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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."
the company best known for its wildly popular search engine
That's what Google do! I've always wandered.
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 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.
I'm holding out to find the G-Spot.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Please remember: an OS is just another application as well.
If Google pushes the OS into the background then the y do become the "OS", at least in the user's eye.
This is why M$ wanted to "cut off Netscape air supply". Netscape was pushing the same way.
As an off shoot look at any browser today, they all support "file:". This was popularized by Netscape, it was also a corner stone to why M$ IE is part of the OS.
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.
That sounds too much like "Gwyndows" and, as such, would remind me of an ex-girlfriend that broke my heart. :)
Using Gwyndows would be like having her name tattered on me.
Let this idea die right here, amigo.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Tattered... ugh... I meant "tattooed".
No more posting before 11 a.m.
Laws are for people with no friends.
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.
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!
Obviously, every idiot knows it's Puh-leeeese.
stuff
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.
Firefox and Thunderbird, and their like, may not be replacing the Windows desktop, but they can facilitate the move away from it. Before I moved to Linux this summer I was using Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, the GIMP and Gaim on Windows. That made it a lot easier to move away from Windows than if I was used to IE, Outlook, MS Office, MSN Messenger and Photoshop.
Why is anything anything?
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.
Firefox is getting much better and has many extensions, but it hasn't quite replaced the windows desktop.
Replacing the Windows desktop is a harder thing to do than to provide adequate and reasonable applications that offer the same functionality as Windows.
While FOSS, particularly something like Firefox+Thunderbird+OpenOffice, offers virtually all of what people need, the slight differences in user interface and the comfort level with existing Windows applications in most corporate settings will slow growth of Windows competitors to only the most cost-conscious segments of the market.
That would include universities, the developing world, full of talent and lean on money, and small business owners with more time and expertise than money. People with ideas instead of money.
Of course, if I wanted mindshare, that's exactly where I'd want it to start. Risk-averse corporate IT departments will eventually climb on board once they see the bandwagon go by without losing a wheel.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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.
" I'm holding out to find the G-Spot"
I've always thought that is what google should name a new google dating service.
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.
While a browser or browser based app is not an OS and never will be, I think the parent poster to yours had a very good point.
Most users do not even know what an 'Operating System' is. Their interaction with it comes almost entirely through the File explorer or Finder (call it what you will). As a developer there's a lot more to it (multiple APIs, file IO, multimedia etc etc), but not as a user.
Google Desktop, interestingly, can all but replace that part of the OS for most users; if they need to open a file, they no longer look for it in folders and click on it, they search and then click a link. And it's faster than the search that's built in - how embarrassing for MS.
Say Google launched photo management software (Picassa), email software (Gmail), a search function (Desktop search), a web browser (perhaps a rebranded Firefox with Desktop Search), and finally an office suite (either written in XUL or native).
As the OS tends towards a badly debugged set of device drivers, in the perception of a non-technical user Google becomes the 'OS'. Also of interest is the fact that the browser has become most peoples' universal file viewer - you can view jpegs, txt, PDFs, movies etc in there. Good or bad, this is often how they use it.
The user sees Google all day - they see Microsoft software when they go to change the printers or the desktop background. Apart from that, as far as they're concerned, their computer is run by Google...
Now whether it would be wise to poke MS with a sharp stick like this is debatable, but the premise that the OS is nothing but a skin on a kernel, filesystem etc is actually true from a user's point of view. That skin, worryingly for Microsoft, is replaceable, that's why they merged IE with the OS and made it impossible to remove, and that's why they're aiming to choke the internet again with XAML.