In light of that, I think it's interesting to look at the business models of a few large companies.
Google's official corporate mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". And, of course, they make money by sticking ads on as much of that information as possible.
Facebook is doing a couple things. One is to convince people to share lots of information about themselves -- so that Facebook can provide that information to their friends... and stick ads on it. One important note here is that all of the information is locked away inside Facebook; no one else (particularly Google) can see it (or stick ads on it). Facebook also provides a platform for game developers. The game companies can sell virtual goods to players, and Facebook takes a cut of those sales.
Apple sells devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod). They also sell content provided by third parties: the iTunes Music Store, and the App Store. Like Facebook, they get a cut of those third-party sales.
Last on my list is Amazon. They sell traditional stuff (books, power tools, toys, just about anything you can keep in a warehouse). They also provide a system where third parties can sell items via the Amazon web site. And more recently, they've started selling less traditional stuff: CPUs by the hour, storage by the GB-month, and all sorts of other cloud infrastructure, lumped into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) brand.
These business models fall into two general categories:
(1) Ads
(2) Selling stuff
Category #2 encompasses a bunch of different things, different kinds of "stuff" -- ranging from things you'd traditionally buy in a store (books, power tools, iPhones), through digital items (music downloads, ebooks, virtual goods in online games), to online services (CPU time, online storage).
Google fits almost entirely into category #1. They have some online services (the Google Maps API), and they have the Android platform -- but they don't sell them. Instead, they make money by sticking ads on the maps or whatever.
Facebook started out in category #1, but has been moving into #2 (with virtual goods). According to VentureBeat, Facebook will make about $3.8B from ads and $0.5B from Facebook Credits (virtual goods).
Apple and Amazon both started in category #2, and have mostly stayed there. Apple dabbles in ads for iOS apps, but it doesn't really seem to be a priority for them.
When considering these two categories, it's useful to look at who the customers are. Who is spending the money? This is an interesting question because any company's real obligation is to its customers (and shareholders, if you want to get picky).
In category #2 the user is the customer. If you buy an iPhone, it's your money, and you're an Apple customer. If you have a problem, you can walk into an Apple Store and ask them to fix it. When you order something from Amazon, Amazon takes your money, and if the goods don't show up on your doorstep, you can call Amazon customer service.
Companies in category #1, supported by ads, have completely separate user bases and customer bases. The users are receiving free services; they aren't the customers. The advertisers are the real customers. If your gmail account breaks, there's an automated recovery system, but if that doesn't work, you're pretty much stuck.
Facebook is in pretty much the same boat. Facebook accounts are free, so Facebook really doesn't have much of an obligation to its users (because they're not customers). Even with the virtual games, it's not clear whether Facebook will view the users or the game developers as their customers.
All four of these companies are doing some work on platforms. Google has their maps API and Android, as well as Google+ (which, according to that rant, doesn't yet have much of an API - but that will presumably change). Facebook has a game platform. Apple has iOS apps. Amazon has all of the AWS services.
The key difference is in how the companies are making money on their platforms. Amazon is simply charging for use (X cents per CPU-hour, Y cents per GB-month). Apple and Facebook are both taking a cut of transactions. Google is giving away the platforms (or use of the platforms) and charging for ads.
If Google doesn't figure out some way to charge for the platform, I'm not sure that having well-defined Amazon-style APIs is really going to help them. Maybe it's a chicken-and-egg problem: if having APIs isn't going to make money, why bother creating them?
I don't think that Facebook (or anyone else) is going to kill Google any time soon. Organizing the world's public information is a valuable service, and sticking ads on search results seems to be a pretty good way of paying for that service. The problem for Google is that there's not a whole lot of room for growth in the search business -- which is why they keep trying to expand into other things (social networks, digital music, ...).
I also doubt that Google is going to kill Facebook. Facebook has too much of a headstart on social networking, and the network effect is just too strong.
The competition between Apple and Amazon will be much more interesting -- in the tablet and media consumption space. But there's almost certainly plenty of room for two companies in that market.
Naturally, I was curious, so I took a look. First, some background... PDF files are binary files (just like JPEG or MP3 files). Certain software will look at at the first few bytes of a file and attempt to determine whether it's binary or plain ASCII text. This is important when transmitting a file: in some contexts (like email), binary files need to be encoded so they're not damaged in transit. Despite being a binary file, the first few bytes of a PDF file might be all 7-bit ASCII, so Adobe strongly recommends adding a comment at the top, with a few non-7-bit characters, just to be sure that the file gets identified as binary. It doesn't really matter what those characters are, so long as their high bits are set. It appears that whoever wrote the PDF generation software built into MacOSX took the string "Derek's PDF", set all the high bits, and used that as the comment. I have no idea who wrote that software, but I'm guessing his name just might be Derek.
From my quick testing, this applies to any PDF file generated on MacOSX (using the built-in PDF generator). The White House PDF file was generated on OSX 10.6.7. I have an old Mac running 10.4.11, and the string is there too. (If you want to verify this, go find a Mac, load up a random web page or whatever, hit print, and then save to PDF.)
Alas, no conspiracy involved. It's just a cute little easter egg.
Anyway, the reporter asked if I could help decipher the remaining header info in that PDF file. I'm happy to say that I have a tool which can extract hidden headers from PDF files, which you can download here. You'll need a Windows PC (any recent version of Windows should do), and it runs from the command line, like this: "analyzepdfheaders c:\whatever.pdf". Let me know if you find anything interesting.
Two dead powerstrips, and three popped circuit breakers, but no damaged equipment. Looks like cheap surge supressor power strips actually work.
I took a one-day glassblowing class at Public Glass in San Francisco last weekend. We made paperweights (the photo above is mine), and simple glass tumblers.
The class was really fun. Turns out hot glass is way more forgiving than I expected. I may just have to go back and take more classes.