Kevin Kelleher at GigaOm continues a thread started by Dave Winer in this strange little story about a talking pig, about how Google can take a successful idea started by Amazon with Amazon Web Services, and really do something with it. Kevin's quick description sums up how this is playing out in a way.

As valued Google workers pack up their desks and launch new startups, this is the single best strategy for Google to bring them back into the fold. And it’s a great way to pull the rug out from under Amazon, strategy-wise and profit-wise.

And this is where Google's brain drain might be perceived as not being a drain at all. Successful startup businesses operate without the control of the corporation, but have all the risk and therefore all the opportunity of innovating. If and when they are folded back into the company through acquisition, the reincorporation of the talent and the new techonologies they bring with them provide the bursts of innovation that keep Google's sails full.

It's an excellent analysis that I have to admit I've never thought about, and there doesn't seem to be any confirmation that this is what Google is thinking. But if they are, I would bet my dollars on that strategy.

GigaOm has an excellent entry on Nokia's long view of providing a device that is an open platform for the Internet. It discusses the gradual release of Nokia's N700/800 series of handheld devices, which are not released under any pressure to get them out fast, but rather to get them right. This is well conceived strategy and smart investment in R&D with open source software that I am hopeful will pay off for consumers in the future.

The article goes on to compare Apple's iPhone to CompuServe and Nokia to the Internet. Strange, that they say that because Apple promised an SDK, and by doing so, Apple are admitting that the tightly closed nature of the iPhone will limit its place in the long term. Their immediate focus on controlling the experience and selling units is obvious. It's very interesting to compare the strategy with Nokia's which has goals that are much further out, and which is willing to take a seemingly more measured release schedule.

Robert Young says in GigaOM that self-expression has become a new industry. I'll just give you the quotable bits:

• the art-form of self-expression has become the “new media”, and social networks are their distribution channels
• for any player who seeks to enter this industry and become the next social networking phenom, the key is to look at self-expression and social networks as a new medium and to view the audience itself as a new generation of “cultural products”
• For traditional media companies that are seeking to enter this space it’s critical to follow the audience into the development of this new market by re-focusing core assets that have the capability to deepen the level, and heighten the production value, of self-expression