It seems that the technology news I have seen recently feels far more like business news than technology. Apple has ten percent market share, Google made a billion dollars yesterday, and Nvidia sold more video cards than someone else, but none of that matters to me. I’m not a shareholder and I don’t care if a billion other people own an Iphone, I care if mine does what I want.
So why do we spend so much time talking about money instead of technology? The simple answer is that it’s a way of keeping score, but does growing market share really mean that a product is better than its competitor? Is youtube.com really the best video sharing site, or is it just the best known? Is myspace.com even good? It must be it has market share, but then is the product actually getting worse as people leave?
Social networking is harder because you have to be where your friends are, but you can use any phone you want to call them so why not buy the Google android? It clearly has less market share, but you also don’t have to pay the apple tax, and with far more freedom to build new applications.
So what do we do about it? Technology is undoubtedly big business and if Yahoo is going to go out of business I want to know, but can’t we agree that we should discuss good products and good ideas without the need to discuss how much money they are making, or at least leave the question of profitability to the end of the conversation?
So beginning the conversation with technology rather than business I love my TiVo, my IPod, my Vizio HDTV and my Xbox 360, though I’m a little less enthusiastic about the Playstation 3, which is mostly a blue-ray player at the moment, and the Wii, and I don’t even own a cell phone (though that is more because of service plans and a desire to not be bothered with phone calls than the technology itself).
What technology do you use every day and do you care how much money the company who makes it earned last quarter?
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