nanairo

That is a good point... though I really don't like either choice. :D

Yep, I can see them getting excited data mining people's social networks. However before they do that they need to get the social network...

Personally I think we shouldn't move away from the concept of: URI <=> resource, just for some short-term gain. I think that metaphor will be a lot more useful in the long term.

What we may do, and to be honest it's starting to happen already, is to get rid of the address bar as an always-visible user interface feature. It could just be an overlaid window for those times when you actually want to type in the url (or if you jus want to check its value) that disappear once one click enter. And to be honest this is already happening in mobile phones where space is limited.

The breadcrumb idea, especially if as customisable as the author suggest, should be done in the site... which we already can do.

he he... I do that often for Wikipedia... even though I don't get why Wikipedia hasn't implemented a nicer looking URL (in particular removing the middle /wiki/). :(

What was the historical reason? I know that originally the actual domain name was written from "largest" to "smallest": com.google, for example.

I find my perfectionist side slightly annoyed by the current form, but then if we ever change it we should move to year-month-day too, and putting the currency symbol after the number, and use decimals everywhere (no more hours but centi-days ^_^)... oh well, I guess the world is nice because it's imperfect. :)

For a start we should try to get rid of all those www: that will be the greatest help. The rest should be pretty easy: a website can always set a forwarding link so that, say: www.cocacola.com/offer goes to the page of the actual offer.

I am not sure about that. Though I do think there is a certain feeling of elitism within Google, like all the brightest people are inside (which to be honest it's probably a pretty good assessment). So I am not sure how much they can get the very real but very (intellectually) shallow world of social networks.

Googlers seem to love to tackle hard problems (e.g. Wave and Instant search) but social networks are not a hard problem from an engineer point of view.

True... though "clone it and eventually users will come" was Microsoft strategy, wasn't it? :D (ah, Microsoft, if you had only patented it! ;P ).

But I'd be careful to consider Google vs. Facebook a done deal. Yes, Facebook has only one service... but Google gets all its money from ads, a Facebook could potentially have a much better profile of its users than Google. If Facebook starts chipping at Google's ads de-facto monopoly, it will really hurt Google.

It will be a good fight for sure. :)

Personally I am more worried of a big company dominating more than one space. Say, I'm happy with PS3 to beat Xbox 'cause Sony is not a threat anywhere else, but Microsoft got the Windows/Office monopolies.

I am happy with Apple being strong in iPod/iPhone because they are weak in PCs. And I am happy with Google being strong in search, and Facebook and Twitter having the social network market.

If we got a Facebook killer from Twitter I'd love it. But from Google? I think they got enough fingers in enough pies for the time being. :)

I feel a bit sad for Rails (yes, I know he will continue contributing, but I doubt it will be anything close to what he did in the last few years, when that was his main job).

But he seems a great guy and he deserves all the best. Good luck in your next endeavour.

Oh, I definitely agree that their impact was weakened by the exclusivity... for a start because Android would have been less popular.

My guess (and it's purely that) is that the deal was extended (maybe one year... dunno) in exchange for the iPad deal. Not a great move, I agree.

Finally, I agree MS stands in a strong position too. But not Google. As long as Android is open, and as long as there are many manufacturers of Android phones, you have a situation where the very few phone companies have an oligopoly on demand and hence have the upperhand: if Motorola doesn't play along, they can go to Sony, or HTC, or Samsung, or LG... and others are coming up soon. Then Motorola can either lose a lucrative business without little harm to the carrier or is forced to oblige.

That said if one particular brand would become the most appealing for some reason, that company would definitely regain some bargaining power.

Actually you can say "las juesas". :)

In Italian it is true that the last letter is not a perfect indication of gender... even for people's names (e.g. Andrea should be a male name). But it works pretty well. Not sure if Spanish is similar (i.e. there are exceptions) or not.

Nobody is arguing that American companies can't compete, or that America isn't a great country. But the UK was an innovator once, and so was Italy before it.

That said you could very well end up with a future with very powerful and very competitive american companies... in a country with no middle-class and a strong divide between managers and those with money, and the labour force with little privileges.

Edit: I think USA got to where it is for a certain pragmatism that it seems to have lost. Now ideologies (free market, socialism, God, etc...) seem to be all that matter, and society is suffering for it. GDP is not a good indicator of the society's wellbeing and even less is current GDP for tomorrow's society's. At the end of the day the richest man in the world is Mexican, but Mexico is hardly a first world country.

I'll take your word for it.

My impression of cause and effect was that it started pretty much from the beginning, when Obama tried to push for economic stimulus first and universal health service later.

And now the teaparty are a force to be reckoned... and their whole point is to have a small government, and they don't want stimuli or similar (as well as no health service).

But please tell me more. American politics is quite interesting. :)