Follow Up to ‘The New Big Brother’

Kevin Ohannessian of Mansueto Digital, recently wrote a post on his blog at fastcompany.com in response to some things I said in my post “Apple: The New Big Brother.” His post agreed with my views on Apple but now of how I dragged Google into the same field. I see where he is coming from and I understand the differences he makes between Apple and Google. However, I agrue that they are similar in other aspects. Both companies have very different business strategies but they reach the same effect on the market. Apple looks to control mainly through their hardware and their closed system approach to software, where Google uses a very open system of trying to amass as much as possible quickly. Google’s software is mostly free and open to be used by anyone.

Google still creates great control through this method though. You can’t seem to do anything on the Internet without going through Google. Whether it’s you’re email, rss feed, calender, maps, searching, advertising, blogging (this blog), or media (youtube). Whatever you want to do, Google has a service for you. And everyone is using these services. Google creates a more open system at the moment but they still have all the control. They buy up new companies every month, and are constantly growing on all fronts, moving into every aspect of technology possible. Google has just as much control over consumers as Apple does.

They reach the same ends through different means. Both companies are trying to become the one stop shop for all consumer needs, and control the flow of media in the consumer’s life.

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