With the launch of the Android phone, Google threw itself into battle with the iPhone, a fight the entire smart phone industry has been waging since Apple first went mobile. Then the release of Google Chrome thrust Google into the war for Internet browsers with Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer.  

Next is the pending release of Chrome OS, by which Google intends to contend with Microsoft and Apple for market share in operating systems, taking on Windows and OS X.  Apple has even gone so far as to deny Google Voice from being used on the App store for the iPhone, leading all to believe the competition between Google and Apple is amping up.

Sounds like good corporate competitive spirit from different companies vying for market dominance.  Ironically, the companies aren’t that different.

Apple and Google share the same brain.

Goople, as I’ve termed it, is the collective brain trust that has run Apple and Google for most of the last decade.  

Al Gore has been a director of Apple since 2003, and also performs similar duties with Google.  Gore was also instrumental in Steve Jobs’s defense a few years back about stock options.  Several other directors for both Apple and Google have worked together and for both technological giants at the same time, essentially competing against themselves.

Neither company has suffered due to this unusual Goople system, but the FTC has taken notice and launched an investigation into both, which has forced the resignation of one person already.  

Whether or not the FTC will find any foul play involved is unknown, but it does show that the methods people employed during the tech bubble burst are still working.  Someone starts off and improves an existing model, picks up a few people that can contribute, and they move from place to place, bringing expertise and efficiency along the way.

In my opinion, the system hasn’t hurt anyone, and if anything, it has improved the quality of product (and variety) that consumers can access.  If Goople can do it better than two separate companies, then individual corporate greed has taken a step toward technological evolution.

Newspaper companies realize that print media is decreasing quickly, as digital media rushes to take its place. Newspapers have been available on their respective Web sites for many years, mostly for free, which analysts believe has much to do with the $11.6 billion loss over the past three years. Because of this huge loss, many newspaper executives are considering charging readers for online news.

Many newspapers already have “tollbooths” on their sites to charge for selected content. For many, the way to get around paying for the news online is to subscribe to the print format, which enables you to access all your news online as well.

It seems like a pretty solid idea until you consider Web sites like Google and Yahoo, which display free stories for the world to see. With all of the news free and readily available, would this idea even work?

The Newspaper Association of America believes that charging for online news will do more harm than good. As said by the Alternative Press, “The subscriptions probably won’t generate enough additional revenue to justify driving away the majority of Internet readers who won’t be willing to ante up.”

Ante up or not, the future of the newspaper industry is bleak. The solution remains unclear, but a hypothesis at the top of the list is that newspapers will have to find their niche.

The theory behind the niche hypothesis is that people will pay for specialized quality on any given topic. Still, the question remains if Americans are willing to pay for the better product when it can be obtained for free at average quality.