Grab a seat, sit back, and enjoy the show as the two uncontested giants of their field appear destined to wage a battle of epic proportion…  If it’s Google and Apple we’re talking about, developments on several fronts just this past week have only contributed to the inevitability of just such a scenario:

• Apple goes into advertising (the iAd platform that’s an integral part of the just-released Iphone OS 4)
• Google’s Android mobile OS makes solid advances in the high-growth Smartphone market (Gartner recently reporting that Android will overtake Apple’s iOS by 2012)
• Both companies continue to quietly work away on the last frontier: the stubborn problem of implementing a viable lean-back  internet video solution (I have a hunch that Apple is leveraging their monitor expertise and building a television)
• Both CNET and the WSJ report that Google is planning to unveil a music streaming/download service tied to their search engine, while Apple works to move iTunes from a desktop app to the cloud.

Meanwhile, although largely overshadowed by World Cup soccer, this past week also saw the start of Wimbledon - so if the uncontested giants we’re talking about are Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, recent events also offer the possibility of a similar clash of the titans.  If the two can manage to make it to the mens’ singles finals, tennis fans around the world will grab a seat, sit back and enjoy a show of their own: a rematch of the 2008 Federer-Nadal Wimbledon final, often considered the greatest tennis match ever played.

It’s maybe a good time, then, for a few thoughts on Google (arguably the Roger Federer of consumer internet technology) and Apple (perhaps the Rafael Nadal of consumer electronics)…

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I got a mass email from one of my city council members the other day.

Where I live, there’s a pretty good chance that any news coming from city hall could have something to do with the latest mass FBI indictments, city officials arrested for being drunk and disorderly, or 25% property tax increases - but this email instead concerned one of our more forward-thinking council person’s plans to apply on behalf of the city to take part in Google’s experimental 1 gigabit fiber-to-the-home network trial program.

1 Gbps internet access - imagine web apps running as crisply as locally-installed desktop applications, HD video streaming at lower compression rates, 30 frame-per-second Skype video calls, and lastly, as computing cycles move from the CPU on your desktop (or your lap) up into the cloud, ever-thinner operating systems.

And that’s where Google comes in.  You may not have heard much about Chrome OS yet, but you will soon.

Because Google has …A Plan.

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Here in the west, innovation and individual expression is such an ingrained ideal that it’s sometimes easy to take it for granted. Not so in Asia, where the imitation of (and often, let’s face it, the improvement upon) successful products is the sincerest form of flattery.

This is especially true when it comes to popular culture and technology.  Twitter has been so phenomenally successful that it’s now arguably equal parts both - so it’s worth taking a look at a few of the Asian clones out there.

The first thing one notices is that most of the knockoffs use the same shade of turquoise blue and the same style of font used in the original.  Again, to western eyes, the choice to copy the graphic design so closely might seem somewhat shameless, almost to the point of adding insult to injury - yet it’s just another example of the Asian mindset.

Intellectual property and copyright issues notwithstanding, the lack of ego that makes these near-exact replicas of Twitter possible is somewhat refreshing - and  sites like digu (below) demonstrate that they’re certainly keeping up with us over there - this Chinese Twitter clone features a Google Maps-powered mashup that pops up real-time geo-located balloons of posts as they occur - just like similar western sites such as twittervision.

It’s an increasingly interesting dynamic, this difference between the East and the West.

It’ll be interesting to see what digu does for an interface in the event Google does in fact pull out of the country….

Maybe you’ve heard -  Google has recently discovered a rash of China-based malware attacks targeting not only Google, but dozens of other major US companies (and certain gmail users) as well.  In response, the company has decided that the practice of censoring Google.cn search results - a practice the company had previously accepted as part of doing business in China since 2005  -  is no longer quite so acceptable.  Google’s decision to defy the Chinese government at the expense of the sizable investment the company has already made in the world’s most rapidly growing internet market was  remarkable - and it was announced in an equally remarkable fashion: via a post on the official company blog written by Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond.

China, for its part, is not blinking.

As Strother Martin once told Paul Newman, what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

Will Google leave China?  It now seems almost as likely as Conan leaving NBC.

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Yup! Still in Vegas, still big, the annual consumer electronics bonanza we fondly refer to as CES drew to an end yesterday.

First off, although more crowed compared to last year, the popular trade show giant still seemed somewhat off from its previous record attendance. But hey, who’s counting, or not happy about the lack of past years’ never-ending cab and bus lines in front of hotels.

Instead, relative to previous years anyway, CES 2010 seemed much about “quality before quantity”, with some really interesting and innovative nuggets across a still impressive line-up of exhibitors.

So, what are my primary take-aways?

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Turns out, I spent a good part of Thanksgiving weekend catching up on my subscription to The Online Reporter.

As I am going through weeks and weeks of back-issues of the popular Internet and CE digest, I catch myself repeatedly noticing the growing number of consumer software start-ups with particularly short and vowel-rich companies names.

Think Google, Hulu, Lala, Vudu, and Veoh. Oh, and then there’s Rollyo, Slooh, and Bebo, of course. And that’s only the beginning.

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The open source software development model has made substantial inroads into the mainstream consumer and enterprise markets over the past few years – to the point that even Microsoft is now tentatively testing the waters by supporting the Apache Foundation (the folks behind the ubiquitous open source Tomcat web server) and even contributing some code to the underlying kernel of the open source Linux operating system.

Software created by an open community of contributing developers with full access to pre-compiled source code - how secure and stable can it be?   Such long-held concerns have now largely faded, as robust and secure open source applications have flourished over the past few years.

When it comes to online video, though, open source remains a bit of a work in progress.

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A few thoughts on the Bing/Yahoo deal - it’s been about a week now since Carol Bartz decided outsource searches to Microsoft, effectively steering the company away from the technology business and (presumably) more towards the media and content/aggregation business.

For a few years now, the two companies have been attempting to join forces in one manner or another.  How did it finally happen?  Microsoft built a compelling product - their Bing search engine works well, has some interesting features, and has gotten generally good reviews.  The takeaway?  While previous unsuccessful Microsoft attempts to partner with Yahoo! depended on cash as a lever, this successful deal was based on the lever of product quality.

For all involved, I would like to think this would be (to use a currently fashionable buzzword) a “teachable moment”.

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Microsoft has a web browser - Google comes out with a browser.

Google has a great search service - Microsoft comes out with a great (bing) search service.

Microsoft has an operating system - Google plans an operating system.

Google’s recent announcement to have a Chrome operating system available in about a year has generated a lot of chatter lately - but is it really a Windows-killer?  I think not - not anytime soon, that is.  Although the era of Vista will soon be behind Microsoft and Windows 7 (still in beta) is earning favorable early reviews, the primary reason Google’s OS won’t vanquish Microsoft’s Windows operating systems is that while the two companies’ browsers and search engines fulfill exactly the same roles, a direct Windows-Chrome OS comparison is a lot less apt.

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HTML version 5 is coming. One of the more talked about aspects of the long-awaited update is the new <video> tag - and if this clip demonstrating Firefox 3.5 support is any indication, the technology will make for some exciting interactive web video possibilities.  While this would imply a challenge to the preeminence of Adobe’s Flash video technology, I feel that for passive web video viewing at least, Flash will be around for a while.

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