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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."
"Take for instance the Siebel database. Now I've never used that interface. But I'd love to go to it and say 'who is the account manager for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia?'," Ballmer told the partners.
;-)
.NET is .NOT, Microsoft can't even search its own desktop (Quote: "It's important for people who search a corporate network,"), and that SQL Server development has ground to a halt (ceding victory to Oracle). He then goes on to make a set of pathetic promises ("In the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy," and, 'This may be addressed in the next release [of SQL Server] in 18 months, Ballmer said, but conceded he "really didn't know",' and, "Government has really been pushing for stronger interoperability. We can't support open source, but we can support interoperability,") and say that Microsoft will never give up the fight.
:-)
I can say one thing for sure. He's DEFINITELY never used the Siebel interface!
This article honestly sounds like Ballmer was getting a bit beat up by Microsoft's partners and shareholders. They've basically gotten him to admit that
I'm sorry, but Ballmer has effectively admitted that Microsoft is now irrelevent. He's trying to grip at pavement by muttering about interop and standards compliance. This is an amazingly similar situation to the introduction of Netscape Navigator. Microsoft almost missed the boat then, but managed to throw enough resources, money, and outright theft behind capturing the browser market. Microsoft's best attempts today only come out as a pathetic whimper. No super-search engine, no desktop search, nothing. If Ballmer was smart, he'd get his boys to activate the existing Databasse File System in NTFS, then use it to push Google and Apple away from the Desktop. Once solid in that area, they should tie it into their online search engine, thus using their desktop monopoly against their competitors.
On the bright side, I am quite glad that Microsoft isn't that good anymore. At the very least, they have to watch where they step with the justice department looking over their shoulders.
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I always imagined they were pretty well controlled to stop people asking difficult questions.
Kudos to the journalists for getting that number of "don't knows" from someone who is used to being in the line of fire.
I suppose in some ways it's refreshingly honest, but people in his position are almost expected to BS their way through difficult questions.
If Google pushed Jabber, let's say, and a Google-branded OS based on Linux, Microsoft would wither rapidly
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See, we're not the best in everything. In fact our major products are behind. Therefore, we don't have a monopoly on anything. Please leave our lawyers alone...
While this does have a hint of truth it also works very well for them.
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No innovation and Microsofties leaving to work for google is a sure sign that 'catching up' is going to get harder and harder as days go by.
Besides, they have grown too big for their own good.
It may be a good thing that the company didn't get split into two. This way, at least we have to fight only one 800-pound gorilla, rather than two cunning 'little' monsters.
Microsoft has SQL server, yet it's not a database company so it can't quite beat Oracle. Microsoft has MSN search, yet it's not a search company so it can't quite beat Google. Microsoft has .NET, and maybe that *is* their turf, creating software infrastructure, but now Ballmer says they it's a standstill. It may be one of the richest companies in the world, but jack of all trades is still the master of none. There was a time when they could push an inferior product because it was priced cheaper than the specialised stuff and it was "good enough", but that's changing too since now OSS is the cheapest software provider, and even if some of it doesn't have as much features as M$'s offerings (such as Openoffice vs. MS Office), it can be free/dirt cheap and still be "good enough".
:)
So yes, M$ isn't going away, but it's not going to rule with absolute power either, and they're unhappy about the latter. Well, tough shit
Just invest the oodles of money it has into helping developers create true cross-platform applications -- and supporting them. Games, productivity apps, graphic apps, video editing apps... it can all be done under Linux. In the meanwhile, Google writes APIs to get Linux to work better than ever, liscenses that out to the multiple distros for a nominal fee...
Microsoft won't have a chance against that. You are combining the brilliance of Google's marketing position and cash position, by helping Google force the hand of "windows only" developers to start writing applications that work in Linux, Windows, and MacOS. Granted the up front monetary gain is going to be minimal -- but when Google has an OS that is not as stifling as Windows is, they will find it a lot easier to distribute and develop applications like Google Earth or whatever... and make a profit off of everything.
I'm not against Google making money... I'm against a closed platform like Windows. Microsoft is a great software company (regardless of what naysayers state), but their vision is one aimed at monopoly. So long as Google can keep up with their "Do no evil" motto... I will support and root for them.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
How many switched to MSN Search when they introduced their "Google Killer" some months ago?
And now they're trying to compete with Google Earth with their Virtual Earth. The only problem is that Google has released their software, but Microsoft hasn't. So now people will grow accustomed to their free software and for people to switch, Microsoft probably have to be vastly better for people to change their habits. I can see a similar chain of events unfold as with the Google web search -- vastly superior than what Microsoft can offer, so they try to catch up, when what they need to is to innovate, which they've never been too great about.
"In the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy," he said.
LOL. I'll believe it when I see it. I wonder how great MSN Search will be by the end of 2005. Six months and counting, Ballmer.
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Ballmer and MSN should take a page from Yahoo, who have been busy actually competing with Google rather than just talking about competing with Google.
Lately I've found that Yahoo's search engine is better at putting the 'canonical' result for a search in the number 1 position than Google is. Google's results frequently put blog postings, etc. higher than the page those postings are talking about. Yahoo does not seem to have this problem.
Yahoo has been rolling out several innovative search services lately.
Yahoo has actively developing and improving APIs for a range of their services. Google's API has not changed since its rollout in 2002.
Yahoo is integrating with Firefox. Google is not, as far as anyone outside the company can tell.
All of these things have caused a 180 degree turnaround in my perception of Yahoo of late. They have quietly become real contenders again in search and related services -- and without all the "we're gonna kill Google! Just watch us!" noise we keep getting every month from MS. I might take Ballmer & co. more seriously if they followed Yahoo's lead and started delivering rather than just making promises.
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...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
They are attempting to diversify, but so far their success has been limited. Companies like GE and IBM are very diverse and make a profit in many different areas. AFAIK, the only areas that Microsoft has been able to make a measurable, consistent profit are the OS software and the Office Suite.
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IE is on the downfall thanks to Firefox, and doesn't really bring Microsoft any revenue anyway
You are ignoring the impacts IE has had on Microsoft's bottom line due to its interoperability with things like ASP and ASP.Net. NMCI, the second largest network (to the internet) is nearly 100% Microsoft. Every single desktop computer is a Dell. Most of the servers are Compaqs (er... HP). Every single one of those runs Windows. The way IE ties in is that many of the applications that run on NMCI are not desktop applications, they are ASP and ASP.Net web applications. These were chosen because of their "ease of development" and because they were an "industry standard" (two terms which mean absolutely nothing semantically, but everything financially). Both of those factors have to do with features that IE has that other browsers do not. The specific features are the ability to render said web applications consistently (circular reasoning, but consistent).
Anyway, since all of NMCI runs windows and IE, all defense contractors who develop software develop on windows and IE (J2EE support exists, but lags in terms of market share -- and many of the J2EE apps render correctly for IE only anyway).
Now admittedly, I haven't worked on an NMCI project in almost a year, so things could have changed. But with the largest single client on the planet, Microsoft isn't doing too bad. And NMCI isn't the only enterprise using IE only for their internal web applications. So IE helps by helping developers choose the appropriate Microsoft development tools (among them SQL Server), which positively impact microsoft's bottom line.
Incidentally, for a while, the only real "feature" that was in common use that broke on other browsers was IE's CSS extension that allowed text to be rendered rotated at 90 degrees. Most of the menu systems for web apps also worked on IE and not on Mozilla, but at least there were work arounds for developers who cared whether their shit ran on other platforms. It's a silly oversight for the CSS standard not to have that capability (it is frequently necessary for large HTML tables to display the column headers rendered at 90 degrees). Has this been fixed?
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