A Tale of Two Keynotes (Premium)

Microsoft and Google brought similar messages about responsibility to their respective developer show keynotes. But that was the end of the similarities.

Over 5,000 people attended Microsoft Build 2018, and though there were lingering concerns about the show not “selling out” as it had in previous years, I had previously explained this was by design. In past years, Microsoft allowed internal teams to claim Build tickets, creating the appearance of an instant sell-out; those teams then sifted out tickets back to those on the waiting list as they figured out how much they really needed for themselves. The event was as packed full as it ever was, and if anything, this shows a lingering enthusiasm for at least attending a Microsoft developer event if not using the technologies discussed.

I didn’t attend Google I/O, but Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted that there were “over 7,000” people attending the event’s keynote address on Tuesday. I suspect their live stream was likewise watched by many, many more people than was Microsoft’s. He also remarked that tech events should always be outside. Having spent two days rotting in the sallow tunnel system of the Washington State Convention Center for Build, I couldn’t agree more.

Microsoft’s show was also notable for its length. An already too-long 3-hour opening day keynote address was running long in rehearsals, and despite cutting some content, it still came in at well over 3.5 hours. (An hour more than the previous year’s show.) Add in the over 1.5 hours for day two (I left at the 1.5-hour mark as I had had enough), and you’re looking at over 5 hours of nearly uninterrupted chair time, a condition that some countries term a crime against humanity. Google’s single keynote, by contrast, was just 1:45. We should all be so blessed.

A note about the complaining.

I received a rather nasty email from a Windows Weekly listener who asked me to reassess my negativity about the length of the Build keynote(s). After some introspection, I have done as he’s requested, and I would like to offer the following additional commentary.

I apologize. My initial complaint, made as it was in the stunned aftermath of the day one keynote, was far too polite.

Microsoft needs to seriously rethink how it presents information publicly, both to its developer base and to the assembled press and bloggers. Punishing us with such lengthy and boring keynotes is disrespectful of the time, effort, and expense we all expended to get there. There is no reason to force an audience to watch 90 minutes of “vision” jabber at a developer event by placing it before the real meat of the presentation. These things should have been split up into multiple parts so the audience could decide which they’d attend.

By comparison, Google’s presentation was light, airy, and approachable. The jokes, while still somewhat stilted, landed, even when given by Mr. Pichai, who’s a similar public speaker to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Where Nadella opened with a bizarre joke about Bill Gates and Apple’s stock price (which fell completely flat), Pichai opened with a joking reference to last year’s hamburger emoji “controversy,” in which Google had had the temerity to put the cheese below the hamburger patty.

“We had a major bug in our of core products,” he deadpanned, showing a before an after image of the emoji that was met with applause and laughter. “We fixed it. The irony of the whole thing is that I’m a vegetarian.” Cue the crowd going wild.

(That Microsoft followed up Nadella’s day one Apple joke with an equally-questionable bit of one-sided back-patting for Google on day two is better left ignored.)

Both Microsoft and Google talked about corporate responsibility. Both did so with no sense of irony.

Microsoft, of course, lorded over the personal computer industry with an iron fist for two decades, destroying competitors left and right, often by pre-announcing products that it never even released. Microsoft was so powerful that it was subjected to over a decade of antitrust sanctions in the US, EU, and elsewhere. And one could make the case—I certainly have—that the resulting distraction led to the rise, during that time, of both Google and Apple, and of the mobile and cloud/web computing models that threatened Microsoft’s very existence.

Google, meanwhile, is the gatekeeper of the web, and it has likewise started experiencing its own antitrust troubles, mostly in Europe so far. But the firm is a cancerous competitor that earns so much from advertising that it can enter any market at will, and does. That it has chosen to enter markets dominated by others—like Apple and Microsoft—and then chip away incessantly at their core businesses speaks to this company’s aggression. Add its routine privacy violations as the cherry on this sick pie, and you get the complete picture.

So naturally, Microsoft and Google are the companies we should trust. Was the opening message of each keynote.

“We have a responsibility as a tech industry to build trust in technology,” Mr. Nadella said during his rambling 90-minute opening remarks. (Seriously, the transcription is a 27-page Word document.) “We are focused on three core pillars, privacy, cybersecurity, and ethical AI … We need to ask ourselves not only what computers can do, but what computers should do. That time has come.”

Meanwhile, over in Mountain View, Mr. Pichai was offering up a similar helping of trust. He also had the smarts to keep his opening remarks, which included product announcements, to under 20 minutes.

“It’s clear that technology can be a positive force. But it’s equally clear that we can’t just be wide-eyed about the innovations that technology creates,” he said. There are very real and important questions being raised about the impact of these advances and the role they will play in our lives. “We feel a deep sense of responsibility to get this right. That’s the spirit with which we’re approaching our core mission: To make information more useful, accessible, and beneficial to society.”

To Microsoft’s credit, the Build keynotes—this year, at least—were far more about developer advances, with real coding happening on-stage in many cases, than was the case with Google I/O. As it so often does, Google is copying Apple in this regard, by using the keynote address at its developer event as a public PR opportunity at which it touts product successes and provides marketing information about new or updated products and services that often have nothing to do with the assembled developers. Microsoft’s whole event was about developers. Google’s was about getting press. (Not that Microsoft doesn’t want good press. But you can only get so much mileage out of Nadella’s “save the world” stuff.)

We can debate which one was “better.” But I think it’s fair to say that Microsoft’s keynote was more developer-centric. And Google’s was more approachable.

Where Microsoft’s day one keynote got bogged down in a litany of information about Satya’s inclusiveness and numerous developer initiatives, Google talked about photos, chatting, and digital assistants. Sure, there was AI all over the place—Google, like Microsoft, has embraced AI with a frenzy that is almost dizzying—and lots of talk about TPUs and machine learning.

But Google benefits from a having a platform, Android, that people use en masse and really like. By contrast, lots of people use Windows, but few like it; it’s for work. Android is where we access our hopes, dreams, and loved ones. It’s personal. When Google updates something as innocuous as a news app, which it did, that act is news. If Microsoft were to silently kill its news app for Windows 10, few would even notice, let alone mourn its passing.

None of this is Microsoft’s fault.

And as I noted yesterday, Microsoft is on the right path in embracing a future that matches up nicely with its core strengths. It’s just that Google, for all its awful privacy creepiness, is able to impact us all—literally—at a far more personal level. Microsoft achieving some competency in embedded components is a laudable achievement, sure. But when Google adds a new feature to Maps, it benefits all of us. We feel it. Likewise, Microsoft may have innovated in AR with HoloLens, but that device costs $3000 and is a niche product at best. But Google just puts AR in phones. For free.

Developers are likely going to fall into these platforms in a very natural way, with older, more established programmers finding solace in the consistency and familiarity of Microsoft’s environments, SDKs, and target platforms. Mobile and web developers will likely lean more heavily to the Google side, since that’s where their audience is. And neither side really competes with each other, which is kind of nice. It raises the possibility of collaboration, of partnership.

That’s for a different day, I guess. Today, I can only state with certainty that Microsoft and Google just hosted two very similar developer events. That couldn’t have been more different from each other.