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Microsoft Under Attack - Part 2
bugbeak writes "Part 2 of BBC's report on Microsoft at its 'most vulnerable moment in history' is available. According to the article, there are six battles Microsoft must go through in order to stay afloat and win, ranging from 'sort out security' (#1) to 'get them young' (#3). The first part of the article series was also linked by Slashdot." From the article: "Already Microsoft is spending 30% to 35% of its research and development budget on security issues, [Gates] says. His promise: Longhorn, the next version of the Windows operating system, will make malicious software (malware) that gets onto computers without the users' knowledge 'a thing of the past'."
GETTING a young company to a position of dominance is thrilling and exciting. People get rich along the way which helps too. MAINTAINING that dominance is harder. There aren't as many chances to get rich and it is harder to climb the ladder quickly. In addition to the apathy which is an inevitable result of becoming a mature and established company, MS is now the King of several Hills. Now it is knocking them off that is thrilling and exciting.
If MS diversified more and didn't obsess over absolutely dominating the industry, they wouldn't be such the target. As it is, they are the "Evil Empire" and the Huns and Mongols getting hungry and sharpening their swords.
Erm - if they honestly believe they can sue Microsoft for loss of data or, indeed, anything at all, they are sorely mistaken. Have they read the EULA recently? Microsoft are NOT liable for anything that Windows does - their fault or not.
At least with IBM & Linux you have a support framework in place - unlike Windows, where support is patchy at best.
Microsoft, for all its faults, is still a desirable company for most techies to work at. They pay well, their name looks very good on a resume, and they have a history of having a rather geek-friendly corporate culture.
.com bubble burst and techies finally realized that looking after yourself and your family is far more important than living up to the dreams of your CEO.
No, they can't talk their employees into working past sunset all weekend long like in the 90s... but then again, no company has been able to do that since the
Microsoft's shitty security has been a result of a short-sighted lack of emphasis, not capacity. Now that they are making it a priority, I have no doubt that Longhorn will be a relatively secure OS.
Whenever it arrives, that is. Meanwhile... fuck it, I'm using OS X.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Microsoft will not be "defeated" in the sense of vanishing from the field as a software company. Ever. They have achieved what is probably the most pervasive and addictive vendor lock-in situation in all of human history. An incredible amount of the information critical to maintaining our society at its current level is stored on, written for, and run by Windows computers.
g one they will be able to do it.
Remember, users will now INSIST on Windows, because they want it/know it/are used to it. This is even better than making it a legal requirement to use Windows or threatening people (by whatever means) to use Windows or else. A vast number of addicts (the situation is surprisingly analogous) to Windows will DEMAND it in spite of anything else, becasue for them it makes life easier.
What might happen is Microsoft will lower their prices and improve their quality to prevent the beginnings of a migration to another product - if they make their customers unhappy (i.e. take away what they're plugged in to) something might happen. But Microsoft will never do this. Their tendancy towards not changing anything is actually a bonus for most people, who want to learn a computer once and never have it do anything unexpected for the rest of their lives. (Please note that although I find this frustrating, it is neither surprising or blameworthy - I don't want to relearn how to drive or perform basic car maintainance every few years.) Competition does not produce products like that, since change is integral to competition. And if by some chance real innovation becomes a requirement, Microsoft may in fact be able to achieve this. We don't know - they haven't had to try. But Microsoft R&D has some good people, and it may be that if Microsoft's survival suddenly depends on an innovate product rather than an essentially-unchanging-but-incrementally-improvin
Microsoft is here to stay, in all cases where users choose stability/familiarity over performance. There are, of course, areas of society where the choice will go the other way, where people are willing to put in the extra time and effort to learn something out of the ordinary. But those will always be the exceptions, and they will only serve as a minor annoyance for Microsoft. Linux only gets so much press because of the novelty of it's pricetag and philosophy. There is no such thing as an "up and coming" Microsoft competitor. Apple produces an infinitely better product, and their market share is fairly fixed. Linux is decimating commercial Unix, but Unix users are both more familiar with the basic principles of the system and (of sheer necessity) more adaptable.
Linux will have successes - it will displace Windows in some cases, maybe even a lot of them. But most of the market share is businesses, and businesses will avoid risks that are not integral to their core business if they can. Microsoft is The Standard (de facto) and that fact is unlikely to change for the forseeable future.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Convergence isn't new to Microsoft at all. It's how they've conducted business all along. The reason that Microsoft has succeeded all these years is that they brought something to that marketplace that it really wanted - ease of use. Everything was integrated together in one clean way. Windows was "great", but what really made Microsoft great was OLE and COM and XML. Hook stuff together and make it work and people will pay big bucks. You may not agree, but the marketplace doesn't want to have to think about which UI they want to install or whether it will work with every application. Most people just want stuff to work. (Yeah, I know, this is /. and that we love to build things, but let's face it, we're not "the norm".)
So what's the future of integration? Well, I'd say that unlike Microsoft's vision of throwing everything into one box, we're going to see a pattern of "divergence" away from all-in-one devices. The pattern of convergence has been seen before, like the all-in-one VCR/TV or all-in-one entertainment centers, that have had limited success. If my Windows Media Center PC dies, do I really want to lose my ability to surf the web, play games, pay my bills, and do my homework all at the same time?
What Microsoft is missing is that the integration point isn't in a single box, but in a single network. Bill has already admitted to missing the Internet in 1995, and that's because in his world we bring everything to one place and control it there. But the reality of the situation is that different devices serve different functions for a reason. Sure I can build a PC that does everything, but is that what I really want? Or do I just want to have my different devices talk to each other (and my friend's devices) and share information? Not that I necessarily want to live in the Java world where my toaster tells my fridge that it's toasting the last slice of bread and to order more, but it sure would be nice if I could do something as simple as have my phone exchange contact information with my PC on my desk without having to dock it. That's a far cry from the Microsoft world where I hold my PC to my head to make a phone call because I have to store all my data in one place. At least then I can get more than 30 minutes of talk time on my phone because the CPU isn't sucking up power yet adding no value to the call in progress.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.