Can Google Outshine Apple And Microsoft at Google I/O 2012?

Google will have its chance to show up Apple and Microsoft in the coming days when the search giant is expected to debut the next version of the Android mobile operating system and new Nexus-branded devices. Google's big show will happen during Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference, which includes keynote sessions on Wednesday and Thursday. The Google conference follows a flurry of announcements from Apple and Microsoft during the month of June.

Apple doubled down on new Macs and an iOS refresh, while Microsoft in two separate events debuted the next-generation version of Windows Phone and a new Windows 8 tablet, Surface. Now, it's Google's turn to convince users to stick with Android mobile devices and stay away from the lure of a revamped iOS and Windows Phone.

Nobody knows for sure what Google has planned, but here's a rundown of the highlights expected and wished for during Google I/O 2012.

Android 4.1/5.0 Jelly Bean

Google is expected to take the wraps off the latest version of Android at Google I/O, but rumors have not been particularly rampant about what features Jelly bean might include. Some speculation suggests Google may be getting ready to release its own voice-activated digital assistant codenamed Majel. The project is named after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, the wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and a longtime Star Trek actor best known as the voice of the computer in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Majel would be similar to Apple's Siri.

Beyond going where no Android has gone before, a recent leak for an upcoming Nexus tablet suggests that Google may cut the carriers and manufacturers out of future device updates, according to Gizmodo Australia. So instead of waiting for Samsung or HTC to upgrade your Galaxy Nexus or One X to Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) or the expected Jelly Bean refresh, Google could send the update directly to you. There's no telling what that might do to your carrier specific overlay such as Samsung's TouchWiz or HTC's Sense, but if the report is accurate that's good news for Android fans hoping to stay on the bleeding edge of update cycles.

There is also some speculation that Chrome will become the default browser in Jelly Bean, following Google's release of the first Chrome Beta for Android in February.

One reason the rumor mill may not be buzzing all that much about the next version of Android is that Jelly Bean could be a minor update from Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. In fact, there are signs that Jelly Bean will be called Android 4.1 and not Android 5.0, which would suggest a more significant refresh.

A user on the xda-developers forum as well as the blog Droid Life spotted a mention on Google Play that the Galaxy Nexus would be the first phone running Android 4.1, Jelly Bean.

Nexus Fest

The Wall Street Journal in May reported that Google will launch Jelly Bean with new Nexus devices including smartphones and tablets from as many as five manufacturers. The Nexus line is the flagship brand Google uses to launch new hardware with every new version of Android.

There have been a lot of reports claiming that a new 7-inch Nexus tablet is on its way from Asus and Google. The device would cost around $250 or less, have a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processsor, and Android 4.1, Jelly Bean.

Gizmodo Australia recently obtained what it claims is a training document that describes the new 7-inch tablet. The purported device would have 1280-by-800 resolution, include 8GB or 16GB storage, 1.3 GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor (the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 also uses a 1.3GHz Tegra 3), GeForce 12-core GPU, and 1GB RAM. Gizmodo's leaked device would also include near field communication for Google Wallet.

It's not clear how many Nexus devices (if any) Google would present during Google I/O. In 2011, Google introduced Ice Cream Sandwich during the developer conference, but didn't follow up with the first Android 4.0 device until October.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt in December said the company was working on a tablet.

Google Cloud

Google is all about offering online-centric services, and during Google I/O the company may introduce a new cloud computing platform to compete with Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), according to GigaOm. This announcement would be more interesting to developers since we're talking about the ability to rent virtual servers to run server-side apps.

But a Google-branded EC2-type service could help support new and interesting online businesses. EC2, for example, is used or has been used by many services you rely on every day including Dropbox, Instagram, Netflix, Quora, and Reddit. If Google does get into the virtual server game, let's hope they don't have a catastrophic outage as Amazon did in 2011.

Project Glass

Some critics are hoping for a sneak peek at Project Glass also known as Google Glass, the search giant's augmented reality glasses. But the Google co-founder Sergey Bring recently said Project Glass wouldn't hit store shelves until at least 2013.

Sergey Brin Demos Google Glass:

It could be an interesting Google I/O this week, but will the search giant debut enough interesting new things to compete with iOS 6, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, a new Retina Display Mac from Apple, and Windows Phone 8 and the Windows 8-based Surface from Microsoft? Only a few days until we know for sure.

Windows 8 Supposedly to Be Delivered to Manufacturers in July

More evidence has surfaced indicating that Windows 8 is on track for an October release. Russian Windows blogger and enthusiast “Wzor” tipped Neowin over the weekend that Microsoft is ready to release the next-generation operating system to manufacturers (known as the “RTM” version) next month.

Neowin says Wzor “has been known to leak Windows information in the past,” lending some credibility to his statement. A forum administrator from Windows message board Winunleaked shared a purported screenshot of a build of Windows 8 sitting inside a directory labeled “RTM,” allegedly taken by Wzor from Microsoft’s internal network server.

Wzor also shared that the RTM release will arrive between July 17-20, which also happens to be the dates for Microsoft’s annual MGX conference. Releasing it then makes sense, since this is an event for the company’s sales and marketing teams.

Of course, anybody can fake a screenshot or take a lucky guess based on readily available information, so take it for what it’s worth. But getting Windows 8 to partners by July is important for several reasons.

All I Want For Christmas Is Windows 8

Simply put, Windows 8 going “RTM” in July is all about getting it in our hands for the holidays. If Microsoft hits that July date for a release to manufacturers, typically the retail release comes in October (Windows 7 is the most recent example).

If Microsoft can’t ship by July, then usually the software giant misses the holiday shopping season altogether. PCs purchased during the holiday season then will run a soon-to-be-obsolete operating system, which hurts sales.

Considering PC sales have been somewhat slow lately, Microsoft’s partners don’t want this to happen. These manufacturers are depending on Windows 8 to help boost sales and make the holiday shopping season (the next biggest period for PC sales after back-to-school sales) a successful one.

Microsoft also has personal reasons for wanting Windows 8 out as soon as possible, and that’s the Surface tablet. The company is a manufacturer itself now too, so releasing Windows 8 in time for the holidays becomes even more important.

Don’t you think Microsoft will sell quite a few Surface tablets over the holidays? It seems a few industry watchers certainly do

Yammer and Microsoft, Next Steps After the Acquisition

Ok news finally broke: Yammer is bought by Microsoft for $1.2bn. After the close of the deal, Microsoft will continue to invest in Yammer’s freemium, stand-alone service, and the team will remain under David Sacks’ direction within the Microsoft Office Division.  Now what’s next with this acquisition, what are the changes we will see in the next few months and in what areas will Yammer put itself (or be put by Microsoft).

Office as the center

Yammer is now placed in the Microsoft Office Division, which means that integration with Office(including Office 365) in general is a likely first step. A logical next step since collaboration on documents and pages in Yammer has been poor over the few years. The first victim will be most likely Crocodoc that offered a bit of an integration, but is likely to either remain unsupported as optional third-party integration while there will be tight integration with a connector for Office to collaborate on documents, but also to upload them directly into Yammer. Which also means that Microsoft and Yammer might go head to head with Jive who was already offering a strong integration with Office and their social business suite.

SharePoint, though not as you think it would

Another logical step at first sight would be SharePoint. Since SharePoint is often positioned as the social piece within Microsoft’s suite. However the main design principle around SharePoint is documents, while Yammer’s main design principle is people. Those two won’t mix, unless SharePoint 2013 is such an overhaul that the basic design principles has changed. However I don’t believe that to be true, since it would be too radical for most of Microsoft’s customers. What I do believe is that the integration with Office as mentioned before could help SharePoint in making sharing documents easier and making collaboration a bit more human.

Skype and Lync

Even though not directly in the Office suite, Skype is interesting, just as Lync. Yammer already has a way in which it shows presence (who’s online), it would be just a small step to integrate Skype with it, especially in the same way Microsoft did it with Skype in Facebook. Of course a link integration can be a premium for paid Yammer networks.

Azure

The downside for some organisations is that Yammer is only available as a full SaaS solution, hosted in the US. Microsoft has a big play with Azure where it could create an optional private cloud in which Yammer could be deployed in a managed way. Also since Microsoft has many data centers, hosting in Europe or in Asia could help in adding extra performance and lower response times.

Dynamics CRM, head on with SFDC

Dynamics CRM would be a very strategic play of both Microsoft and Yammer. Nowadays SFDC put Chatter as the social glue in the service and sales cloud offerings. And it doesn’t have to be said that Chatter was inspired by Yammer at least. By integrating not only Yammer into office, but also by integrating it more with Dynamics CRM it could eat a big part of the pie that SFDC is looking at. Especially since it is to be expected that Microsoft should be able to integrate enterprise social networking a lot better in Office than SFDC is able to.

Surface

Microsoft has an enterprise footprint which is huge and Microsoft is introducing the Surface as a new important part of their overall mobile and Windows 8 strategy. Having a good and tight integration with their productivity tools that go beyond Office and therefore include Yammer could be important. On the other hand, is the Surface so important that just for this Microsoft is willing to pay $1.2bn? I don’t think it is that important.

Rise of the suites

After the latest acquisition of IBM, SFDC, Oracle, Adobe and SAP it is clear that we are at the start of an acquisition spree in the social business space and particular the enterprise space. It is the rise of the suites and none of them focuses on enterprise collaboration and productivity, now Microsoft does and let the other guys to fight about the social marketing and analytics space. Smart move, now a smarter execution is required to stay ahead.

Just carry on with Yammer

Why would things all of a sudden have to change? We all might think that Microsoft might try to push Yammer in certain directions it shouldn’t be going, however will they? One of the best kept secrets of Microsoft is that they are a good supporter of open source. Microsoft is also big enough to just add a complete product without having to integrate it all and let it grow more organically and by allowing it to integrate with many things and not just Microsoft products and platforms.

Not so big of a deal

Of course $1.2bn is a lot of money, especially when you are acquired in cash. However for Microsoft it is not that much of a deal. It is just as much money as they paid for Visio, Navivision, Fast Search which are not really flagship products. Plus it is a lot less than de $8.5bn Microsoft paid for Skype and to put more perspective to it the net income of the record-breaking Q1 of 2012 was nearly $6bn. So it might even be that Yammer is just a strategic asset for them on the long run as a differentiator or as something that makes certain products more complete, instead of something that is driving change in the short run.