over-reaching, for consumer riches.”
Full article, with a bunch of seemingly paid-for gobbledegook about Microsoft’s Surface vaporlets, here.
Related articles:
A smaller iPad would spell doom for everyone else – July 6, 2012
AP reviews Google Nexus 7 tablet: It’s no iPad; better than Kindle Fire, but lacks storage space – July 2, 2012
Spec Shootout: Apple iPad vs. Google Nexus 7 vs. Amazon Kindle Fire vs. Microsoft Surface – June 28, 2012
Analyst: Google Nexus 7 threatens Microsoft Surface, Amazon Kindle Fire, not Apple’s iPad – June 28, 2012
Analyst: Amazon, not Apple, should worry about Google’s tiny screen Nexus 7 tablet – June 27, 2012
Google sells tiny screen tablet aimed at Amazon’s tiny screen Kindle Fire – June 27, 2012
Google ‘Nexus 7′ tablet ships in July with Tegra 3, 7-inch display, $199 for 8GB, $249 for 16GB (with video) – June 27, 2012
Apple’s revolutionary iPad widens lead as tablet sales surge – June 15, 2012
Apple’s massive domination of tablet market unabated as Amazon’s tiny screen Kindle Fire demand tumbles – June 5, 2012
Apple’s iPad remains dominant in Q112 while Amazon’s tiny screen Kindle Fire fizzles – June 4, 2012
Amazon’s tiny screen Kindle Fire shipments have dropped off a cliff – May 9, 2012
Amazon’s Kindle Fire shipments fizzle to anemic 4% market share – May 4, 2012
simple: greed.
simple again: not knowing your limits (unlike the most focused ceo of all time: iSteve)
Uh…what’s the French version of Godwin’s Law?
How about the Waterloo Corollary?
Well done.
Google also seems to be under the impression that people have infinite time to consume content, tell everyone about it, and watch ads to pay for it.
MOJO:
Google lost its mojo since day 1, 1998 Sep4.
EXAGGERATION:
they ARE overextending themselves like whores.
STUPIDITY:
quite stupid.
with all their assumed intelligence they have not learned from human history. all the mistakes MSFT did in 3 decades are being repeated!?!
ESSENCE:
Michelangelo’s (1475-1564) slave sculptures perfectly represent focus: GooglyGoo should’ve listened: to focus, like Apple & Angelo, it’s at least as essential to know what to leave out/carve out from the noise/negative space, as it is to know exactly what you want/is necessary!
Google made many enemies and has few allies, therefore now operates in panic mode, needing to invade every possible market themselves to keep access to their core business… Ads
Marks is an idiot.
If you read the entire article one of his arguments is that eventually the far east will produce great tablets for $50 and no one will care who makes them.
The surface is DOA at this point.
this Article is his Napoleonic moment with analysis.
I’m sure there are already $50 tablets or at least fairly close to that price point. Thing is, no one will want to use anything built that cheaply and certainly anyone that did would be the last person on earth you’d want to target as a developer.
Which leads into my next point. iPads and other tablets have a singular purpose: to run software. Since the iPad is the only tablet that you can run any meaningful software on it is the only tablet. Since any competing tablet would need to also build up a pool of software from scratch by courting developers, and customers to buy the apps it leaves would be competitors hopelessly far behind in a chicken and egg race that they have to run up hill with their pants hanging around their ankles, while blindfolded, sleep deprived, and with a sprained ankle.
They not only can’t win, they can’t compete in a meaningful way and it gets worse every day that Apple builds its massive lead.
aah nothing like a good old fashioned sexist eh. That moment reveals so much more about this writer and his lauding of the oh so stone age thinking of Microsoft than all the rest of this waffling irrational article combined.
this is a good article. steve jobs, we know now wrestled with imperfection. he clearly wanted to make things better and had ideas in his head on how it could happen. google is a fantastic search engine. they are good at what they do but android and now the tablet is not them trying to make life better. it’s not them seeing an imperfection and hitting it hard. its them seeing profit and a way to make it. they clearly have succeeded to some point but they’ll never be apple this way. that motivation cannot be sustained. it lacks passion. find a problem and fix it…so simple
They’ll never be Apple but they do a very good impression of Microsoft, the 90s decade.
Google is not a fantastic search engine, it is a convoluted paid for, gamed system of a search engine.
The 90’s are over, there are better ways to search. Don’t confuse name recognition with function. Google has gotten better at getting paid, worse at delivering uncluttered results.
duckduckgo & blekko are two great new engines just to name a couple.
Try them out, see what search looks like without google ads and sponsor crap all over the screen, it is actually useful again..
“Michelangelo’s (1475-1564) slave sculptures perfectly represent focus: GooglyGoo should’ve listened: to focus, like Apple & Angelo, it’s at least as essential to know what to leave out/carve out from the noise/negative space, as it is to know exactly what you want/is necessary!”
Well, if Apple were following the true path, most of Lion and Mountain Lion would have never seen the light of day.
Twitter & Farcebook integration, hiding the system folder, restore windows, removal of the save option, deletion of Front Row. the Crap app store and much more would be flushed where they belong- down to Redmond or Mountain View for duplication.
Not so much Google’s Napoleonic moment as its Stalingrad. Napoleon actually got into Moscow after winning the Battle of Borodino but because the Grand Armee subsisted on supplies stripped off the land, the Russian winter did them in as Tsar Alexander instituted a scorched earth policy leaving nothing behind for the French Army to forage. So horses and men died from the cold and starvation which led to decreased resistance to diseases.
Most of Napoleon’s army died on the retreat from Moscow.
In Stalingrad in 1942, Hitler instigated Operation Blau (Blue) to take over the rich wheatfields of the Ukraine and cut off the Soviet southern oil supply lines in the Caucasus up the River Volga. There were never any operational orders to take Stanlingrad as an objective – it was Hitler’s preoccupation with Stalin and the city’s namesake that induced tunnel vision.
On November 19 Stalin instituted Operation Uranus involving 1 million Soviet soldiers drawn mainly from the Siberian regiments and overwhelmed Paulus’s Sixty Army flanks manned by the Romanians and Italians, unhinging Paulus’s rearguard and encircling Stalingrad within 3 days that was widened into a 100 km wide corridor within a week. This sealed the fate of the Sixth Army as it was impossible to break out of the cordon due to the cold and exhaustion of the men fighting Rattenkrieg (Rat Warfare) in Stalingrad.
“But the Napoleonic moment is the latest announcement of the Nexus 7. It’s a $200 tablet aimed directly at Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. I can understand the temptation. It’s a big market. With a lot of potential. ”
So, Apple’s 9.7″ iPad that sold about 12 million units in Q1 2012 and may sell 20+ million in Q2 2012 missed the REAL market of the 7″ tablet?
Kindle fire shipped (sales figures not avail) 5.5 million combined in Q4 2011 and Q1 2012. The iPad SOLD about 20 million in those two quarters. Sure, the Fire is relatively new and sales could climb, but iPad sales are climbing, as well.
The 7″ tablet market is about as important as the $50 smartphone market.
Your analogy is beyond stupid. Microsoft sold < 50,000 10" Windows tablets in all of the 10 years it was available for sale. Did that mean that the 9.7" iPad was destined for failure the moment it was released?
…That people aren’t clamouring for 7″ tablets. Apple can ignore the small market for them and fair just fine. The 9.7″ iPad is hardly in danger of being eaten alive by seven inchers.
They don’t need to make an iPad Mini.
Totally full of shit and a remarkable lack of knowledge regarding history and empires. No empire succeeds without wanting to expand. Entropy means death. Empire builders rely on others’ resources to maintain the stays quo. There is no evidence that Napoleon would have kept his empire intact without invading the east. This is inductive reasoning.
Silly analogy. It’s mostly Google’s Microsoft moment. For all intents and purposes, they’ve become the new Microsoft.
They are not creating new ideas and products. They buy what they cannot mimic. They mimic what they cannot buy. If necessary they embark upon a long drawn out iterative development process until what they have is ” good enough.”
Like Microsoft, they will copy themselves into a morass of mediocre products that excite and motivate no one.
are reworking the ideas of those they wish io compete with.
Becoming like Microsoft? Say it isn’t so.
Microsoft, who thinks nothing of squandering resources on dubious buyouts, looking clueless in the process?
Microsoft, whose last-century core business model must be scuttled, but survives through entrenched executive thinking, even as it takes on more water?
Microsoft, whose cheerleader CEO inspires negative enthusiasm and confidence among even Board members, stockholders, business partners, and Forbes Magazine?
Microsoft, which wastes everybody’s time by trotting out vaporous products, airy-fairy concept videos, rigged presentations, deranged proclamations, and farcical interviews—all performed ineptly, cynically, and desperately?
Google’s not that far gone—is it?
…FACT OF THE DAY
In France it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon.
I wonder how they translate George Orwell’s Animal Farm? Although perhaps the anti socialist polemic isn’t popular reading in France.
But the article is correct, Google is spreading itself thinly as is Microsoft, the lack of focus makes success elusive.
Apple should release a web search engine.
Beat google at their own game by destroying their core business.
Aplple would do an outstanding job of integrating search and social media.
Regardless what goggle does, I’m never using or buying any of it.
Well then Apple would be pulling a Google, trying to compete outside their core power just because its there. Certainly Apple should continue to make inroads in search.
The problem occurs when companies jump the shark, expand into areas that are outside their core success due to the momentum of power and success.
Microsoft: The world needed cheap computing and Microsoft filled the need. The DNA of the company was being first into a new platform, to make MS critical. They no longer do that, and let platforms succeed without them — no presence on iOS — they let Android fill the need of cheap computing on smartphones!
Google: The world needed efficient search, and they provided an immediate infrastructure and brilliant algorithms to make themselves essential. There was no company doing cheap smartphone computing so they coded that up also. Now they are making blunt club consumer decisions which is outside the wheelhouse and is altering their course.
Apple: innovation on mainstream products with outstanding militaristic management. It almost killed them, but the bet paid off with the cash cow iPod that fueled every great idea they could envision with perfect execution.
It just good business. It’s about the OS.
MS dropped the ball and Apple and Google see this as their opportunity to break the MS monopoly. They are positioning themselves to become what Windows was in the 90’s and 2000’s
Its the OS war all over again and MS blew it.
Sadly, one must never underestimate the stupidity and fickleness of the average consumer. Check out what’s on your TV.
Real Housewives of New Jersey, Q.E.D.
so you guys all noticed how it sold out in a matter of days right? pre-orders now backlogged until August…
It’s this elitism and assumption that everyone else can afford and WANTS an Apple device that I can’t stand about Apple users.
As soon as a new Android device comes out Apple people are so quick to compare it to a relevant iDevice. It’s like comparing a Rolex to a Casio, both do the same job, pretty much just as well as eachother, but one of them says “Hi, I’ve got way more money than the guy wearing the Casio”, whereas the other says “Hi, I just wanted to be able to tell what time it is.”
The Nexus 7 isn’t trying to take on the iPad, it’s HALF the price! People who want an iPad will buy an iPad. People who just want something to browse the web, check emails, play angry birds etc. will probably buy a Nexus 7, I have.
The Nexus 7, by all accounts is a well built, rather functional device. And the important thing is, its price means it’s available to a much, much wider audience. The people who will buy the Nexus 7 are people who would have never bought an iPad in the first place. Like me.
That’s why it’s selling like hot-cakes, because finally people who want a quality tablet and a low price can get just that.