Microsoft Isn't Slowing Down

An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to this Business Week article Microsoft is stronger than ever. Considering this is typical of the kind of Microsoft Rump-Swabbery that Management often use to 'enlighte'" themselves, it's little wonder that so many are of the opinion that if you can't give Microsoft money for it, it must be no good." Of course, did anyone expect Microsoft to just roll over?

Comments

Re:Learning Strategy

[sheldon]

All good points!

I did not relate this to Go, but I made a similar comment last year after the PocketPC was released.

If you look at what Microsoft did, they looked at the existing climate of Palm domination and then asked, "Great, but where do people want to be in the future?"

They then designed towards that future. More powerful, more capable devices. Color, sounds, fast, powerful, lot's of storage, etc...

The first versions of WinCE were not successful, primarily because they hadn't clearly defined this vision, and the hardware was not capable of it. After several years of refinement and evolution, the hardware began to catch up.

And now you have the iPaq and it's ilk capturing 20% marketshare.

Meanwhile Palm is changing case colors and releasing Supermodel versions of the same device that first came to market back in 1996. Any bets if they will merge with AOL within 2 years time?

Learning Strategy

[Amphigory]

I am learning to play the game of Go (kind of an oriental version of Chess, only much cooler.) One thing I have learned along the way is that its very easy to make strategy against where your opponent is -- and lose. You need to be planning for where your opponent is going, anticipating his moves and taking the places on the board he wants before he can get them. Otherwise, you will inevitably get slaughtered.

It seems to me that the open source community has not learned this lesson -- possibly because we are so unstructured. Like it or not, open source has not generally produced fundamentally new technologies at the rate Microsoft has. The one exception would lie in the Internet server market (and it is not coincidental that that is the main market where OSS is successful). We tend to spend all our time catching up in other areas.

For example, Microsoft has had a component based desktop for years, and we are just now starting to get workable ones. Microsoft has had easy GUI design for trivial apps (VB) since the early 90's -- and we are just starting to get it (QT Designer, Kylix). Microsoft still has us totally slaughtered in the groupware arena because we can't seem to really understand that groupware and email are not quite the same thing.

When Microsoft *does* miss a beat -- as with the Internet -- they follow up quickly. Once again, this is like Go. If your opponent gets you in an awkward strategic situation, you can often play through it tactically. Essentially, you end up playing just to stay in the game until your opponent makes a mistake. Then you strike out ahead and hopefully recover your strategic error. This is Microsoft's well known practice of always being the second-best product on the market until the competition screws up.

Anyway, one wonders if Bill Gates plays Go. It's relatively popular on the west coast thanks to the large oriental population. It's truly an awesome game -- the Japanese maintain that it teaches character and strategic thinking for real life. And, I think they're right. It penalizes both cowardice and foolhardiness equally, encourages you to think ahead, and has rules simple enough to teach my three-year-old with permutations complex enough to take a lifetime to understand.

&lt/Ramble&gt

--

Re:Learning Strategy

[steveha]

Like it or not, open source has not generally produced fundamentally new technologies at the rate Microsoft has. The one exception would lie in the Internet server market (and it is not coincidental that that is the main market where OSS is successful). We tend to spend all our time catching up in other areas.

This is true, but you are overlooking something. The free software community has been spending its time catching up, because it has had so much catching up to do. Linus introduced his early kernels at a time when MS had spent nearly a decade on Windows, and IIRC the free BSD variants came even later than that. KDE wasn't started until 1996, when MS had already had its Windows desktop working for over a dozen years. (For some value of "working", anyway.) GNOME started even later than KDE.

The reason free software is so strong in web serving is that the free operating systems were ready to run web servers by the time web servers were invented; free OSs didn't have to play catch-up at all in that area.

Thanks to RMS and GNU, there was a ready-made suite of great command-line stuff, just waiting for a kernel; but the GUI desktop is another matter. KDE and GNOME both started from close to zero. They had only X11 to build upon. Remember that it took Microsoft about 7 years to get Windows into decent shape; KDE and GNOME did it in much less time. Both have added features and apps at a rapid pace; at this point you can get a newbie up and running on either environment as fast as on Windows. (That newbie has a much better chance of setting up Windows on his own than the free stuff, but setup systems are another area we are playing catchup.)

I think the next couple of years will be very interesting. GNOME and KDE, finally at feature-parity with Windows and with the worst bugs fixed, will have a chance to grow in new directions. The GUI apps available will swell. Don't count the free stuff out of the fight just yet.

In the near future, watch for these things to happen:

Schools and small companies start adopting free software for their business, to save a few dollars per seat

Large companies like Boeing start to use free software as a threat to get Microsoft to lower the per-seat fees: "We could move to Linux and GNOME; you better make us a deal or we'll do it"

PCs start to be available with GNOME and applications pre-installed

When you start to see Boeing setting up GNOME on 30,000 seats at a time, or when you see Gateway and Dell start offering GNOME preinstalled, you will know that the software landscape has shifted. That will be a while, but I think the day is coming.

steveha

Time to dust off our Microsoft Exit Strategy...

[gdav]

A few years back, I was one of the people involved in drawing up a plan for our university's choice of desktop OS and office software suite. For the office suite we looked at offerings from Microsoft (the incumbent), Corel and Lotus, and for the desktop OS... well, that quickly came down to an all-Microsoft choice. I should point out that our student labs run over 400 apps used in teaching, mostly win16 but a few win32 (and one or two DOS!)

We consulted our users about the office site and they quickly voted for Microsoft on the grounds that it would be a sheer bloody pain to shift. Corel was on the ropes and Lotus cost almost as much as Microsoft. So we signed Campus Agreement, and it made life a lot simpler, and Mr Gates a lot richer.

I was the local Linux zealot and I did try long and hard to convince myself that:

* We could offer a Linux desktop, with linux-native office apps and browser, and run all 400-odd teaching apps under Wine.

* We could offer a Linux desktop, with linux-native office apps and browser, and run all 400-odd teaching apps under VMware.

* We could offer a Linux desktop, with linux-native office apps and browser, and run all 400-odd teaching apps on a Citrix app server via the linux ICA client.

And the I thought - why?

Once the decision was made, we all thought - "Don't worry, we don't need to renegotiate for a few years, and the DOJ will have broken Microsoft up by then - or at very least imposed regulations to make Mr Gates tame, polite and meek in all his dealings". This did not turn out to be true, did it?

So I suppose it's time to look at putting together a strategy to make Windows 2000/Office 2000 our final Microsoft platform - there's no way we're touching Windows Xtra Pain, that's for sure. Since we last looked at the problem, Staroffice/Openoffice has become pretty viable, many of our teaching apps have been replaced by web-based teaching aids, many new apps have appeared that have linux ports.

Are any other universities thinking along these lines?

george

Re:Time to dust off our Microsoft Exit Strategy...

[aozilla]

For 100 users, Office will run you $100/user if it is OEM installed, and about $300 for upgrades 2-3 years from now. that comes out around $10000/yr for office software.

For 100 simultaneous users, all of whom have no clue how to use the software, you figure you need about 5 trained sysadmins. Let's say you only run the lab 5 days a week for 10 hours, and pay your sysadmins $10/hour. In three years: 5*5*52*3*10*10=$390,000. Lets say using Windows software saves you only one of those sysadmins. 1*5*52*3*10*10=$78,000. I think we have a winner.

It's a GOOD thing, believe it or not

[Xunker]

I know it's essentially suicide to mention anything PRO-Microsoft, but I'm going to take the leap.

As much as some of the 'harrier' open-source and free-software supprorters deride large Close-Souce Companies. the truth of the matter is that having companies like them around *does* foster quality development.

Just think: suppose MS died, and there was no one controlling the desktop market? I'm willing to bet you a herring that feature development on ye' olde' favourite Free OS would slow. There would be no need to improve it at the current rate because you're not racing anyone.

We in the Open Source and Free Software communities would like to think that we're immune from such normal things like sloth, but believe it or not, we are human, and are at risk of getting sloppy if there is no one prodding us on.
.

Re:It's a GOOD thing, believe it or not

[kinkie]

Tell this to the Gnome's Evolution designers: its interface is a blatant rip-off of Microsoft Outlook.

Not that there's anything bad in that, except the fact that Outlook's interface is as bad as an interface can be. No, make it worse.

Re:It's a GOOD thing, believe it or not

[KingBozo]

The problem is I can say good things about linux and don't have to back them up, or I can say bad things about MS and not have to back them up.

What does that have to say about the Slashdot crowd.

Not anonymized for your flame throwing skills.

Re:It's a GOOD thing, believe it or not

[ryants]

There would be no need to improve it at the current rate because you're not racing anyone

We aren't racing anyone except ourselves right now, as it is, anyways.

GNOME and KDE race against each other, but neither really pays attention to what comes out of Redmond... nor should they.

If MS vanished, this race would continue, and we'd all continue to benefit from the meme battle.

Ryan T. Sammartino

The statement that bothered me...

[banky]

(I think I can get flamebait and troll all in one post)
Quote:
"There's no block to people putting features on Windows," he snaps.

Isn't that part of the problem?
1. Putting a feature into Windows means its now a target for embrasure (is that a word?), extension, or imitation. You have just decided to compete with MS. Somehow I doubt their "shared source" will help. Ask Stac how much success they had in putting features into a Microsoft product.
2. This statement is, to me, implicitly saying that innovation is dependant on Windows in the first place. Wasn't it Jackson who said (paraphrased) MS makes a barrier to innovation with this kind of thinking? They hammer the doors shut if you aren't talking Win32?

Re:Continued Growth

[KFury]

Nah. Before that happens they'll devote billions to R&D to find new markets.

Face it folks, Microsoft may be our best bet for interstellar travel, if only so they can find other civilizations that need Windows machines!

Kevin Fox
--

If everything was so hunky dori...

[mav[LAG]]

then why are we seeing these panicky reactions from Microsoft? You know - Gates and Ballmer flip-flopping, Allchin, Mundie. If they were really confident about the future there would be little need to fly kites all the time about OSS or the GPL.

I suspect Microsoft is actually deeply worried about the next five years. The top execs know only too well just what IBM looked like to the business press in 1989 - and how quickly they fell from a position of seeming invincibility. The margins in the packaged software business are falling rapidly. Unix server revenues are nearly triple Windows server revenues - and Linux is cleaning their clocks at the low end. To move away from the software license model means going the services route - a la .NET which is untested and a big gamble to say the least.

Unlike the heyday of fawning which accompanied Microsoft in the mid-90s, businesses are becoming very hard-nosed about security, privacy and robustness - especially as more businesses integrate Internet functionality into their business models. Most are deeply disturbed at the idea of a middleware layer of services controlled solely by Microsoft and won't be very keen to move there.

Microsoft != Windows

[tbo]

While you may be of the opinion that Windows sucks more than ever, or that linux/OS X/BSD/BeOS/AmigaOS is more threatening than ever, that's largely irrelevant. Microsoft is a business, and their strength is reflected by business forcasts, price-to-earning ratios, and other financial indicators.

While Eazel is going out of business, Mandrake is asking resorting to donations, and countless other tech companies are hurting, Microsoft is doing just fine. They're not instituting mass layoffs. I know people who work there, and things are the same-old, same-old.

Linux may be a better OS, but it's not a better business plan, unfortunately.

Re:Microsoft != Windows

[YKnot]

It's just one more lesson from history where being open is better than being closed.

Better for whom? We're not buying our PCs from IBM, are we? There may not be as many Macs as there are PCs, but Apple sold (almost) every single one of them. The lesson is not to be open but to know your business. When that business requires openness, be open. When it requires secrecy, choose carefully who gets to take a look. Microsoft is keeping that balance. Others aren't because they thought code first, business later.

Re:Microsoft != Windows

[ryants]

Mandrake is asking resorting to donations

*sigh*

It was the users who asked Mandrake to set up the donation system; it was not Mandrake's idea.

Sheesh. How many times must this be repeated before it sinks in?

Ryan T. Sammartino

Re:Microsoft != Windows

[ryants]

but the growth of the PC has been in direct relationship with the growth of Windows, and related M$ products

I think you have that backwards.

MS grew because the PC grew, not vice versa.

The so-called IBM PC is as prevelant as it is because of the reverse engineering of the original BIOSes and the relative openness of the PC versus the Mac (for example). Anybody could build a PC, but nobody except Apple could build a Mac.

It's just one more lesson from history where being open is better than being closed.

Ryan T. Sammartino

Re:Microsoft != Windows

[DarkWinter]

Microsoft is a business, and never was a truer word spoken.

And not only are they a near monopoly, but they have become one as a result of the buying patterns of the masses, and the fact that most competitive products were indeed quite poor during the early stages of Windows (as far as ease of use)

I'm sure it's been said before, but the growth of the PC has been in direct relationship with the growth of Windows, and related M$ products. It made the PC accessable, and as a result the PC became more available. The growth of M$ has been the growth of the PC

We all know it's not a better product, but it's growth and that of the PC are so interwoven that it will take time to seperate them. Or money. Lots of money. And no single company can raise the capitol to dethrone the king, so we're back to the first choice, time.

To defeat (or effectively compete) with M$, will take a business plan based on slow, steady business growth, focussing on strengths over M$'s weaknesses. The sudden growth of the Linux dist markets got them a little too eager, and they over-reached.

A new plan is needed, and sadly, one of these dists needs to be run like a ruthless company, something we nerds don't take well too. Either that or we have to settle for a smaller piece of the market.

Any how, I live for the day I can shout, "The king is dead, long live the king!"

Re:Why must they act like it's a fight?

[overshoot]

Their Chairman views everything as a very high-stakes competion. It is how he is wired. As a result the entire company is built off of the, "If they are not for us, they are against us" philosophy.

Incomplete.

• If they're not for us, they're against us. Kill them now.
  
• If the suckers are for us, they can wait. Kill them later.

Continued Growth

[west]

Microsoft has indicated that it is intent on continued growth of 20% a year.

Has anyone calculated just how many years it will be before Microsoft corporate strategy requires that they own everything? :-).

Re:Continued Growth

[Waffle Iron]

Microsoft has indicated that it is intent on continued growth of 20% a year.

Has anyone calculated just how many years it will be before Microsoft corporate strategy requires that they own everything? :-).

If calculated literally, not very long. My calculus 101 professor once worked through a similar example: if the current human population growth of 3% per year continues unchecked, ignoring relativistic factors, how long will it be until the expanding sphere of human bodies reaches the speed of light?

IIRC, the time was surprisingly short (on the order of a few hundred thousand years or something).

The Microsoft example would probably take only a few decades.

Crazy Like a Fox

[Multics]

My expectation is that they think:

With W in office, their legal troubles will fade away. It certainly didn't hurt that the first-level judge was at least unwise about his comments. If applications had been peeled off of Windows the world would be a different place. The probability of that happening is about 0.0001 now.

They are talking up Linux to make sure everyone thinks that they are all worried about an O/S with no significant applications that anyone cares about. They are worried like my grandfather (who is 92) is worried that 10 nymphomanics are going to attack him every Sunday.

They will finish their take-over of the web, but getting Steve "kingdom builder" Case to throw away Netscape. Already places like Weather Channel are difficult to use in Netscape and that trend will accelerate violently this year. (And yes, macromedia flash is part of WC's problems)

So what if XP is a failure. They'll change the license for Win2k to a time-based one and poof the monopoly is complete. These guys are classic Monopolists and as soon as they can lock everyone one into their party (they are very very close now), innovation will nearly stop. No monopolist will invest in his marketplace when he has absolute control and a reliable income stream. That is what XP is about. The terminal technology while MS goes off and attempts to dominate all the other software marketplaces. Ever consider what it would take in terms of cash for them to buy Palm and Handspring and just close them?...

The only thing that will stop this mess is Bill quitting and he can't just about as any human can't taking in O2. I wonder if he is at all happy... I'll bet not.

So kids, we're in deep trouble. "Open" people have failed to provide things people want enough to switch away from Windows on the desktop. If "Open" doesn't own the desktop, it is likely that "Open" doesn't own anything.

--Multics

The Entire US Navy Will RUn Microsoft

[superid]

Ever heard of the Navy/Marine Corps Internet? Pretty soon every sailor and government employee "from the desktop to the warfighter" will be using MS exclusively (at least officially). Desktops are mandated to be Windows 2000 and end users cannot install any software or maintain their machine. This includes laptops and even classified networks and communications. It's a $6B contract to EDS and I think it will either be a dramatic failure or a dramatic flop. I'm not sure there can be a middle ground.

SuperID
Free Database Hosting

money and persistance is hard to beat

[soldack]

This king of leads to the MS 3 rule; no MS product works at all well until version 3. MS can just throw more and more money at a problem until it goes away.
Very few other companies in the world could have afforded or would have wanted to keep MSN going. MS is different though. Once they attack a space, they just keep fighting (and spending). They will not allow defeat.
Take a look at embedded software. Another version of WinCE, 3.0 (aka PocketPC) is trying to push forward and staring to do better. At the same time, NT Embedded has finally spawned Windows XP Embedded (Win2k Embedded never made it out of the gate).
MSNBC keeps pushing forward. The mighty CNN (backed by AOLTime) is now struggling to fight off this (and Fox). Spend enough and keep trying and people watched.
Enterprise software? They have Win2k running on 32 processor intel based systems with 64 gigs of RAM. Exchange is all of the place. SQLServer use is growing.
As a business they do some many things to make sure they win. Every piece is tied to all the others. They tell you that "If you run windows and office at home, you should use a PocketPC! It runs all the same stuff!" They say that "If you run Win2k, than Exchange, SQLServer, and IIS run the best!" They want everything to tie to them. Your windows login becomes your "Passport". Now they own part of your identity. Pretty soon you will have to pay to use your own passport. Just a penny a login...
The fact is that they are just too damn good at this capitalist game. In order to protect the people and not stiffle innovation, the playing field has to be made a bit more fair. The government no longer seems up to the task. Our only hope is that MS's enemies gang up on them. Can even AOLTimeWarner, Sony, Sun, Oracle, and IBM combined beat them? I don't know. I sure hope so because I would have rather have a bunch of powerful companies in specific sectors than one all powerful company in all sectors of the economy.

Re:money and persistance is hard to beat

[mgkimsal2]

Can even AOLTimeWarner, Sony, Sun, Oracle, and IBM combined beat them?

This was always at the crux of the trial I thought - MS could always point to their 'competitors', but if AOLTW, Sony, Sun, Oracle and IBM "got together" to develop an 'anti-MS' strategy (pricing/marketing/etc) wouldn't that be pointed at as a giant conspiracy or collusion? It would probably be MORE illegal than MS' monopoly abuse, if that's possible. Not that it would be WRONG necessarily, but I'd guess illegal nonetheless.

Re:We should strive to be a superset of MS

[be-fan]

(this was not intended as a troll, btw).
>>>>>>>>>>>
Its really sad that you have to state that. On /., anything that doesn't extoll all the virtues of OSS programs and condemn MS for being capitalist pigs is taken as trolling. God forbid we should judge anything an technical merit.

Re:Nice Margins

[selectspec]

What you said is interesting but I strongly disagree about your analysis of Java with regards to web apps. Java GUI perhaps is clunky. However, Java rules the networking middle tier as perhaps the most scalable, well structured and speedy platform. Simple servlets (no EJB) are very fast, very easy to learn, and very powerful. All C# will bring to this equation is native interfaces to the OS platform. Java lacks this (file permissions, etc) because Java tries to be too pure in its platform independence. .NET's biggest challenge, is that vetran C++ network coders who played with MTS and COM+ had bad experiences. The shit didn't work and didn't scale. While Microsoft may get it right with .NET, that taste is lingering, and those guys have moved on to Java Servlets.

The Dogs of War Don't Just Roll Over

[Baldrson]

Of course, did anyone expect Microsoft to just roll over?

When the east coast establishment simultaneously:

• In conjunction with Netscape, activates the antitrust powers of the US Government against Microsoft.
• Agglomerates the AOL/Time-Warner/CNN/Netscape behemoth with the approval of said powers of the US Government.
• Commits institutional investors to purchasing the initial public offerings of almost anything capitalized by Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

I think it is safe to say that no one with big chunks of capital and/or US Government power thought Microsoft was going to "just roll over".

Microsoft isn't slowing down?

[AirLace]

Not surprising for something that has never moved.

Not surprising

[Mr. Sketch]

Microsoft's XP line will do as well or perhaps better than they are expecting, despite what the /. community thinks. The average consumer will see, via good ole Microsoft marketing, that they will be able to use their computer more efficiently and effectively and that it will do lots of things for them if they get this new 'Windows XP' thing.

As for monthy subscriptions, I'm guessing most won't care too much because it'll be taken directly from their credit card that they have to pay every month anyways and if it will provide them with a richer experience on their computer they will probably overlook it. I hate to say it, but if Microsoft delivers on it's promises with this new system and provides something that is significantly different than it's previous line of windows products that people will buy it and Microsoft will make more money and extend their monopoly.

So far thay seem to have done everything right with the tight integration they are promissing which should enhance the users experience. It's too bad the Justice Department is letting this happen if they could only see how much this will help and hurt consumers at the same time, not to mention what it will do to competition.

Yes this will help consumers in ways I've already mentioned and that Microsoft has mentioned, but it will also hurt several of them if they are denied the freedom to use what they want to, however I'm willing to bet that 80-90% of the Windows users out there don't care what they're using and will just use whatever someone puts in front of them.

Competition of course will be hurt quite a bit, but this should not be surprising either coming from Microsoft. Microsoft plays hardball, and they have the resources to play harder than anyone.

I'm not pro-Microsoft by any means, but I can recognize that they do have a good business and excellent marketing which has brought them to where they are today and will continue to carry them in the future. As for Linux and other open alternatives, I'm not sure. I personally use Linux as my primary operating system, but I can also see that Linux has no real business model or good marketing and unless that is changed, giants like Microsoft will trample them out of existance.

Having a better product isn't enough.

Free==no good!

[swordgeek]

I have a client that was just bought out by a company making business based on what a bunch of clueless execs decide in a little office, somewhere far away. I look at this situation, and understand perfectly well why MS is going to continue to steamroller over everyone they can. Here are some policies.

1) Thou shalt use no free software, because it's unsupported and will therefore break.
Now their main app is serving data up through samba, but because Mother Corp. says so, they're going to have to find something else. The stupid part is, they're outsourcing support anyways, and the company (mine) doing support _will_ support samba! There's just no vendor to blame when it breaks.
2) Thou shalt use (backup product A), despite the fact that (backup product B) is better, cheaper, has been successfully implemented across the company for several years, and is the only supported software for their large tape library.

With decisions like this, it's no wonder that companies (i.e. MS but not exclusively them) can get away with increasing their market share with a crappy product over and over again.

Here's an idea: Let the techs make the tech decisions for tech reasons, then watch bad companies rot and productivity increase immensely!

Due to MS' concerted effort?

[13013dobbs]

I wonder if MS' continued growth is due to their being able to have a unified front against other companies? MS acts as one while Linux has numerous groups all with the same core beliefs (basicly) but, with their own idea of how things should be done. When MS puts out a piece of software, there is only one version at a time. Often in the Linux world you will have a free* version, a open* version, a gnu* version, etc... MS is once again able to use its unified front against these other (and often times better) products to give the impression that it's product is more popular and thus (in their eyes) better.

Why exactly did you post this?

[DrEldarion]

Did anyone really expect Microsoft to start slowing down? They're the biggest and most profitable software company out there. The quality of what they sell is really irrelevant from a business standpoint. What matters is that they know how to sell it, keep selling it, and make large quantities of money from selling it. They do that well. Very well.

How many people here DIDN'T know that Microsoft was going strong?

Honestly, I don't think this article was posted to inform us of anything, or to be interesting. I think the sole reason that this was posted was to see the flames fly at Microsoft. If that's the case, you really need to grow up.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:Enemies are forever

[NumberSyx]

Ever hear of someone choosing to switch to windows ?

I did once for a couple of weeks. I got tired of having to fight with Linux to do the simplest things and I wanted USB, DvD and all sorts of things I thought Linux couldn't deliver. I had forgotten why I switched to Linux in the first place. I am not going to go into detail about how horrible Windows was (anyone who says its easy to install Windows, has never done it), but I can tell you I am back to Linux, I have USB, DvD and all that other stuff, I have vowed never to return to Windows.

Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.

Microsoft's biggest competitor...

[big.ears]

Microsoft's biggest competitor isn't Linux, Mac, OS/2, Sun, Oracle, Beos, etc.--its themselves, because they have to give people a reason to buy new versions of their old products. They do this in several different ways--one is by adding features (e.g., they added Explorer to their OS, and XP has built-in .zip and mp3/wma support. These additions weren't necessarily motivated by the need to kill off netscape/winzip/winamp,--they were motivated by the need to get users to upgrade.) Another way is to make their older products subtly incompatible with their newer products (Like all the different versions of Word that didn't work well with eachother, or the criminal differences between Word format and their Works format. For a long time, it was impossible to read one with the other. A third way is to make it difficult, impossible, or illegal to move old software to a new computer.

Their .net strategy is a way to avoid all these games. Instead of having to produce a better word processor to convince people to upgrade from Office 97, they develop a steady revenue stream by offering their product as a service, and charging monthly. Its brilliant, and they probably have the power to do it. Fortunately, as long as their are free alternatives out there (mozilla, abiword, openoffice, etc.), they will not be able to capitalize entirely on their position, EVEN IF THOSE ALTERNATIVES ARE NOT USED BY THE MAJORITY OF COMPUTER USERS. AOL funds Netscape development but uses Explorer because right now, Explorer is a little better, and if they don't have an "Ace in the hole", Microsoft will no longer need to give away Explorer. Microsoft's strategy can be successful at quashing competing companies, but the open source alternatives don't play by the same business rules, and are thus very important for keeping Microsoft in check.

Re:All your business press are belong to us...

[Philbert Desenex]

The business press (local, national and international) has traditionally been very nice to companies that are currently on top, but the kind of 100% criticism-free reporting that Microsoft gets is just astounding.

No business reporter ever got fired for kissing Microsoft's butt, I guess. This article from Brill's Content describes what happens to reporters who don't toe the M$ line.

Microsoft Everywhere

[iomud]

If everything works as planned, Microsoft's software could be at nearly every point a consumer or corporation touches the Web. Since the Internet is now the backbone of most computing, that puts Microsoft at the center of all things digital.

Does anyone else find that deeply disturbing? I certainly do.

Don't be afraid, look at the real fact!

[CrazyLegs]

Look, M$ produces suck-ass products and we all know it. But they figured out how to market hard and own the markets they choose. However, the Business Week article - besides being an overt blow-job for M$ advertising dollars - is almost science-fiction in its analysis.

M$ will continue to make lots of money, no doubt. But there are a few issues that need to be understood:

• M$ will NEVER make significant money from Internet-based subscription services. People don't like to pay for stuff they think they can get for free off the Web. Lots of companies have tried this route and failed - and M$ doesn't seem to have more clues about the Internet-as-a-business-model than anyone else.
• M$ will NEVER make any serious inroads into the big corporate datacenters - contrary to what their PR and the press will tell you. I work in Big Corporate Land and can tell you that any M$ technology that's snuck onto the raised floor is going buh-bye in favour of Unix.
• .Net is a junky vision and is just a rehash of ActiveX, DNA, and whatever other names they've used in the past. It's more marketing concept than it is a set of solutions. The folks who adopt .Net in any meaningful way are the same folks who develop with ActiveX, OLE, MTS, etc. today. I don't see any new markets opening up with .Net
• Finally, M$ on everything we touch? Don't make me laugh! They have screwed up more often than they haven't - settop box software, PDAs, phones. Need I go on?

In the end, M$ makes loadsadough and will continue to do so. But they're not poised to dominate the world, me buckos. They're big, they're bloated, and not every pie in which they currently have a finger will taste very good to consumers. 'nuff said.

Re:Microsoft will die, just give it time

[s20451]

Microsoft will eventually fall victim to the same forces that destroyed the Soviet Union as well as the old-world monarchies in Europe.

The problem with your argument is that Communism never made anybody rich. The forces that caused the collapse of the USSR were economic more than political; they were just bankrupted by their "business model" of oppressive centralized control. People seem to have much more patience with repression than with starvation, and I'm not seeing too many economic problems over at MS.

MS will probably collapse in time, as do most huge organizations, but it probably won't be because they're evil. It will probably be more like a shift in the economic climate, such as the one that did in the great rail companies.

Allow me to butt in

[D Anderson n'Swaart]

I think I'm a fairly standard, run-of-the-mill computer nerd, pro ope-source blah blah woof woof. But be that as it may, I have never seriously used Linux. I have used Windows 95 and Windows 2000 on my home systems, but I have never installed and kept a Linux distro. Why?

Well, I wanted to, because I wanted to support an operating system that I believe deserves to be supported. I also didn't want to support Microsoft, even if it was only an implied support by using their product, since heaven forbid I pay for anything made by them. However, each time I investigated options that would give me the same sort of applications etc in Linux that I use in Windows, I came up a little short. It wasn't that there were no applications out there; it was that these applications weren't of the same standard as Microsoft ones. No, I am not trying to troll. I am no fan of Microsoft, believe me.

I am not saying that the applications I tried were less stable than the M$ equivalents. But basically, because I am a writer, I need three things: a good word processor that won't die, a good browser, and a good music program. Okay, when I'm screwing around with other stuff then I want some more, but that's what I basically require of my system. Linux gave me a system that was friendly enough, and the music program was...oki. But there are no word processors out there that can compete with Microsoft Word. Sure, Word has crashed on me a couple of times. Yes, I've even lost a couple of pages of novel a few times. But StarOffice et al do not have the same feature set that Word has, and the features they do have are not packaged as neatly. I might have been tempted to use StarOffice for word processing if only it could use a blue background and white text, because I really like the way that it combines everything into one package, whereas M$ Office is a whole bunch of separate applications.

But the simple fact of the matter is that, when it comes to an operating system that is very stable and a word processor that is very functional and wonderful to use, Microsoft is sadly still on top with Windows and Word 2000. Word XP is even better, despite the fact that the interface looks like a webpage. For anything else...I would have to go third party, and could probably find something equally good in Linux. But the problem is that, especially for luzers, the things I have mentioned here are the things that are used the most. So until some really neet applications are released that can threaten the Office suite, Microsoft will always be either a manopoly or a huge market leader.