There are phases in the institution of the internet in which 6 colourful letters just can’t be avoided. Last week was one of them. It started with the announcement that the data glasses Google Glass will be sent to developers within the month. Fittingly, CEO Sergey Brin let himself be seen bespectacled in the New York subway. Now Google has surprised us with the registration of a patent for a matching virtual keyboard, with which it is supposed to be possible to type on your hand. On the side, people have been trying to develop a procedure which could revolutionise password security – with hardware keys, which could be realised in the form of a ring, for instance.

Things are getting exciting from an e-commerce point of view as well, with the change over from free product searches to Google Shopping around the corner. Following the AdWords principle, merchants will have to pay to be listed in the future.
By the way, this busy bodying is either not doing anything, or not doing enough for the company’s popularity.

According to Wirtschaftswoche, Google was dethroned by Wikipedia in the rankings of the pots popular internet brands.

Remember going over to a friend’s for a lan? If you weren’t a kid in the 90s then probably not, but while copyright holders were busy making those “you wouldn’t steel a hand bag” warnings, the reality of how we entertain changed and they missed it. Apple did not. But because of access issues their video streaming services didn’t really make it across the US border for a while. Amazon prime and Watchever have finally filled the gap, offering a legal option for the streaming which digital natives have been doing for years. However, despite their moves towards combining content and service, it seems that even e-commerce enterprises such as Amazon are still planning on bridging the gap for a while longer. Recent pressure tactics in their battle of the giants with Disney sees Amazon putting a lot of energy into securing a price advantage on DVDs.

DVDs are different from books, they carry no social standing to be measured in inches per shelf, so why bother muscling your way into an industry destined for extinction? If they can get the price down to under 15$ per DVD, this will keep DVDs in the running while we transfer to digital, which isn’t a bad tactic as the transition to online entertainment has taken longer than it had to.