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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.
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.
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
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.
you are using My-SQL... something goes wrong... what do you do? Post in a forum, email a friend...
Or you can get support from MySQL...you did buy a commercial license right?
I think what Bill means is...
"I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer is better...at downloading malware, spyware, viruses, and leaving your machine gapping open to the world."
Because of corporate image. Microsoft realizes that Firefox is at least a worthy competitor to IE, but it would look absolutely terrible for the company if their very famous captain came out and said 'Well, what do ya know...our competitor's product IS better.'
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!
At least he admits to knowing what the word "browser" means. He pretended not to during the antitrust trial.
OLPC Australia
(oh, and i have no real problem with slashdot rendering in Firefox)
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Last year I have had an index corruption on a sizeable (32 mil entries at 2kb) table on our live MSSQL server, and we couldn't find out a way to do anything with that index file, since all attempts to do this just returned error messages.
Indexes are recreatable, and we could easily have time for dropping all indexes, deleting any references to such indexes and recreating them - but the glitch wouldn't allow to do this.
The MS knowledge base for that error message contained a single sentence that basically said - 'Known issue since 2003, no workaround available'.
The phone support suggested us to reinstall the computer/SQL server, and populate the data from backups.
We had other issues with other, fairly niche commercial software - and it is clear that the vendor support is useless, and it is not an argument.
The real support will be provided either by in-house people or third-party support companies. Or by the vendor charging extra in an attempt to compete with these third parties.
This support is as available for open source programs as for closed-source programs. It is a separate service.
GMail as a service shouldn't be attractive to businesses for precisely that reason.
But what if Google sells a "GMail appliance?"
All the features of GMail, but on your own VPN, and nobody but you controls the data. Starting to look more interesting.
Add the ability to plug in any service you want where the ads normally are... company announcements, whatever.
Now *that* would be really attractive, I think, to a lot of companies. I don't know how well their Search Appliance worked out, but a GMail appliance could indeed be a threat to Exchange.
This Like That - fun with words!
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.
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.