The last three conferences I've been to (Web 2.0, SXSW, eTech) I've overheard people talking about how Google has jumped the shark. In fact at Web 2.0 a few people were hoarding the Google schawg because "There was a time when people loved Microsoft and the schwag from that time is worth tons and any minute now people are going to wise up and Google is going to fall from grace in a big way." I'm not sure if I'm buying that personally or if it's more along the lines of a conversation I had last night where we were talking about how because Google said they weren't evil, everyone expects them to be. It's as if they said "We hate polka dots." and everyone suddenly started pointing and yelling "Look! Is that sentence ended with a period... or a POLKA DOT!!?" So it's a question of if they did in fact jump the shark, or if everyone just assumes they have.

There's a saying that the only difference between a mad man who thinks he is king and a king who thinks he is king is that other people also believe the king is king. In that case, does it matter what the reality is, or just what everyone thinks?

Yahoo! has been making a lot of presentations here at eTech and seem to have a general "tell us what you want and we'll do it" attitude which is quite refreshing compared to the secrecy that seems to surround Google. As others have pointed out Google has also been consistently un-mac-friendly which doesn't mean a lot when looking at overall computer usage, but looking around here at the group of people who are making the tools and services that we'll all be using tomorrow and seeing a 95%+ mac usage rate, it does mean something. These people will be working with companies that work with them, and not with those that don't.

I'm not sure what any of this means at the moment, and quite honestly haven't had enough sleep or coffee to be making a post like this but it's something to look at and think about a bit in the near future for sure. I'm headed back to LA now, more notes on this conference when I get in.

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