I had forgotten about the battle for the rights to UNIX but
a appeals court just overturned the assignment of UNIX to NOVELL giving SCO clearance to sue IBM for billions. SCO are litigious and have deep pockets - will be interesting to see if there is any impact on the embedded market - like cell phones and wireless routers
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Customers and suppliers a love/hate relationship
My friend Nissan Ratzlav-Katz starting blogging about customer service in Israel and how tolerant many of us have become to sub-standard and even really crappy customer service.
One of the key Israeli Linux IL community objections to Google is that they don't give customer service - although I would argue that great products delivered that work on a global scale for free definitely qualify as great customer service.
How do startups make customer service scale into awesomeness? touches on many good points including a I Love/I Hate Ratio (Virgin Atlantic scores at the bottom - Microsoft is about even and Amazon, Google score at around 8 - meaning that 8x as many people love Google as hate them. Which is pretty impressive I thought.
Still - one thing we miss is the synergy between love/hate and suppliers and customers. If you give great service, customers will love you and if you're a great customer and pay on time - suppliers will love you.
The only counter-example I know is Israeli corporate customers that will pay the best supplier in the world Net 180 days and take a 20% discount just because they felt like it.
Bottom line - Israel may be a country with a poor service ethic but it's a country with a poor payment on time ethic.
In my book - it's not an accident.
One of the key Israeli Linux IL community objections to Google is that they don't give customer service - although I would argue that great products delivered that work on a global scale for free definitely qualify as great customer service.
How do startups make customer service scale into awesomeness? touches on many good points including a I Love/I Hate Ratio (Virgin Atlantic scores at the bottom - Microsoft is about even and Amazon, Google score at around 8 - meaning that 8x as many people love Google as hate them. Which is pretty impressive I thought.
Still - one thing we miss is the synergy between love/hate and suppliers and customers. If you give great service, customers will love you and if you're a great customer and pay on time - suppliers will love you.
The only counter-example I know is Israeli corporate customers that will pay the best supplier in the world Net 180 days and take a 20% discount just because they felt like it.
Bottom line - Israel may be a country with a poor service ethic but it's a country with a poor payment on time ethic.
In my book - it's not an accident.
Writing from left to right, thinking from right to left
I had a couple of interesting threads in software patents and web mail applications with Hebrew support in Israeli Linux-IL group mailing list.
I was accused of sins of hubris and not understanding how important patents are to young startups. What really surprised me was the depth of contempt and fear in the Israeli Linux community of Google. There seemed to be a consensus that Google abuses our privacy and reads our email to their own advantage.
This is certainly a topic for a much longer essay but it appears to me that, living in Israel, we are victims of a shtetl (small isolated village) mentality. When Jews live in a shtetl - the Czar and Polish graf, American Government, Peace Now and the West Bank settlers...and Google are all our enemies.
Better to roll your own email system with Open source than take the risk of using Google Applications.
Easier to decry Peace Now as a virus in our society than to put your money where your mouth is and live in Jerusalem.
Danny Lieberman
I was accused of sins of hubris and not understanding how important patents are to young startups. What really surprised me was the depth of contempt and fear in the Israeli Linux community of Google. There seemed to be a consensus that Google abuses our privacy and reads our email to their own advantage.
This is certainly a topic for a much longer essay but it appears to me that, living in Israel, we are victims of a shtetl (small isolated village) mentality. When Jews live in a shtetl - the Czar and Polish graf, American Government, Peace Now and the West Bank settlers...and Google are all our enemies.
Better to roll your own email system with Open source than take the risk of using Google Applications.
Easier to decry Peace Now as a virus in our society than to put your money where your mouth is and live in Jerusalem.
Danny Lieberman
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