It’s definitely worth the read. Here’s the link to Steve Yegge’s entire essay/rant:

https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX

Here are a few quotes if you just want to scroll:

Amazon vs. Google

“There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies (Google and Amazon), and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly.”

“Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon’s retail site…Bezos is super smart; don’t get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.”

Amazon Transformation

“Amazon transformed internally into a service-oriented architecture.”

“I’m not really sure how Bezos came to this realization — the insight that he can’t build one product and have it be right for everyone. But it doesn’t matter, because he gets it. There’s actually a formal name for this phenomenon. It’s called Accessibility, and it’s the most important thing in the computing world.”

“Like anything else big and important in life, Accessibility has an evil twin who, jilted by the unbalanced affection displayed by their parents in their youth, has grown into an equally powerful Arch-Nemesis (yes, there’s more than one nemesis to accessibility) named Security. And boy howdy are the two ever at odds.
But I’ll argue that Accessibility is actually more important than Security because dialing Accessibility to zero means you have no product at all, whereas dialing Security to zero can still get you a reasonably successful product such as the Playstation Network.”

Does Google Get Platforms?

“That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is Platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t “get” platforms.”

“Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo). We all don’t get it. The Golden Rule of platforms is that you Eat Your Own Dogfood. The Google+ platform is a pathetic afterthought. We had no API at all at launch, and last I checked, we had one measly API call….”

Platform vs. Product

“…The problem is that we’re (Google) a Product Company through and through. We built a successful product with broad appeal — our search, that is — and that wild success has biased us.

Amazon was a product company too, so it took an out-of-band force to make Bezos understand the need for a platform. That force was their evaporating margins; he was cornered and had to think of a way out. But all he had was a bunch of engineers and all these computers… if only they could be monetized somehow… you can see how he arrived at AWS, in hindsight.

Microsoft started out as a platform, so they’ve just had lots of practice at it.

Facebook, though: they worry me. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure they started off as a Product and they rode that success pretty far. So I’m not sure exactly how they made the transition to a platform. It was a relatively long time ago, since they had to be a platform before (now very old) things like Mafia Wars could come along.”

“The Golden Rule of Platforms, “Eat Your Own Dogfood”, can be rephrased as “Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything.” You can’t just bolt it on later.”

A great Colorado musician NRateliff played a few great songs.  Listen to some of his work here:  http://www.myspace.com/nathanielrateliff

It’s been a great first session.  Truly enjoying my first Tedx event.

So, you might notice some new design changes and features.  I hope you enjoy.

• The walk/run route around Balboa Island is 2.6185 miles.
• http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=655635

• My first bike ride of 2007 was about 9.0527 miles.
• http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=655800

How did we know the exact mileage? Check out the website http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/ and find out for yourself.

1-800-Free-411 (1-800-373-3411)

That’s right, free information calls. No more $2 charges on your phone bills. You do have to listen to a 10-15 second advert but it’s worth it.

Check ‘em out at www.free411.com

PS You probably don’t want to call 1-800-411-Free (it’s an adult phone site).

Imagine if you text and it appears on your MySpace page or personal website. Or what if I took a picture from cell phone and then sent and it uploaded to my site with a message. Now we’re talking about cool. I’m not a programmer but I’m guessing it isn’t too hard. I’m not sure though. I might send them a little note.

I did notice that the founders have quite a good track record. I’m sure we’ll be reading about this company soon.

Here’s an excerpt:

The basic argument is very simple. Most creativity is collaborative. It combines different views, disciplines and insights in new ways. The opportunities for creative collaboration are expanding the whole time. The number of people who could be participants in these creative conversations is going up largely thanks to the communications technologies that now give voice to many more people and make it easier for them to connect. As a result we are developing new ways to be innovative and creative at mass scale. We can be organised without having an organisation. People can combine their ideas and skills without a hierarchy to coordinate their activities. Many of the ingredients of these forms of self-organised creative collaboration are not new – peer review for example has been around a long time in academia. But what is striking about Wikipedia, Linux, Second Life, Youtube and many more is the way they take familiar ingredients and combine them to allow people to collaborate creatively at mass scale.

The rest is here:
http://www.wethinkthebook.net/book/home.aspx

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from the website)

Charles Leadbeater is one the world’s leading authorities on innovation and creativity in organisations. He has advised companies, cities and governments around the world on innovation strategy and drawn on that experience in writing his latest book We-think: why mass creativity is the next big thing, which charts the rise of mass, participative approaches to innovation from science and open source software, to computer games and political campaigning.

www.charlesleadbeater.net