Microsoft is the new IBM. Google is the new Microsoft. Facebook is the new Google.

In the 80s, it was said that no one was fired for picking IBM. Microsoft was the hot new innovator in the 80s. In the 90s, got stagnant and then beloved for embracing open source. Microsoft turned into a villian. Five years ago Google was the new innovator that everyone loved. Now they are playing the kind of tricks we used to expect from Microsoft, while Microsoft is earning new love, probably coming from new leadership from Ray Ozzie.

It might feel early to some, but I think it’s time to say that no one will be fired for picking Google for their IT services. Search engine and adwords aside, Google’s office suite (especially email) is strong enough for the enterprise. But while Google has awesome products–products that are more exciting than Windows and Office ever were–it’s also playing games in the market.

Case 1: Android. Is Google serious? Yeah, it’s a move against Apple and the iPhone, but where’s the beef? Android phones should have been here by now. It’s not too late for Android to make a mark, but it does seem like Google announced early to scare off competitors. Fortunately, it hasn’t worked. Nokia/Symbian going open source is a strong move. And Motorola had news recently about their Linux phones, which actually are coming out. The more people at the party, the better for us users.

Case 2: Knol. A lot of people have noticed over the past few years that the top link on many searches at Google point to Wikipedia. For whatever reason, Wikipedia does not use Google adsense. They don’t have any ads. I remember Jason Calacanis begging them to put ads there, but they didn’t listen. Google can’t have so much traffic going off into non-monetized land. Their solution is to clone wikipedia and put ads on it. And just to make sure the traffic is going there, they seem to have juiced their search results. Techcrunch reported last week that Google Knol entries are appearing high in search results much faster than should be expected. That’s the kind of behavior that inspires Justice Department types. But worse, it erodes confidence in Google search results.

Case 3: Friend Connect. Google has clearly blown it in the social space. I don’t count them out entirely, but they have not been winning. Orkut is insigificant. They’ve been sneaking social features into Gmail and Reader, which depending on your perspective either treads close to or steps over the social contract with users. With Friend Connect, they seem to be pushing Facebook towards being more open and letting users keep hold of their data. This is a net positive for users because Facebook didn’t blink. They accelerated their own Connect strategy. Still, Google comes out looking like a bully in this.

At F8 last month, Zuckerberg talking about how the mission of this company is to bring people closer together, the enable better understanding of each other. That’s a big goal that sounds a lot like Bill Gates’ mission to have a computer on every desktop. Google’s do-no-evil motto seemed hip a few years ago, but their misteps sometimes make it seem like a joke. Their stated mission is to connect people to information. Boring. Give me the world-changing missing every time.

Lest there be confusion, I am in no way suggesting that Google itself is evil. It’s a corporation. Individuals are judged by morality, not abstractions. And I’ll be the last person to indict business and businessmen. If I could offer humble advice, I’d suggest to Google’s leadership that they not allow their teams to pull these tricks even if they seem to make sense in the short run.

Leon’s insightful writings regularly appear at www.leonatkinson.com

A Pew Internet and American Life Project report is forshadowing the near future where mobile is really the most personal computer.  In a recent report, when asked how hard it would be to give up a specific technology, folks are more likely to say the cellphone would be most difficult to do without, followed by the Internet, TV, and landline telephone.

Backing up the story that we Americans love us some cell phones.  This week whilst watching Celebrity Rehab on Vh1, one of the participants made an interesting statement.  Jessica Sierra, a former American Idol contestant, was presented with a stay at a clean living facility to continue her clean and sober success after graduating from the Pasadena Recovery Center.  Jessica was distraut over the prospect, worried that an extended stay in rehab would interfere with her ability to work, and to EARN MONEY TO PAY HER CELL BILLS.  Here is a cocaine addict who is more concerned with her cell phone than with sobriety OR crack!

Those jokes about the T-mobile SideCrack, and the RIM CrackBerry are not so far off after all.

The TV late night chat shows have returned this week.  David Letterman is back with his WGA writers after negotiating a seperate deal with the union.  Jay Leno is back without writers, and his show is better for it.  Jay may have stumbled out of the gates, and curiosity may have driven some viewers to the WGA-written Late Show on Wednesday, but as the strike goes on Jay will prevail.

Jay Leno is a funny guy who honed his comedy on the road for decades.  His style of comedy is observational, topical, and delivered on his feet to a live audience.  In a writer-less world, Jay is back to doing what he has done all his life, the same things he did to get the gig from Johnny Carson in the first place.  Shooting from the hip with live entertainment.  Letterman, on the otherhand, is back to the same old show with the same old writers, relying on scripts and lists and snarky setups to carry the show.

An added bonus for Jay is, that without a script, there is nothing for the NBC censors to edit.  Already the Tonight Show has a fresher, rawer, “I can’t beleive Jay said that” feel.  As the show springs from Jay’s head, all Standards and Practices can do is cringe.  NBC is just happy to have a host on the air, and will give Jay lots of room to improvise and wisecrack, even if it is a bit bluer than they are used to.  The writer’s strike will allow the Tonight Show to be less Jack Paar and more Howard Stern, but then again today our culture is more like Howard than Paar.

So as the Writer’s Guild strike wears on, David Letterman will sink back into the shelter of his standard writer’s room fare.  He will get better guests (as some actors will refuse to cross the picket line) and he will get a small pop in the rating.  Meanwhile Jay Leno is going to get less sleep at night as he worries out jokes, and he will drink more coffee before the show to keep himself on his toes.  Neccessarily, Jay will go places and say things that will keep the guests and audiences on their toes too.  The Tonight Show will look and feel fresh and current, while the Late Show looks like is has for 20 years.

What a blast form Christmas past! I saw this on FARK today.  Some guy digitized the Sears Christmas Wishbook from 1982 onto Flickr.  I looked through the toys section with my daughters and not much has changed.  They found most of the same toys and brands that they have on their 2007 Santa lists (Barbie, electric guitar, Legos, Breyer horses, etc.). 

But Wait, There’s More! The Bestest part are the old-school electronic games!  Here is a link to a Flickr slideshow for the games section.  Check it out! How many of these did you have?  What didn’t your mom get you? How many DO you still have? (I bet Chen has most of them, in original packaging, in his garage!) 

One thing I noticed is that prices from 1982 to 2007 are about the same.  The prices for Barbie, Lego, Playmobil, and other staples are the same as they are now at Walmart.  And even Intellivision  was $259, the same as a console today.  The major price shift is in small electronic games; back in the day they cost fifty bucks, and now they are disposable Happy Meal toys!

So, what was on my Wishlist in 1982? Dark Tower, Vectrex, Merlin, and a bunch of Atari games.

It is that time of year: when there is a chill in the air, crappy flip phones attached to two-year contracts are given as gifts, and John Szeder (the Mayor of Mobile) composes another Yuletide ditty.  Please to enjoy…

Twas the night before Christmas, and on the carrier decks,
Many publisher’s games were revenue wrecks.
The GLU had just melted, Vivendi got sold,
Tetris part seven had just been declared gold!

Holiday crunching on games for new phones,
Caused QA headaches, long hours and moans.
The handsets are buggy, the firmware is broken,
Developers wished they lived in Hoboken.

The iPhone was shipping, a million people had bought.
Cheap javascript knockoff games are the best that they got.
Android was announced and was coming on the horizon,
And soon, you could get open access on Verizon.

“We are open!” declared carriers “come use our pipe!”
People were too busy making free calls on Skype.
So cheer up! It’s Christmas! And while the carriers slumbered
Open access for all means their days are numbered.

So ship your games and fix bugs with good cheer,
And Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year!

     –John “Burgermeister Meisterburger of Mobile” Szeder

In the past two weeks, shares of mobile game publisher Glu (GLUU) have tanked nearly 50%.  The business press have attributed the plunge to: 2008 guidance, revenue outlook, European troubles, brokerage cuts, take your pick.  The bottom line is that Glu was worth about 10 bucks a share last month, and now it is about half that.  This makes Glu a prime candidate for acquisition.

Glu is a really good mobile publisher, with strong studios, good distribution, terrific licenses, and up-and-coming internal IP.  With a market cap now at $157 million, cash reserves of $72m, and revenue of $63 million, this time is ripe for someone to acquire Glu for just 1.5X revenue.  This is a deal by any measure.

Who is in the market for a strong mobile division that could become instantly profitable after eliminating merger redundancies?  Warner Bros. has a relationship with Glu and recently acquired Travellers Tales.  WB has previously announced a $500m video games fund. Comcast is on the short list of media companies that lack a mobile branch.  IAC would benefit from mobile diversification. Heck, even EA would have made sense at one point, but Glu’s loss of Hasbro, and deals with EA’s rivals (Activision), would now curtail their interest. Microsoft has licensed them IP, and would benefit from an instant mobile infrastructure. 

And the long shot prediction to acquire Glu…(cue drumroll, hold envelope to forehead)…Popcap.  Popcap is swimming in cash, has games at Glu, and their concentration of Popcap casual game IP could make Popcap/Glu the #1 mobile publisher.

The article is about emoticons, not EMOTICONS ^TM, but is still interesting ;-). Alex Williams wrote the article in the Sunday NYT Fashion and Style section.  It was about the history, and cultural status of emoticons.  The gist is that the use of emoticons is now mainstream, mass-market; used by young and old in both casual and business emails and IMs.  Hmm, I bet they would make a terrific theme for a game! :-P

LINK: Sunday July 29th 2007 NYT Article about Emoticons

In the few past years, several “industry experts” have declared both the TV sitcom and the Match-3 puzzle game, “dead”.  True enough, both formats have seen better times (as in #1) as far as ratings and critical acclaim.  Friends and Bejeweled are so 2003!  What else do these two different forms of mass-market entertainment have in common?

Both get cloned.  Call it “ripping-off”, or just riding the wave of public demand, both sitcoms and puzzle games spawn copy cats.  Suburban families, falling gems, urban hipsters, or nothing, results in a slew of similar shows/games.  Just as several UK shows enjoyed greater success when re-envisioned as US shows, several Japanese console games have been reinvented in the US to lead the casual game market.  Sometimes an imported premise results in something great (All in the Family), but even then that show spawned six spinoffs!  For my money (and Popcap’s!), there is nothing wrong with taking a clever premise and making something better and more marketable out of it. 

Popular culture is cyclical, and both sitcoms and games are subject to the whims of the entertainment tides.  Too often, though, entertainment industry executives tire of a format, genre, or game mechanic, and then insist on changing gears and chasing a fad.  When Idol is hot, every studio wants more talent shows; when medical dramas are the craze, dozens of hospital shows are greenlit.  What stays constant is the mass-market’s demand to be entertained by GOOD programs.  Just because the industry insider is tired of the same ol’ pitches, does not mean that the public is done consuming them. 

It’s like the tortoise and the hare.  Shows like Ozzie and Harriet, or The Simpsons settled into long runs.  Similarly, Bejeweled was not a smash hit for being number one once, but for being in the top twenty for five years.  Today, in a publishing market that is cool to Match-3 games, they still sell very well with the public (as PC downloads they ranked third behind Click Management and Hidden Object, but ahead of everything else by a wide margin.)

The Sitcom, and Match-3 games, also share similar benefits (some are benefits to the publisher, others are benefits to the player).
• Affordable to produce – sitcoms have one set, match-3 has one screen of assets
• Shallow learning curve – you can play any match-3 just as you can laugh at any pratfall.
• Lack of Complexity – both are done in a sitting, and can be picked up again anytime without missing a beat.
• Limited attention span – you can do other tasks while simultaneously enjoying them.
• Approachable – the themes and interactions of both play well to the broadest audiences.
• Localizable – they can easily be repackaged and enjoyed around the world.
• Multiple formats – this is the cincher.  Just as sitcoms translate well to additional revenue streams like web, DVD, airline viewing, iPods, syndication, etc., so do Match-3 games easily port.  In fact, a Match-3 game can more than double its revenue on mobile alone.  That leaves iPod, console, arcade, set-top-box and other revenue opportunities as gravy.  Aveyond and Dream Day Wedding don’t port as well and will miss those opportunities.

Critics and experts may get bored with things as they become popular, but the mass-market always knows what it wants.  Next time you watch The Office on your iPod or catch a new Simpsons on Sunday, consider that you can also play Bejeweled on your iPod or find a fresh Match-3 game online.  Sitcoms and Match-3 games are staples of popular entertainment and will be with us and evolving for decades to come.  Match-3 games are not “played out” to the audience, and more importantly, they are fresh and approachable to the 95% of the world who has not yet discovered “casual games”.

Poor Infusio.  They just learned the hard way that mobile licensors are just warming the mobile slots for the media companies they are licensing from.  According to this article “Microsoft sued over Halo mobile“, MSFT wants out of their agreement with Infusio, and Infusio is accusing MSFT of sandbagging on approvals of Infusio’s Halo mobile designs.  
 
The way I read it, Infusio paid $2mil for the priviledge of teaching Microsoft how to build and deploy mobile games.  Midtown Madness, AOE and ZooTycoon were just chum to get the waters ready for Microsoft’s grand entrance.  Now that the Redmond gang are up to speed in mobile, they want their rights back so they can publish themselves into the deckslots and goodwill built up by Infusio.  It doesn’t hurt that Halo is their crown jewel and they will have their own internal mobile game to launch with Halo 3. 

The ultimate upside in a deal like this is not getting to publish Halo; the gold medal ribbon is having Microsoft acquire you.  This lawsuit seems to indicate that Infusio ain’t gonna win the gold medal ribbon.

I got this email today from John Szeder, the Mayor of Mobile.  Merry Christmas!

Twas the night before Christmas, the porting was done.
Greg Ballard was flaunting his new S-1.

“We’re burning $10Mil, our poor ship will sink,”
“unless we get bought by Time Warner, Inc!”

All other execs thought glu were the champs,
because their comp plans were just stock and food stamps.

Hands On re-orged, to their 2005 management team.
Like a season of Dallas their ‘06 was just a dream.

And Dchoc is shipping a title with  brands.
The logic for which, no one else understands.

Tira keeps JUMPing and THQ moved to the sticks,
Limelife keeps making games for chicks.

And Santa stood ready with his phone at the North Pole
“NO SIGNAL” it said in the world’s biggest coverage hole.

And he wished he had games to play as he rode off into the night
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

John Szeder is the CEO of mobile developer and publisher Mofactor, the creators of Duckshot.