Google has been announcing some pretty cool things over the last few days. One of the biggest and most recent is the launch of Google's cloud music service called ... Google Music.
The more announcements I hear from Google, the more I think about the bigger picture. If you look at what Apple has going for it and then also contrast it directly with what Google has going for it... ultimately, both companies are trying to create an ecosystem.
In this ecosystem there are a series of connected devices (phones, TVs, computers or other hand-held devices) and one unified platform that ties them all together. This raises two pertinent questions in my mind:
1. Will consumers continue to cross platforms? ... or will there be a movement toward buying solely into one ecosystem and having everything you own controlled through that? Undoubtedly this method will have trade-offs but will consumers be willing to let those go, in the spirit of unification?
2. Will these juggernauts keep marketing 'products' or will we see more marketing around 'platforms?' - I can especially see this with Android being open source, thereby making it product agnostic essentially. However, I can also begin to imagine Apple doing this if they begin to focus more on the future of their operating systems and the unification of iOS and OSX. It will certainly be cool to see consumers having platforms marketed to them versus the products that deliver these platforms. I'm sure Apple and Google both will market the two (products/platforms) together; however, I can only imagine how the focus on the platform may tend to eat up more and more of the conversation over time.
I don't think there will be a 'winner' in this battle of ecosystems, because the pie will certainly be cut different ways (e.g. market share vs. revenue share); however, what I do think will be interesting to see is how these ecosystems develop. Microsoft just bought Skype... is Microsoft an ecosystem too?
Which ecosystem do you belong to? Why?
