But occasionally, the best of these tech prophets can express a developing trend with a more imaginative perspective than the tech news treadmill, and that's something venture investor and musician Roger McNamee did rather well back in May at the US Narm conference... the not-enticingly named National Association of Recording Merchandisers.
Though the talk was a while ago, a video and McNamee's own transcript have been causing a stir this week. It's not a point of view we're used to hearing, but McNamee explains why Apple "is a far better monopolist to deal with than Google" because it has been better at building a business model around digital content.
Google's uniformity undermined brands
He's extremely tough on Google, stating that the era of search is over because of the rise of specialist search through apps, that Google "about to get a taste of what the music industry has been dealing with for a decade" as the tech world changes around it. He makes the astute observation that it was the lack of differentiation, what appeared to be the equality of information online, that undermined credible brands.
Photo by creativedc on Flickr. Some rights reserved
"What we all missed at the time is that by treating every piece of information the same, Google enforced a standard that permitted no differentiation," he told the audience at Narm.
"Every word on every Google page is in the same typeface. No brand images appear other than Google's. This action essentially neutered the production values of every high end content creator. The long tail took off and the music industry got its ass kicked."
The biggest beneficiaries, he says, should be those who were short-changed by the Google era of the web, which commoditised all content by "removing differentiation".
The end of the Microsoft/Google monopoly era
It's a superbly exciting, well-informed and all too rare perspective on the role of technology in facilitating content creation and distribution.
He's evangelical about the iPad and iPhone as devices because of their massive adoption rate, but goes on to say that HTML5 is the greatest creative and business opportunity for content creators since Google and Microsoft began to monopolise and monetize the content of others over the past twelve years.
Where Microsoft once had 96% control of internet connected devices, it now has just 50% because the growth of mobile is replacing the PC era. Google, meanwhile, has captured 80% of the index search business from which it has dominated the booming web advertising market.
"Google's success eventually filled the web with crap, so consumers began using other products to search: Wikipedia for facts, Facebook for matters of taste, time or money, Twitter for news, Yelp for restaurants, Realtor.com for places to live, LinkedIn for jobs. Over the past three years, these alternatives have gone from 10% of search volume to about half," said McNamee.
The end of search
"As if all this competition wasn't bad enough for Google, then along came Apple with the iPhone and App Store... Apple has branded, trustworthy apps for everything. If they want news, Apple customers use apps from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. If they want to know which camera to buy, they ask friends on Facebook. If they want to go to dinner, they use the Yelp app. These searches have economic value and it's not going to Google, even on Android.
"When Apple and the app model win, Google's search business loses."
But if that sounds like a triumphant results for Apple, McNamee turns it round again. HTML5 delivers a better experience than an Apple app, but is cheaper and offers better value to users. His band Moonalice has been using HTML5-based technology to livestream their shows to mobiles and iPads.
"Near term, focus your platform strategy on Apple," he advises musicians. "Long term, focus on HTML5. The sooner you commit to HTML5, the more likely you will produce something of economic value. Remember that HTML5 will produce companies as important as Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix. It costs musicians practically nothing to create good digital video and fantastic audio, but they need distribution systems optimised for their content."
Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/jul/27/google-apple-html5