A week ago, I wrote about the global browser wars and suggested that keeping score, while interesting, was a sideshow to a bigger battle about whose ecosystem will dominate. Maybe not as earth shattering in real time as the whether the United States would go into default, but two reference points popped in the last few days that should serve as gentle reminders that it is never a bad time to pay attention.
First, if you are keeping score at home, here are the major contenders. The top three, in no particular order or preference, are characterized by being all things:
- Google —(Chrome, Google+, Gmail, et al) plus Android (News - Alert)
- Apple/iOS — (Macs, iPhones, IPads, iPods, Safari, et al) plus the Apple Apps Store
- Microsoft — (Windows for PCs and phones, IE, Exchange, Office, et al) plus Facebook and Skype
And, just to be fair, let’s throw in a couple of wild cards to the mix.
Substitute your own list if you like, but mine includes things like: HTML5 (which can disintermediate attempts at constructing defensible (from a business perspective) ecosystems; peer-to-peer networking (to get around them); the open source community (think Mozilla); and, life finding a way through start-ups and creative/aggressive business types like Amazon or via entrenched empires like Oracle (News 
- Alert), IBM, HP, communications service providers and financial institutions, depending upon how each chooses to play.
Putting aside wild cards for another day, let’s return to viewing the center ring of today’s circus. For those who like to read the tea leaves instead of reading about the impact of the Tea Party, I put forth for consideration the following two items:
The reason to pair them is because they are indicative of a paradigm shift in what is the intrinsic value-creation and competitive sustainability engine of the online world going forward. We are moving from value extraction being based on going someplace (search) and doing something (interacting/transacting) and then going someplace else to do something else to one that is more along the lines of the famous lyrics of the Eagle’s hit song Hotel California: “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.”
Google (News - Alert) became dominant because its business model has been driven by people’s need to find someplace as the prerequisite for actually going there. Google has brilliantly reaped a world of profits to be derived from being both instigator and benefactor of a virtuous circle — find someplace, get paid for helping people find that place, accumulate more and more knowledge based on behavioral information to allow people to find someplace that perfectly fits their needs, hence, always start and increasingly end with Google. That is why the item on Google+ as a referral agent is important.
Despite disappointed investors and others telling Microsoft to abandon the money-losing Bing search engine, the reality is, they should not. I would contend that they best not and in many ways cannot. As much as people want to focus on who is likely to build the best “decision engine,” this is not and never has been about a race about who is “smarter.” This is about making money in a changing world.
Yes, decision engines are being built to provide users faster, easier, better access to options that will satisfy their volition, as expressed by their online personae and the enforcement of those personae policies and rules, in a richer way. However, if you believe those options will not be weighted toward full-fledged and paying members of an ecosystem, there are a number of foreclosed homes in neighborhoods that have been totally deserted I’d like to show you.
Think ecosystem wars are a bit in the future? Not so. Check out our article today from TMCnet Contributor Ed Silverstein concerning Microsoft’s latest ad making fun of Google. Bookmark the NetMarketShare cite and keep up on all of the ecosystem critical components — starting today with social media referrals, browsers (including by device type), operating systems, search engines, etc. Chrome is up, Safari (driven by iPad and iPhone (News - Alert) sales) is booming and IE is taking a licking.
For Microsoft, this is an eco-challenge they cannot afford to lose. It is part of their manifest destiny. Those who believe that now is the time to dump Bing do not get it.
There is also a cautionary note to all of this. For TV trivia aficionados, you may remember that before Survivor (2000) and the Apprentice (2004), producer Mark Burnett had a show that first aired in 1996 called, “Eco-Challenge: The Expedition Race.” It involved teams competing in some of the harshest environments on the plant on a multi-day adventure that test people’s intelligence, fitness and survival skills to extreme limits. I was a huge fan. Unfortunately, eco-challenge was not up to the marketing challenge and died. You can’t even find it on Hulu and episodes that you can find are on VHS.
Ecosystems are fundamentally about creating walled gardens on the Internet so you can check out but never leave. In the early days of the Internet, we used to measure success by things like “eyeballs” (number of visitors) and “stickiness,” (time spent). Going forward, it will be about hearts and minds captured, time not spent in the ecosystem and money that is. Click-outs and not click-throughs will be critical metrics.
Apple has been leading the eco-challenge thus far. Google has the scale and the knack. Microsoft has the money and the most to lose.
How all of this plays out is anyone’s guess. It is going to be fun to watch. Little things like pulling/dragging users into the ecosystem, whether their context is personal, professional/work or both, are all important. So are matters of security and privacy. This includes: who hosts my identity, has access to it, has rights to resale of my behavior, etc. And then there are always the little challenges regarding who owns what intellectual property, what rights do various ecosystem members have, and of who gets paid an how much.
Note to Mark Burnett, there is a reality show in here somewhere.
Peter Bernstein is a technology industry veteran, having worked in multiple capacities with several of the industry's biggest brands, including Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Telcordia, HP, Siemens, Nortel, France Telecom (News - Alert), and others, and having served on the Advisory Boards of 15 technology startups. To read more of Peter's work, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Rich Steeves
