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Gates on Google
EnsignExtra writes " A long and interesting article in Fortune on the battle between Gates and Google. 'Forced to watch Google's stock soar the way Microsoft's used to, and Brin and Page enjoy their roles as tech's new rock stars, Gates brings to the fight a ferocity that nobody has seen since the Netscape war a decade ago. Their popularity gets under his skin. "There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," he says sarcastically, suggesting that Google is nothing more than the latest fad, adding, "At least they know to wear black."...Trying to build a Google killer, however, has turned out to be truly humbling for Microsoft.'"
The interesting thing is that supposedly Google is interested in the power of OpenOffice. This could maybe lead to online creation of office documents, emailing them through GMail, and storing them in Google webspace. It starts to kill the use of Windows apps.
Next, they'll come out with a GBrowser and add extra functionality for their new line of star studded packages in your Google account if you use their browser. Maybe that's why they've taken a bunch of Firefox developers...but who knows?
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Of course Bill (and Microsoft) are going to hate Google; they are after all competitors in the search industry. What, do you really except them to sit down and play a game of checkers?
Well, if Microsoft hadn't built up an AOL-like overdone presence with their MSN web portal, maybe people wouldn't be sick of M$. I go to Google for the refreshing simple-ness.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
Dyslexics have more fnu.
If Microsoft would innovate, instead of copy, then Gates would not have to be envious of Google's success and coolness.
I hope Google expands into areas that generate revenue while competing directly against MS - that will put pressure on MS and hopefully bring down cost and maybe even improve quality.
BP http://www.card-central.com
Confidence ran high. A senior Microsoft executive said the top brass thought the fight against Google "was going to be Netscape all over again."
*Chuckle*
"I remember when [Payne's team] showed off their first prototype in early 2004--people laughed because it was so much like Google," says a former Microsoft executive. "We had copied them. That's not how you lead."
Hmm..isnt that how they led with XP, copying Aqua?
One reason Google has been rolling out so many new or improved products is that Schmidt understands that innovation is the only sure edge Google has. The moment Google allows itself to slow, Microsoft could overwhelm it.
This is the reason why Odds are stacked so high up against companies such as Google or Apple. All their success depends on their ability to innovate constantly and continuously, that any letup will cost them both users and provide enough leverage for competitors to one_up them.
"Microsoft can play its old game to compete with Linux and Apple. It has to play Google's game to compete with Google."
And that sums it all. Google has proven to Microsoft that they cant compete on the same level. Microsoft has bureaucratic issues that needs to be resolved in terms of its size and the products it push through, and in their direction. Google has its own such as growing pains, the push to constantly innovate and the drive to outlast a cash cow ten times bigger.
Rapid Nirvana
No small thanks to our very own googledotdotorg :).
My photolog
...or because Opera and Firefox have a Google search field in the toolbars already and don't need a third party to add the functionality?
Predictive text is shiv!
Gates says that when Microsoft is done integrating search into future versions of Windows and Office, the world will look back at the way we are now "Googling" for stuff on the Internet and laugh. "The idea that you type in these words [in the search box] that aren't sentences and you don't get any answers--you just get back all these things you have to click on--that is so antiquated," he says, later adding, "We need to take search way beyond how people think of it today and just have it be naturally available, based on the task they want to do." For example, if you wanted to look up a factoid while you were writing a document, you might search for it without ever leaving Word.
It seems to me that the high-ups at MS are completely out of touch with the real world nowadays. This quote from Gates is just like all their recent releases comparing Longhorn to Tiger.. their perception of what MS's products offer is way inflated from what they actually do, and they seem to be persuading themselves that empty promises of what a future product will do is somehow better than a product which is available here and now, today.
Is there anyone outside of MS that thinks they have the slightest chance of beating Google at the search technology game? Google are far closer to natual language searching than any of MS's efforts, and comparing past trends of how MS promises stack up against reality, I think we can all be sure that by the time MS gets anywhere close to what they're promising here, the competition are going to be offering searching by telepathy from within Duke Nukem Forever.
Did you notice that Google appeared on Gates's radar screen when he read their job ads, and saw they were looking for the same sorts of folks as him? That told him they were looking to compete.
I first saw Paul Graham mention this -- he would read the job ads of his competitors. If he saw C++, Oracle, etc. then he knew the people didn't matter (and wouldn't matter).
If he saw Perl, Python, etc. he took notice. [He never saw Common Lisp, of course]
Graham's said that no matter what Mar-Com (marketing communications) bozos have to say, the job ads tell the real story.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
"Mozilla/Firefox/Opera do not have the google toolbar."
i nfo.php?id=33
You are wrong, and I dub thee "fuckbeak" for the error...
Google Toolbar Firefox Extension: (there are actually multiple flavours)
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/more
If there is anything unique about gates, it's his obsessive desire to possess and dominate everything. Jobs and McNealy are content to do a few things well. But gates won't be content until he rules it all. Everything. The whole world.
Its quite funny to see linux, ipod, google, etc drive bill into fits of rage.
That may be true. But it's pretty sad that, for Bill, it's not enough to win; someone else has to lose. He hates sharing the stage. It's like Bill thinks all computers everywhere are his personal domain. There's probably medication available for that problem.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
You can use Google software with any Internet browser to search the web and your desktop for just about anything; send and store up to two gigabytes of e-mail via Gmail (Hotmail, Microsoft's rival free e-mail service, offers 250 megabytes, a fraction of that); manage, edit, and send digital photographs using Google's Picasa software, easily the best PC photo software out there; and, through Google's Blogger, create, post online, and print formatted documents--all without applications from Microsoft.
Emphasis mine. Nice notion, but rather inaccurate. Google Toolbar is for Internet Explorer only. Google Desktop Search is available only for Windows XP and Windows 2000. Picasa Photo Organizer requires Internet Explorer and Windows XP or Windows 2000. Same for Google Deskbar and GMail Notifier. You can use Google's sites without applications from Microsoft, but you sure can't use any of their downloadable software without a good dose of fairly recent Microsoft product.
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.
When criminals in this world appear
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and break the laws that they should fear
and frighten all who see or hear
the cry goes up both far and near
for Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! Underdog!
Credits to: http://www.delorie.com/users/dj/tidbits/underdog_
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I think that this section says a lot:
But Microsoft isn't exactly in fighting trim. Its ambitious new operating system, code-named Longhorn, is more than a year late, even after having been scaled back. Linux, the free operating system that Gates once scoffed at, is fighting Microsoft for share in both the server and desktop markets, forcing the company to do the unthinkable: offer customer discounts. Last year it had to spend $1 billion to rewrite thousands of lines of code to make its programs less susceptible to viruses. Its Xbox gaming console is winning raves from players but has yet to make serious money. Meanwhile, Apple has stolen the show in online music with its hugely popular iPod and iTunes Music Store. Plus, the recently released Firefox browser, which can be downloaded free, has forced Gates to reconstitute an Internet Explorer development team. Indeed, four years have passed since Microsoft released a piece of software that generated the kind of buzz Google seems to generate every month.
So Microsoft is competing with Linux on the overall OS, with Sony and Nintendo in the gaming market, with Apple for music related things, with Mozilla for browsers, and with Google (and Yahoo) for search. The battle is being fought on too many fronts. All of these companies that are succeeding in competing with Microsoft are succeeding because they're trying to do one thing well. They may have other projects they work on, but they devote themselves full out to that one arena in most cases. Apple isn't trying to write search engines. The Moz folks aren't getting into digital music. Too many fronts...
>"Microsoft can play its old game to compete with Linux and Apple. It has to play Google's game to compete with Google."
How many fronts can Microsoft take on, at once? They're used to competing in "steamroller mode" where they mobilize the company against a smaller (or larger but less focused, like IBM) competitor, and run them over. But now Linux and Google are recognized as major threats, Firefox and Apple are chipping away at market share, and OpenOffice is sitting in the wings, especially considering IBM's embedding it, and other such efforts. They can't mobilize the company against any one of these things without taking the finger off of the others.
If I were Microsoft, I'd have a small focus group figuring out how the company can survive and thrive as "just another highly successful company" rather than as "The Industry Dominator," because it just doesn't look to me as if they're going to be able to keep that position in the long run.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Have to post anon for the obvious reasons. I have a close friend who's been on the the core team for the search engine at M$ for nearly 2 years now.
;)
Though he's in complete denial about his position he projet is nop nearer to rollout then a year ago. Why? Because M$ has turned from a team of highly skilled engineers to a mass of bumbleing corporate sycopnts.
The tales he tells about the project are astounding. Engineers are suin the company and being transferred about like cattle. Far, far more time is spent on interoffice politics and CYA then ever is done on engineering. Teams get reshuffled and project specs get redone. My friend had to get a lawyer just to threaten the company enough to keep his own job there and the weird thing is....the significance all this seems to be completely lost on him.
He maintains that the new search engine peoject will knock the socks off Google even and he's been maintaining this for almost a year now....with nothing real to show. Looks like the reality distortion field isn't just restricted to Jobs.
My prediction...M$ will drop this project after another year after spending dozens (hundreds) of millions on it and the let the finger pointing and firings begin! M$ no longer has what it takes to carry an innovative project to completion. They're too fat, too decadent, too full of disloyal temp workers and too busy trying to cover their own asses.
Mark my words...the M$ search engine project and it's (imho) inevitable failure will be the death knell for M$.
Tiger anyone ?
"If you want to be the best,
If you want to beat the rest,
Medication's what you need..."
Yeah, but none of those make real money for Microsoft. Profits made from
Office and Windows subsidize everything else that Microsoft does. This is
why Microsoft seems to desperate lately: their only two cash cows are under
the heaviest attack from OSS.
BTW, did anyone else notice that MS slashed their R&D budget? How do they
expect to thrive in new markets if they don't try new stuff? You can only
leverage a desktop monopoly so far...
*sigh* back to work...
I the only one smiling from ear to ear?
I'd be willing to wager that Microsoft's customers are pretty darned happy - everytime M$FT gets angry at the competition, their customers are rewarded with a vast new generation of ably-crafted products [often given away for free].
And as Microsoft is getting attacked on all fronts, am I the only one smiling from ear to ear?
Or, put another way, Microsoft is competing on all fronts. You can bet your bottom dollar that's the way Bill Gates sees it and that he likes it that way too.
Lest we forget, Microsoft is still making money hand over fist, and its profits continue to rise. It might have missed its last profits forecast by some fraction of a percentage point but the Microsoft vs Everyone Else battle is still pretty firmly tipped in its favour.
The company is a behemoth. Apple isn't really a threat in the short or medium term because so many computer users (especially large corporates) are tied into x86-compatible architectures. iPods might and switching might help Apple erode some of the home market, but the business market isn't going to jump onto that bandwagon so easily. Besides, we all know that Microsoft will do whatever it takes to get the deal done when faced with the possibility of losing serious business to a competitor.
Firefox isn't really much more than an annoyance, because it will never have the marketing muscle to compete with MSIE - the reason why MSIE destroyed Netscape's dominance wasn't its superiority, it was because MSIE was just there, an easy mouse click away on every new Windows 95 PC, whereas Navigator wasn't, and needed to be installed from scratch.
Xbox might not have made any money but I doubt that Microsoft was expecting to get into the console gaming market and have made a profit by now. It's not in it for the short-term, it wants to be a long-term player, and the console gaming market, just like most things, is one in which you have to speculate to accumalate. The market was Nintendo/Sega, then Sony/Nintendo/Sega, now it's Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft (or maybe Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo): who's to say in five years time that it won't be Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo?
Never write off or underestimate what lies in Redmond. Too many companies have made that mistake - even mighty IBM - and learnt not to do it the hard way.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I am having a very hard time believing that your non-technical friends read the Terms and Conditions. This is something that I have never seen. The whole spyware industry is based on the fact that most people do not read or understand EULAs.
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
You downloaded Google? Did it fit on a floppy or did you need a Zip disk?
I saw ol' Bill give a little rah-rah speech a number of years ago. I dropped my can of tuna fish in the box at the door, thus feeding the MS PR machine (that was, at the time, making hay about how MS was helping feed the hungry) and gaining free entry to Jones Hall in downtown Houston. Most of the attendees had obviously never been to the symphony so they didn't know the layout of the place. Since there was no reserved seating, I ran around to a box entrance and grabbed a seat within, literally, spitting distance of the stage. I mean, the guy was right there in front of me, close enough for me to hear him breathe off-mike. Close enough for me to feel what he was feeling instead of just listen to his words. We were treated to the Gates/Baldwin parody of that silly SNL-inspired movie, A Night at the Roxbury. I guess that would make this about 5 years ago.
The PR garbage flowed from him, everyone made nice, and then questions were taken from the floor. Someone asked about Linux. That was when things got surreal.
Gates made a point of screwing up the pronunciation of the name, trying to give the impression that this OS was from a foreign planet or something. Then he set about ridiculing the available apps, the ease of use, etc. He threw a handful of ill-considered (to anyone who knew anything about Linux) criticisms against the wall, hoping something would stick. He tried to make fun of the whole thing.
And he sweated bullets. Literally and figuratively.
It dawned on me at that moment that the guy was flat-out scared. He saw this THING bearing down on him and he clearly didn't have a clue how to respond. "Barely-concealed panic" is how I would characterize it. I get the feeling this Gates character really hates to not be in control and this Linux thing was giving him ulcers.
That was the ridiculing stage. The fighting stage came soon after. But that was also the moment that I realized Linux was here to stay.
Sure, the
TFA article touched on the browser war from the standpoint of MS crushing Netscape on price.
Where there article didn't seem to go was into the anxiety in Redmond when they realized that the browser could diminish the importance of the desktop OS in a major way, which is where I was going with the point about Google partnering with Apple (admittedly unlikely, given the personalities in question) or Google rolling a killer Linux distribution (feel the waves of fear emanating from the NorthWest...)
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
" Jumping from desktop search to Excel is a pretty good stretch of the imagination. I'm not really sure if that's the way the MSFT exec meant it."
.Net Notice anything? The both break the link between Microsoft and the X86. I would bet that Microsoft vision of the future is Microsoft XBox like systems tied to MSN using Network enabled applications to store files on Microsoft servers. Not to mention watching movies served from those servers and listening to music bought from those servers. There will come an end to must have upgrades to Windows. Computers are very close to doing what ever you want them to now. Microsoft can not expect a constant stream of new Windows and Office users. That is one reason they went into Games. People will always want a new game. With the end of the constant upgrade cycle the only way that they can keep the money flowing in is going to a computing as a services model. .net and the XBox360? Someday the x86 will run out of steam. It has already been hacked and extended to death. Microsoft has not had any luck using other ISAs until WindowsCE started to get some traction. They do not want the end of the X86 to be the end of Microsoft.
I think that is exactly what the mean. I think it shows more what Microsoft is planing than what Google is. Microsoft is seeing that Netscape was right after all. Windows is rapidly getting to the point of not mattering all that much. Many companies have moved from running on Windows to using the browser as the UI for applications. Gmail and Google maps have shown that Google are the masters of web based interfaces. Let's look at Two of Microsoft biggest projects. XBox360 and
Why the break from Intel with
Often what people fear is what they themselves are planing.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I have no idea what that was supposed to mean. Mix in a few more metaphors and it might just make sense.
Yep. And the funny thing is that Google has a real chance to do what MS has been trying to ram down people's throats for years - namely, "sell" web-based applications. Difference is google would rather just put inobtrusive ads on your workspace, while MS wants you to subscribe. Easier and cheaper always win.
The other thing is the potential to integrate all your communication and work tools. Imagine better collaboration, documentation, and email sofware seamlessly integrated. Guarantee you Google's already working on it. How MS has avoided making Outlook better I have no idea. Guess it's that whole monopoly thing, they don't have to.
The question is how and when they roll out GMail. It has to be close - I use it all the time and love it. I imagine they're still refining the business model? When the public at large starts using that and realizes that it beats the crap out of everything else, and starts having their mail forwarded to their gmail accounts because it's better...google wins.
I this way, Google can jump OSS as the biggest threat to MS. Imagine people running all their apps as java apps (or similar) served by google. It's hardware-agnostic. It's OS-agnostic. Watch MS try making a TCO argument there:
This has the potential to do in a *non-evil* way everything MS tried to do between the combined nebulous efforts of Passport and the failed part of its .Net initiative. And people will love it.
FTA: Google has even had the nerve to set up an office five miles down the road from Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters. Its opening last November was supposed to be an invitation-only affair, but word spread and by 7 p.m. the place was swarming with dozens of uninvited Microsofties--casually, and sometimes not so casually, looking for work. The Google migration has gotten so bad, says a former Microsoft employee, that when he told his bosses and colleagues he was leaving earlier this year, "the first question out of their mouths was 'You're not going to Google, are you?' "
THIS is the real battle, not software, not market share, but people. I can't see any other reason why Google setup an office just down the road from Microsoft other than to siphon off their talent. When the industry believes the smartest and brightest are at Google and not Microsoft, confidence in products, market share and ultimately the future will follow.
Make no mistake, Bill is livid because Google is stealing sheep from his cherished flock of programmers.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Sometimes I fantasize about what I would do if I had a lot of money.
I look around at guys who are making a lot more dough, and I think to myself, they aren't any smarter than me; usually they're less smart. I'm just not willing to do what they did: primarily spend a lot of their time and energy thinking about how to make more money. I'd rather do something beautiful, or fascinating, and to work with people I really like being around. The rich aren't like you and me -- and the difference isn't just money.
Bill Gates is a the example of this in the extreme. I deeply respect his philanthropic work. But there is something to his outsized competitiveness that I find disturbing. It's almost as if somebody else's success amounts to a personal failure to him, and that positive attention to others is a personal affront to him. Of course, it's this competitiveness that enables him to do the fantastic philanthropic work he does, but it strikes me as almost, well, insecure and a little sad.
As an ordinary person when I look at Sergei and Larry of Google fame being successful, I'm delighted that a couple of nice guys are getting positive attention for being smart and decent. I'm not sure this is a feeling Mr. Gates can ever share.
Some psychologists are now suggesting that people have a kind of "set-point" for happiness; a level they happen to gravitate towards despite things that happen in their lives. Success can make them more happy briefly, but they tend to return to their baseline. So, I suppose if I ever do decide to put my mind to making serious money, I'll still be as happy as I am today. But I doubt I ever will get a chance to put this to the test.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So Microsoft keeps telling me.
But where is all that stuff?
What important software is written in C#?
Windows? Linux? MS Office? Apache? Autocad? Photoshop? ... Nope, no C# in sight.
So where is it? All I've heard so far is a few ASP.NET websites and a few demos like calculators, etc. Nothing really impressive and nothing really important.
So what are you talking about?
That saying should be tatooed in reverse on the forehead of every CEO of every company that competes against Microsoft, so that every morning they look in the mirror and see that message in bold black ink.
The aggressiveness and will to succeed that you find in the CEOs of so many technology companies tends to go hand in hand with the sort of hubris that becomes an iron anchor. They succeed temporarily against Microsoft, get happy about it and crow to whomever will listen, and a few years later they get solidly trounced by the Beast of Redmond.
It has been proven over and over again that Microsoft succeeds against opponents who become complacent. Those that don't (Intuit is a good example) can fend off Microsoft's attacks. But I'm seeing signs that Google is already getting too full of themselves. If they're not paranoid of Microsoft, they're screwed.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
success at comoditizing the PC.
There are almost no designers of PC chassis left. The differentiation comes with 'plastic panels' on the same box. Regardless of which panels you might buy, you're still stuck with the box underneath it all.
The Mac design team __designed__ the new iBook, PowerBook, PowerMac, eMac, MacMini and iMac to look, feel, work and be disctinctive.
In the case of the last two, the MacMini is arguably the smallest form factor white the latest iMac has suceeed in making the computer disappear entirely.
Gates will never be able to do that because of his success. There's NOBODY left who can do that kind of innovative design. He stuck with the same chassis with different coloured plastic panels stuck to them.
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