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Microsoft 'under attack' On All Fronts
khujifig writes "The Beeb are carrying a story looking at the challenges facing Microsoft in the next few years.
This includes a brief description of the M.Home (sans Clippy) which the Beeb describes as "a far cry from real life", and a discussion of the next few years competition for Microsoft. They go on to highlight Linux, OpenOffice.org, the GIMP and Firefox (which Gates himself has used: "I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better,"), and look Apple in relation to Longhorn. Not as bad a read as I was expecting. Their summary: Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to innovate or die. "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?."" It should be said, tho', that articles like this have been written about MSFT for a long time - and there's still billions in their war-chest.
Quite the pro OSS piece... To answer the question posed in the summary, "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?" Because there is more to the world than just the web and e-mail.
It's the end of the world as we know it...
...and I feel fine.
Which Microsoft product "The Gimp" is supposed to attack? Paintbrush?
I thought The Gimp was Adobe Photoshop concurrent, and AFAIK, Adobe has not yet been bought by MS.
"I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better,"
What makes it so much better? I've been using Firefox for a while now and it seems like more then 'just another browser' to me.
Most of the small businesses out there want support for a product even if they never use it. They want to know it's there. They also want to know that it's going to be supported by the same people for a long time. Think of it as security.
This isn't about which is the better product... it's about which one will get the project done AND be supported if shit hits the fan.
Support does NOT mean Forums or RTFM. They want real people. The fact is most people are not IT people. They just want it to work and forget about it. If it breaks they want someone to call to get it working again.
The same is for large companies except in the fact that they want support of future innovations. You are institituting a large scale database project... you are using My-SQL... something goes wrong... what do you do? Post in a forum, email a friend...
Same situation you are using MS-SQL, you can call tech support and bam get an answer or at least a much more educated idea.
I'm dissing open source. It's awesome and I think it keeps innovation alive and is always an alternative. But without the support... you aren't going to get the backing you might want.
One day, Microsoft will market their own flavor of Linux, out of spite.
Google GMail doesn't seem like a serious threat to Exchange. Postfix, yes, but a third-party service which reads your email...no.
Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to inovate or die.
Microsoft is about likely to go under as IBM, they may take a hit now and again, they they always come out fighting.. Look atthe X-Box, they had no real console based experenice before, yet they managed to give Sony a good fight, even debuting a year after Sony... I expect that the new version of IE will have everything that FF has, and more...it's just how MS does things...
I have always looked at MS as a big mean dog...you really don't want to mess with them, and you really really don't want to back them in a corner..
Please don't talk this as pro-MS, it's more of a pro-reality statement
"Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?." Sadly because i play games, and to play 99% of the games out there you need windows.
But hopefully they'll get up off their lazy butts and get to work.
How old is IE? Wonder if the recent Firefox buzz hasn't got them back in the shop feverishly working on IE 7. Wonder if many of the feature in the said browser won't mimic those found in Firefox (opera, safari, etc...)
How old is XP? Wonder if the recent Jaguar/Panther/Tiger buzz hasn't got them in the shop.... (you get the idea).
I hope we can keep them lumbering for a few more years. It would sure be nice to see them either start to *really* innovate or throw in the towel.
If you make them lose money long enough, it doesn't matter how much they have in the war-chest: like any good capatalist, they'll pull out when they realize its not growing anymore.
Name a company that can seriously put all of there resources together and pose a serious threat to Microsoft?
Only niche market software sources are able to peck away at MS.
People are brainwashed into following the most marketed item with all of the fancy surface features.
Mac ownership is still at less than 2% and Linux can't really be considered to be a more secure and desktop-ready alternative to XP or 2000.
According to Gartner Mac market share is at 3.7% for Q1 2005. Not to mention that Macs tend to be used longer (still using a 400mhz G4 from 2000 as my primary computer when my PC from the same time has long been recycled).
As for Linux, maybe not desktop-ready, but clearly more secure than Windows? Oops, I fed the troll.
However, MS IS looking at web and e-mail. A little over a week ago I got a call from an MS recruiter asking if I wanted to interview for the MSN web services division (my resume was posted online). It was my first ever call from MS (although I've approached them a few times before).
Basically, they're looking for people to code things like Outlook Live, which is essentially a web service edition of Outlook Web Access. According to the recruiter, they seem to be going full-speed toward services (while keeping an eye on the cashcows).
there is more to the world than just the web and e-mail
Not to the vast majority of computer users. Most people I know think that the Web and the Internet are the same thing.
The computer using experience for most is: email, web surfing (this includes shopping on eBay) and gaming.
Digital photography is starting to push into that list more and more, but let's face it, Picassa is a great app and the price is right!
Mr Gates told me, and challenged my assertion that Firefox's 'market share' is growing rapidly.
"So much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?" he argued.
And I have to say that software gets [forcefully] purchased all the time as well. Heck, I can remember buying dozens of computers -- ranging from desktops made into back-office quasi-servers to full blown workgroup type servers. To get each and every one of those machines the Windows tax had to be paid (at the time). I'm sure those machines are counted in Microsoft's totals for market share as well.
They still run Linux to this day.
Heck, I can count now HUNDREDS of computers that I'm responsible for that all originally legally ran Windows. Care to guess which Linux distro I used on them? Sad -- but a lot of those installs showed up as only one (1) [bittorrent] download...
Mr. Gate's arguments don't and won't fly for too much longer. Microsoft days are numbers -- and yes, I am ready to sell-short their stock when the day(s) come. Might as well make money on their misery -- they certainly have on mine.
Name a company that can seriously put all of there resources together and pose a serious threat to Microsoft?
The problem with Microsoft is that they've become too big and they have way too many products.
There's not a single company who can fight with Microsoft. But all of them are fighting with them: Sony, Nintendo (xbox), Linux, mac os x, solaris (windows), mysql, postgresql, oracle, IBM DB2 (ms sql), firefox, opera (ie), google, yahoo (search engine, MSN), openoffice (office)
Microsoft just can't win. After having 95%+ of market share in desktops they need to search a way to grow even more to satisfy the stock buyers, so they fight in every market. And they can fight against a single or a few companies, but not against the whole IT industry
Microsoft has not lost its ability to innovate because its people aren't smart any more. They have not lost their ability to innovate because they just don't have any more great ideas. They have not lost their ability to innovate because of poor management or leadership.
Microsoft has lost its ability to create innovative products for three reasons:
1) The company is now run by HR, which is forcing a politically correct agenda into the rank and file. The biggest head on this hydra is the review process, where you are reviewed by your direct manager. From this review comes rewards and longevity at the company. Because of the onerous process, people tend to drift into comfortable spots where they have a great relationship with their manager, and stay there. If you don't do this, you run the risk of being one of the lower echelon that is managed out of the company. There is no peer review, the system encourages favoritism. The process is completely destructive to innovation, you do what your manager wants, not what is right for the company. They are different things.
2)Microsoft cannot move innovation from the research groups into the product groups because the product groups are completely disfunctional and understaffed. Once the 35% y/y growth stopped, it became all about revenue, and headcount became a scarce commodity that had to be completely justified. Because of this, the resource pool is spent on the most critical areas, which tend to be test and sustaining engineering, and whatever Bill wants to fund this year. This leaves little for new features and innovation. In fact, the feature list for Office has over a thousand new features on it, they can fund maybe 30. The 30 are picked by Sinofski or Bill. The rest are dropped. Work from Research is ignored.
3)Employee morale is at an all time low. The place is just not fun to work at any more. The stock option program is gone, replaced by a stock award program that gives the employee one-tenth the leverage they had with options. The stock has been flat for 5 years. The will and desire of the average employee is gone. It's just a job.
Microsoft has to address these three problems in order to remain competitive. I, personally, do not believe they can fix these issues. It will take them a long time to die, and it will be painful to watch, but they will join the ranks of AT&T, DEC, SUN and the long list of other one-time greats.
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
Hmm, I work in a big building full of people who use computers for more than Email, Web and Gaming. It's this strange custom called a J O B -- you Linux users should try it sometime.
They could give away everything they make for free for 20-50 years before going bankrupt.
So nice to see clueless moderators mod this nonsense up. NOT!
Get your bloody facts straight!
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Well, I've seen figured cited at anywhere from 8% to a patently unbelievable 35%, but 10% or so seems to be the most common. Here's one study.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I've dealt with a lot of commercial 3rd party support schemes, and I have to say, my experience has been extremly positive with regards to Open source.
I remember a big CORBA corporation, won't name them or their product, but it was basically an ORB. We had used their stuff for previous versions of our product, but it was unstable and a nightmare to maintain. Just to give you an example, telnetting into their software that was attached to our process, would kill the whole server by just typing a random character!!!
So one day they started asking us "how much money we make" with our product, and wanted to charge us a % of the profits we make! Not only that, they wanted to charge us in the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, for their new support scam to be renewed in a yearly basis. Oh, and the new version of their orb required us to recode our app!
So when they told us this, one of my co-workers had been testing JacORB. Turns out this our software was faster, more stable and ran in more platforms than the one from the comercial vendor!
Not only that, but when we had problems, we usually got responses the same day. We even got sent code to patch the software for some problems! All of this FOR FREE!
I have no problem paying for tech support, but a lot of this support is not only too expensive, but it's very slow and no, it's not much better than the message boards or mailing lists of some of the open source products. Try dealing with Oracle tech support and exchaging code with them, to see how slow it is to get them to fix problems.
- sigs are for wimps.
More along the lines of: GIMP::Photoshop New Military Technology::Tired old civilian technology Photoshop is ok, but GIMP is better. Have you ever even used it? The interface is a bit rough around the edges, less so these days than the past, but it has an enourmous amount of power behind it.
How do you figure?
Photoshop is the compilation of years of work, hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, and -- most importantly -- over 15 years of industry feedback and exposure. Adobe has crafted Photoshop to fit real world needs, based on input from people who actually use it in a professional setting.
Indeed, at this point, it's impossible to say which has more influence: industry over Photoshop, or Photoshop over industry.
The GIMP, while an admirable effort -- and certainly one worth continuing -- is nowhere NEAR ready to take a place on the professional stage. Just the lack of native CMYK support alone is enough to render it useless for pretty much every company, individual graphic designer, and photographer I can think of.
Saying that the GIMP's interface "is a bit rough around the edges" exposes you as an enthusiast, but probably not a professional user (that is, one who earns his living off of graphic design). The difference between a good, familiar interface and a rough, unfamiliar interface can translate into massive ammounts of lost time. At this point, after 15 years, the Photoshop interface has become something of a standard; when you open a graphic design program you expect certain hotkeys to do certain things, certain menus to be in certain places, and certain tools to work certain ways. Everything that deviates from those expectations translates into lost time. The GIMP is rife with breaks from the "standard" interface.
I know that slashdot is hardly the place for Adobe users, but uninformed "our OSS product is better because it's free" thinking is bad for all of us. I'd love to be able to replace Photoshop with the GIMP some day, and maybe I will. But if people really believe that the GIMP is a viable replacement for Photoshop today, I fear that day will never come.
-F.
student of animation and the fine arts
Microsoft has real problems and here is why - they approach the market reactively, "innovating" by relying on surveys, focus groups, market analysis, whatever you want to call it. To sum it up -
if (no complaint)
stick to status quo
else
fix complaint
The problem is that complaints are usually symptoms of larger problems, and by tacking on simple fixes, Microsoft usually just ends up with a convoluted framework for whatever product they happen to be fixing.
Your average joe doesn't understand the potential of new technology, he is just reacting to the new-fangled features you just put in. This is why technology design by survey fails miserably. You need someone who fully understands what is at the edge of current technology, and who can creatively apply it in ways that enhance the average joe's life. I don't get the impression that Ballmer gets this idea. In fact, I have heard through the grapevine that the problem is ingrained in Microsoft company culture, and no one challenges it, because the company is conservatively micro-managed from the top.
Microsoft gets away with this model because the average joe is unaware of innovative concepts while they are new, before Microsoft has copied them. But the software remains clunky, akin to cars of the old days, where you cranked the thing up by hand and put up with the smell, noise, and the breakdowns - because there was still a tangible benefit. People thought this was the nature of cars back then, and accepted it because they couldn't see any better. Better engineering will eventually make computer systems easier to use and more reliable, analagous to what the Japanese did to the auto industry. Aside from good design the Japanese automakers popularized the use of statistics to test their components to make sure the performed reliably, carefully revising materials and design based on what worked, rather than going with the what was most available on the market. The computer industry could use that same sense of perfection, followed through with design by people who understand both people and the techonology, and of course lots of unit testing.
Microsoft hasn't re-invented itself as management would like shareholders to think, it has only re-hashed itself into something superficially better in order to avoid any more slip. Until the old guard leaves, that isn't likely to happen. This can be witnessed in the company's financials - growth continues, but is slowing in a growing market, despite a monopoly. If you want to make some dough, invest in some Apple stock and watch Microsoft sink in the long run - since it is pretty clear that they will be sticking to their guns with Ballmer. I've never owned a Mac but I've used a few and I see them as the next best thing, especially with the affordable mini model out, a good architecture to boot, and style that drops Microsoft right on its ass.
I think the interesting point that this article raises is that Microsoft is no longer able to bully its competition. Back in the days of the web browser wars and even the GUI wars Microsoft was able to win because it could either undercut, buy out, or out lawyer any corporation on the planet. In the absense of innovation and an active monopoly these appear to be Microsofts only weapons and they are all neutured by OSS. You can't undercut or buy-out free software, and the global nature of OSS seems to give lawyers the willies. There is only one thing left for them to try and thats patents, and I don't anybody really wants to open that can of worms, even M$... but they will.
Just as Microsoft needs an Apple, I think OSS needs a Microsoft (if only to keep it on its toes) so I don't want to see M$ die completely just reduce its market share to a healthy 30-50%. But I'd also like to see them release some decent products. I can't remember the last time I saw some Microsoft software and thought "Hey thats cool!". They've got the resources what's stopping them?
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
I used to be one of the photoshop detractors. It's funny what groupthink does when you're part of the creation of it. I really believed gimp was the bees knees because I was contributing to its code, using it, and because I heard all the testimony from other gimp users about how much better than photoshop it must be.
Then I went & used photoshop 5.5 for 45 minutes on my girlfriend's powerbook. Never had such a quick turnaround in my life. I went right back to Gimp, gave it one look and thought "What is this shit?" and stopped caring (and developing) for it.
I'm no graphic artist, but I'll go to the gf's macs before using gimp on my own desktop.
These articles only partially get it right. Alot of what MS makes their big $ off of is becoming a commodity. It doesn't really even matter if Firefox and OOo are "better". This part of the computer industry will become less and less the sweet spot for growth and innovation. If MS concentrates on these markets but fails in the growths area (connected non-PC devices, web services etc.) then they will die. If they climb to the high ground and are successful, I think one day we will be saying "Remember when MS used to make Office?". As much as I like the open source movement, Apple and Google are MS's real problems. Linux, Firefox, OOo are just commoditizing the trailing edge where MS will lose if they try and key fighting on this front. I mean how much more can you improve office, at some point OOo will catch up.
Haven't you heard of OpenOffice.org lately? You don't need Microsoft to do word processing.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
When I worked at Microsoft, there was a large push to look at trying to develop a services model out of their support section. They brought in some guy from IBM to push this (after they merged their Product Support Services division with Microsoft Consulting Services and called it Microsoft Services).
;-)
They had two large problems that lead them to either slow these plans down or abandon them altogether (not sure since I no longer work there). The first is that people expect MS to lose money on support. Note that they only lose money because they are darned inefficient at providing support, however, so it is not the great value that it appears.
Secondly, they don't want to gut their partner program by directly competing with their partners.
There is a third problem that I don't think they have thought about, however. This is that the services industry is pretty close to what economists call "perfect competition." There are very few barriers to entry. Customers can switch service providers at any time at very little cost. So services will *never* be the cash cow that Windows and Office are. Yet Windows and Office are under what I call terminal attack. The attacks from the open source community are simply not ever going to go away, and Microsoft can never really win this war-- the best they can hope for is a containment strategy which quite frankly isn't working at the moment.
What about emerging product markets (home of the future sort of things)? Great, and there is growth potential there. However, there is no potential for Microsoft to grow there because these markets are small. And they are competitive. So they could grow rapidly and Microsoft would simply be unable to have this growth translate into similar levels of revenue growth. This means that these markets *will not* satisfy shareholders.
Microsoft, as a software company, is dying. But it is a death of a thousand cuts and is unlikely to be a dramatic implosion in the immediate future. However, give it five or ten years and we will see a very different picture. I predict that in 10 years, that Microsoft will largely be a media and entertainment business. However, I make the following predictions:
1) Longhorn will be praised as a great marketing success by Microsoft. It will sell more retail copies than XP.
2) We are already in the opening period of a war for the desktop. A few battles have gone either direction. Each battle that Microsoft loses will force more interoperability from them and will cause more to fall. It will also bring more expertise to open source software. Battles that FOSS loses will have no long-term implications. The Desktop War is already heating up, with Microsoft launching a counterattack via television advertising
3) The consumer market will follow the corporate market.
4) Microsoft will lose this war within 10 years.
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