A big Google-Apple partnership next week? Bet on it.
I don't typically join the gaggle of folks trying to guess what Steve Jobs' next move is going to be, but for once I can't resist. On Monday Jobs is taking the stage at Apple's worldwide developers conference in San Francisco …
Context & Ripple Effects
Standing on June 8, 2007, Apple goes into Monday's San Francisco developers conference carrying an unusually loaded news file: iTunes songs now embed buyers' names and email addresses, a $10 billion iPhone business is being floated by analysts as rumor rather than forecast, and MarketWatch advised investors on June 7 to short the stock precisely because the good news had piled up. That Wired framed the same moment around a new animated OS replacing boring interfaces, and CNET around a broader 'summer of Apple,' shows the keynote week has outgrown its developer audience.
First-order effects
- Traders enter Monday positioned against each other: MarketWatch's June 7 short call depends on the good-news run stalling, while a Google deal confirmed on stage would break that thesis within minutes of Jobs speaking.
- For WWDC attendees and the press, the claimed Google-Apple tie-up is an open question, not a plan — neither company has confirmed it, so keynote expectations rest entirely on analyst guesswork layered over one hard scheduling fact: Jobs takes the stage Monday.
Second-order effects
- A live Apple-Google alliance would hand Google placement on Apple hardware just ahead of the iPhone reaching customers, moving software-distribution leverage toward whoever controls the device.
- Competing syndicated narratives are fighting over the same keynote slot — Wired's interface-overhaul angle against CNET's summer-of-Apple frame — and whichever story lands first shapes how the other gets covered.
Third-order effects
- If Apple's developer keynotes keep doubling as venues for announcing platform alliances, pre-event rumor cycles become a standing input into the company's share price — exactly the dynamic MarketWatch was trading against on June 7.
- A confirmed Apple-Google axis points toward consumer platforms built as two-company stacks of hardware plus web services, squeezing players who lack a partner on the other side of that line.
The trend: Alliances between device makers and web-services companies are becoming staged media events, with Apple's developer keynotes serving as the fixed calendar point around which markets and coverage position themselves.