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Ballmer: 'We'll catch Google'
An anonymous reader writes "Steve Ballmer was all about honesty when briefing partners in Sydney yesterday. Microsoft CEO's confessed the software giant's .Net strategy has come to a standstill, says he's accepted SQL Server's shortcomings and vowed to keep fighting search giant Google."
Good luck with that. They have to first overcome the problem that people like Google and don't like MS.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
More like a Ford Expedition - and some of the way is off road.
But seriously folks... this does sound horribly like a company that
a) doesn't really know what it's trying to do
b) and so is fighting battles on every front... and the forces of Google, Linux, Oracle are massing on the banks of the Rhine and the Oder.
Ballmer (from the article):"We can't support open source, but we can support interoperability," he said. (what does that mean?... I can't count the number of times I've not been able to lace up some Microsoft technology to some other technology... on the other hand, symmetrically I can't count the number of times I have easily been able to lace up some OSS to other technology.... (I know that doesn't qualify for tautology..., but it illustrates a point))
Ballmer (from the article, re lack of SQLServer spatial storage capabilities):This may be addressed in the next release [of SQL Server] in 18 months, Ballmer said, but conceded he "really didn't know"
Ballmer (from the article, re MapPoint lack of expansion into Southeast Asia): "I didn't know we weren't doing well there," he said. "I'll address that with the team vigorously."
So, for all Ballmer doesn't know in this discussion with partners, how much weight will (Ballmer, from the article): "In the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy," hold?
Sounds like Microsoft is seeing Google much as they saw Netscape in the past... a threat that is important and trumps all other goings-on on campus. I'm not sure based on what I've seen so far Microsoft can exceed Google's technology, let alone even catch up with it. Writing smart search technology, evolving it quickly, and improving on it is a much more daunting challenge than cobbling a browser together quickly.
i'm sure you'll catch it.
open ie, just type www.google.com
caught it?
one bug, one crash
Well, if you're slipping into irrelevancy as your OS gets delayed and your dev platforms get ignored because of your (previously mentioned) OS delays, what do you do?
Do you stand around and say "We screwed up, please ignore us forever" or "We're coming back to the top! Really, we promise".
He owes it to his shareholders to at least pretend like they're fixing the problems, when really the biggest problem is that they can't seem to release relevant software on schedule with the desired features. Perhaps the biggest problem for MS is that the new competition has spread their talent far too thin, that they're working on too many projects at once, can't finish any of them, and are suffering tremendously because of it.
It's unfortunate, indeed, that some of the BEST ideas to come out of Redmond still haven't seen the light of day.
Video Phone Blogs send video messages straight to the web.
No. He isn't admitting that MS is irrelevent. He is admiting that MS is losing in places, hence has competition, hence is not a monopoly. MS NEEDS to look like they are losing a bit, because when they were winning everything (in the eyes of many people) they were getting attacked.
Saying things like that are a calculated gamble, words like that can send stock prices down, so there has to be a reason for it. "Honesty" aside, it is business.
Or, maybe it's "follow the market". But the market isn't going in a single direction now, it's buggering off all over the place.
It seems to me that the best things in life start with philosophies and then stick to them.
Deleted
- In a few years Windows will be competitive with Linux for clusters
- Longhorn will be "supercocmpetitive" with apache.
- One day windows will have a scripting language (msh/monad) as powerful as
/bin/sh.
Is it the case thah people can see through the fud, so they're concentrating on reality? Wow.This has always been Balmer's M.O. He's played this game a hundred times.
"Aw, shucks... There's no point in denying that the horse crap we shoved out the door last year stunk to high heaven. What a big screw up! But look out, because this year we are going to really dazzle you with some great products!"
He's spent his whole career acknowleging that MS has made poor software "in the past" while promising the moon and the stars Real Soon Now.
He's gotta be giddy with laughter over the fact that it still works after all these years.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
They may be able to make up some lost ground with Google, but I'm not so sure they'll be able to catch up. It took them a while to destroy Netscape (who has now reared it's ugly head again as Firefox). That was a single target - a single app that did a single thing. Google is more of a hydra that just keeps on growing new heads all over the place...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I don't know where you live but I see a lot more Ford Taurus' on the road than Ferraris. I'd rather have the Taurus' market share any day.
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
Most businesses are happy to sell a decent product that competes well enough in the marketplace for them to turn a healthy profit every year. Microsoft though, is never satisfied. They look around for markets they haven't entered yet, and then do their worst to try to crush every other market players and dominate it with their own mediocre offering.
Why?
What drives this sociopathic yearning? Are they really just chasing an evil desire to rule the world or what?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
First, Google, despite being the beloved of the geek crowd is Windows-centric again and again. I have working nVidia drivers on FC3, why can't I get an app to surf 3D satellite maps and such? Why is Keyhole for Windows? Is Google going to do ANYTHING with Linux? I don't see them as such darlings, but then I don't have an irrational FUD-based hatred of Microsoft so I am not seizing on them as a battering ram against Redmond.
Second, Portal Kombat is finished. The audience left before there could be a truly gory fatality and left Netscape, Lycos, etc. to figure it out (to the extent that it ever did actually sink in) for themselves that they (the public) didn't care. Why does Microsoft care who searches the web through which engine?
Third, why are people so interested in searching their own desktops? Hello? Anyone remember AltaVista and their search software? Whoopie. I get to have someone else write code so I can waste processor cycles searching my machine for files I should have been smart enough to organize in the first place. Want to help me? Write an app that catalogs every CD as soon as I insert it and then stores the results in a database and make it part of the OS package.
If anything, this is more like Peterbilt saying they're going to catch up with Ferrari. Different markets altogether really. I don't need anyone to search my desktop, Google doesn't write any sort of OS, and Microsoft has never been the search king in my experience. So it's like, who cares?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
No it's not. it's like Tonka-Trucks parent company saying "we're gonna catch ferrari". Sure there's lots of money in the Ferrari market, but not if you DON"T MAKE SPORTS CARS to begin with!
Microsoft - makes SOFTWARE
Google - ORGANIZES and SEARCHES the worlds INFORMATION
Why are they trying to "catch-up" to someone they shouldn't even be competeing with?
http://www.bobbarr2008.com/
The article makes him sound completely out of touch with operations. Someone handed him some shiny brochures and said "Hit the stand, Jack. Make it sound good.". Of course he's not supposed to say "Well, we're boned. We give up." but this guy may as well be on your dashboard, all grins and nods with nothin but a spring in his head.
"We cannot support open source"? Inflexability and weakness.
"We can support interoperability" We are being told we have to.
"I didn't know x" We're sorry.. we thought you ran things around here..
http://www.andashdesigns.com/
It may sound like Microsoft is conceding in areas, but you watch. Ballmer will come back flailing and ranting "REVOLUTION!" within the next couple of weeks.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
MS is to big to become "irrelevent." Many people said the same thing about IBM, and they haven't. Their role in the industry has changed, people no longer call PC's (IBM compatible), but they are still here and large. That is what I see eventually happening with Microsoft. There are way to many smart people working for them to go away. I'll be curious to see how the Intel/Apple thing goes. That could change things, but at this stage in the game I see MS sticking around for quite a long time.
Desktop search is the voice recognition of the new century. It will sort of work, but never well enough to make it worth relying upon.
A nice prediction, except for one problem: Apple users are already using Desktop Search. It's here now, it works, and it's much loved by users. Same thing with Google Web Apps. GMail, GMaps, and Google Search are all here today, all much loved by users, and all wiping the deck with competitors.
Voice Rec was one of those things that we always saw coming, but never saw the reality of. (Although it has gotten into niche applications like voice dialing.) The threats to Microsoft, OTOH, are already banging at the gates (ha ha) and are threatening Microsoft's bottom line. Unless Apple's and Google's growth were to abruptly stop tomorrow, even conservative projections don't look good for Microsoft.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Hardly. It would take more than that to successfully dethrone MS from the Desktop. The following items (not all included, but important, none the less)
Unified Application Architecture
Application Interoperability
Legacy Application Support (Win32)
Desktop Office Software Solution
3rd Party Hardware Support
Game Publisher Support
Seamless platform transition ability for business users
All of these need to be at or above existing accepted Desktop standards before you can reasonably hope to unseat Microsoft.
Think "non-dominant" instead of "irrelevant". And if they're not dominant, they can be irrelevant TO ME. Sure, MS isn't going away, but I'll be very glad when they're not driving the market anymore.
I'm going to go play with Google Earth some more.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Microsoft is becoming irrelevent in the same way that IBM is irrelevent. They've both got a lot of money and power, yes, but their drive in the market has falled behind: they've got no ability to really innovate like the newer players in the game.
Not that I'm saying this is a unique thing: it's cyclic. Early on, MS was a power-player too.
"It is a good divine that follows his own instructions" - Portia, The Merchant of Venice
Your post was modded funny, but I think you point out a serious fact: Ballmer just isn't up to the job of being Microsoft CEO. That doesn't mean he isn't a smart individual, or very capable in some ways.
Think about Apple, Oracle, maybe even Linux development as managed by Torvalds - What would happen to any of these organizations/efforts without the people who were central to their creation and success? (We know what happened to Apple.) Getting back to the corporate example, as big as these organizations are, one person at the top can make a huge difference, for good or bad. Look what happened to DEC, Wang Labs, IBM, AT&T when the chief exec went pear-shaped.
It's also quite possible to go from bad or mediocre to good - Note Yahoo! before Terry Semel, GE before Jack Welch, Chrysler before Iaccoca. Of course /. is focused on technology, so the tendency is to believe the success or failure of a company is almost completely dependent on the quality of its product technology. I think it is much more dependent on the leadership of the company (like anything else, sports teams, politics, military, etc.) /.-ers post about the various OSS personalities, but discuss Microsoft and Apple almost exclusively in terms of their tech. Gates is a brilliant guy, Jobs is a brilliant guy. Ballmer was never the right choice as Microsoft CEO IMHO, but I don't know who is. I don't know who could replace Jobs, either. I'm sure there are people who would be great CEOs of both companies. I'm guessing Ballmer is on his way out. The big question - What will Microsoft do when it does have the right CEO?
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
But Balmer said they could do "Interoperability" which essentially means giving up the "need for compatibility".
.net, IIS, SQL Server, etc.). With the large number of websites built for IE and run on MS server stuff, MS search could go places that Google would have a harder time following.
I'm not sure that interoperability means the end of "need for compatibility." Of course, they will offer interoperability. But I'll wager its just another embrace-and-extend play in which MS plays better with MS. Sure, MS won't prevent Windows users from using Google, but I wonder if MS will try to create an integrated search tool that gets instant high market-share merely by being embedded in the OS.
Going further, what stops MS from offering integrated search products that can access MS-proprietary data structures (ASP,
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
He is admiting that MS is losing in places, hence has competition, hence is not a monopoly.
The conclusion doesn't follow from the previous statements. You can hold a monopoly in A while at the same time be losing to competitors in B and C.
You still have the monopoly in A.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Like someone else who is in over their head.
You know, the guy whose father was President of the United States...
I imagine if it wasn't for that kind of nepotismal influence (sp?) he would be selling used cars in Waco...
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Point and Click users want what their friends and family want. They want to share pics, audio/video files, text files, powerpoint presentations, etc., etc. And on the desktop MS has won the race to place first in the consumers' mind in that regard.
When you buy tissue do you think tissue or do you think Kleenex? You might buy some generic brand buy you think Kleenex. Until interoperability becomes commonplace buyers will think Windows on the desktop because that's what their event horizon presents them with.
Remember the joke in Pulp Fiction... the baby tomato out for a walk with it's parent tomatoes dallies behind, angering the papa tomato, who stomps the baby tomato and yells: "Ketchup"... when you think ketchup you think Heinz, when consumers think Personal Computing they think Windows. I doubt that the majority even know what an OS is, as it all comes bundled.
While I'm on a rant, I think MS has chased the dream of the PC as a multimedia server, but I don't think they saw the dual core, multiprocessor model coming to the mass consumer market and their licensing strategy will have to morph to fit the market, as what is the PC becomes an appliance destined for the home basement as a server while laptops become ubiquitous.
Perhaps the most ironic POV prevalent in Open Source is that users are lusers and marketers are hypocritical scum, yet there are marketing people who would happily undertake to promote Open Source products, for the simple reason of undertaking the challenge, but when their kind is treated as piriah it's unlikely too many will be forth coming.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I use it heavily now! I got jealous of my friends with OS X Tiger and installed Microsoft's Desktop Search, which currently blows Google's offering out of the water. It's basically the only good way I've ever seen to look through my huge MP3 collection.
And so you don't think I'm some MS flunkie, I can't wait to see Google come at MS Desktop Search with the upgrade equivalent of a devastating counter-punch.
"Desktop Searching", like AJAX is something that has long been possible but is only now just appearing. It's also something everyone with more than 500MB of storage needs, where Voice Recognition was and is gimmicky, a huge pain to setup, and largely useless.
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
Anyone who's in the .NET space knows that .NET is not .NOT and knows that SQL Server development isn't stalled, etc., etc.
Yes, Microsoft's search blows compared to Google's, but to say, "MS IS IRRELEVANT" is pretty far from the truth. (If irrelevancy equals tens of billions of dollars in profit per quarter, I'll take irrelevancy any day of the week.)
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
The problem for Microsoft is where to go. They'll be able to defend the desktop for a while, but there's a possible snowball effect going to occur. The more people switch, the more Linux hardware/software/games, the more people can switch.
They don't have much of a services division, they don't really do hardware. Their software isn't generally sold as "we'll send engineers in to install it".
The big danger for them that I perceive is webapps. I am seeing more and more development going on that is internal webapps. Companies are writing stuff for internal use to operate through a browser. Even if that's in ASP.NET (and you write it to be compliant), you've decoupled the desktop and server. Companies don't have to do much rewriting of applications to then switch desktops to Mac/Linux.
Yeah, but considering the financial state of Ford, I'd rather have Ferrari's profits.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Ballmar's statements and (lack of) answers are symptomatic of a company who is fighting on too many fronts. The core of their business is the desktop / desktop suite, which they do well.
The backend, services and innovation are another story. MS is competing against companies that have their own (non-MS)set of rules. Google develops innovation, MySQL promotes enterprise use, apache values simplicity and security, Linux embraces stability, etc...
MS finds itself in genres where they do not write the rules and is in a quandry.
Do not write MS off though. It only takes a moment of clarity and focus for them to get back on track.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
The parent said *A* Taurus catching *A* Ferrari. If you put 200 Ford Taurus on a racetrack with one Ferrari, I can pretty mcuh assure you none of the Taurus will lap the Ferrari.
But on a side note related to the question you raise, why would you rather have the Taurus when companies around you are building Insights and Pryuses? Why would you rather have a platform of popularity rooted in the past instead of thinking to future popularity? That is the issue Microsoft faces, they are chasing after things popular in the past, not the future.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some lessons for Microsoft to learn .NET needs to fully support Mac OS/X and Linux! .Net is failing because you only have a CLR for Windows. Yes Mono is nice enough but Java is still the best solution for having one program that will run anywhere. Why not use native code if you are going to run only on Windows. Oh and you pissed off the Visual Basic developers. Visual Basic .NET is too different and a pain for them to port to. Or so I hear I have never learned VB. Blah blah java sucks... go away.
1. You can not win them all.
Why is Microsoft going after Google at all? Is Microsoft loosing money? To beat Google it might just take more money than Microsoft will ever make back.
2.
3. Focus, focus, focus....
It is hard to take Microsoft seriously about getting Longhorn out and or making Windows more secure when you are buying up accounting software, fighting with Apple about who as the most open music system, and saying your going after Google.
4. Stop sounding like a stupid spoiled brat..
I mean Open source is a commie plot... Get real please. You are sounding like the tin hat people.
5. Learn from your own past.
Open source is here to stay. Fight it at your own peril. Think of all the companies that stuck with CP/M when you came out with MS-DOS. Think about the companies that stuck with dos when you came out with Windows 3.1... What you have done to others can also be done to you.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
How do you know Longhorn doesn't have a bunch of cool, unannounced features?
Because if they had any, Microsoft would have marketed the shit out of them. You don't increase your sales by releasing disappointing screenshots and announcing to the world your new operating system won't have anything special. Microsoft are clued in when it comes to marketing, if they had anything to crow about you wouldn't be able to hear yourself think for the noise.
He's gotta be giddy with laughter over the fact that it still works after all these years.
No, he have come to the point were he actually believes in it.
Well, search technology has reached the end of the road in relevancy - until one technology progresses:
Natural language processing.
Currently, all searches require human processing. Google realized this and created a system which pulls human cues into a database. A truly great idea: people rank websites by linking to them. Amazing - an original idea.
But it's here, and it's the terminus.
Microsoft can posit and pose and yell and scream. They could even, however unlikely, write a system which is equal.
But all that won't change anything until programs can efficiently determine subject matter, context, relevancy, originality and so on. That is all a long way off.
Ballmer and the rest of the MS folks have been at this game for many years. Every so often, they say something to the effect of "You know, we realize that things are pretty bad, and we're going to change that." But in the end, they never do.
It's just a ploy to make the disgruntled Microsoft users believe that there's a ray of hope, so that they don't abandon ship.
Years ago in the "Windows NT 5.0 Rapid Deployment Conference" (Before it was even going to be called Windows 2000), Jim Allchin stood up and told us all how horrible NT4 was, and effectively that they had "seen the light". 2000 had many of the same problems that he admitted to NT 4 having on that platform. They didn't fix them, they just tried to make us all feel better. And they've done it over and over since then, nothing's changed.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Microsoft is the master of the Desktop, any way you slice it or dice it.
-everphilski-
Ballmer may really believe that Longhorn is going to take the world by storm, but my gut feeling is that Microsoft is doomed to irrelevency
The way it was doomed to irrelevancy becuse the Internet was going to become the platform?
Longhorn will be more of the same, with no acknowlegement of the paradigm shifts Apple is pushing onto the desktop and Google is pushing into Internet apps
Microsoft is a weird schizo kind of company. In its core business, it destroy all rivals because it is not tech driven -- it's driven by pragmatism. Competitors waste time money and effort trying to steal Microsoft's cash cow, but the barn is so well managed that they can only look at it from the outside, actually from a trailer park in the next county, where their perpetual motion driven milking machines are doomed to decay into rust.
On the other hand, Microsoft has plenty of Rube Goldberg plans of its own, for things like music subscription services and the like, that are totally tech driven and completely people unsaavy. And they have money to spend on these things. It's like they've corralled all those dangerous geek impulses in a safe area well removed from the barn. It's dreadfully inefficent to spend your time on these things, but sustained compound growth covers a multitude of sins.
That's all in the past though. The thing though that may doom them is coping with maturity. The change they need is not technological, it's cultural. There is no prospect of tech adoption driven growth like they had in the 80s and 90s, where customers needed desktop systems literally by the truckload, and MS could provide software which while never particularly good, was good enough and the cheapest way to equip entire corporate divisions at a time.
(1) It is precisely becuase MS was NOT innovative that customers turned to them. Peple had a big transformation to manage, didn't want anything fancy or expensive to get in the way, and tolerated all kinds of technical, aesthetic and cultural deficiencies along the way. In this situation, it was the rate of technological adoption that mattered more than anything else. Finesse was not required or particularly appreciated.
(2)That problem is obsolete, so MS's corporate culture is obsolete. Notice Google's motto. Bad boys with attitude aren't wanted or admired by MS's customer base.
(3) A tech oriented make-over of MS based on innovation is a fantasy. An infantile fantasy: the kind that you're supposed to grow out of. They have a great business now, they just need to update it for the needs of 2005 instead of the needs of 1985.
(4) To do this, they need to become their customer's best friend, not the devil you know. People now have more time to be skeptical and demanding than they used to.
(5) Ambition is fine in a top dog manager, but it can't go naked. Gates's testy, irritable drive for world domination does not fit the bill, nor does Ballmer's outsized, sweaty antics. Somebody a bit more suave would be nice. Appointing a European might be a good move, not because Europeans are smarter than us, but because it would signal a new, outward looking perspective.
You can see good things and bad things about Ballmer's attitude here. You can't say they're not self-critical. The question is -- are they asking the right questions?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Why does everyone prefer Unix servers over Windows servers?
What groupthink colored world are you living in?
Look, get out. Unix is popular, but so is Windows on the server. Really, really popular. In terms of traditional Unix, Windows outsells all variants. In terms of Linux it's hard to tell how many installs there are, but if you look around at Netcraft, you'll see that 30-40% of sites use IIS. What does that mean? Million of IIS servers, each at close $1K or more a whack.
This whole thread is silly. It's almost like MS annouced they were going bankrupt.
And, as far as Spotlight goes, it's good and works good, but it's not exactly the be all. And it's not all that unique.
The only way Microsoft has ever really "competed" was to simply buy the competitor. Maybe he's alluding to plans to purchase a controlling share in Google! MSGoogle -- I hope they don't mess with the culture.
stuff |
What groupthink colored world are you living in?
:-)
;-)
Unix, not Linux. GroupThink(TM) says that Unix is inferior to the great and wise Linux. (Excuse me while I hurl here.)
Most well trained admins prefer a Unix server box over a Windows server box. Unfortunately, Windows servers were dictated by managers and MSCEs (i.e. People who thought Microsoft was "cool", but really didn't know what the hell they were doing.) I'm willing to bet that part of the reason that Linux has caught on in the server arena is because it's close enough to a true Unix, yet "cool" enough at the moment to get accepted.
My point still stands, though. Mac OS X has a lot of little "nice" things that add up to a completely "nice" Desktop. That's why people like them. It's not just the Jobs Reality Distortion Field. Or if it is, he's managed to make it permanent this time.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
From Windows 3.1 onward:
Alt-Tab - cycles through running applications
Ctl-Tab - cycles through currrent applications windows/documents
Adding shift to both above combinations cycles backwards.
Lots of those little things in OS X were blatantly stolen from Windows, which, I admit, is ironic, as much of Windows was stolen from Apple.
"Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me." - Robert A. Heinlein
Well Ballmer has been keeping MS growing at a healthy pace in revenues and getting more and more profitable every quarter for quite a long time. If that isn't "up to the job" I don't know what is. Thats what you want out of your CEO.
The CTO should handle the progress of the technology.
Ctl-Tab - cycles through currrent applications windows/documents
I think you may be confused. I just tried that on my Windows XP machine. It worked in Mozilla (switching each tab), but it failed miserably for every other program I tried.
Alt-Tab - cycles through running applications
Alt-Tab cycles through every open Window, not every open Application. Again, I think you're confused.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It certainly is. It has been mentioned before on Slashdot (I can't recall the link, but it was the last time talk of the death of M$ came up) but Microsoft has the recources and brains to create high quality software, they just don't (usually). They are far too caught up in being some kind of cultural juggernaut. Now that others (apple, google) have shown that they can be much more savvy without the overwhelming bloat I believe they may indeed be on their way, not to irrelivance, but out of OS dominance. I think the best we can hope for is that microsoft will start developing crossplatform apps that perform the way they are capable of making them perform. Apps like the Office suite are actually pretty good software. The UI is pretty good, they have become better at making it intuitive and placing features where they are likely to be used and it does everything you could need it to do. With little prior knowledge of Excel I am able to open a complex spreadsheet and take advantage of perhaps half of its features. so please, PLEASE GOD, let M$ get out of the OS business and into the software business.
useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
'MS Search', despite the fact that it even *contains* a verb already... not gonna happen. Ever.
You must think in Russian.
...they are going heavy into gaming, consoles, media centers, cell phones, etc. Looks to me like they are diversifying/adding products as fast as possible, that and raking cash out of the system and turning it into tangibles as well, to stay ahead of inflation and the dollar devaluing. And they patent something every day, too. It all adds up. I don't think they are terribly worried about things yet-concerned yes, aware, yes, but worried, nope.
This post is moderatd as "insightful", but it's really a troll. Microsoft has made huge advances in the last 5-10 years. Win2k and Win2k3 are solid servers. Sql Server 7.0 and 2K are solid database servers. IIS6 is not only the fastest web application server on the market, it has also been able to avoid the security nightmares of its earlier versions. Outlook, Microsoft's biggest source of desktop security holes, is now rock solid in its latest version. .NET (please don't regurgitate that "java clone" rhetoric, before I used the platform I used to naively make the same comments) is light years beyond VB6/ASP/COM development.
/., so ludicrous turns into "insightful".
Is Microsoft behind in some areas? Definitely. Longhorn is not even released and it's behind Apples current offering. Their server operating systems still do not have a lightweight "non gui" installation (this isn't true for Windows embedded). The list goes on. The point I'm trying to make, however, is that your comment that they've never followed up with improving their products and that everything Balmer says is "lip service" is just ludicrous. But then again, this is
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
The biggest problem is that they can't seem to release relevant software on schedule with the desired features.
This is the biggest difference between Microsoft and Google. Google doesn't announce it's developments years in advance. Thus, there's no rush, no pressure, and you can never be behind schedule. They also can't break any promises since there weren't any made to begin with.
Web Design Tips
Most well trained admins prefer a Unix server box over a Windows server box.
Unsubstantiated conjecture. Most *you* know.
Windows servers were dictated by managers and MSCEs
Unsubstantiated conjecture. Most *you* know.
The fact is that Windows Server outsells Unix. You claiming that it's a fluke, and all of those people are idiots and all the Unix users are saints is silly.
I am not dissing on APple.
Except of course that you are both right and wrong. If I store it then I organize it. There is no way for me to know how you stored your information, unless you tell me. Most people who are smart, organize their information in a way that makes sense to them. People who don't organize their information need a desktop search tool. We all need to search the net because we have absolutely no idea of how it is organized. I will very rarely ever need to search for my own information. It actually seems counter intuitive that I would need to. I personally don't like associating with people who misplace their car keys, or lose their socks in the wash. It is quite peculiar for "those" people to just be pre-occupied with themselves, instead of what is going on external to their own psyche.
Microsoft is becoming irrelevent in the same way that IBM is irrelevent.
.net is? Who really cares? Nobody... but those same people who couldn't even tell you what .net is supposed to do (if they've heard of it at all) are still using Windows PC's running MS Office. MS still gets paid.
.net foibles, database problems) that this is a company on its way to being delisted off the stock market and run into bankruptcy. The truth is, at the very worst they're on cruise control right now, and they're on cruise control at 80mph when their competitors are all struggling to hit 60 at full throttle.
For Christ's sake, people, it's spelled "irrelevant." Once is a typo, over and over like this and I feel the need to educate. (But please - "dependent" and "independent" are still spelled with e's... this is another pet peeve of mine here.)
As for MS, the problem is even if none of the things Ballmer mentions comes to pass, they've still got Windows and Office. And that's where they make all their money anyway.
Who other than developers really even knows what
This is a company that's hugely profitable with billions in the bank despite their high-profile foundering. You'd think from the stories posted here (Longhorn delays,
To digress only slightly, I will say that I find myself constantly questioning the importance of desktop search in the first place... if MS screws this up, I really doubt anyone other than Slashdot readers are going to care. I say that as someone who's writing this right now on a dual-G5 PowerMac running Tiger. A plain old file search is all I think most people want or need. (Yeah, I know, and "640k oughta be enough for anybody", but I just find desktop search as it's being talked about right now to be a pretty unnatural and non-intuitive way of finding stuff. Give me a file name box and wildcard support and I can find pretty much anything on my computer in about fifteen seconds.)
That depends, if you look at the front end web servers and the non-critical DB apps. ... sure run whatever is the easy short term solution. So both Windows and Linux look good in terms of unit volume. But look behind those, and it's all s390s and "Traditional Unix" on the backend ... no sane person is running their main DB accounting servers on anything else (excepting, possibly, Red Hat and Microsoft).
Sure, this could just be my opinion ... but I work for a Linux company, and I'm not saying Linux has taken over in this space ... and as a personal observation every single large company I've walked into has had a couple of "large" (think 64 CPUs) Unix boxes that ran whatever was the "core" part of their business, mainly because it's been that way for the last 10 years and noone is stupid enough to want to change anything.
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
Nothing you just said contradicts anything I said. I said nothing to specifically bash MS-SQL, IIS, or .NET, so I don't know where the fuck you are getting all this.
.NET and things will sound very familiar...
My point remains the same.
Pull up a Lexus/Nexis on his comments around the launch of
Better still, go get your hands on the original broadcast of Cringely's PBS special, "Triumph of the Nerds" and you get to see a clip of Steve Balmer in his pre-CEO days making essentially the same "in the immediate future, we will not suck anymore" comments that he is now making about what he was promising back then.
Go back even further if you like. As surely as "no more GPF's" meant "BSOD", and as surely as "no more BSOD" actually means "RSOD", Balmer has been singing this same song for almost thirty years now.
If anybody is trolling, it's you. Hearing somebody describe Outlook as "rock solid" almost makes me want to weep for the future of America... but then I remember that there's a good chance, given Microsoft's past history of "astroturfing" on Internet discussion groups, that you could well be a paid shill for all I know.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.