The release of the Kindle Fire has many pointing to Amazon’s vision for the tablet as a breakthrough. After all, with it’s low price, curated approach to the crowded world of Android apps and a content-first approach, it looks like someone finally got an Android tablet right.
Except that Barnes & Noble kinda got it right before Amazon. OK, sure, so maybe the Nook Color is technically categorized by B&N as an e-reader, but in reality it was a low-end Android tablet, priced cheaply with a curated approach to content.
But that’s all just a technicality now, because while B&N may have been ahead of Amazon with the Nook Color, the Fire will still blow every other Android tablet out of the water, including the Nook Color and the new Nook tablet, which B&N introduced last week as an answer to the Fire.
So what’s more interesting with the Fire is not where it leaves B&N, which is in a fairly predictable second-place position among high-end e-readers and Android tablets, but where the Fire leaves Google. After all, the Fire is Amazon’s audacious attempt to introduce another tablet upon Google’s platform, while taking away many of the advantages that Google has gained through investing in the Android platform.
What do I mean? Well, sure, technically the Fire is built upon Android, but Amazon’s curated approach will no doubt be more about Amazon than Google, which is best exemplified by the fact that Amazon puts its own browser on the device, displacing Google’s browser. By taking the browser away and giving the consumer a server-assisted browsing experience with Silk, it will be Amazon, not Google, gathering all the data about consumer purchase and social behavior.
So what should Google do? Well, there’s not much they can do, other than continue to push hardware providers like Samsung, HTC and, of course, Motorola and others to utilize a version of Android that has all the Google services that Google was intending for consumers to use with the release of Android.
Nothing to do, except maybe…
And content is something that Google, as much as it likes to think it is, doesn’t get. At all. The examples are numerous. The failure of Google TV. Google’s no-show in the music space despite making noise with Google Music. And finally, there’s Google eBookstore, which, from what I can tell, is even more of a non-factor than Google Music.
Full story at Gigaom.
But that’s all just a technicality now, because while B&N may have been ahead of Amazon with the Nook Color, the Fire will still blow every other Android tablet out of the water, including the Nook Color and the new Nook tablet, which B&N introduced last week as an answer to the Fire.
So what’s more interesting with the Fire is not where it leaves B&N, which is in a fairly predictable second-place position among high-end e-readers and Android tablets, but where the Fire leaves Google. After all, the Fire is Amazon’s audacious attempt to introduce another tablet upon Google’s platform, while taking away many of the advantages that Google has gained through investing in the Android platform.
What do I mean? Well, sure, technically the Fire is built upon Android, but Amazon’s curated approach will no doubt be more about Amazon than Google, which is best exemplified by the fact that Amazon puts its own browser on the device, displacing Google’s browser. By taking the browser away and giving the consumer a server-assisted browsing experience with Silk, it will be Amazon, not Google, gathering all the data about consumer purchase and social behavior.
So what should Google do? Well, there’s not much they can do, other than continue to push hardware providers like Samsung, HTC and, of course, Motorola and others to utilize a version of Android that has all the Google services that Google was intending for consumers to use with the release of Android.
Nothing to do, except maybe…
Yes, Google should acquire Barnes & Noble. Wait, you ask, didn’t Google just buy Motorola, another hardware company? Of course, but the thing is, B&N isn’t a hardware company. What B&N is is a content retailer.
Like Amazon.And content is something that Google, as much as it likes to think it is, doesn’t get. At all. The examples are numerous. The failure of Google TV. Google’s no-show in the music space despite making noise with Google Music. And finally, there’s Google eBookstore, which, from what I can tell, is even more of a non-factor than Google Music.
Full story at Gigaom.
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