rumors

Delicious scare

During the last few days I’ve been asked by several people what I think about the scary bit of news regarding the shutdown of Delicious. I’ve replied individually several times, but I feel that a blog post is in order. So here it goes.

First of all, Delicious is not being shutdown. Here is a quote from their blog:

Is Delicious being shut down? And should I be worried about my data?

– No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.

Secondly, if you are worried about your data, just make a backup of it. Delicious had an export option for years. Login to your account and you’ll be able to export your bookmarks from the Settings page.

Thirdly, I can understand that news like that could throw some people into a search for alternative mode. And here are alternatives of them out there. I haven’t tried any of them in years, since I’m a happy Delicious user. But if I were forced to choose one day, Xmarks would be my first choice. My reasons are:

All features that are vital for me are a part of the free subscription. More features are available for premium subscribers.
Cross-browser support that covers all browsers that I care about.
Support for sharing of bookmarks. That’s the main reason for me to actually use a social bookmarking service instead of a much simpler bookmark synchronization service.
Support for private bookmarks. I want to share as much as possible, but not everything.
Easy integration with third-party tools and services. For example, using an RSS feed.
Support for direct import from Delicious.

But with all that said, I want to stress it once again – Delicious is not shutting down. So if you use and enjoy the service, simply continue doing just that. No need to worry.

Jobs vs. Schmidt = product vs. service

Gizmodo is running a very speculative – and yes, there are speculations, – post about a meeting between Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt. It took place in a public place, and someone noticed it and made a couple of pictures and now everyone and their brother is running around trying to figure out what these two were talking about. Things went as far as even consulting a body language expert.

Firstly, my reaction to this is: “C’mon! Leave them alone already!“. Who cares? But it seems too many people do. So there kicks in my second reaction – since we don’t really know what it was all about, let’s speculate and blow this out of all proportions. After looking at the pictures, reading through the comments, and through the body language expert’s analysis, here is my view of what is captured on those pictures.

This is, quite obviously, a historical moment, where two schools of thought are standing against each other. Steve Jobs represents the old school which stands for closed things and for products, as in things that you can touch, feel, and break. Eric Schmidt represents the new school of thought, which is characterised by openness and the idea of a service. Two great men with two great companies behind them meet at the neutral point. And while Eric seems to be more uncomfortable, as body language expert suggests, the important bit here is that they are at the same table on the same terms. The clash of the titans, so to speak. The outcome is obvious for some of us though. Go, Eric, go!

P.S.: Before you start throwing lava balls at me, I do mean this as a joke, and yes, I am drunk. It’s Friday night after all.

P.P.S.: There is some truth to every joke.

Google’s business domain

While trying to investigate a bit into the rumor of Google buying Skype, I ran across this rather lengthy post. In there, I stumbled upon a thought which is simple and rather obvious, but which I haven’t had yet:

Google isn’t a search engine company; it brokers connections between people and corporations for profit.[…] Search is just one, albeit dominant.