Monday, August 28, 2006

The Pondering Primate: Reality Is An Inconveniance That Cannot Interfere With My 2nd Hand Ideas

In response to The Pondering Primate: Google And China Mobile To Offer Physical World Connection With QRCodes:

Is it possible that you were getting too misty eyed and bendy kneed about seeing China Mobile, Google and Nokia in a headline together to read the very small article?

Google have nothing to do with the QR codes. QR codes are a way of encoding a URL or other small piece of info - up to 400 chars or so - and you can create them for free. As people have been doing to good effect in Japan for some time. The QR code handling will be done by a subsidiary of China Mobile, not Google; Google aren't involved (sorry, I'm labouring this but it seems neccessary). The key interesting bit of the single paragraph you didn't read is that Nokia will preinstall the QR code software, because *if* the integration is handled well and *if* this drives take up by other handset manufacturers it will become ubiquitous, as in Japan, and it will be successful in a way that 3rd party downloadable add-ons attempting the same task never could be. There is no world beating revenue opportunity here for Google because any URL can be in the code, not just one passing through Google allowing them to track and bill for advertising. They are entirely seperate, as the article makes clear. If anyone is making money from this it will be China Mobile increasing ARPU, something they are no doubt well aware of.

If you are going to comment on news please read the news first, and make it very clear when you are indulging in wild speculation which has nothing to do with it. Some people appear to actually take your blog seriously and you owe it to these people to do some due diligence.

PS Google aren't involved in the QR codes. Get over it.