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."

Comments

Re:Confused

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

You can't beat Google. Google didn't invent searching, but they did perfect it,

note to self: include this phrase on slashdot, get modded up.

Re:"We'll catch Google"

[Gzip Christ]

It's like a Ford Taurus saying it's gonna catch a Ferrari.

Or it's like a tortoise saying that it's going to catch a hare. This is the type of thing people said back when Microsoft decided to seriously compete with Netscape. Internet Explorer at the time was a vastly inferior product and Netscape had something like 90+% market share. There's no way Microsoft could catch up, right?

Of course, everybody knows that Microsoft did catch up by improving Internet Explorer to the point that it was good enough, leveraging its Operating System monopoly to make it dramatically easier to start using IE than Netscape (by bundling it), and using predatory, negative pricing subsidized by their OS monopoly to kill Netscape's revenue source. Sure, it didn't help that Netscape Communicator grew fat and bloated and that Netscape failed to release a 5.0 product in a timely manner, but Microsoft may have won anyway. Watch for Microsoft to try similar shenanigans in its effort to catch up with Google. Godspeed Google - give the bastards a run for their money.

.NET at a standstill

[The Slashdolt]

I know the slashdot crowd doesn't like Java, but the reality is that it has a major foothold and it is not letting go. Take for example, this graph. You can clearly see the decline in .NET and the sustainability of Java. Go Mono!

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Uhhhh... They had wheels in 1964!