Byting the Hand that Feeds Them

Who is watching you online ?  A better question is, “Who isn't watching you?”  You see it on the newsfeeds every day. NSA has been grabbing tons of consumer information without any legal authority. Every week it seems you hear about security breaches at large corporations like Target and other major department stores.  Banks are being held up at the point and click of a mouse for millions of dollars, yet most consumers are blissfully unaware.  Not only that but they line up to give up their privacy to free email services, social networks and smart phone providers.  Like it or not, software applications have used artificial intelligence algorithms since the late 90's. Word processors infer the meaning of everything you type. Many smartphones do the same. 

What does all this mean to your privacy? 

Let's start by looking at how Google tracks you. The other day I was about to send an email via Gmail 

English: Gmail logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

and I mentioned in the body of the letter that I had attached a document. I forgot to attach the document and pressed send. Imme diately Gmail paused to ask me if I meant to attach a file. Gmail was reading what I had written!! If you use Chrome to surf the web you will also notice that the ads on Gmail also correspond to items you have recently viewed online.  What it boils down to is that Gmail and Chrome are scanning everything you write and then passing this information onto to Google before you even press send.

Google tracking is not limited to your “free” Gmail account and browser. Virtually every service Google offers tracks your movements and keystrokes.  Last July, when there was a huge flap about Google privacy policy changes.  It was about this time that a small software company came out with a plug-in for Google Chrome that would sound  an alarm every time Chrome sent tracking information back to Google. This program created quite a stir because once you loaded it the alarm would go off constantly because Google was tracking almost every keystroke.

Currently Google is being sued by a number of foreign countries for invasion of privacy. However, you don't have to frequent foreign shores to hear about how Google is abusing its power.  Even Google’s competitors have jumped on the anti-privacy band wagon. Microsoft started an anti-Google campaign last Christmas touting, "Don’t Get Scroogled." They even managed to cash in on this phenomenon by selling Scroogled T-shirts and coffee cups.  Microsoft used some of these profits to purchase TV ads nationwide that publicly took potshots at Google’s privacy policies. 

This did not deter Google in the least.  Recently Google removed a user's capability to control their privacy setting on android devices running Android 4.42. I won’t bore you with the list of apps that Google uses to track you. Suffice it to say that virtually all of them track you in some way.

Bear in mind that when it comes to data mining it’s not just Google who’s doing it on a land office basis. Yahoo, Bing (owned by Microsoft) and most search engines track you as well. Also any free services you acquire from the internet come complete with spyware of one form or another. These algorithms track how often you use their apps, they can load adware on your devices, or even hound you to buy other apps and services.   They can also be programmed to record your geographic location and what other functions you may be using. This is especially true of smart phone and tablet apps. You should read the disclaimers before you install any free app. Most will blatantly inform you that they have access to your contact data base, ip address, system access and more. That means that the app can control vital functions of your smart device!

It's all a game until someone gets hurt.

Even gaming consoles have been coopted into the data mining arena.  Recently Microsoft released its

Image via CrunchBase

 new XBOX One game console.  Guess what? It requires you to login to Microsoft before you can play any games! Earlier I alluded to Microsoft's Scroogled marketing campaign against Google.  But the reality is that Microsoft has been spying on you for even longer than Google. Think about it. All Microsoft applications call home every time you boot up.  Every version of the Windows operating system calls home every day to check for updates and to make sure all your Microsoft software is bought and paid for! They also use their crash recovery monitor to send system information back that tracks the programs that are running at the time of the crash.

Let's not forget the fact that Social Media sites track your conversation, your contacts and your itinerary in realtime. What you may also be unaware of is the fact that every social network you subscribe to literally owns the information you key into their database. Every post, URL, picture, podcast and video that you upload belongs to them lock, stock and barrel. Their systems scan every keystroke and match it with ads that run on their system. They are scrutinizing every personal and private entry you make. On top of that, your employers and all your "friends" can see your posts! This can unfortunately include criminals disguised as beautiful blonds and little old ladies who just want to be friends.  

Be very careful what you post on any social network. Do not disclose your age, personal address, when

Google Chrome OS on VMWare (Photo credit: berrytokyo)

 you are on vacation, when you’re not home, where you bank, or any kind of private or financial information. Cyber criminals are monitoring social networks more than ever. So much so that the FBI has raised the threat level for social networks to their highest level.  Add to this the ongoing threats from hackers using widely available free hacking tools, deceptive email tactics and phishing strategies and you have an internet onslaught that’s wilder than the wild, wild west.

To make things even worse our own government is spying on us. The NSA has been busilygathering hundreds of terabytes of data from search engines, all social media sites, Microsoft, Apple Yahoo, Bing, cell phone companies and thousands of other online entities. This has gotten so out of hand that the congressional oversight committee that monitors the NSA recently stated that they had gone too far in gathering data and want them to stop gathering information without a specified threat.

Surveillance camera (Photo credits: www.mysecuritysign.com)

In addition, it not just the internet that is eroding your privacy, its anything connected to internet.  Smart devices are popping up like weeds. Everything from internet enabled appliances to cars are fair game.  Even personal property is not beyond reach.  Case in point: The Boston Bomber was caught because people were taking pictures of the racers coming to the finish line. Internet security camera s are all the rage with home and business owners. Often times one or more of these cameras are pointed outside covering the entrance to their properties. The next time you’re at Wal-Mart, look up before you enter and smile you’re on Wal-Mart Candid Camera.  And just to make it really interesting, people are now starting to wear smart eye wear (such as Google Glass) to record their surroundings. There are smart watches and tiny spy cameras everywhere. Some large retailers have been caught tracking their patrons store movements via the customers smart phone IP addresses and if you have an app for that store running, more than likely you will receive a text, email or popup suggesting you check out their latest special on whatever they are trying to push on you, the unaware consumer.

How to minimize your loss of privacy when using the internet. 

·         Don’t use Chrome, Internet Explorer or Safari as your browser. Choose a more secure alternative such as; SRware http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php or

·         Comodo http://www.comodo.com/home/browsers-toolbars/browser.php 

·         Don’t Use Google, Yahoo or Bing, (and others) as your search engine of choice if you want to avoid being spied on. Best alternatives; Duck Duck Go https://duckduckgo.com/ Start page https://www.startpage.com/ Ixquick https://ixquick.com/  and Blekko http://blekko.com/

·         There are even plug-in apps such as Abine’s DoNotTrackMe https://www.abine.com/. It works with Chrome and Firefox and does a decent job of minimizing ad tracking software. This can block web tracking, cookies and email tracking. Another woth mentioning is Web of Trust www.mywot.com/‎. This plug-in does not stop track of any kind but it does warn you about URL’s that have bad reputations so that you will avoid them.

·         You'll also need to avoid using the top five social networks if you want to retain your privacy.  (Facebook, YouTube, Google Plus, Twitter and LinkedIn) Here is a list of social networks that provide much greater privacy. Everyme,  23Snaps, Notabli, Nextdoor, Yammer, Couple, Path, Family Wall, Edmodo, and Photocircle.

·         Tablets, Smart phones and other smart devices – Make sure you are running an antivirus/malware application on your smart device. Make sure its on all the time. Only use apps that have been around for a while. They should have lots of downloads and say they do not use adware. Also buy the apps you use unless you are just trying it out.

·         Don’t use free email – A paid email service like Hushmail can provide no-ad private email for very little money. If you must use it, try using a masking application like DoNotTrackMe or use encryption software like the kind provided by TrendMicro or Voltage.

The bottom line is that you have two choices when it comes to online privacy: Switch your browsing, networking and emailing to services that ensure your privacy, or keep working with the services that keep byting the hand that feeds them.  

If you liked this article, share it with your friends and co-workers. If you have a comment related to this article, enter it in the section below. I always enjoy researching and writing my social media predictions for the coming year. I hope this one was informative and enjoyable for you. May the coming year be enlightening and profitable for you and your family. 

Until next time, that's my opinion, I look forward to hearing yours. Happy New Year to you and yours!

Hector Cisneros is a partner, COO and social media director for WSquared Media Group based in Jacksonville, FL. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. He is also the co-host of Blog Talk Radio’s “Working the Web to Win,” where he and Carl Weiss make Working the Web to Win simple for every business. Hector is a syndicated writer for Ezine Online and is an active Blogger, (including ghost writing) and he is a published author of two books, 60 Seconds to success (on sale at Amazon and B&N) and Internet Marketing for the 21st Century which you can get free by clicking on the link at WSquaredMediaGroup.com. 

Internet Predictions for 2014

by Carl Weiss

If you think the Internet in 2013 was a roller coaster ride, wait until you see what shapes up in 2014. While Google will still dominate search, that doesn't mean that the also-rans aren't going to try to chip away at their market share.  One of the biggest upheavals in 2013 by Google was the unveiling of Hummingbird, the single biggest algorithm change since it's inception.  Many website owners who found their Google ranking either reduced or lost in Cyberspace after the introduction of Hummingbird may switch allegiances to Yahoo and/or Bing if they feel they are being treated better by the competition.  Several other moves by Google have also rankled many, such as their decision to bundle Local into Google+.  This not only forces anyone who wants to use Google Local or Google Maps for marketing purposes to log into G+ every time they want to access either, but it forces their customers to log in as well if they want to post a review.  Add to that the fact that has Google not only poisoned the organic ranking well, they also spiked pay-per-click by making it mandatory for new Adwords clients to keep their account on auto-pay.  This means that once your ppc funds run out, Google will hit your credit card whether you like it or not.  Not nice Google!

When it comes to the big boys playing rough, Google isn't alone.  Other online behemoths such as Facebook have also shown a propensity to do whatever they can to get their hands on your wallet.  As a number of Facebook users have discovered when they access their news feed, video ads start playing automatically when they scroll.

A recent blog on wired.com states that, "In its news release, Facebook frames the video ads as a way to help “brands tell stories on Facebook to ensure the best experience for people. In prior earnings calls with Wall Street analysts, Facebook was more forthcoming about the profit potential behind these videos.  Facebook shareholders, including staffers and executives with stock options, have their own reasons to like this product. Advertisers are expected to pay a significant premium for video ads, lifting Facebook’s financial performance and buoying its stock, which was trading below its initial offering price until this past fall. Today, the stock is trading up roughly 90 cents to around $54.70, a 44 percent premium over the initial offering price."

Not nice Facebook! 

Do Nice Guys Always Finish Last

A number of  other big players stumbled in 2013, such as Microsoft with Windows 8.  Many users of their 8.1 operating system have reported problems accessing SkyDrive cloud storage.  Says PC World, The problems for the affected users began after installing Windows 8.1, the update to Windows 8 that started shipping in mid-October. The complaints include nagging and persistent error messages, slow performance, difficulty uploading files, lost and corruptedfolders and documents, and sync troubles, including duplicate files and processes caught in a loop. 

While Microsoft said that "The company is aware of a small number of people discussing these issues on forums," this is hardly a way to bolster the acceptance of Windows 8, which has not been well loved by the masses.  Could this open the door to a competing PC operating system?  Stay tuned.

One of the biggest complaints that consumers in the US have deals with the high cost of cable TV.  Many households pay $150 or more per month to watch the Boob Tube.  With a limited number of choices for cable and satellite TV, the operators of these services have felt that they could charge whatever the market would bear.  I hate to be a bearer of bad news to the cable moguls, but their hegemony could soon be a thing of the past.  Already, several online providers of on-demand movies and TV series are alive and kicking, including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, just to name a few.  With fees as low as $8 per month, many consumers have already cut the cable and gone online.  In 2013 alone, the number of cable subscribers in the US fell by nearly 1 million.  Over the same period Netflix saw the number of subscribers jump by nearly 4 million.  As other entrepreneurs ink deals with movie and TV production companies, how long will it be before the cable and satellite TV moguls are forced to either compete or perish?  I predict that 2014 will see a significant shift in viewer loyalty as more online options become available to the masses.  How serious is the threat?  Serious enough for Time Warner Chairman Jeff Bewkes to admit in a Forbes interview that his industry needs to, "Offer online video now or someone else will!"

We're Not in Kansas Any More, Toto!

When it comes to the King Kong of online complaints, the blue ribbon would have to go to the government's healthcare.gov website.  If it wasn't enough that the $650 million website keeps crashing the security of the site is also suspect.  I think the blog by a reporter with fiscaltimes.com sums it up best:

Although I spent several hours "talking" my application to a HealthCare.gov representative on a toll-free hotline – divulging my entire family's Social Security numbers and dates of birth – when I called three weeks ago, they said they had no record of my application and asked me to send a photocopy of my driver's license to a government processing center in London, Kentucky.

When I called back last week, I spent another half hour on the phone with HealthCare.gov. After the first representative placed me on hold and eventually hung up, I called back and asked for the supervisor.

"Is my application file in your system?" I asked.

"We don't have any answers," the supervisor replied. "It takes two weeks to do identity proofing. You'll get a reply by mail or a pre-recorded phone message."

When you realize that the federal government has stated that unless at least 7 million consumers sign up for the service that it will not be viable and that signing up for the program is been all but impossible, I predict that in 2014 the feds will be forced to either go back to the drawing board or drop the program in its entirety.

Why Gamble with Your Financial Freedom?

The feds weren't the only government entity to experience technical difficulties in launching a new online service.  The State of New Jersey has also been having problems getting its recently legalized online casino gambling service up and running.  After launching the new service, with the proviso that only New Jersey residents be allowed to play online for cash, the system immediately experienced a number of glitches that resulted in about 75 percent of people who tried to play online being rejected.

Steve Callender, the general manager at the Tropicana Atlantic City, commented, “I would say a quarter are getting on.  We don’t have a situation where people who are outside the state are getting on.”  http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/12/online_gambling_new_jersey_technical_issue_geolocation.html

At least part of the problem revolves around the fact that a number of major banks, including AMEX and PayPal have refused to fund gaming transactions.  While the 6 casinos that have been authorized to offer online wagering say that are trying to fix these problems, they all admitted that the fix will take months to resolve.  Personally I think this once more provides proof positive that business and bureaucracy do not mix.

Other issues to keep a weather eye on in the coming year includes the prevalence and severity of cyber attacks taking place on individuals, corporations and governments.  2013 saw a number of landmark cases by the FBI, including the shutting down of the drug superstore Silk Road, whose 29 year old webmaster was busted in Seattle after making millions online.  The bad news is that no sooner had this site gone dark when several other web entrepreneurs stepped in to fill the void.  (For more on this story, see my blog Iron Fist in a Silk Glove.)  

Last year saw the Chinese military hacking into all kinds of government and corporate entities.  At one point the hacking became prevalent that if you were a government agency that wasn't being attacked then the rumor was that "You weren't important enough."  While government cyberspying is anything but new, it was the land office scale of the Chinese hacking that rankled many in Washington.  So blatant was the attack that it wasn't long before the physical location of the attackers was learned.

In a quote from the LA Times, “Mandiant Corp., a U.S. computer security firm based in Alexandria, Va., said in a report last month that it had traced an epidemic of attacks on dozens of U.S. and Canadian companies to an office building in Shanghai occupied by an espionage unit of the People's Liberation Army.”

Before the year was out, another international player in the government hackathon emerged: Iran.  That's right, the same government that we negotiated a nuclear non-proliferation treaty with has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.  In a quote from freebeacon.com

"An Arab hacking group with ties to the Iranian government claims to have seized classified information from servers belonging to the Israeli and Saudi governments, as well as the Saudi Bin Laden Group, a construction conglomerate run by the family of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. The hackers released a statement in Arabic that took aim at both the Israelis and Saudis, two nations that have grown closer in recent weeks over their opposition to the West’s recently signed nuclear accord with Tehran."

While many Americans first reaction might be one of, "How does this tit-for-tat cyber attack by Iran on Israel affect US national security?"  You have to be aware that these same hackers may also have been actively caught trying to compromise the security of some of this country's biggest financial institutions.

In a quote from a blog on haaretz.comhttp://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.564492 - "Over the last year, the U.S. has accused Iran of cyber attacks against its banks, while Saudi Arabia has placed the blame on Iranian hackers for a serious cyber assault on computers of its national oil company, Aramco."  

So the issue is hardly put paid and I predict that international hacking in 2014 could bring this country to the brink of war should any key link in the national infrastructure become breached.    Far from discouraging other countries from committing acts of cyberwarfare, the US government's lackadaisical attitude toward cybercrime and cyberattacks in general encourages hostile and even friendly governments into jumping on the hacking bandwagon.  Sooner or later, this policy will create a crisis where either the financial institutions, power infrastructure or communications backbone of this country  will become critically compromised, resulting in the kind of public outrage that hasn't been felt since Pearl Harbor.  

Carl Weiss is president of W Squared Media Group a digital marketing agency in Jacksonville, Florida.  He is also co-host of Working the Web to Win on BlogTalkRadio.com and owner of Jacksonville Video Production.

The Byte Before Christmas

By Carl Weiss

With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore.

Twas the byte before Christmas,

When all through the house

Not  creature was stirring,

Not even a mouse.

Now that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are behind us, let’s take a look at what is shaping up to be a very merry Internet Christmas in 2013. 

Shop Til You Drop

As has become the tradition in this time of giving, not everyone has gotten the “Peace on Earth & Good Will Toward Men” tweet.  With the exception of the usual shopper melees that have become so ubiquitous that the KFC franchise posted a tongue-in-cheek salute to them on YouTube,  a  notable incident included a brawlinvolving more than 40 people at an Alamo Christmas tree lighting ceremony in San Antonio.  (Bad Santa!)

Who’s Been Naughty

Of course shoppers weren’t the only people infused with the spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge this year.  Everyone from Bitcoin bandits who recently hacked their way into more than $1 million in ill-gotten gains, to at least one Seattle restaurant that ejected a patron for sporting Google Glass, to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius suggestion that frustrated users of healthcare.gov “avoid the lines” by shopping on the website during off-peak hours.

Speaking of Scrooge, Microsoft has upped the ante on its Scroogled campaign, which has for the past two years poked fun at Google’s privacy policy, when they decided to cash in on the phenomenon by selling Scroogled T-shirts, hats, hoodies and mugs.  Many of the items for sale sport the meme “Keep calm while we steal your data.”  When one Google spokesperson was asked their opinion of the all-too-public slur by Microsoft that has been broadcast online and on TV, the response was one of, “Microsoft’s latest venture comes as no surprise, since competition in the wearables space is really heating up.”

When it comes to playing nice with the other children, Microsoft is no saint.  After partnering up with Apple, Ericsson, Sony and Rim and operating under the name Rockstar Bidco in order to collectively purchase a portfolio of more than 6,000 patents from the bankrupt Canadian telecom Nortel in 2011, Microsoft has been busy litigating Google for patent infringement.

An arstechnica.com blog stated that, “Google probably knew this was coming. When it lost out in the Nortel auction, the company's top lawyer, David Drummond, complained that the Microsoft-Apple patent alliance was part of a "hostile, organized campaign against Android.".

Who’s Been Nice

That doesn’t mean that a quick search of the Internet was unable to locate anyone with the Christmas spirit.  Far from it.  I found everything from an article in the Washington Post that touted a DC restaurant that turned its patio into a Christmas tree lot for charity, to 14-year old Hailey Poutiatine who  puts on a concert each Christmas Eve in Spokane, giving the donations to the Christmas Bureau. 

In fact, when it comes to finding who’s been naughty or nice, the web is hard to beat.  Among other reporting agencies, Consumer Reports has for the past four years published a Naughty & Nice List of company policies and practices. 

NAUGHTY

·         Amazon. The world's 11^th largest retailer, with more than $61 billion in annual sales, recently raised the requirement for free Super Saver shipping on eligible items by $10, to $35.

·         United Airlines. One practice travelers can usually count on when flying with commercial airlines is pre-boarding for families with young kids. Not at United. "Families with infants or with children who are under the age of 4 may board the aircraft when their group number is called."

NICE

·         Lands' End. The catalog merchant has an unconditional "Guaranteed. Period." policy that entitles customers to return for refund or exchange any product at any time, for any reason. That largesse extends even to personalized items that have been hemmed or monogrammed.

·         Southwest Airlines. Airlines typically allow flight cancellations within 24 hours of booking without financial penalty. Southwest offers greater flexibility if you need to switch flights. You can modify your itinerary without time restriction and simply pay the difference in cost between fares.

Christmas Around the World  (I’m not making these up, I swear.)

One of the benefits of working the web has to do with the fact that you can reach out and touch Christmas traditions from all around the world.  Some notables are as follows:

Chritmas cracker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Great Britain – The Brits celebrate the yule by wearing silly hats and making bad jokes 
as they pop Christmas crackers and pal around with Father Christmas. There’s something to be said about the British sense of humor. Not to mention their cuisine.

Greenland – Speaking of cuisine, here’s a Christmas dinner yule never forget.  At Christmas time in the frozen arctic nation they prepare and eat a special feast which includes mattak (raw whale skin) and kiviak, which is made by wrapping a small arctic bird called an auk in seal skin and then burying it for a couple of months.  Yum! 

Japan– All they want for Christmas is their KFC.  No sushi for me, mama san.  Please pass the bucket of the Colonel’s best.  Due to a combination of limited cooking facilities in many Japanese homes combined with the marketing prowess of KFC, fried chicken on Christmas Eve has become all the rage in Japan.  Meri Kurisumasu!

China – In China, Santa is known as Sheng dan lao ren.  While most of the Christmas decorations and artificial Christmas trees sold worldwide are made in China, most Chinese would not know what they are all about, since the only place they are likely to see them are in major department stores in big cities.  A Christmas tradition that is becoming more common in China is giving brightly wrapped apples on Christmas Eve.  Apparently the word for Christmas Eve (Pine An Ye) in Cantonese is similar to the word for apple (Ping Guo).  Talk about being inscrutable.   Seng Dan Fai Lok!

If you are interested in finding out how other cultures celebrate Christmas, check out the website Christmas Around the World.   http://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/

While the Internet can claim to have truly brought all the people of the world together for this giving season, I’m not sure what old Clement Moore would think of a geopolitically corrected rendition of his perennial holiday poem:

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—

“Meri Kurisumasu to all, and to all a good night!”

Please pass the kiviak…

Happy holidays from all the elves at W Squared Media Group.  Join Carl on his weekly Working the Web to Win radio show that airs live at 4 pm EST every Tuesday.

The Smartest Guys in the Room

By Carl Weiss

When it comes to revolutionizing the way in which we perceive and operate in the world as we know it, the Internet has without a doubt been one of the most important inventions ever created.  And like many inventions, the web was the result of a lot of labor by a number of talented people.  Some of those people wound up being relegated to footnote status while others went onto become Internet icons.

The Internet was actually an outgrowth of the ARPANET, which was a cold war project designed to safeguard government communications in case of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.  Developed in the sixties and seventies, the ARPANET program led to t a number of internet protocols such as TCP/IP that formed the foundation for internetworking that we all use today.

wozniak_jobs (Photo credit: Revolweb)

The only problem was that back in the sixties and through much of the seventies, the only people who had access to computers were governments, fortune 500 companies and universities.  Then in 1976 a couple of guys named Steve invented and began selling one of the first practical microcomputers, called the Apple.  The problem back then was that these fledgling computers were not very powerful and they were expensive.  The first Apple sold for $666.66.  This was at a time when many compact cars sold for a couple thousand dollars.

Add to this the fact that their computer didn’t do a lot and it was obvious that they would have to woo a number of software developers.  Some of these included Fred Gibbons, Mitch Kapor and Bill Gates.  While people think of Microsoft as being a mortal enemy of Apple, back then the two were kissing cousins.  It wasn’t until a few years later with the advent of the IBM PC that the lines were drawn in the sand between Apple vs PC and the two wound up in opposing camps.  In the early days not only did every Apple computer come equipped with Gate’s version of Basic, but in a 1983 interview Bill  stated that he expected to generate half of Microsoft’s revenues in 1984 from Macintosh software alone.

While many people don’t instantly recall who Fred Gibbons and Mitch Kapor were back then, their contributions kept Apple’s train on the tracks during the early half of the eighties.  Fred’s company Software Publishing Company created a number of software products, chief among them being Harvard Graphics, which brought on-screen graphics capabilities to early versions of the Apple. 

Mitch Kapor developer of Lotus 1-2-3 was one of the rock stars of software development in the early days of personal computing.  In fact Lotus 1-2-3 became one of microcomputing’s first killer apps which would eventually contribute to the popularity of Apple’s nemesis, the IBM PC.  That doesn’t mean that there weren’t other software developers on the hunt for other killer apps.  In fact, Lotus 1-2-3 was an offshoot of another earlier spreadsheet program called Visicalc. 

Of course, competition among software developers was not the only place where the microcomputer war was heating up.  Back then there were a number of companies trying to muscle in on the hardware game as well.  Chief among them was Tandy Radio Shack whose TRS-80 was a popular brand at the time.   (Although it didn’t help that denigrators of the brand used to refer to it as the Trash Eighty.)  The Commodore 64 was another successful brand, selling some 17 million units sold. 

The first developers of IBM PC computers neglected audio capabilities (first IBM model, 1981). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is when the titan of computer manufacturing decided to get into the game with a micro of its own.  By 1980 more than 50 microcomputer systems were on the market.  This is when IBM decided it was time to join the fray.  Before 1981, IBM was the dominant player when it came to mainframe computers.  They had never even considered creating a microcomputer.  In fact, so sudden was their entry into this burgeoning market that they did something unprecedented.  Instead of taking the time to create an entirely proprietary product, they instead cobbled together the IBM PC with mostly off-the-shelf technology.  (They didn’t even have an operating system for a PC, which opened the door for Bill Gates whose MS-DOS system quickly became the defacto operating system for the IBM PC along with an eventual swarm of clones.)

So many competitors began to pile on that even those who had enjoyed hegemony during the early going (such as Apple) began to feel the heat.  By 1982, the marketplace had reached critical mass and a shakeout was inevitable.  Not wanting to wind up kicked to the curb, Steve Jobs at Apple decided it was time to reinvent itself by once again looking into the crystal ball to determine where personal computing was headed.  So taking $50 million of the company’s money, Steve assembled a team of the best and brightest at Apple and created what he thought would be the next leap forward in personal computing technology.  Called Lisa, the computer was released in January of 1984 priced between $3,495 and $5,495.  Even though the system was well ahead of its time, commercially its launch was hailed as a failure, one that would ultimately cost Jobs his job. (The release later that year of the Macintosh, which was both faster and cheaper saved Apple from joining the technological scrap heap wherein many of its competitors wound up.)

This failure did not deter Jobs, who along with several other ousted Apple employees went onto start NeXT Computer, Inc. in 1995.  While NeXT only sold around 50,000 units and was ultimately absorbed by Apple for $429 million, several of the concepts developed at NeXT were incorporated into later Apple systems, including parts of the OS X and IOS operating systems.  During his hiatus from Apple, Steve Jobs also dabbled with another company called Pixar, in which even George Lucas had lost faith.  Pixar would later go onto produce a number of animated features some of which would receive Academy awards.  Jobs also clearly had a bead on the NeXT big trend of the 1990’s which he referred to as interpersonal computing that would soon appear with an eerily similar moniker: The Internet. 

The term Internet was actually coined back in 1974 as an abbreviation to the term “internetworking”.  Of course, at that time, the only entities internetworking were military sites and universities.  However, by the 1980’s NASA joined the fray by developing the NASA Science Network which allowed scientists to share data on a global basis.  This eventually coalesced into the NASA Science Internet, which eventually connected more than 20,000 scientists worldwide.  As interest in worldwide networking grew, the technology spawned other early adopters, such as Usenet, UUCPNet, FidoNet, JUNET and NSFNET.   During the late 1980’s the first Internet service providers were formed, starting with the first commercial dialup service in the US called The World.

By the early 1990’s search engines such as Archie and Gopher sprung up, along with the first web browsers, such as ViolaWWW.  While a far cry from the multi-media offerings we have come to know and expect today, these early search engines and browsers offered little more than text-only listings more reminiscent of Craigslist than Google.  That did not mean that there wasn’t market share to be had. 

As the World Wide Web grew, search engines and web directories began to spring up like weeds with such names as WebCrawler, Lycos, HotBot, Excite, Yahoo (founded in 1994) and AltaVista.  Also several new web browsers hit the market, the most notable of which was Netscape, that appeared in 1994.  Clearly a cut above other web browsers, Netscape Navigator was the gold standard for surfing the web in the 1990’s.  In fact the product was such a hit that only 16 months after its inception, the company went public with its stock soaring from $28 to $58 on the opening day.  It also began the feeding frenzy later called the Tech Bubble that would run rampant for the next six years creating a number of billionaires in the process.

One such billionaire definitely took notice of Netscape in a big way.  Bill Gates at Microsoft knew a good thing when he saw it.  And he knew that Microsoft had to stake a claim on the Internet.  By August of 1995 Microsoft announced the introduction of Internet Explorer 1.0.  While it took Microsoft more than 5 years to gain the upper hand over Netscape, their dominance in the operating system market opened the doors for them to chip away at Netscape’s market share.  So much so that by June of 2006 netscape.com went dark for good.  That would seem like good news to Bill at Microsoft.  It probably would have been had it not been for one other upstart named Google.

Begun in March of 1996 as a research project by two Stanford students named Larry Page and Sergey Brin, their original idea had not been to design a web browser or search engine for that matter.  What they were out to develop was the world’s first digital library.  In search of a dissertation theme, Page considered exploring the mathematical properties of the Internet by turning its structure into a gigantic graph.  Page’s web crawling software called BackRub began exploring the web autonomously with Page’s own website serving as ground zero.  His research along Brin’s help eventually morphed into an algorithm that the pair named PageRank, which became the nexus for their Google search engine, which was registered on September 15, 1997.

Google Chrome (Photo credit: thms.nl)

By December 1998, Google had an index of about 60 million pages.  But already a number of Internet gurus were arguing that Google’s search results were superior to those of its competitors.  In March 1999 the company moved to Palo Alto.  In June of that same year they secured $25 million in equity capital from venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Sequoia Capital.  While Brin and Page were hesitant to take the company public, it was Google’s IPO on August 19, 2004 that shook the pillars of the Internet that would ultimately see Google as not only the dominant search engine online, but it would also enable the company to own the world’s most popular web browser (Chrome), the world’s most popular video portal (YouTube) and the world’s most popular cellphone operating system (Android).

Of course, like a many innovators that came before them, that doesn’t mean that the latest successors to the Internet crown are always omniscient.  Several of Google’s latest tech forays have yet to come to roost, including a computer worn on your face (Google Glass), a pair of mysterious barges berthed in San Francisco Bay and Maine, and communication blimps that are designed to bring the Internet to sub- Saharan Africa.

Not to be outdone, Apple announced a product a year ago that while intriguing has yet to hit the market called the iWatch.  Love them or hate them, one thing you can say about the smartest guys in the room is that they will never leave you bored.  I can’t wait to see what comes NeXT.

Carl Weiss is president of W Squared Media Group, a digital media agency located in Jacksonville, Florida.  He is also co-host of Working the Web To Win that is broadcast on BlogTalkRadio and YouTube every Tuesday at 4 pm Eastern.