Anso Labs is helmed by Jesse Andrews, the former lead architect at Flock, the Web-browser company that was recently acquired by Zynga, and Soo Choi, a former exec at Booz Allen Hamilton. Anso Labs is best known for its work on the cloud computing front with NASA, the U.S. space agency.

The move takes place against the backdrop of a surge in consolidation in the cloud computing and data center business. Last week, Time Warner Cable dropped $230 million for NaviSite. And on Jan. 28, Verizon acquired Terremark for $1.4 billion. That one-two punch in data center deal-making has led to persistent speculation that other data center companies, Rackspace among them, will be rolled up by larger companies–like Hewlett-Packard, Dell or Cisco Systems–that are eager to add cloud services to their portfolio.

Ask Rackspace executives about this–and I have–and they’ll tell you they’re not thinking about that. Rather than being rolled up by someone else, they’re focused on rolling up the assets they want to grow, and to remain independent. Late last year Rackspace acquired Cloudkick, a start-up focused on building cloud monitoring tools.

Rackspace did $629 million in revenue in 2009, and is expected to show annual sales of about $775 million when it reports fourth-quarter earnings tomorrow. It has 100,000 customers, and while many of them are small- and medium-size businesses, larger enterprise customers like Coca-Cola, Target and Vodaphone are tapping Rackspace for Web hosting and to run their cloud applications.

Rackspace wants Anso Labs for its expertise and devotion to OpenStack, an open-source cloud computing software project backed by Rackspace, Dell, Citrix, Cisco and Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu flavor of Linux.

Rackspace wants to create a bunch of inter-operable cloud services so that customers can move workload from one cloud service provider to another at will, giving them increased flexibility. It’s comparable in some ways to vCloud from VMware and Eucalyptus.

The move is a response to a call by the Federal Trade Commission for a “do not track” mechanism to let users decide not to allow advertising cookies to track their online movements for the purposes of personalizing the ads they see on the Web.

The Keep My Opt-Outs add-on installs easily enough in Chrome, though a few people who have installed it are complaining of problems with the Chrome browser in comments on the add-on’s Web site.

Given Chrome’s relatively small share of the browser market, on its face this is a marginal move. Google however says there will be more to come. It wants to make its add-on available for other browsers and will share the code with the rest of the world on an open-source basis.

Gil Elbaz, the man who in 2003 sold a start-up called Applied Semantics (now known as AdSense) to Google, has what he thinks is the solution. His latest effort is Factual, and it attracted a $25 million round of funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures with SV Angel and former Disney president Michael Ovitz participating. Ben Horowitz and Danny Rimer are joining Factual’s board of directors.

I caught up with Elbaz by phone yesterday to talk about the vision of Factual and his plans to grow the company.

NewEnterprise: So at a high level, what is Factual and what do you intend to do?

Gil Elbaz: We see this as an emerging category. We think of it as a data platform that offers data and data services to all sorts of developers, to build cooler, more innovative applications more quickly, especially when it comes to apps that are data-driven. Finding the right vendor for that data, and then integrating it, then managing and maintaining that data is costly and expensive. Developers can move that much more quickly by tapping into our knowledge base. We’re marketing certain verticals where our data is really good. We’re putting some extra marketing muscle behind our places database.

NE: Give me a use case. How might someone use the platform?

GE: Our places database is a good example where we’re getting quite a bit of traction. What we’ve done is built one of the most comprehensive databases of business listings and points of interest. This data is easy to browse, and it’s complete. It contains address and phone and contact info and latitude and longitude. If you want to a build a new service like Yelp or Foursquare, or something that relies on knowing what’s in close proximity, a mobile app can make a simple API call, send over the current GPS coordinate and fulfill the request very quickly. That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what we can do, but it’s making serious waves because it is very hard to get that data, especially if you’re going mobile. It’s very hard to get that good data for locations around the world.

NE: Do you have other datasets?

GE: We’re being market driven and being focused on that because that’s what our customers have been asking for. But we do have others. We have data from other vertical segments like health and entertainment. In the area of education we built a database of high schools that Newsweek magazine uses in their fairly important annual ranking of high schools. They not only use the data that we were able to generate and build, but they were also able to benefit from our crowdsourcing API, so that their users get not only a more engaging experience but the great partnership comes back into our central database, so the information can be improved. That’s a nice virtuous circle that makes us confident that our data is going to keep getting better because of these partnerships.

NE: I’m trying to come up with a metaphor, and the closest thing I can think of is data–information–as a utility supplier of data. If I want to build an application that contains a lot of data, I can come to you for the data I want to use so I don’t have to go out and gather it myself. Is that fair?

GE: I think that’s a pretty good metaphor. It’s really the access that’s important. When you use our pipe you’re going to know that you’re getting good data, that’s up to date and that we stand behind it, and that other people are participating to make it better, and update it, and that you can get it quickly. Looking ahead, there’s going to be times when it’s not strictly our data. Sometimes it will be data that has been uploaded from other people or from people in the community who want to take advantage of the data platform. So it’s really the pipes and the platform that we’re building that make this kind of data and sharing possible.

NE: You sold your first company to Google. The issue came up that you don’t need the funds. You could fund this on your own. Explain why you sought funding.

GE: I did fund the company for a little while. But I knew that our mission is very audacious and in order to become the ubiquitous data layer for the Internet, to be the obvious place that a developer would go to first to get data into their application, it’s a huge, tall order, and something that’s going to take a lot of technology and marketing effort and strategic guidance. The types of people that we brought in on our angel round and then the people we’re bringing onto the board have a lot of operational experience. Also, you never know when an idea is so big that you want to raise money down the line. If you want to do that it makes sense to build bridges with the financial community as early as possible, in case it does become a more capital-intensive business. This is a new category and we feel like we have a good understanding of it, and things can change quickly, and if it does, we want to be positioned with a good team who can help us navigate the different opportunities that will certainly arise.

NE: So now that you’ve landed the funding, what’s the first order of business?

GE: The challenge is always scaling correctly and quickly. I think we’re positioned well for this. We have a humming machine here. The management team is in place and we’ve been working on this for a few years now. And we have a great culture in place with people who are really passionate about making data available. However, hiring the engineering talent is taking up a huge amount of time. That’s the number one thing on my priority list for the short term.

NE: How do you find the best engineers? Is there a trick to it?

GE: I’d have to say that having worked at Google for three and-a-half years was the perfect place to learn what a deep and strong engineering culture was all about. I also got a lot of hiring experience at Google’s Santa Monica office. I don’t think there’s one trick. I think there are signals that a person is not just looking for a job, but for an opportunity to make extremely important intellectual contributions. And also I’m looking for people who want to make contributions not just to a project but to the world. You look for quick thinking and passion, and a history of doing things beyond what the job requires. I love it when I see people who have contributed to open-source projects on their own time. That demonstrates that they’re trying to contribute to society but also that they like working on important tools that make a difference.

Although Andy Rubin’s keynote at D: Dive into Mobile is scheduled for just before dinner, expect to hear a lot of talk about dessert. On the menu are Froyo, Gingerbread and perhaps even a hint of Honeycomb.

Google did release a couple of tasty treats already on Monday–announcing plans for the Samsung co-developed Nexus S as well as the release of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). But I hear the cookie jar isn’t quite empty yet.

In between sugary snacks, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg will pepper Rubin on the many issues facing Android and the wireless industry. Mobilized will have live coverage of the session at this spot beginning around 6:45 pm PT.

Liveblog

6:37 pm: The crowd is still settling into their seats here at the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco, the swanky home to the inaugural D: Dive Into Mobile.

6:40 pm: Lights dim. Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg take the stage. “My husband, Walt Mossberg, and I would like to welcome you to this intimate dinner,” Swisher quips.

6:42 pm: Ironically, the crowd was asked to silence their mobile devices, but Kara says they should just feel free to leave them on.

6:44 pm: It’s Rubin time (and he has brought a satchel of goodies with him).

Rubin is asked about the Nexus One and why it didn’t shake up the business model. “We bit off a little more than we can chew.” Rubin says that they were hoping for a model more like that in Europe, where people can pick a phone and then separately pick service, typically at retail stores like Carphone Warehouse. “We were trying to do that model in the U.S. and only do it online.”

6:46 pm: Kara: So have you given up on that business model?

Rubin: With Nexus S, which is the thing we announced today, we still have that notion of an unlocked phone. But we are not selling it ourselves, but through traditional channels, in this case Best Buy.

6:48 pm: Walt: How is Android doing?

Rubin: Android started as an eight-person start-up. “During that time at Google we obviously staffed up.” Now there are 172 different phone models using Android after the OS was launched two years ago with one, the T-Mobile G1.

Rubin credits the quality of the software and the open nature of it.

6:49 pm: Walt: I notice more and more they are taking on the personality of the carrier, not Google, not the handset maker. There are lots of what I would call craplets. Verizon, for example, swapped out Google for Bing. Is there a danger it is being taken over?

Rubin: That’s the nature of open. That’s actually a feature of Android.

He takes a swipe at Windows Mobile, saying that the alternative is a commoditized world where all the phones have to have a start menu in one place and all the icons have to be tiles.

6:54 pm: Kara: Do you consider yourself the Microsoft of phones in that regard?

Rubin: No. We’re probably more like the Linux of phones, and that’s a true statement.

Walt: You mean hard to get drivers for, only for geeks, no real consumer would buy it?

Rubin: No, I think we’ve already proven that wrong. Bad analogy.

6:55 pm: Discussion about all the crapware that comes on many phones.

Rubin: The consumers are voting and the consumers are voicing their opinions.

6:56 pm: Rubin has some relatively nice things to say about the iPhone.

“I think everybody is embracing the iPhone. They are pretty open.”

Rubin says that most developers actually are having a pretty easy time getting their apps approved by Apple.

6:57 pm: Kara: How do you consider Apple as a competitor?

Certainly they make great products, Rubin says–robust, solid, good user experiences. A lot of consistency across applications. More recently I see them getting involved in the other end of the spectrum–services like a bookstore, the app store.

6:59 pm: Walt: What about Apple’s massive data center? That’s another area of competition for you guys.

Rubin talks about the power of Google’s ad-based model, which allows the core advertising to fund all kinds of applications.

Walt: Do you think Apple has the DNA to do this?

Rubin: “My assumption is Apple is a company that learns from its mistakes.”

7:01 pm: Kara and Walt: Are you profitable? Is Android profitable? Does Android make any money?

Rubin: We’re making money on the advertising that’s generated through Android.

Walt: Are you profitable if it was broken out as a separate business?

Rubin: Yes. [Wow. I'm curious about the math, but maybe if you add all the searches on Android-based devices.]

There’s no way I would have ever been profitable as a start-up. I probably wouldn’t have made it as a separate company.

7:06 pm: Walt: How do you see the rest of the competition beyond Apple?

Rubin: I don’t think it’s ever going to be just two [Apple and Android]. There’s a lot of innovation and a lot of ideas out there.

Rubin says there is a fundamental advantage to Android and iPhone since they are new and designed from the ground up.

He notes even Windows Phone 7 has legacy code from the original Windows Mobile from way back when.

“You just have this package of stuff that was invented before the Internet,” Rubin says. “When the architects built that product, they didn’t have the Internet in mind.”

7:08 pm: Walt: Is there anything you do like about Windows Phone 7?

Rubin: It was a big bet. They struck upon that notion of the centerpiece of the main tiles. It’s a good 1.0 product. It does look different and it does look unique. It’s solid. I’m not the predictor of being successful.

He says if he were to give advice to Microsoft, he would suggest that it give more freedom to carriers and phone makers so the devices don’t look the same.

Kara: Have you gone to Finland to woo Nokia?

Rubin: I haven’t been to Finland.

Walt: Forget Finland, have you tried to convince Nokia?

Rubin just laughs (a-ha).

7:12 pm: Kara: The discussions with Nokia–talk about them in detail.

Rubin: The company has new leadership [referring to CEO Stephen Elop]. They are evaluating lots of alternatives. I’m open-minded and a big proponent of Android.

Rubin again declines to talk about any meetings he may have had.

7:14 pm: What about the challenge of iconic products like RIM?

Rubin: Talks about the challenge of legacy and points out Motorola had that problem when it became overly dependent on the Razr. Then, “they bet the company on Android,” he points out.

Rubin said RIM is doing the right things–acquiring assets like QNX and DataViz to build a more modern operating system.

7:16 pm: Walt points out that RIM will be here Tuesday–PlayBook tablet in hand.

7:16 pm: Back to the discussion about persuading companies to use Android.

Rubin: If it’s good–and we all believe that it’s good–everybody can use it.

“You don’t need to be a partner of Google to run Android.”

7:17 pm: Walt asks about tablets. Are they exciting to you? Are they important to you? Can they replace laptops for some people?

Rubin: I think what is going on in tablets is interesting. It’s fundamentally changing the model of computing interaction.

It is much more physical. You touch it. You feel it.

7:19 pm: What changes in the paradigm? It’s not a laptop. It’s not a phone.

Rubin points out that we used to have PDAs, but the cellphone eventually replaced it. The tablet is a sort of in-between device so the use case is less clear. You might definitely have it on the couch, but maybe not on the subway.

7:21 pm: Walt: What makes it more interesting and more immersive? There is something different there?

Rubin: If you do a good job, what you’ve done is make it a reflex. Like a car. You learn how to drive and you can drive almost any car. You don’t get distracted by things. That’s the result of many, many years of evolution. That’s true of any consumer product. They become almost like second nature for you.

7:24 pm: Kara and Walt ask about privacy.

Rubin: There is nothing in open source Android OS that sends keystrokes or what applications you use to Google.

He encourages people to look at the source code.

Walt: There are Google services that do collect certain things?

Rubin: Yes, like on other platforms. But he encourages people to read the company’s privacy policy.

7:27 pm: How do you overcome the perception that Google wants to collect more information than the others?

I think you just have to be transparent. You have open source–be inspectable. Any other interpretation is either FUD or just people who don’t understand.

7:28 pm: On to the goodie bag. Rubin pulls out a Nexus S. Says it is his personal device.

Kara: Oh good. She grabs it and pulls it close to her.

Now Rubin is showing the features, screen, etc. He’s talking about the Near Field Communications technology that is actually printed inside the back of the case. NFC allows a phone to scan specially printed tags.

Walt: Is that what sends all the information back to Google?

Rubin: Laughs. Goes back to demoing NFC and showing the Nexus S scanning a tag, which sends a URL for a video of the Nexus S to the phone, which then starts playing.

7:31 pm: Rubin talks about the applications: Buying coffee, getting coupons.

What we are hoping is third-party developers create a lot of cool apps. Devices can also use NFC to exchange contact info between two devices as well, kind of like beaming in the old Palm days.

7:32 pm: Rubin is talking abut the Nexus strategy.

To give a “Pure Google” phone. Google works with the hardware maker to take maximum advantage of Android’s features.

7:35 pm: What’s new with Gingerbread?

We added a garbage collector. Added broader voice over Internet Protocol support. Can cut, copy and paste without a trackball.

7:36 pm: Walt: What about video calling? I know there are third-party apps that do that. It seems like a natural thing that it belongs in the phone function.

Kara: FaceGoog or GoogleTime.

Rubin: There’s a whole bunch of software engineers hitting their keyboards back in Mountain View. If consumers want it, we’ll add it. [He strongly hints that it is coming, points out there already is Google video chat for PC.]

7:38 pm: Rubin reaches into his bag of tricks again. Pulls out a prototype Motorola tablet to show a forthcoming version of Google’s mobile map application.

7:38 pm: Shows the improved 3-D abilities and new panning and zooming options. What we are showing off here is some pretty cool performance.

“It will be available for cellphones in a matter of days,” Rubin says.

What allows the new presentation is that maps are no longer a series of tiles, but rather vector graphics.

7:40 pm: Vector data is smaller and more efficient, so users can load data in case they go offline. “You could load a whole state,” Rubin says.

This app runs on Android only for now, though it will work on tablets and phones.

Walt: What about PCs?

Rubin: That would be a natural extension.

7:41 pm: What version of Android is running on that tablet?

Rubin: Honeycomb [the next version of Android, due out some time next year]. There are no buttons on the Motorola tablet. He’s showing his personal email again.

7:43 pm: More on Honeycomb: We added new APIs to Honeycomb that allow an application to split its views to multiple views. On a a tablet they can be side by side, while on a phone they might be one after the other.

7:46 pm: On to Q&A.

7:46 pm: What about the Chrome OS team? What’s the delineation between the two?

Rubin: That’s a good question. Google was born on the Web. “I don’t think it would be doing its job unless it reinvested in the Web.”

But evolution of the Web had stagnated a bit, prompting Chrome. “It’s kind of slowed down a bit.”

Apps vs. Web?

There’s no need to argue. We’re doing both, Rubin says.

7:50 pm: What are the plans for the Android team to focus on the enterprise?

We did a little bit, Rubin says, but he likens it to baby steps. Support for VPN and some secure browsing. Gingerbread has some added features like remote wipe. Each release you will see more and more.

7:51 pm: App discovery. What are your plans?

Rubin: This is all evolving. The Android market is evolving as well. Gingerbread allows “related applications.” We are always adding features.

As a search company, if we can’t help you discover apps, I think we have a problem. We should be very easily able to organize a few hundred-thousand apps.

7:53 pm: Question about mobile payments; What is Andy Rubin’s vision? Groupon?

Rubin: I think there is a lot of opportunity. It is not an opportunity that is going to be seized by one company. Today Android does carrier billing integration, so you can put apps on your carrier bill. Creates an efficient micropayment option.

With Nexus S having added gyroscope capability, can see things from even within a store. Should help make, for example, better coupon apps.

7:57 pm: Android on TVs?

Rubin: That’s exactly what Google TV is. It is Android running on a set-top box. The first versions of that are running an Intel processor.

Have demonstrated the same app can run on both a three-inch screen or a flat-panel TV.

People are building all kinds of things. Refrigerators, ovens, automotive. Rubin says the nice thing about open source is that he and Google don’t have to be involved in every use. “We knew what to do to make it scale as widely as possible.”

7:58 pm: Question about carrier data plans and pricing.

Rubin: Average usage on an Android phone is 440MB a month. Rubin points out we are at a bandwidth crunch, but that it tends to be a cycle. New networks tend not to be overwhelmed by demand at first, but then the demands grow. Then new networks come along.

How should OEMs try to differentiate?

Rubin: I think HTC has done a really good job with Sense. Motorola has Blur. People are really differentiated.

Rubin says he often hears complaints about fragmentation. “Fragmentation” is the wrong word. Different phones do things differently, but that’s differentiation. Basically the apps are still compatible, Rubin says.

8:04 pm: Is Android too clunky? Will we see a sea change where Android really gets more user friendly?

Rubin: I would probably characterize Android today as an enthusiast product for early adopters–or wives of tech enthusiasts.

8:05 pm: Rubin says the company made some concessions that led to “geeking it out.” But then there are apps that offer easier customization and personalization.

8:07 pm: Walt points out places where it requires an extra step to do things like compose an email, while the iPhone does it in a single step.

Rubin: Yep. We get it. You will see the fruits of that investment in the tablets first and then in the phones. It’s going to get better. Honeycomb will be a good start

8:08 pm: Applause and they exit stage. ‘Night.

By making a rap video, of course.

CouchOne Inc., an Oakland, Calif-based company that makes a database built on open source software called CouchDB, produced the video partially on a whim and partially to bring attention to the start-up, which raised a $2 million Series A round last year from Redpoint Ventures and is in the process of raising a Series B.

The video, “I Use CouchDB,” stars CouchOne co-founder Chris Anderson and the company’s office manager, Claire McCabe, as a cool-looking pair whose stresses melt away when they replace their clunky SQL database with CouchDB. The video intersperses shots of the company’s product in use with scenes of Chris and Claire rolling through the streets of Oakland, Claire at one point riding on a car hood.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

At the end of this video interview with BoomTown about RockMelt–a new social browser that debuted in beta last night via yet another broken news embargo (thus, I have just joined the army of TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington on this irksome issue)–the two founders politely tried to gloss over my calling it a “Facebook browser.”

Except, um, it is.

Sure, as Eric Vishria and Tim Howes correctly note, there are Twitter and other news apps present. And I even like the mantra for RockMelt, which “re-imagines the browser around friends, feeds, and sharing.”

But that would be–for the most part right now–friends on Facebook, feeds from Facebook and sharing with Facebook.

In fact, the whole shebang is essentially–as you can see from the screenshots below–a big wet kiss to Facebook.

Still, RockMelt certainly could cause a bang, since it is funded by Marc Andreessen, via his venture firm Andreessen Horowitz–along with a passel of Silicon Valley luminaries such as longtime exec and mentor to the tech stars, Bill Campbell.

Andreessen, of course, is the legendary entrepreneur who invented the browser and founded the first commercial Internet company–Netscape–16 years ago. (He is also, coincidentally or not, on the board of Facebook.)

Still, with all its pluses, the Mountain View, Calif.-based RockMelt could have a hard time breaking through the crowded browser software market to reach consumers.

Microsoft now dominates the market with its Internet Explorer, followed by other big players, such as Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.

While not the first browser focused on social networking–that would be Flock, which is still around–RockMelt is trying to distinguish itself using these now-popular and innovative services.

You sign on to it using Facebook, natch, and the friends you choose are arrayed down one side vertically, while news and other apps are on the other.

It’s built on Google’s Chromium open source technology, which makes RockMelt a truly Silicon Valley creation.

It will be interesting to see how RockMelt does with its powerful and myriad social connections, but until we find out, here are Howes (who once worked at Netscape) and Vishria talking about their plans:

And here are the screenshots of RockMelt (click on the images to make them larger):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101108/heres-a-better-name-for-rockmelt-the-facebrowser-plus-boomtowns-two-dude-video/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20101019/google-exec-tweets-to-tell-jobs-what-open-is/ http://allthingsd.com/20101019/google-exec-tweets-to-tell-jobs-what-open-is/#comments Tue, 19 Oct 2010 19:00:27 +0000 Amir Efrati http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=31279 A war of words between Google and Apple continued last night, shortly after Apple CEO Steve Jobs publicly criticized Google’s mobile-device operating system, Android, which competes with Apple’s own software for the iPhone and iPad.

Jobs said Android was problematic because customers and app developers had to deal with a “mess” of numerous versions of the open-source software, which Google gives away for free to handset makers. He also said Google executives were “disingenuous” for calling Apple’s IOS operating system “closed.”

“Google loves to characterize Android as open and iOS and iPhone as closed,” he said during Apple’s third quarter earnings call. But that’s a “smokescreen to hide the real issue of what is best for the customer–integrated versus fragmented.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101019/google-exec-tweets-to-tell-jobs-what-open-is/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101005/google-answers-oracles-java-suit/ http://allthingsd.com/20101005/google-answers-oracles-java-suit/#comments Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:50:45 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=50128
Silicon Valley’s latest Goliath versus Goliath battle is officially on.

Google today responded to Oracle’s (ORCL) claims that its Android OS infringes copyrights and patents related to Java, which Oracle acquired as part of its purchase of Sun Microsystems earlier this year. This morning, the search sovereign filed an answer to Oracle’s suit, denying all seven of its patent-infringement charges, and asking that the company’s copyright-infringement claim be dismissed because Google (GOOG) feels it is “legally deficient.”

And, interestingly, the answer calls Oracle out as a hypocrite–a company that pushed for a fully open Java platform when the OS was owned by Sun, only to blatantly ignore the open source community’s requests to fully open source it after its acquisition of Sun closed.

“It’s disappointing that after years of supporting open source, Oracle turned around to attack not just Android, but the entire open source Java community with vague software patent claims,” the company said in a statement. “Open platforms like Android are essential to innovation, and we will continue to support the open source community to make the mobile experience better for consumers and developers alike.”

Google’s prayer for relief makes that disappointment quite clear. In it, the company asks not only for a judgment dismissing Oracle’s complaint against it with prejudice, but also for a judgment in favor of Google on all of its counterclaims; a declaration that Google has not infringed, contributed to the infringement of, or induced others to infringe, either directly or indirectly, any valid and enforceable claims of the Patents-in-Suit; a declaration that the Patents-in-Suit are invalid; a declaration that Oracle’s claims are barred by the doctrines of laches, equitable estoppel, and/or waiver; a declaration that the Oracle’s claims are barred by the doctrine of unclean hands; a declaration that this case is exceptional and an award to Google of its reasonable costs and expenses of litigation, including attorneys’ fees and expert witness fees; and such other and further relief as this Court may deem just and proper.

Here are three of the more pointed graphs from the answer, followed by a copy of the document in its entirety.

7. Sun came under significant criticism from members of the open source community, including Oracle Corp., for its refusal to fully open source Java. For example, in August of 2006, the Apache Software Foundation (“ASF”), a not-for-profit corporation that provides organizational, legal, and financial support for open source software projects, attempted to obtain a TCK from Sun to verify Apache Harmony’s compatibility with Java. Although Sun eventually offered to open source the TCK for Java SE, Sun included field of use (“FOU”) restrictions that limited the circumstances under which Apache Harmony users could use the software that the ASF created, such as preventing the TCK from being executed on mobile devices. In April of 2007, the ASF wrote an open letter to Sun asking for either a TCK license without FOU restrictions, or an explanation as to why Sun was “protect[ing] portions of Sun’s commercial Java business at the expense of ASF’s open software” and violating “Sun’s public promise that any Sun-led specification [such as Java] would be fully implementable and distributable as open source/free software.” However, Sun continued to refuse the ASF’s requests.

8. Oracle Corp., as a member of the Executive Committee (“EC”) of the Java Community Process (“JCP”), the organization tasked with managing Java standards, voiced the same concerns regarding Sun’s refusal to fully open source the Java platform. Later that year, in December of 2007, during a JCP EC meeting, Oracle Corp. proposed that the JCP should provide “a new, simplified IPR [intellectual property rights] Policy that permits the broadest number of implementations.” At that same meeting, BEA Systems – which at the time was in negotiations that resulted in Oracle Corp. purchasing BEA – proposed a resolution that TCK licenses would be “offered without field of use restrictions . . . enabling the TCK to be used by organizations including Apache.” Oracle Corp. voted in favor of the resolution.

9. Just over a year later, in February of 2009, Oracle Corp. reiterated its position on the open-source community’s expectation of a fully open Java platform when it supported a motion that “TCK licenses must not be used to discriminate against or restrict compatible implementations of Java specifications by including field of use restrictions on the tested implementations or otherwise. Licenses containing such limitations do not meet the requirements of the JSPA, the agreement under which the JCP operates, and violate the expectations of the Java community that JCP specs can be openly implemented.”

UPDATE: Oracle has issued this statement on Google’s answer.

“In developing Android, Google chose to use Java code without obtaining a license. Additionally, it modified the technology so it is not compliant with Java’s central design principle to ‘write once and run anywhere.’ Google’s infringement and fragmentation of Java code not only damages Oracle, it clearly harms consumers, developers and device manufacturers.”

UPDATE: Engadget’s Nilay Patel has a good analysis of Google’s strategy, here — as well as some potential holes in it.

2010.10.04 – Google Answer and Counterclaims _filed_ –

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101005/google-answers-oracles-java-suit/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100922/fcc-to-rebuild-using-drupal/ http://allthingsd.com/20100922/fcc-to-rebuild-using-drupal/#comments Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:30:57 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=30191 FCC Managing Director Steven VanRoekel announced today that–following in the footsteps of Whitehouse.gov, Commerce.gov and Ed.gov–the Federal Communications Commission will be rebuilding its Web site using the open source content management system Drupal. In the announcement, VanRoekel states that “This decision is a significant step towards modernizing our own underlying online infrastructure.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100922/fcc-to-rebuild-using-drupal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100903/wave-headed-for-googles-remainders-bin/ http://allthingsd.com/20100903/wave-headed-for-googles-remainders-bin/#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:51:23 +0000 Voices http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=29241 If Google keeps this up, it’s going to find itself with a busy little bargain basement filled with engineers and developers poking around for deals on discontinued products. First it was the house brand Nexus One smartphone finding new life among Android developers after failing to grab the public. And soon the guts of Wave, the ambitious but amorphous and ultimately abandoned collaboration tool, will be made available as an open-source, client-server package, called Wave in a Box, to those interested in building on Google’s experiment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100903/wave-headed-for-googles-remainders-bin/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100804/wave-goodbye/ http://allthingsd.com/20100804/wave-goodbye/#comments Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:10:06 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=46170 So much for that “20 percent time” idea.

Google has decided to discontinue development of Google Wave, its new online collaboration tool. Why? Says Google, “It has not seen the user adoption we would have liked.”

“We will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects,” the company said in its blog post. “The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began.”

Wave’s low adoption rate isn’t surprising; in fact, you could argue the product was always a non-starter. Overhyped and overcomplex, Wave was not so much “a “modern version of email” as it was a chaos of real-time communication, sucking IMs, status updates, messages and media into a brutal digital shore dump that wasn’t really sequentially readable.

And in the end it didn’t redefine messaging or real-time collaboration, though it did do some wonderful things for “Pulp Fiction”…

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100804/wave-goodbye/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100712/after-some-flashy-investing-is-andreessen-horowitzs-next-move-a-big-new-fund/ http://allthingsd.com/20100712/after-some-flashy-investing-is-andreessen-horowitzs-next-move-a-big-new-fund/#comments Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:25:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=30404

Since it launched almost exactly a year ago with a $300 million fund, the venture firm of Andreessen Horowitz has cut a rather high-profile path through the Silicon Valley investing community.

And it’s clear the firm has been aiming to make a big splash in the sector–from its involvement in the fractious fight over the spin-off of Skype to its funding of a series of high-profile start-ups (Zynga, Asana, Kno and Rockmelt) to its most recent aggressive moves to finally win the top spot in investing in hot social location site Foursquare.

Now, according to sources and after spending about half its kitty, Andreessen Horowitz is poised to begin another round of fundraising to further bolster its clout.

While it is unclear how much the VC firm will raise, sources expect it to be much more than its first fund.

In its last go-round, the firm had a quick completion of the fund raising, in the midst of a national econalypse. So many assume the next try will be a lot easier, especially given its knack for grabbing hot deals.

A spokeswoman for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment on future fundraising plans.

The firm is going to need the money as it expands its partners and ambitions to change the venture landscape, as iconic entrepreneur Marc Andreessen noted when he founded the firm with his longtime business partner Ben Horowitz in July of 2009.

Andreessen said then that he was essentially professionalizing the active angel investing that he and Horowitz had been doing.

Over the last several years, either together or apart, the pair have invested in a large variety of innovative start-ups, such as Twitter, Aliph, Digg, LinkedIn and many more.

Andreessen is on the board of Facebook and an adviser to Twitter too.

In an interview with me last year, Andreessen said that unlike many VC firms, Andreessen Horowitz will invest in companies at any stage of life–from early stage to late–and of any size and in any kind of digital sector and will focus on companies led by tech-savvy founders.

He also expressed a disdain for the way the venture business was run.

“For the first time in my life, I am crossing over into the dark side,” said Andreessen at the time, in a joke about VCs being like Darth Vader.

At the time, he also noted that money talked. “It’s important to have more capital,” he said. “Sometimes having a huge checkbook is a great thing.”

Well, we’ll see if Andreessen Horowitz can make that checkbook even larger.

Until then, here is a tally of investments that Andreessen Horowitz has made so far, sourced from the firm, split up into categories and size of investment round the firm participated in with other investors. The firm declined to provide the exact amount of their participation in each investment.

It should be noted that Andreessen’s and Horowitz’s previous individual investments in some of these companies are not identified here:

Board

Kno: tablet device for students; $7.5 million
Nicira: cloud infrastructure software; $13 million
Okta: cloud app management; $750,000
Proferi: analytic applications; $2 million
Rockmelt; desktop browser for Facebook; unknown funding
Skype: Web telephony; $50 million

Passive

Apptio: IT cost transparency solutions; $14 million
Asana: enterprise collaboration; $9 million
Boku: mobile online payments; unknown funding
Digg: social media and content; unknown funding
Foursquare: social location; $20 million
Fusion I/O: enterprise I/O solutions; $45 million
Tiny Speck: social gaming; $5 million
Zynga: social gaming; $180 million

Seed

Burbn; social location; $500,000
Canvas Networks: image boards; $625,000
Factual: structured data; $1 million
GoodData: cloud-based collaborative analytics; $2.5 million
Quantifind; enterprise; unknown funding
RethinkDB: database storage; $1.2 million
Mixed Media Labs: photo sharing; $370,000
SnapLogic: open-source enterprise data integration; $2.3 million
TopProspect: social recruiting; unknown funding
Vikkii: user-generated subtitling; unknown funding
Ze Frank Games: online gaming; unknown funding

And here are video interviews BoomTown has done with both Andreessen and Horowitz in the last year on their investing theories:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100712/after-some-flashy-investing-is-andreessen-horowitzs-next-move-a-big-new-fund/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100603/steve-ballmer-ray-ozzie-session/ http://allthingsd.com/20100603/steve-ballmer-ray-ozzie-session/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:17:47 +0000 John Paczkowski http://d8.allthingsd.com/?p=459 As an indicator of the headwinds facing Microsoft and its CEO, Steve Ballmer, today, two pieces of news last week are worth considering. The first, that Apple (AAPL) had overtaken Microsoft as the world’s most valuable technology company, would seem to signal that Microsoft (MSFT) is no longer quite the driving force in technology it once was, particularly in the consumer space. The second, word of a restructuring that will give Ballmer greater oversight of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division, indicates that the company is scrambling to change this.

The enterprise space, though, is a different story, as Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who joins Ballmer onstage today, will tell you. In enterprise, Microsoft is still the undisputed leader, though here, too, the company is under attack by new on-demand computing services from formidable rivals like Google (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN).

Full video is below, followed by the liveblog:

Liveblog

8:09 am: Stay tuned. This morning’s interview will begin soon.

8:16 am: Before the main event, a few introductory remarks from Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson. Obligatory Steve Ballmer hoodie joke.

8:17 am: Thomson talking about Australia’s contributions to the technology industry. His top example: The Ugg boot, which solved Australia’s sheep overpopulation problem.

8:18 am: Thomson now drawing parallels between “Harry Potter” characters Harry/Hermione and Walt/Kara.

8:20 am: Walt takes the stage with a faux wand: “Expelliarmus!”

8:21 am: Ballmer and Ozzie take the stage.

8:21 am: Neither is wearing a hoodie.

8:22 am: This is Ozzie’s first appearance at D. Ballmer’s a veteran.

8:22 am: A first question for the pair: Where do you think the economy is these days?

Ballmer: I would say in the developed world, things have come off the lows for sure. I think our industry is even more revved up than others. But we’re in a good product cycle that has propelled the market. We’ve seen some comeback in business spending. What’s the old adage? Burn me once, shame on me [pause]–whatever it is. At least for now, we continue to see developed countries coming back. Emerging markets are a bit different.

Ballmer talks for a moment about China and intellectual property protections there, which are obviously problematic.

8:25 am: Walt asks about the cloud and the transition from the desktop. Microsoft has been the dominant company in local clients, but now you’ve said you’re “all in” in the cloud. What sort of opportunity is this?

Ozzie: I can’t remember a time when it’s been so exciting from the perspective of so many transitions happening concurrently. Now we’ve got everybody connected on the Internet…all devices connectible on the Internet. Now we’ve got companies around the industry coalescing around standards-based ways for storing data. We’re at a shift in the enterprise space and how it manages IT.

Ozzie talks about sharing-based operations in enterprise computing. How does the mobile phone connect to these scenarios? The real opportunity for us is how do we re-pivot to the cloud and make all these devices connect to the cloud.

8:29 am: Ballmer jumps in and notes that almost all players in the business believe the desktop will be important for some time, despite all that we’re hearing about the cloud and HTML5. At the end of the day, the world we’re talking about is driven from the cloud out, but it’s smart cloud talking to smart devices and apps that are controlled locally.

8:31 am: More from Ballmer–The experiences people want will almost always require some device with a reasonable amount of storage and graphics ability. The trend today is all about getting smarter on the client, not getting thinner on the client.

8:32 am: Ozzie says that regardless of what the device is, applications will feel more cached than installed, thanks to the cloud.

8:32 am: Walt–So the cloud isn’t a threat to you?

Ballmer: There’s nothing bad for us in the trend. It’s all good. But it’s a transition and as such, it’s a period of tumult. So we need to be smarter and more vigilant. But not because we’re moving from a world that’s fundamentally good for us to a world that’s not. We’re moving from a world that’s good for us to a world that’s potentially even more good for us.

8:34 am: Walt–Who’s your competition today?

Ballmer: The main ones are folks that people would guess: Google, Apple, Oracle (ORCL), VMware (VMW). And of course, we still always have the things that come out of Open Source–Linux, etc.

8:35 am: Walt asks about synching. He describes it as an unmet need. People need to synch their stuff across multiple devices, sometimes cross-platform. Why isn’t this just built into things today?

Ozzie: Right now one core synch tech is built into most devices these days. It’s called OpenSync. Synch is hard, but it’s a straightforward engineering task. What’s transpiring on the Net is unusual, because we’re spreading our data all over the Web. But we don’t really have a conceptual model for this that’s as clean as those of the past. I think at a high level, what we all want is how are we going to agree as an industry on some meta-data ways of how and where I keep my data. I don’t think we’ll end up in a world where all our data is stored in a single place.

8:39 am: Walt pushes ahead. Notes Zuckerberg’s appearance last night and the privacy implications of this.

Ballmer: There’s an innovation problem here. If you want to share some things and not share other things, you can wind up with something at a complexity level that people don’t want to or can’t engage. Getting the UI right is an innovation challenge.

8:41 am: Walt follows up, asks if competitors are coming together on a standard level.

Ozzie says they are, but not at an “experience level.”

8:41 am: Ballmer–Companies are going to try to get a differential advantage here and that means users are going to struggle with the privacy model for their information. Remember the cookie debate? Consumers didn’t understand what the cookie was. So how do you craft the discussion around issues like these so that they do?

8:43 am: Ozzie on privacy in the cloud–Businesses want to know that we’re not looking at their data. We’ve got to be very clean about this.

8:44 am: Ballmer–I think that the notion that there are different tastes in privacy and there are different opportunities to commercialize this is important, but there’s got to be a dialogue with the customer; the customer has to be allowed to make the choice.

8:45 am: Ballmer talks a bit about the differences between the consumer cloud and the enterprise cloud.

8:46 am: Walt recalls Tuesday evening’s Steve Jobs interview. Steve thought we’re on a course where fewer people will be using PCs and more portable devices (like the iPad). What do you think?

Ballmer: I think that people are going to be using PCs in greater and greater numbers for years to come. But I think PCs will look different…they’ll evolve. They’ll get smaller…they’ll get touch…their innards will change. The real question is, “What is a PC?” Nothing that’s done on a PC today will get less relevant tomorrow. I think there will exist a general-purpose device that does anything you want, because people don’t want multiple devices, or can’t afford them. I think the PC as we know it will continue to morph in form factor. So the real question is: Where do you push? Ballmer notes Jobs’s truck metaphor and says, “Windows machines will not be trucks.”

8:50 am: Walt circles back, notes that Ballmer uses the term “PC” to include things that most people don’t think of as PCs. Is the iPad a PC?

Ballmer: Of course it is. What do you do on it? Answer email. A guy tried to take notes on it at a meeting I was at yesterday–that was interesting [chuckles from the audience]. He suggests that the positioning of devices like the iPad as something beyond the PC is just a marketing tactic.

8:52 am: Walt talks a bit about Microsoft’s history in tablets. What’s the company doing in this area these days? Are there going to be tablets that look like the iPad that run Windows?

Ballmer: Sure. You’re going to have a range of devices over time that are light and don’t have a keyboard and will run Windows. Depending on what you want, there will be devices that offer a similar experience to Windows. There will be others that will be more customized, more optimized. This will be a real competitive form factor of innovation. We will, with our partners, drive innovation in form factor. Windows Phone, for example. Apple has chosen to do this as well.

8:55 am: Still more from Ballmer–Some people will want to have two different devices for two different purposes. But there has to be an option for an integrated device. The bulk of the market is going to stay with general-purpose devices.

8:57 am: A question for Ozzie–Do you think the tablet will have mass appeal this time around?

Ozzie: I think there’s going to be success in a number of form factors–in the pad form factor, in the tablet mode. I think there will be appliance-like screens that will be in our living rooms. This isn’t science fiction anymore; it’s possible. There are certain fundamental differences in productivity in consumption and creation experiences, though. Both must exist on these devices.

8:59 am: Ballmer says Microsoft and Apple will eventually “run into each other” in the market. Is the iPad really that different from the PC? No, it’s just a different form factor. The Mac’s got minimal market share; iPad’s got a surge of momentum. The race is on.

9:01 am: Walt–I think the Mac, while still at a low market share, has done pretty well for Apple.

Ballmer: Apple had a heck of a quarter last quarter, but their market share remains the same. He seems to suggest that the debut of the iPad is a signal that the Mac is going away. PCs running Microsoft software are not.

9:02 am: Conversation shifts to talk of the mobile space. Where are you now?

Ballmer: We had a good longtime employee who wanted to retire and he’s going to do so. And it doesn’t make sense to replace him. On the phone side of the business, we learned the value of excellent execution. We were ahead of this game and now we find ourselves No. 5 in the market. We missed a whole cycle. I’ve been quite public about the fact that I’ve made some changes in leadership around our Windows Phone software. We had to do a little clean-up. The excellence in execution is an important part of innovation. We’re driving forward in the phone business. But this is a very dynamic business; the market leaders here have shifted over twice in the past few years, and that’s an opportunity for us. So we’ve got to have great ideas and we’ve got to execute consistently.

9:05 am: Walt asks about rivals in the mobile space? Let’s talk about RIM (RIMM).

Ballmer: They’re obviously a good competitor. There’s this old myth that they’re primarily an enterprise company, but they’ve done quite well in the consumer market. As a general-purpose tech platform, RIM has less robustness than its competitors, but there’s a reason they’ve got such a huge following.

Walt: What about Nokia (NOK)?

Ballmer: I know they’ve got this huge global market share. But being in the U.S. skews your perspective because they’ve got such small share here. On the software side, they’re also trying to get their act together.

Walt: Apple?

Ballmer: They’ve done a good job of coming from nowhere a few years ago. They’ve done the best job on the browser. People focus on the apps, but the browser is really the thing that has distinguished their phones from others.

9:09 am: Ballmer–The irony of the situation is that the Internet was designed for the PC and then reoptimized for the PC. And partly what everyone’s trying to do with the phone is say, “Okay, I’m not a PC, I’m a phone–how do I plug into this?” So rivals like RIM that don’t have a PC business may be at a disadvantage. Or they may have better perspective.

9:11 am: Walt asks the pair’s thoughts on Google and its advances in mobile, tablets, etc.

Ballmer: On the phone, Android’s a real competitor. On the larger screen devices, who knows? I don’t know that these Android-based things will matter. But I don’t know that they won’t either. I don’t really understand why Google has to have two different mobile operating systems. Chrome? It’s like two, two, two operating systems–but they’re not in one! You want to know about Chrome, talk to them. (An odd comment to make considering Microsoft has at least 3 mobile operating systems that I can think of: Windows Mobile 6.x, Windows Phone OS 7.0, and whatever it’s got running on the Kin)

Ozzie: On the Android-versus-Chrome issue, Android is a bet on the past; Chrome is a bet on the future. When you install an app, you’re targeting a device. When you use Chrome, you’re looking at a cloud-based future.

Ballmer: So why do two? Why not focus on one? Having two OS’s is confusing. You need coherence.

Walt: Well, you have OS variations, don’t you?

Ballmer concedes this, but notes that Microsoft also has coherence. Do one. Make a bet and pursue it.

9:16 am: Walt–How is Bing doing against Google?

Ballmer: Well, we launched only a year ago, but we’re the first search engine to gain market share in a long time…but this is a long game. We’re up 54 percent in unique users year over year; our demographics are good. We overindex with younger crowds. We’ve done a lot to establish a name and to make a good product that delivers relevant results. But I think we have our work cut out for us in a battle with a very large behemoth.

Walt: Wait. You’re calling someone else a behemoth?

Ballmer chuckles, remarks on the Yahoo (YHOO) deal, notes that search is a scale business. Scale is important for improvement in product quality. The Yahoo deal will help with this, he says.

9:19 am: Walt–Is Microsoft taking an app ecosystem approach with Bing?

Ozzie says that it is. Suggests that the company is developing it with a plug-in architecture in mind. Talks about layering.

Ballmer: Rarely when you search do you want to search. You’re not looking for a list of Web sites. You want to find the Web site you’re looking for. You want to do something. If we can help the user take actions more quickly, that would be a great breakthrough.

Walt: You really could have a good encapsulate app in Bing.

Ballmer: That is what we have. The question is, is that extensible?

Q & A

Q: Is Apple right to dismiss the stylus?

A: Ballmer–We do think people want to take notes and draw. What’s the best way to do that? Well, there are different ways to do that and we’ll support them all. Today, we offer devices that do use a stylus. I certainly believe that people do want to take the things that they do today with pencil and paper and do them with new technologies.

Ozzie: The software here has not kept up with the hardware. With touch, we haven’t yet even figured what the control architecture should be. There will be slates you use a stylus on, there will be others that you use touch, etc.

Q: Talk about your degree of comfort in following the law in China. And how are you dealing with the security issues there?

A: Ballmer–Do we think there are hackers everywhere, including China? Yes. Are there professional hackers everywhere? Yes. Do we think that almost every government employs people to read things that they shouldn’t? I don’t know, but I suspect they do. I don’t find any of this amazing.

When it comes to China, if you’re going to stay and do business someplace, I’m not going to put my employees in harm’s way. The best way to make a difference in China and other countries is to stay in the country. We’re staying and trying to be part of a reformation process…and I think that’s the principled stand to take.

Q: Any advice for Apple and Google as they face potential antitrust troubles? [laughter]

A: [Ballmer grins] No advice. I just wish them the best in getting lots of good experience.

Q: Question about health care.

A: Ballmer–It’s a slow moving market. Certainly the money that was put into the health-care bill gives an incentive to have these things proceed a little more quickly.

Q: What do you want Microsoft’s role to be in media?

A: Ballmer–Media starts with what gets created, so we need great tools for creators to make content, and we need to make tools to help people monetize that. This is an area that the advantages Google has in search can and are being leveraged.

Q: Question about weak battery life in the laptop form factor.

A: Ballmer–We’re doing a lot with software. We’re doing work to support Intel’s (INTC) efforts to create chips with better power consumption. This is an area of improvement for us.

Q: What are your thoughts on cross-platform development?

A: HTML5 will show up everywhere. The question is, will that be enough to write great apps? Will there be folks that may have some things that run cross-platform? I think there will be. But developers are going to optimize for one platform.

Walt: Will Silverlight run on the iPhone?

Ballmer: It doesn’t. And my guess is that if it did, it would be blocked.

And that’s a wrap.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100603/steve-ballmer-ray-ozzie-session/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20100527/exclusive-palm-loses-mobile-design-guru-matias-duarte/ http://allthingsd.com/20100527/exclusive-palm-loses-mobile-design-guru-matias-duarte/#comments Thu, 27 May 2010 11:45:14 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=41581 Looks like Palm is suffering a bit of post-acquisition talent drain.

Mobile user interface master Matias Duarte has left Palm and evidently hired on at the most obvious of places: Google.

Duarte, who led development of Palm’s webOS UI as the company’s senior director of human interface and user experience, has jumped ship, Palm (PALM) confirms. And while the company refuses to tell me where he’s going, multiple sources say it’s Google (GOOG), where he’ll presumably be working on Android, the company’s open-source platform for mobile devices–noncompete clauses permitting, of course.

Duarte’s departure is a significant loss for Palm and new owner Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which has said it plans to “double down” on webOS. His prowess with user experience and information design is well known in the industry. Before Duarte landed at Palm in 2007, he was design chief at Helio. And prior to that, he led the team that created the Danger Hiptop mobile device. When Palm announced the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2009, it was Duarte who introduced the design of webOS.

So, as I said, a real loss for Palm as it heads to its new home at HP. And a bittersweet moment for Duarte, who had great hopes for Palm’s reinvention. As he wrote in a 2009 blog post: “When I started in this field, the Palm V was the unquestioned leader in mobile devices. To this day I believe it represents one of the best consumer electronic products ever created. I always aspired to match Palm in simplicity, usability and design–so now that I’m here, I feel like a kid who’s just been handed the keys to Daddy’s convertible.”

Looks like you’ve got the keys to the Segway now, my friend.

Google and Duarte have not yet responded to requests for comment. I will update here if they do.

UPDATE: Google confirms that Duarte has joined Google as User Experience Director for Android. The company declined further comment.

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