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Google Muscles Into Microsoft's Turf
gollum123 copies and pastes: "AP has a story on how as Google rapidly rolls out new products, the company best known for its wildly popular search engine is muscling into the software giant's turf, including its stronghold: the computer desktop."
... then get back to me. Until then , plu-lease, the're just another application , albeit online.
the company best known for its wildly popular search engine
That's what Google do! I've always wandered.
I thought Netscape was going to do this... about 6 years ago. It hasn't quite happened yet. Firefox is getting much better and has many extensions, but it hasn't quite replaced the windows desktop.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
The abstract suggests (or did to me) that Google are doing something new. No such thing (at least in this article). It's just an editorial piece that basically says "boy, aren't google doing lots of stuff - I guess Microsoft must be getting worried".
Read reviews of shopping cart software
...they can rely on the quality of their products and their customers' loyalty.
/painfully straight face
~BS
They shouldn't have any problem competing on a level playing field.
Home of the EULA shirt
I won't be impressed until I see Google Office. And Gwindows. That will be something.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
I wonder how long it'll be before google snap up HyperOffice. They're based around the apps the guys who made WebOS made, and, to tell the truth, their products are pretty good, it just seems a shame that no-one uses them.
I'd make a bet that google will buy them out, and ruthlessly remarket, rape, and pillage their software.
Am I the only one who finds it ironic to read about Google's World Domination plans on Yahoo news ? :)
... I won't waste my time explaining what MS has that Google doesn't :)
:)
Google Search - ?
Gmail - Hotmail
Desktop Search - ?
That's how the tally stands for Google
But I gotta love http://www.google.com/firefox
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Get a clue Microsoft! The Google Toolbar supplements basic lack of features in IE (such as auto-complete, search box, and pop blocker). When it's your product, you don't need to add a toolbar extension, you just add the features to to the goddamn browser itself!
It's imporant to consider that web-based storage of information won't become viable for information other than the odd picture and written document until current internet connections get drasticly faster and more reliable overall.
It's also important to keep in mind that there are several key differences between web-based software and technologies and system-based software and technologies, especially with regards to an operating system.
The third consideration is that while Google is making progress, so is Microsoft. Granted, the G-man could catch MS, but I don't think it's quite as immenent as the article intones it to be.
A few weeks ago I was looking for a document on my company's very large file server. In fact it was a document with notes on a completitors product. So I did a document containing "company name" search. To my surprise it seemed almost ever document in our marketing department and sales departments had mentioned this company in like every second document.
:P
Several hours later I have a very unhappy looking network admin show up at my office curious about why I have so many documents open. Apparently S&M were trying to open some docs and they were locked by me. So I close the 5 documents I had open and give him the ok. He comes back 5 minutes later. 1500 documents were "locked" for my account. MS's search told had opened, and locked every document it listed in the find window and wouldn't release them until I had shutdown my PC.
Now the moral of the story is google isnt going to need to do a lot with a desktop search tool to impress me. Maybe I just ask too much of MS
Rather than write an OS, they will just buy someone out who already wrote an OS. Then they will take the code base and the technology and add some Google flare to it. They will make one hell of a search feature, to be sure. Oh wait, it's called Google desktop.
....End Conspiracy Theory....
Just look at what they have done lately. Picaso anyone? Keyhole viewer anyone? They are just taking these little companies in for the base apps to their upcoming OS in my conspiracy theory. After all you can't have a good OS without the bloat that comes pre-installed with it.
Watch for Google to buy things like an IM chat client, some cheesy MineSweeper game, and some sort of CD burning software. That gives them basically the core of what you get when installing Windows. All they need is the OS...
Hey, I'd install it when it comes out. Then go straight back to Windows when I need to game. That's the key for anyone trying to contend...make sure you get 100% software compatability, games included. Without that you just won't take over.
This is the part where Google wakes up in bed with the motherboard of its best server under the sheets with it.
Trolls: The high-tech version of those morons that scrawl obscenities in public bathrooms.
The article does not really say. I dont think having a Google search on the desktop means the end of Office. The masses are not ready to commit everything to web based applications just yet. For the forseeable future Google and MS are not (in my opinion anyway) going to be direct competitors on the desktop, unless Google decide to bring out their own Linux distro, or write an OS from scratch. Searching the desktop is just low hanging fruit for Google. Their own distro would still require several years to gain acceptance to the level where they become even a remote threat to MS.
Even if they were moving in this direction surely a Google web based desktop/app suite poses a far greater threat to Linux then the massively entrenched MS. Its the small players who get killed first in these battles.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The article makes a bold statement that it doesn't really back up. While Google does have the largest market share in web search and will be taking some of the share of desktop search soon, that's a long way from taking over the desktop. And an even farther stretch from making Microsoft's OS obsolete.
This guy doesn't even know the difference between memory and storage so why should I listen to him?
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
And how, pray tell, do you come to that conclusion?
Well, "Don't be evil" is their company motto.
I'm impressed with what google has done. They definetly (?) have a bright core group of people. But they don't have all that much money compared to other players in the computer industry, and those companies haven't succeded in thwarting M$. I think if google made an OS it would be like their website no frills and FAST. I wish them the best of luck.
"brxref
"If successful, Google could help refashion computing, making people less reliant on storing information on the Microsoft-powered PC on their desk and more dependent on free Web-based e-mail and search functions that can be accessed anywhere from any device regardless of the operating system." - Associated Press, 2004
/.ers the chance to discuss Google which we haven't done in 4 days so we're getting a bit antsy. Larry and Sergei, by the way, are cashing out stock to the tune of $1bn each. For those not following the stock, it's up about 65-70% since it's debut.
"Sun has always believed that a computer connected to a network is much more valuable than a disconnected one. The network is a resource with far more information and service capability than any one computer. It can provide access to its information and services to anyone, anyplace, anytime, on any type of device... The network does not replace the desktop; it extends it, makes it easier to use and much more ubiquitous. It's no longer a question of whether the complexity of software and computing will be moved onto the network. It's a question of how fast will it happen." - Pat Sueltz, Sun Microsystems, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal Nov 15, 1999.
To think that five years later we're discussing a search engine as a competitor to Microsoft. I can't think of anything that sounds more 1999 than that. The main difference here is, of course, that unlike Sun, you don't need to buy a Google "server" to run these services. They already exist. If Google acquires other web-based businesses (let's say, a direct Salesforce.com competitor or Salesforce.com itself, it's only a billion dollars), then they can very rapidly muscle into this.
Unfortunately, as someone else mentioned, there isn't much news in this article. I guess it justs gives us
I'm just waiting for Google to release the "true iPod killer" which can index 5 Libraries of Congress in a minute and weighs less than 1/1000th of a Volkswagen.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
First of all, let me know when Google finishes their "Google OS". Second, let me know when it will run Half-life 2. Granted, Google has a great search engine and that desktop thing ain't too shabby either but it is, with the exception of mail, variations on a theme. Google isn't so much in the business of coming up with new ideas and bringing them to market, they are just perfecting what others do. I'm not saying it isn't valuable (what other website name has been transformed into a verb) but to compare their handful of products with the breadth and depth of the Ms product line is laughable.
one thing striking about google is thier objectivity. every technology has been about bringing the results to the fore. no nonsense. be it email, search, ads, catalog search, picture search, news. i use each of these services almost every single day, and some of it several times a day. and they do it all free- now thats one hell of a company. microsoft does a remarkable job of thier offering - but they are always mired in controversy in more than one ways. dubious methods, and always biased. not that thats bad( i do not want to judge them there, the record speaks volumes) - but there are better ways to do it than that. thats what seperates google from microsoft.
Not so long ago, a small technology company made a software that made a specific document format ubiquitous. Technophile pundits hailed it as the end of the Microsoft monopoly. Not long after, a software giant followed up with a software platform that would make programs run on every operating system, and pundits predicted an end to the Windows era. These pundits of course, continued without qualms about their use of Microsoft software, and nobody questioned why anybody would use anything else.
Fast forward a few years. Microsoft continues to reign supreme. A fad operating system now plays contender, and pundits hail it to take over Windows one day. Nonetheless, everybody, including these pundits, continues to use Microsoft products without qualms. And this has been the status quo for more than 6~7 years, without Microsoft domination subsiding even a wee bit.
Wake me up when the pundits themselves start to migrate away from Microsoft products.
Go Microsoft?
Personally, I do not consider Google nor Microsoft evil (there goes my Slashdot image), I merely consider them companies trying to get rich each in its own way. Nevertheless, it seems to be the trend nowadays, Google is your friend and more of the same nonsens.
In the long run, I'm more afraid of a "oh, it's from Google so it's OK" mentality than the old "it's Microsoft so it must be evil" one. There is such a thing as trusting something or someone too much...
I say trust nobody - it's safer that way.
Is Microsoft paying attention?
XUL makes web based application servers practical.
User gets his desktop but all his 'stuff' resides elsewhere on the net and economy of scale takes general management functions like automated updates, backup, disaster recovery, etc. availabel to the 'small enterprise'. With Suns new biz model of paying for non-security related patches to it's 'free' OS, Sun better watch this as well.
If there is one threat to Mr. Softie and Sun, it's sleeping through a killer XUL app or two.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Gindows will be a modern cluster only operating system that can find what you want before you know you want it. Comes complete with a minibar.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Google has oogles of cash, buys MacOS, releases it on PC. Wanna puff?
We're still waiting for these to come to pass:
September 3, 2002
November 23, 1998
December 5, 2002
How long have people been saying the end of Microsoft is upon us?
There are already desktop-killing applications out there. The IMDB wiped out certain CD based movie databases. There are route finders that mean I don't have to have autoroute installed. There are CRM systems where you use a web interface and rent the service.
I'm using Gmail, and I can search for messages as quickly as I can search messages locally.
This is all the result of more users and faster networks. There's some nervousness still about "my data is online" but it's going to change. People will just do it because the benefits outweigh the risks.
As 3G grows, hi-speed will be accessible almost anywhere.
No. You're wrong. Why do so many people think this? They are responsible to their shareholders in that they cannot willfully or illegally lose their shareholders money. They do no have to forsake their values.
Time makes more converts than reason
As high speed network connections become more commonplace the mobile public will gravitate towards the best platform to keep their information at their fingertips and not stored on their home pc's which for many are inaccessible from abroad.
Google's email system is a good example of what thin clients should of been in the first place. The interface is slick, easy to use, and you can click from one function to another and it responds nearly as quick as a desktop based application. And this is over a 155k wireless connection. On my home FIOS system where I have 15mbit downloads it's faster than Thunderbird (Tunderbird however maintains my IMAP folders)
Regardless. Nx broke some ground with a network accessable desktop that ran Linux. No doubt that once it went Open source Google's engineers laid their hands on it and we may see something really productive.
Google rolls out a usbkey or firewirekey based product that keeps enough software to boot a network connection and windowing system to open a nx based desktop from any networked pc anywhere in the world. Yes then M$ should be worried becuase Google would of then presented the ultimate thin client that would be far cheaper per seat than any product currently produced so far. And if you think that the backend couldnt handle it you have to remember Google's search engine is ran by huge wharehouses of computers we hardly consider using for fileservers nowdays in one huge grid application.
Google just uses their knowledge in the field of searching and data-mining to create new services for its users.
plain old google to search the web, gmail to search and archive your mail and a desktop search to search and
manage your office/media files. it basically all comes down to the management of data.
Mircrosoft does everything. they want to provide everything for everybody. this is pointless.
they copy other peoples ideas and sell it as their own.
ok, they do own research as well. the only area where Microsoft seems to be good in is marketing.
Microsoft denies that Google has been the impetus for improvements in its products. Sohn says the company is simply responding to customer feedback.
That's a clever dodge given that "customer feedback" is most likely: "Increase Hotmail storage to match Google. And make Hotmail more like Gmail. Oh, and make desktop search as good as Google. Thanks."
So on one hand, Microsoft defends its entry into markets as "competition is good for the customer" meaning competition pushes innovation, but on the other hand, when others (read: Google) enter its markets, the competition apparently has no effect on its development.
Nice try, Microsoft. As a market leader its important to deny that competition is even possible, but when you're clearly playing catch-up, comments like these belie your insecurity about your own ability to "innovate."
The Google-Microsoft competition is good news for consumers because it means more choices and better products.
Everything else in the story is just fill.
Where pretty (anime) girls are well, you know that Im around
I spy on em and I loveem cause to me theyre all the same
I want to hug em and squeeze em they dont even know my name
They call me the wanderer yeah the wanderer
I roam around around around...
Oh well theres Syn thia on my left and theres Ack tavia on my right And Serena is the girl with that Ill be with tonight
And when she asks me which one I love the best I tear open my shirt I got TUX on my chest Cause Im the wanderer yeah the wanderer I roam around around around...
First, when you click the close button, it has to pop up a dialog box and ask, "Document has been changed. Would you like to save your changes now?" The possible responses must include the standard choices of yes, no, or cancel.
Second, when your browser crashes, it has to attempt to save the file and automatically recover it when you start up again. If it can't save it, it must have an autosave feature so that the maximum possible amount of data loss is bounded.
Web applications for word processing may be possible some day. As you point out, most of the stuff you need is there already. You do need to add some extra hooks in the browser, though. I wouldn't call those things trivial, either. HTTP is supposed to be stateless. Cookies violate that, but they are too limited to be used for word processing.
Word processing is very stateful, and to enable a web application to provide word processing will require fundamental changes to the way that web browsers operate. Perhaps the changes will be easy to implement, but they are very significant, and should not be made too lightly. The implications for security and privacy need to be examined thoroughly, at the very least.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
Since google is not planning on releasing their own browser, they could just merge with mozilla. Imagine what could happen if that merger occured. Then Microsoft would have even more to worry about.
If Santa and the Easter Bunny announced that they exist, I would probably believe them...
All this searching just makes me increasingly baffled as to why MS didn't include some cutesy GUI'd analog to slocate in XP. It seems like such a simple, straightforward technology: there's a perl port of it that's like 70 lines.
they are legally required to put profits for their shareholders above all other considerations
No. You're wrong. Why do so many people think this? They are responsible to their shareholders in that they cannot willfully or illegally lose their shareholders money. They do no have to forsake their values.
No, you're naive. The basic naivete comes from your language, in fact. "They do not have to forsake their values." Sure, they don't. But there's a _lot_ of pressure to do so.
Do you really believe people think this because they are whacky? Take a look at this passage from an article from the Harvard Business School:
Generating corporate virtue
By now, the story of Malden Mills and its owner, Aaron Feuerstein, is so familiar that the company name has become a sort of shorthand for corporate benevolence. The tale briefly told: In 1995, a fire destroyed Malden Mills' textile plant in Lawrence, an economically depressed town in northeastern Massachusetts. With an insurance settlement of close to $300 million in hand, Feuerstein could have, for example, moved operations to a country with a lower wage base, or he could have retired. Instead, he rebuilt in Lawrence and continued to pay his employees while the new plant was under construction.
"Why don't more companies act that way?" is a common reaction when people first hear the story. It is much too simplistic to reply that Feuerstein is a better person than most. Whatever Feuerstein's relative level of virtue, he had far fewer shareholders to answer to than the average CEO. Feuerstein's only shareholders are himself and several members of his family, who presumably share his willingness to sacrifice profits for the sake of the employees' wellbeing. (Feuerstein was perhaps too willing--Malden Mills filed for bankruptcy protection last November.) The typical CEO of a publicly held corporation, by contrast, is accountable to thousands of shareholders.
My purpose here is not to denigrate the share-owned corporation, which is a fundamental building block of democratic capitalism, but to acknowledge that its legal structure imposes certain priorities on its senior leaders. If they fail to maximize earnings for shareholders, managers risk removal by the equity holders to whom they report. Worse, failure to serve shareholders' interests puts the corporation in jeopardy of being acquired by a stronger company or losing access to capital markets. In theory at least, self-interest and self-preservation ensure that no rational executive will engage in activities that clearly erode shareholder value.
For an interesting approach to the problem (and it does exist!), check out the article.
A lot of people are theorising OS here...
Microsoft Avalon is an XML system for writing rich clients that operate on data stored on a server. For the technical people, you have a secure XML Web Service that provides the Model and Controller of a MVC application, and then you have the rich client providing the View and a proxy into the controller.
I am not going to say "this is what Google is going," but Google would have to be scared about this, since in order to use these new features, you have to install a new Microsoft OS and IE, and in the process msn.com/search.msn.com probably take over the browser, and all their tools might not be loadable, etc.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is pushing ease of deployment of applications and security of data as big selling points to this model. If your document never leaves the server, even when you are editing it, if you e-mail a link which is secured at the server, then the document itself becomes much more secure.
And, of course, DRM is trivial when everything has to be routed through the server, too.
If you're google, you're sitting there though going, well we can write XML Web Services, and we can write desktop applications. You might look to develop an alternative, say using Java and XUL for the client application.
You might think user's trust us with their e-mail, and send sensitive documents. We could reuse our storage back end to store word processing documents, we could index them, and serve ads based on that information.
You might think we could provide a word processor for free (as in cost) using this revenue, just as we provide search, webmail, etc. now.
I'm not saying that is what they are doing, but it seems a lot more likely (since it would tie into Google's strongest traits as a company, including name recognition and perceived integrity) that developing a new operating system (which would be outside Google's current realm of strengths).
If your code is acting bloated, and is running rather slow, it's likely and predicted that some loops you will unroll.
these guys are no more saints then any other business.
I, respectfully, disagree. Just because companies are generally amoral does not mean all of them behave in the same way. Some companies try to retain the trust of customers though honesty, and fair dealing. Some companies often used as examples here on Slashdot are Google and Apple. I think this is for a very good reason. Both companies are under the control of geeks who want to do "cool stuff." While responsible for making money and increasing shareholder value, it is obvious that the people in charge really want to make cool things, and the money making is not all there is to it. Executives who run other companies, like say, Dell or Walmart only seem to care about maximizing profit. They want money, and that is all they are focused on. Everything is about making the most money and cool stuff is only made if it can be certain to make more money than not cool stuff. Has Apple or Google ever acted in a way that is not ethical? Almost certainly, but for the most part the companies are not about getting our money, but rather doing cool stuff. The results are fairly obvious as well. They make the cool stuff. Companies that are not motivated to make cool stuff, from the top down, usually fail to do so, because those in command cannot see past their pocketbooks to see the potential of innovation.
I'm not an Apple zealot. I don't like a lot of the things they do, and their music business using DRM is very questionable. In the end, however, I think that they may have saved us a lot of pain by entering the market. They proved that people wanted, and would pay for digital music, and they provided a loophole in the DRM, so that customers can still do anything they need or want with the music in a legal way.
If Apple did not enter the music business, MS would probably just win, and we would all be stuck with most new music (and most old music) trapped in a DRM format that makes it illegal to copy between machines and formats. We would end up either breaking the law, or paying a tax on music to both MS, and the RIAA, again and again.
I might mention, I'm also not an open source zealot. OS is a great idea, and is a wonderful value proposition, that has really not been taken advantage of they way it should be. That said, I have no problem with closed source, and if someone wants to sell closed source software, I don't have any problems with that. Apple has been pretty good about adhering to standards and open formats, especially of late. It is entirely possible that this would not continue if they had a huge market share, like MS, but since that is never going to happen, I'm not really worried about it. People rant and scream about MS, because MS pisses on us again and again. Anyone in the computer business, or any business that relies upon computers has suffered at MS's hands. If not for their business practices, and illegal antics we'd probably be ten years ahead of where we are today. They have disemboweled the market. The only good thing that has come out of it, is that OS has evolved into such a powerful force because of the hardship it has had to endure. The strength of open source may eventually remake both the software and intellectual property industries.
From the article:
The Google-Microsoft competition is good news for consumers because it means more choices and better products
Ah, right. Thanks. Just like the browser wars!
Cheers.