Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft at the Tipover Point
David Gerard writes "In the wake of Microsoft's first flat quarter, The Inquirer brings us The IT Industry Is Shifting Away From Microsoft - Linux is being taken seriously, Microsoft is not trusted and our favorite monopoly is finding it harder and harder to compete with 'free.'"
It's an extended holiday, and any opinion peices you see during these days are little more than weak efforts to fill a quota. I would also assume that this article was posted on slashdot to fill a similar hole.
To be fair, does Microsoft's flattening revenue have to do with "open source" taking their marketshare, or is it because many customers are quite happy with older Microsoft products and have refused to sign up to the recent licensing agreements? I know a couple of very large corporations whose desktops are NT 4, and they're only grudgingly finally upgrading to 2000. This same thing can be seen with countless users continuing to use Office 97, etc -- Given this, a flattening or declining revenue stream seems obvious.
Office and Windows rely on being ubiquitious to drive sales. Every free copy of Word that goes out there, every stolen copy of Windows, serves to cement Microsoft's monopoly in place. When people now have to think in terms of Windows and Word as a paying proposition, the relatively high prices for Windows and Office suddenly become a factor. Free is pretty good, but Sun seems to be making money off of "reasonably priced."
This is my sig.
> You know what this means right? We've backed Microsoft into a corner, so now it's going to pull every dirty trick in the book to get it's profits back...
And this differs from their previous behavior, how?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The editorial points mostly at Microsoft's failed offerings like MSN and Xbox, saying that the 80% profit numbers for Windows and Office can only sustain the failed products as long as Windows and Office remain profitable. It suggests that Linux and GPL'ed office products will erode that 80% profit number.
The "failed" products aren't a problem: that's exactly what big business is supposed to do. When you've got a product or two that bring in tons of money, you throw lots of money around trying to invent other moneymakers. You know that your main product or two will eventually run dry: that's no surprise, and that's why you continue to throw money at other ideas trying to come up with the next big moneymaker.
Most of these other sideline products (MSN, Xbox, smart phones) will fail. But that's not unexpected: most small businesses and startups fail. This is what big businesses do: fund R&D trying to come up with the Next Big Thing to replace their current revenue stream.
It's the same thing Microsoft did with Office: initially, they were an OS-only company. They got into Office because they needed to diversify, just like every big business did. Office started as a pretty crummy product that got routinely spanked by both WordPerfect and Lotus. But given enough time and enough money, Office became a profit machine. Microsoft is actually pretty lucky to have two dynamo products in the market at once.
Think of MS like 3M: could 3M survive simply by producing Post-It Notes? No, they have a huge amount of diversity and R&D running to find the Next Big Thing. The more products you throw at the market, the more chances you have of staying power.
What's your damage, Heather?
But could they? It would destroy their MSWind system. It would put them into competition with OpenOffice on a system where they don't control the APIs. And the people already using it despise them. And once their current customers realize that there's an alternative, they'll despise them too.
MS might come out with a BSD derived OS though. They can do that without giving up everything. And Apple has, again, proved that it can be done by a commercial company. But don't look for MS to do anything that causes them to need to admit ANYTHING.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Long before Windows 95 there was OS/2. A far better implementation of a GUI interface. Stable, powerful and good looking. Better than Mac OS was at the time and far better than Windows 3.x and it didn't crash all the time.
:)
To be accurate you have to say that Microsoft has *never* actually created anything new. They are not innovators, they are remarketers of existing technology. Period. If you look at the history of the company, they have purchased, stolen or borrowed everything they have. Bill Gates didn't "invent" DOS, he bought it. He didn't "invent" Windows. He didn't "invent" Word or Excel or Powerpoint or Access or Front Page or... Remember Word Star, Word Perfect, Lotus 123, etc. ? Those were all forerunners of the Microsoft products and they were all better. The reason Microsoft took over was because they had the marketing behind MS-DOS and once they had their stranglehold on the OEMs with that it was just a matter of time before the rest happened. IBM REALLY screwed up there. Digital Research had a better DOS but didn't have the marketing at the time.
My point is that Microsoft has not done anything that someone else didn't do first or even better. It's too bad IBM didn't have Bill Gates in their marketing department. We'd be much better off than we are today.
Oh wait - we have Linux now so maybe not!
Have you hugged your penguin today?
Pardon me, but the article seems like a bunch of half-assed opinions with no facts to back them up, mixed in with a little bit of good old fashoned flaming/ranting.
Licensing 6.0 is a disaster, and so is Product Activation. At least we know that much.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Come on now people, companies go through good times and bad times, and I wouldn't count Microsoft out so easily -- especially since our point of fact is from The Inquirer. (The most reputable source for news since man put script to paper.)
Moreover, let's keep in mind, Microsoft is a heavily diversified company with an overwhelming monopoly to weild, and thye've taken losses in some very touchy areas -- especially the home entertainment business. Their business on a whole may be flat, but some parts of their business doing AMAZINGLY well.
In business, there is no single factor to bring down a company (well, besides money of course), but rather it's a aglomeration of tons of facts which balance the company. Even with Microsoft's "flat" quarter, they've got a lot of steam to pump other products up. Just look at their cash reserves.
But Open Source doesn't NEED to "is coming anywhere CLOSE to Microsoft popularity". That's a part of the point. It merely needs to get "good enough" penetration that people start developing vertical application for it. And it's already there. All of a sudden, there's need for the more general applications. And what do you know, many of them are already available.
The cost saving will frequently make a choice that popularity ignores. Thus the tipping point isn't anywhere near the point of "equal popularity". It's a lot cheaper to choose Linux. And with the price of computers dropping, the cost of the OS and Office Software can be more than the cost of the computer. Not even counting the cost of keeping track of the licenses. Or the cost of the file formats becoming incompatible. Or the cost of...
Whether we are actually near the tipping point is arguable. Claiming that we aren't because most people "prefer" MS software is...at best misleading.
P.S.: Do you really put more faith in the stories from the major media? I have to believe that you've never been on the scene of something that you later saw reported. The major media deserve NO more credence than the Weekly World News. That they are a trifle subtler doesn't give them more credence, it merely means that they fool a larger fraction of the people.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This must have been written by a fanboy, and not a serious person. The flattening of Microsoft's profits is long overdue; it is a sign of a company reaching middle age. The growth of a startup company in an undersaturated market cannot be maintained forever. Eventually, new products cease to be useful. At least not worth replacement for the sake of replacement.
For thirty years, Microsoft competed in a market that had essentially zero competition. Now, after having delivered fairly robust and stable systems (Windows XP and 2k), they are no longer selling to untapped markets. Of course their profits are going to taper off. This has absolutely nothing to do with Linux, BSD, Apple, or Sun. This has everything to do with classic market mechanics.
The article leads some fun 'rah rah' type cheerleading, but it misses the point. Are things changing for Microsoft? Undoubtedly. Are they solely or even mostly due to 'upstart' operating systems? Not a chance. I'd love it if some vertical apps (particularly EMR systems) were being written for Linux. But they aren't. Beating MS isn't going to be like overwhelming an enemy. It'll be more like digging Frenchman out of trenches, one inch at a time, in WWI. (Feel free to run with the analogy. I haven't got the time;)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Man, that article is a huge circle-jerk. Look, I like Linux. I use it every day -- for development. I use XP for my everyday apps, because it's a better tool for those.
Linux has almost no penetration desktop, non-server applications. Evidence? Coming right up. Note Google's usage breakdown.
Note that Linux ranks dead last, below Windows 95! Yes, we're talking about Google, which is the geek's best friend, which would have naturally higher numbers than many other sites.
Tipover point? XP ranks first at 42%! Yes, Microsoft's latest O/S (which the article seems to think is a dismal failure) accounts for almost half of all web access!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Apache serves my web pages for the same reason - does what we need and it's way cheaper than IIS. IExplorer is so prone to attack that we use Firebird instead. Firebird also has a few features like pop-up blocking and tabbed windows that I wonder why anyone sticks with Explorer.
Re-reading your post gave me a distinct sense of Deja-Vu. Back in the late 70's, early 80's, IBM was pretty dismissive when it came to the Apple II. IBM just couldn't imagine that these desktop computers would amount to much. What IBM, and apparently you, failed to realize is that most businesses have pretty simple needs that can be met dozens of ways. When that's the case, price becomes an important factor.
I think the point he was making was that big customers can show MS that they are assessing technologies such as Star Office and Java Desktop, and immediately be offered huge discounts. That must have at least some effect on MS's bottom line.
And I'm not sure why you were modded "Troll" for making some reasonable points... oh, hang on, this is /.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
Wehn will people start to understand that Microsoft does not free market principles for it's success - it relies on a government granted monopoly called copyrights. There is a difference.
If those companies had signed up for the new license, then they would still be paying Microsoft.
#1. Open Source is part of the equation. It allows companies that do sign with Microsoft to get huge discounts.
#2. Other companies do not upgrade their old Microsoft products. But they may have problems getting licenses for those products in the future.
#3. Other companies have migrated all or a portion of their systems to Open Source products.
#4. Microsoft's other products are losing money.
It is a bit complicated. There isn't any single factor. And that is why Microsoft is having such a hard time dealing with it.
For example, the author says that Microsoft refuses to change, but they have a history of doing just that. They followed Apple's lead on GUIs. They went from poo-poo-ing the internet to become one of its chief exploiters. One of their key corporate virtues is a distinct lack of NIH (not invented here) Syndrome; many of their key products were originally developed elsewhere (DOS, IE, PowerPoint, WebTV, FrontPage, VisualBasic, SQL Server), or are direct copies of other companies' products (Pocket PC, Ultimate TV, Windows).
Granted, they've shown a certain unwillingness to overhaul their systems at the cost of backward compatibility (like Apple has peridoically done, with the transition from ][ to Mac, from 68K to PPC, from MacOS to OSX), but don't mistake that for obstinance.
There is always someone better, faster, smarter, or more creative than you. Suck it up, be happy there are things to learn from others, and share what you know. MS has tremendous resources and I'd love to see them join the rest of the tech community instead of constantly trying to force the computing industry to adopt their worldview.
Its likely that a group of hackers would crack it, and allow Linux to open the "secure" content, but that would be illegal, which kinda kills the idea of Linux as an OS for the masses...
This is the real threat, and considering MS's history I really do think they'll try it. OpenOffice can open Word files? No problem, DRM them and poof, no more (legal) OpenOffice. Legal doesn't much matter to you and me, I figure that if I've bought the content I can bloody well open it on the platform of my choice; but legal does matter to corporate adopters. If they can't *legally* open the MS Word document sent to them, they'll leave Linux, its that simple. And, ultimately, legal does matter to us, if we're forced to run pirate than we are open to lawsuits, arrest, etc. The DMCA must be overturned.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
But could they? It would destroy their MSWind system.
Remember there are two Windows OSes, Server and Desktop. Linux has been eating away at the Server OS and looks like it's winning, but MS is still strong since they have AD and strong integration on the back end. That won't last long with Novell and Suse attacking it.
As for the desktop OS, people will still be reluctant to use anything but MS Office; OO may be good, but when it comes to documents which have been edited by dozens of people and have hundreds of pages with different formatting everywhere, only the same version of Word that created that document opens it without any errors. Even if OO does open it correctly, the cost of reviewing the document just once for formatting inconsistancies makes buying the same version of Word worth the price.
MS could port MS Office to Linux/BSD, which would ensure their cash cow continues to bring in money. But would they do it? Probably not since Office is about the only reason people don't desert Windows. And without the desktop Windows OS, the server OS loses a lot of the functionality.
They could build Windows on top of existing distributions; but then they lose control of plug and play, which would be the biggest complaint from users of Windows on Linux; people would blame MS for Linux's shortcomings when their brand new digital camera failed to connect properly. They could build their own distribution to have better control of plug and play, but then they'd have to release under GPL... I doubt MS would be willing to do that. To build a hybrid OS like Apple and keep it closed source would do nothing for MS since it's no different from what they have now.
So unless (until?) there's a shift in their thinking about Open Source, I think they're just gonna keep fighting (losing) the battle by adding new bells and whistles and spending a lot more money on the PR FUD front.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
The thing that makes Microsoft special is that it can (reasonably) legitimately cook the books such that their results don't go through good times and bad times. In good times, they put their extra income into hiding, such that they can pull it out later to cover the bad times. The fact that they're actually having a flat quarter, therefore, means that either they decided they wanted to have a flat quarter (other companies getting too jealous and dangerous, perhaps), accounting standards have become such that they can't do this trick anymore (in the wake of Enron, it's possible), or they've been actually having bad times for long enough that they've run out of ways to cover them.
It's certainly possible that the market for MS products hasn't grown any since the mid 90s, when they saturated the market for everything they make money on, and so their trend of making more on paper each year has now caught up with them. This could be simply a result of the fact that you can't make any more money when you already have all the money.
It's also possible that their tricks have now been outlawed in such a way that someone would actually end up in jail, so now they have to report what they actually make when they actually make it. I wouldn't be too surprised if this were the case, since regulators and Congress have been really worried about companies doing exactly what Microsoft does not to maintain the appearance of slowly and steadily improving, but simply staying in business.
Or maybe Microsoft is actually at the end of their rope, and have avoided appearing this way due to their enormous assets and complex accounting, and will lose all their money next year. I wouldn't bet on that, but I wouldn't be surprised if this quarter signals that Microsoft will no longer be performing (in an earnings way) absolutely reliably in the future, which may shake the market's weird (from a technical standpoint) confidence in them.
I just went through the software I use daily and while most of it runs on Windows XP, none of it's by Microsoft.
Yeah, well, there's your problem. You read Slashdot. You know of alternatives to Microsoft junk and are willing to seek them out. The vast majority of people are not, and will use just what comes on their machine.
The best examples of Microsoft lock-in are Outlook/Exchange and ActiveX. If you want to use Exchange to its fullest potential, you'd better have all Windows machines in your organization, or forget it. The Mac version was shit until late 2000. In Outlook 8.2.2, attempting to accept a meeting invitation would crash a Mac. Things got better when Outlook 2001 came around, but even that still doesn't do certain things like (IIRC) voting buttons. Now if you want OS X-native Exchange connectivity, you need Entourage. But Entourage does a shit job at it. It doesn't speak MAPI, instead relying on other protocols (IMAP, SMTP) for everything-- protocols that are typically turned off in most organizations, who won't turn them back on due to security concerns and whatnot. And the Windows version of Outlook is like the Roach Motel for your data. Ever notice that Outlook will happily import data from about a dozen different competing products, but that exporting data out of Outlook is a major pain in the ass? Think that's not intentional? That's lock-in. Make it painful to try to use or switch to something else.
Then there's ActiveX. A Microsoft concoction designed to appeal to lazy developers. They develop stuff in ActiveX, and if you want to use it on a non-IE browser, you're SOL. That's lock-in.
Bottom line: Microsoft products play best with other Microsoft products, and grudgingly if at all with other products. If you want cross-platform capability, you're better off with Linux or OS X-- those platforms MUST interoperate very well so they'll be adopted into Microsoft strongholds. Microsoft stuff doesn't HAVE to work with anything but other Microsoft stuff.
Here's another example of tacit Microsoft lock-in: the Snap Server applicances. Yeah, they run some Unix variant. Yeah, they provide Windows and Apple file sharing, or a reasonable facsimilie thereof. But here's something you need to know about it: files touched by Mac clients don't get their Windows backup flag set correctly, so Windows backup software can't tell what do put on tape when a differential backup is run-- Mac-changed files don't get backed up. The Snap people know, and they don't care. What's implied is that if you want everything to work right you should get rid of your Macs.
Now that Phoenix has signed on to "Trusted Computing" we are facing the very real possibility that the next generation of hardware (and MS OS) will have a very difficult to break content lock in. [Linux would] have to run in "Non-Trusted" mode, MS webservers wouldn't serve to a non-trusted computer... ... This is the real threat, and considering MS's history I really do think they'll try it. OpenOffice can open Word files? No problem, DRM them and poof, no more (legal) OpenOffice.
You are forgetting something - making the classic American mistake. America != The World. In fact, America is a minority when it comes to population.
The world is techifying. The most populace countries (China, India) are quickly arming their preverbial IT armies.
Your stupid DRM laws won't apply to us, the rest of the World. We don't care for them. We'll buy non-DRM hardware and run non-locking software on top of it. The large hardware companies would be mad to turn against us since we outnumber you, ooo, by about 32 to 1 or so.
I know we (the rest of the world) are all not rich yet. But the balance of power is shifting - just check your outsourcing statistics.
There is only a small degree to which American laws can be used to consolidate Microsoft's position. Microsoft knows it cannot ignore the rest of the world because it is the bigger market and the future market is a global one. Microsoft maintaining a global monopoly is a whole other ball game and one they are starting to lose.
Free Gamer - Free games list and commentary
> If Gates wanted to, he could by up every Linux
> company with pocket change...
Which would accomplish precisely nothing he couldn't accomplish by starting his own distribution. Buying up Linux companies would just encourage the founding of more Linux companies.
> I put a little more credence into what financial
> analysts are saying...
Well, of course. Just look how well they predicted the dot-bomb crash.
Someone is paying those analysts for those opinions. It isn't you and I. I wonder who it might be?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I showed the Monkeyboy clip to a non-techie friend of mine. He had the best take yet on it. "My God! This is the way those Amway assholes act!" Yeah, Monkeyboy made for a lot of snide comments but there is no context whatsover in which it looks good. It's indicative of a huge grape Flavr-Aid happening.
As a developer for a Major Microsoft vendor, I value flexibility. The more flexibility I have with current software apps in production, the more options I have for development and integration. Whenever we choose a Microsoft app, I know that we will ONLY be able to use SQL Server, it will ONLY work on the Microsoft OS and my options are extremely limited.
If one thing in that entire chain fails, the entire chain fails.
But by going with tools and apps that are cross platform compatible, I can mix and match with no worries. The development community is much more vast and mixed as well and any problem I can possibly conceive has usually been solved. By choosing tools and apps that give you options, you have a greater fklexibility for development.
This is one reason why whenever I we decide to purchase new software or apps, I ALWAYS evaluate open source projects first and actively promote them to the company; I have been asked if this is contradictory to our companies nature since Microsoft is our biggest client and my response has been 'We run Microsoft on every desktop here in the compny as well as on numerous servers. Do they honestly expect EVERYTHING to be Microsoft?'
Fact remains that Microsoft decided early to be a desktop company and never really put a decent effort towards servers until recently... which is a little late in the game. They realized that by getting businesses to buy in to their product, the could get software developers to buy in and then consumers. But they focused on the desktops of the business, not the servers (as shown by their weak effort put into Xenix which was later sold to old SCO and currently owned by the new SCO).
Linux has always been server side and as such has a ddistinct advantage; they are attacking the problem from a top down perspective. Get it on the servers and then onto business desktops. Once the worker spends 8 hours out of nearly everyday with Linux, Windows will be seem awkward and unstable to even the most computer illiterate luddite. Software manufacturers will realize that businesses use Linux for desktops as well as servers, lose their fear of the GPL and realize that you can make closed source software for open source systems.
Once Photoshop is released for Linux, that will herald the day of the Linux desktop and Microsoft will truly be scared.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
You make one big error in your judgement.
You forget that these countries are self sufficient in everything they need to maintain themselves. So they will never reach a point where they must inflate into infinity in order to pay for their imports like has been done in the united states with reguard to oil, (and some foods).
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
I think that if Linux is to really have inroads into the desktop market, the desktop has to standardize. Sure I can train my wife to use KDE, but what if she goes to work and they use Gnome, or what if she works on a Sun SPARC and uses CDE? It would be nice to get things more standardized.
In fact its this very reason why I run fvwm2 as my window manager under Gnome at work (I dumped metacity), because I use Linux at work/home, and a Sun SPARC Ultra60 at school, and the Sun doesn't have Gnome/KDE, and I'm a user of that system, not an admin (I take classes, not admin the network). I can run FVWM on Linux/Sun/HP-UX/SGI/BSD/AIX with little effort in compilation (doesn't require Gnome/KDE libs, et al), and have a common desktop that looks, feels, and behaves the same accross *nix platforms.
My boss at work uses RedHat9/KDE/sawfish on one machine and Fedora1/Gnome/metacity on his other one. I use Fedora1/Gnome/fvwm2 on mine. Another co-worker uses Knoppix/Gnome/metacity. All of our desktop window management systems behave differently. I have a hard time using my boss's computer because the windows management behaves differently than mine, et al. So how can I teach my family all of this? I can't. Thats why some sort of standardization would be helpful.
I do, though, give up some functionality that metacity or sawfish has. But I don't want to have to learn how to use X different X11 windows management systems. Thats partly what Microsoft does have going for it. I sit down at a WinNT/Win95/Win98/WinME/Win2000/WinXP machine and the windows management is the same. There is always a "start" menu, and its organized (by default) in the same way, and its easy to change some of its behavior - you change it the exact same way regardless of what version of Windows you are on.
We'll buy non-DRM hardware
Trusted Computing is subtle and insidious. If you have "non-DRM hardware" pretty much all that accomplished is that YOU get locked out. You can't run any of the new software. You can't use any of the new files. You get locked out of more and more websites.
Non-DRM hardware is like a speakerless computer. The "new enhanced" computer can do everything the old computer can do. There is no reason NOT to buy the computer that has free speakers (or DRM) attached, you can just leave the speakers (or DRM) turned off and it works just like a "plain" computer. Of course if you leave the DRM turned off you get locked out of all of the new software, new files, and new websites. Ultimately you may end up locked out of the internet.
As for other countries, either they adopt it or they get locked out of all sorts of things. I'm pretty sure they are also planning on having each country run its own "Root Of Trust". Most countries will absolutely JUMP at the chance to have that sort of power over all of the computers in their country. The Digital Imprimatur is a long read, but it contains an excellent description of how seductive Trusted Computing can be for any government.
I certainly HOPE that there is a massive rebellion against Trusted Computing, but do not underestimate the threat! They have a very very plausible route to conquering the world with this crap. In many ways it is exacly like Microsoft's notorious "Embrace and Extend" tactic. The new Trusted Computers will "embrace" ALL existing software and files and websites. It then "extends" new software files and websites. For anyone who goes along with the change everything "just works", all old stuff and all new stuff. Anyone does not go along with the change begins suffering more and more as they run into more and more "new stuff" that doesn't work. They get error messages when they try to instal new software. They get error messages when they try to open new files. They get error messages when they try to view a new website. They get error messages when they try to read E-mail. Error messages saying that they have "old" and "obsolete" hardware. Messages telling them they need to "upgrade".
Most people are not techies, they don't understand anything about Trusted Computing. They just want the damn computer to work. When they start downloading free music files and they get error messages about their hardware, they don't care why they are getting errors, they just want it "fixed" so it will work. They will choose the new "enhanced" computer because that is the only one that can play the free files. That is the only "fix" to be able to play all of the free music and stuff they will be offered.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
That said, start expecting to see exploits coming out a lot -- there's simply going to be more people attacking as well as using.
Security problems are bound to happen. It's going to be up to us to prove that we can respond faster and more professionally than Microsoft. Get ready!
Berto
Does China imprison people for organized religious worship? Yes.
Does China imprison political activists based ENTIRELY on words? Yes.
Does China force women to undergo abortions? Yes.
"In other words, your entire post is based off your grossly innacurate perception of another country."
If any part of YOUR post had pointed out inaccuracies in mine, I might consider you insightful like the person who moderated you. As it is, since you offer no facts it's just flamebait.
The Inquirer's article is interesting, but the underlying forces have little to do with open source, and have been building for years.
For years, Microsoft was the classic "growth" stock. MS revenue and profit regularly posted double digit gains and beat analyst expectations. As a result, the value of MS stock soared into the stratosphere, making Chairman Bill Gates the richest man in the world based on the value of his Microsoft holdings, and making millionaires of many Microsoft employees. Growth companies don't pay dividends: they plow thier profits back into the company, and people invest in them because they expect the value of the stock to go up.
What happens when your company hits the limits of its growth? The dilemma MS faces is its own success. They own 95% of the desktop world. Almost everyone who _can_ use Windows and Office _does_ use it. They won't get continuing double-digit increases in revenue and profit from thier core business, because they've saturated thier market.
They've managed to narrowly beat revenue and profit estimates the past few years, but if you look closely at thier numbers, they _haven't_ done it from sales of Windows and Office. They've done it from gains in and returns on thier investment portfolio. MS has something like $49 billion in cash and short-term securities, and is getting an increasing number of complaints from investors that they ought to start returning some of that cash hoard to investors in the form of dividends.
Microsoft is in transition from a "growth" company to a "mature" company. Mature companies generate large amounts of cash, but _don't_ show tremendous growth. If it _doesn't_ show tremendous growth, the value of MS stock will drop out of the stratosphere, and folks whose wealth depends on the value of their MS stock won't be happy.
The challenge Steve Ballmer faces as MS CEO is to somehow support the value of MS stock while looking for huge new markets MS can enter and dominate to continue its growth.
So yes, you can look for MS to use any means it can to generate revenue and increase profits. But we didn't back them into a corner: they did it to themselves by becoming _too_ successful.
______
Dennis
I see it coming. The people who run Microsoft are clever; many readers here don't think so, but they've managed to outpace and outwit everyone from their competitors to govermnent investigators. Lately we've heard about MS doing "why do you use Linux" surveys and paying a fair amount of attention to the Linux side of the world. No imagine MS Linux: The OS is OSS, free to all. Then you simply buy the CS versions of MS software that run on it, and presto: as a business owner you now have the wonder of Linux, with its highly touted security and "free" price tag, and the integration with your existing MS Windows infrastructure. Imagine Linux web and database servers that interoperate with Active Directory and allow for seamless intranet connections with MS boxes; that's what I see happening. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a full-steam-ahead development team working on it as I type.
The person who wrote this really knows their stuff. MS has been backing themselves into a corner for a while now and while most windows users can be distracted by bright shiny objects some are admitting the fact that their OS has major problems that are not going away anytime soon.
As one reader here wrote that some websites or servers will not work without the seal of "owned by MS" in the future, it is already here. There are some sites now that will not work with any other OS and browser other than Windows and IE. Can you guess where the content creation tools that made these sites come from?
Even the MS page to lodge a complaint against it for the anti-trust case only works under Windows and IE....which if you are running those, you will be less likely to complain. Good idea I guess....but proves the case against them.
Microsoft will reap what it has sown and it could not happen to a nicer bunch!
When our firewall got hacked and I was reimplementing it in Linux or OpenBSD, I was constantly being asked, what is Linux, how much does it cost?
I used to tell em its free but they'd give me the look that Ive fallen for a nigerian scammer or havent read between the lines, or stealing software.
Nothing in life comes free... I got that twice as I was setting up the firewall. They also needed a big company behind the software regardless of my opinion of its stability. IT experts around the globe understand and respect opensource operaring systems, but companies as a whole cant put their trust into Linux. Microsoft is a face. It has an address and everyone knows that address. There are phone numbers to call and people to threaten should things break. You cannot call a kid in a garage and threaten him.
So companies like RedHat leaving out desktop users and focusing on business are doing Linux a favor. They're doing IT technicians in those companies a favor by allowing them to use what they trust in most. Once you have every institution use a Linux or BSD server as a redundant firewall or file server... other applications for it will spring up, and that tide, Microsoft cant go against.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Here we are 20 years on and I can't actually remember the last time I saw an IBM branded PC in a shop. I've seen the odd model of laptop but the days of walking into a PC retailers and seeing swathes of IBM PCs are long gone. Microsoft is starting to go exactly the same way.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
In the end, this may be what saves us all. Many people don't upgrade their hardware and software all that frequently. Businesses outside the computer industry also tend not to. The huge base of existing hardware that is not "trusted" provides a strong disincentive for any software manufacturer or website operator considering limiting access to "trusted" systems only.
In fact, if trusted computing succeeds, it will be through the opposite route: making non-trusted hardware and OS software effectively unavailable to the masses first and then rolling out websites and software that require this capability only after most users have the required hardware. This could take a very long time, given the slowing rates of hardware turnover.