I’ve had a good 24 hours now to reflect on the Gates CES 2006 Keynote and the most exciting thing for me was the prototypes he showed off. Too bad those are still a “few years away.” There were a couple other bright spots — and no, not Gates shadowboxing at the end — like when the Xbox 360 rep announced that they were adding a third manufacturing plant.

Last night after the keynote we went to the local Best Buy and I talked to one of our clients who works there. He told me no new shipments of Xbox 360 at the Puyallup store since that last well publicized Sunday where they had 18 and sold out to the overnight campers quickly. That’s far and away not the “weekly shipments” that had been promised. Another Best Buy employee told me they have no idea when these Xbox 360s are coming in, they just “show up.”

I’m not sure which is worse: me believing Best Buy employees or the fact that this might actually be true.

And now for Google who takes front and center spotlight at CES 2006 tomorrow.

Inside Google isn’t thrilled about the information coming from the Wall Street Journal alleged leak that Google will be announcing some sort of video rental download deal and a software package consisting of mostly programs not by Google. So unimpressed was Nathan that he resorted to using all caps (Update: he commented saying he always uses all caps, but notes the use of the exclamation point): TELL ME IT’S NOT A SOFTWARE BUNDLE!

I really hope Google isn’t doing something as low rent an unimaginative as a software bundle, but I guess anything’s possible. I really hope that if it is a software bundle, they’re hiding something else up their sleeve.

He makes some good points about how anti-climactic this could be for Google. With Microsoft seemingly planning to do everything cool in the second half of 2006 and a serious Xbox 360 supply problem, they are on the ropes. I couldn’t help thinking that instead of Balmer coming out to fight Gates in the final segment it should have been Larry Page or Sergey Brin. Heck, might as well be both of them beating down Gates & company.

Then again, if I was in the Microsoft camp I’d be praying that Google was doing exactly what the WSJ outlined: a video download program and a bunch of open source software packaged with their toolbar.

Meanwhile, some press isn’t too happy that CES didn’t spring for decent free internet and instead was charging $9.95 for 30 minutes access. Andy Ambramson is trying to lead the crusade to get better internet access. Folks aren’t EVDO-enabled there? I remember seeing an EVDO user in the Tablet PC meetup last year.

Have you noticed how many deal Google seems to be trying to do to get that toolbar of theirs planted in our browsers? No thanks, Google. Push harder, and I start to feel like something is amiss. I like you better, Google when you aren’t pushing so hard.

We’ll find out tomorrow what are the real Google announcements. I know one thing for sure: it isn’t nearly as critical for them to have a good showing at CES as it is for Microsoft.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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