Au salon LeWeb, la Silicon Valley ne les fait pas tous rêver - INTERNET. ‘Silicon Valley needs a competitor, get your act together’ – Eric Schmidt. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt threw down the gauntlet to the rest of the world, saying “Silicon Valley needs a competitor”.
“Competition is good. Get your act together,” he said at the LeWeb 2011 conference in Paris. Schmidt said that Silicon Valley had shown the world a “model of innovation” and that there are a number of cities in the world that could be a tech hub to rival that in San Francisco. There are developing tech hubs in Paris, London, Berlin and even a developing hub in Africa, dubbed “The Silicon Cape” in Cape Town.
“Entrepreneurship comes from young people, who have less to lose and are risk-seeking, and don’t have families. Schmidt said there was a huge race now to own identity, ecommerce and social on mobile platforms. “There is an opportunity to build the next Facebook, the next Google right in front of you. He urged the governments of these cities to invest in fixed, wireless broadband if they care about creating jobs. “What governments care about are jobs. Google+ To Take On Foursquare With Upcoming “Check-in Offers” Feature.
It looks like Google+ is adding a feature that will allow users to “check-in” via the Google+ mobile application in order to receive a time-sensitive deal or discount.
This feature is mentioned in Google Places’s help documentation, but has not yet been made available to business owners using the Google Places service. Google check-ins have a confusing history, it has to be said. To be clear, the ability to check in via Google+ is not new. Google’s location-based social service Google Latitude launched checkins in February, prior to the launch of Google+.
And when Google+ arrived on mobile, it offered a check-in feature of its own, seemingly based on Latitude, which pulls up a list of nearby Google Places. Google Latitude also allows you to sync your Latitude check-ins with Google+, as Google explains here. Whew! Yeah, it’s kind of a big ol’ mess right now. Google probably should have killed off Latitude when Google+ launched to avoid this kind of confusion.
Google's Schmidt: Android leads the iPhone. PARIS--In the fight between the two smartphone heavyweights, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was blunt today about who he thinks is winning.
"Android is ahead of the iPhone now," Schmidt declared to an audience of techies and aspiring entrepreneurs at the LeWeb conference here. He made his statement to a room bursting at the seams with iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and the audience met his words with a moment of silence that implied some skepticism. So Schmidt elaborated on how he was measuring: "unit volume, Ice Cream Sandwich, the price is lower, there are more vendors. " Android is indeed a success in the market. But one big weakness compared with iOS was very visible at the conference: becoming the top priority for programmers. "We've been focused on iPhone," McCue said. Schmidt thinks the high volume of Android phone shipments will win out, though, aided by the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, aka Android 4.0.
Success in Android is central to Google's plans. Updated 7:21 a.m.