Mike Elgan

Scanning the headlines over the past year, you might be forgiven for believing that in-the-air gestures were coming soon to living room boxes, PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones. But in-the-air gestures won’t be a mainstream user interface any time soon. I’ll tell you exactly why at the end of this column. But first, let’s face […]

The 20th century was all about mass everything—mass production, mass marketing and mass consumption. The current century will be all about customization. The one-size-fits-all products, businesses and marketing campaigns will be left in the dust. Is your company ready? The quintessential 20th century company might be McDonald’s. Some 40 years ago, the chain started churning […]

There’s been a lot of speculative chatter about Google+ being closed, killed or at least neglected by Google. This news would be disconcerting to me, personally, if it were true. I’ve invested uncounted hours cultivating relationships over the nearly three years of its existence. I’ve used the site as my full-time blogging platform, my email […]

The Web celebrated its 25th anniversary on March 11. That’s too young to die, but there’s reason to worry about its survival. The open Web is in trouble and mobile apps are to blame, according to a rapidly forming consensus among Silicon Valley pundits and prognosticators. The catalyst for this view is a new report […]

Google Senior Vice President Sundar Pichai apparently has mesh networking on the brain. He mentioned it twice March 9 during an on-stage interview at the SXSW (South by Southwest) film and technology festival in Austin, Texas. Pichai is in charge of Android, Chrome, Google Apps and even the company’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, which […]