Sure, Google's and Apple's ecosystems look a little different, but they are meant to do pretty much the same thing. For the two companies, innovation on mobile essentially means catching up to the other's growing list of features.

A platform is essentially a business model that thrives because of the participation and value added from third parties with only incremental effort from the owner of the platform.

Apple continues to make ever-thinner devices with a superlative build and a luxurious feel. What the company has achieved beneath the surface is worth even more praise.

Its definition can be a bit murky, but to me, native advertising is a sales pitch that fits right into the flow of the information being shown. It doesn't interrupt - native ads don't pop up or dance across the screen - and its content is actually valuable to the person viewing it.

My definition of media? 'Anything which owns attention.' This could be a game or, perhaps, a platform. Ironically, the media tends to associate media with publishing - digital or otherwise - which, in turn, is too narrow a way to consider not only the media but also the reality of the competitive landscape and media-focused innovation.

I think the emotional appeal of a platform is what works. I think the old-media entities still have not figured out that part of the game plan.

The funny thing is that I used to be a blogger, but it wasn't known as 'blogging' at that time. This was in the '99/2000 time frame.

Looking back, Google's success came from the fortuitous timing of being born at the cusp of the broadband age. But it also came about because of the new reality of the Internet: a lot of services were going to be algorithmic, and owning your own infrastructure would be a key advantage.

Compared to Apple, Internet companies like Google and Facebook don't have strong perspectives on the way they want the world to work.

Our entire society is rooted around the idea of more, and longer has become the measure of success.

The possibilities that come with thinking about the camera as a portal into the realm of information and services are attractive not only to Snap but also to every other big player in the tech world. Facebook, for instance, has slowly been enhancing the visual capabilities of its Messenger.

In cities like New York, it is common to find taxicabs with wireless-enabled card readers.

While in the early days of networks, growth was limited by slowness and cost at numerous points - expensive telephone connections, computers that crashed, browsers that didn't work - the rise of the smartphone has essentially changed all that.

In 1947, Porsche began work on its 356. In many ways, it was like the original iPhone. It wasn't perfect. It was underpowered. But it was streamlined and aerodynamic.

If you look at something like Spotify, many record labels are investors in the company. So from that standpoint, the money is all going back into the labels.

Sure, we all like listening to music on vinyl, but that doesn't mean streaming music on Spotify is bad.

Uber, like Google, is taking a highly disorganized business - in its case, private transportation such as taxicabs and private limousines - and ordering it neatly.

Facebook needs to maintain its vise-like grip on our attention to become a conduit of not only advertising but also commerce, so that it can take a cut of everything.

Everybody has a different interpretation of immigration problems, and it's a highly personal experience. If anyone tells you there is a uniform solution to it, there isn't. As far as I'm concerned, it worked for me. And I don't know how to fix the problem.

Echoes of the iPhone are everywhere. Xiaomi's phones and Google's new Pixel are designed to fool you into thinking that they just might be an iPhone.

Most of the stress we feel here in Silicon Valley is self-inflicted.

The battle between Google and Apple has shifted from devices, operating systems, and apps to a new, amorphous idea called 'contextual computing.' We have become data-spewing factories, and the only way to make sense of it all is through context.

The digitization of our society is a challenge that is both legislative and philosophical.

In the digital realm, companies are free from the friction of producing physical goods, and as a result, we see companies like Google go from zero dollars in revenues to billions at a much faster rate.