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

Microsoft is now irrelevent

[AKAImBatman]

"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.

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 .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'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. :-)

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[C. Mattix]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[Dukael_Mikakis]

Not quite irrelevant.

Perhaps not right now on the forefront, but if there's any company that can quickly push themselves into relevancy it would be Google and then Microsoft. Even Oracle with all of their megalomaniacal acquisitions can't quite push themselves into the application software market.

I'm not an MS fan by any measure but keep in mind they still dominate the OS market and even if our user environment can eventually be run by web apps, we'll still need an OS to get there. (Though many workplaces don't bother to upgrade their Windows versions with new releases)

While here Ballmer doesn't seem to be convincing anybody of MS's relevance, I wouldn't underestimate MS. They've shown that they can be moderately relevant in many markets if they throw enough cash at their project (and cash they do have). The X-Box, for example.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[Otter]

Prediction:

Five years from now, after Apple and Google have taken their shots, the open-source people have copied whichever they decide to copy and Microsoft has wheeled out their metadata/search combo -- we'll be exactly where we are now. Users who know how to use directories will continue to do so; everyone else will be dumping everything into the default documents location and unable to find anything.

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[AKAImBatman]

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.

If that's true, then the gamble requires that Microsoft have something up their sleeve to help them have a "fighting comeback" in the marketplace. The problem is that Microsoft has never been very good about keeping their mouth shut about future developments. Which means that the only thing in their pipeline right now is Longhorn. Now just about every feature that could actually let Microsoft compete is getting stripped out of Longhorn, thus leaving them with nothing more than a few whiz-bang features.

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. 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. The result will be that Microsoft will begin losing their desktop dominance to Apple and their Internet dominance to Google/FireFox, which will leave Microsoft in the position of having to become a cross-platform application provider, again.

Personally, I think that's a good thing. ;-)

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[C. Mattix]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[interiot]

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.

What's the primary way that the core information on the internet is accessed right now? Is it via neatly organizing things into directories (eg. Yahoo, DMOZ)? Or is it by brute-force search (eg. Google)?

That's right, there is no organization. Same philosophy as GMail... don't organize it, search it instead.

Yeah, an omniscient organizer, or a full-fledged semantic web, would both be better than raw search. But for now, we have search, and people have had many years to become familiar with it. Google isn't a newfangled doodad.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[Moofie]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[imr]

Any news about cairo?

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[JudicatorX]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[laxian]

Nice try, budding futurist pundit.

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[Skim123]

Agreed, when reading the parent post I was thinking, "Hook, line, and sinker!!"

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.)

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[16K Ram Pack]

IBM shifted what they did and became primarily a services company. They were always hot at dealing with clients in a sales situation, and having worked with them, they are professional.

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

Hmm, I have relied upon it about a dozen times so far today. So you may want to revise your estimate of "never" to a month or so ago. I keep everything on my machine organized into a pretty intricate directory tree that is great for finding things but it is not perfect. First it is easier to add multiple meta-tags than it is to create multiple shortcuts and directories and secondly because it is just more convenient to hit a quick key sequence to launch apps and documents and network locations than it is to browse a directory. I can launch any application using my traditional directories with a single click, but I rarely do so anymore because I can remember the names of most programs I want to run and it is faster to cmd-space, type a couple letters, down arrow, and enter than it is to even get to applications even when I have their locations memorized.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[gr8_phk]

" MS is to big to become "irrelevent."... ...at this stage in the game I see MS sticking around for quite a long time."

Sure, Novell was still around when they decided to go the Linux route. I wouldn't have called them "relevant" at that point though - at least not in the way one thinks of MS today. BTW, my employer still uses Groupwise and some other Novell stuff. It takes a long time for something to go away completely, but that's doesn't mean it's still "relevant". SCO is still around too :-) For me personally, MS is already irrelevant - they have nothing to offer that I can't get a GPLed (read free in this context) equivalent for.

Relevance is probably an S-curve function of market share and MS is just not to the steep part yet.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[AKAImBatman]

Why are so many Slashdot users in love with Apple?

Why are so many users in love with Google? Why does everyone prefer Unix servers over Windows servers?

The answer is that it Just Works(TM). Apple has made Mac OS X an extremely pleasent environment to use with little things like Alt-TAB through applications, then Alt-` through an application's windows. These little things add up into a much nicer user environment.

Same thing with the Desktop search. Google, Jeeves, MS Indexed Find, and other search technologies just don't compare to Spotlight. Spotlight digs into the file and generates all the meta-data automatically. From that meta-data, it then generates indexes that make the search lightening fast. And it does it all without compromising system integrity, system security, or finding "ghost" files.

Honestly, if you haven't used an Apple, consider getting one or borrowing one. After just a little bit of everyday use, I think you'll find what everyone is raving about. :-)

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[Kineticabstract]

Heh.

According to Google, Peter Ulm is the Microsoft account manager for Commonwealth Bank.

http://www.google.com/search?biw=1272&hl=en&q=micr osoft+who+is+the+account+manager+for+the+Commonwea lth+Bank+of+Australia&btnG=Google+Search/

Google knows all. Who needs a M$ solution?

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[drsquare]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[MindStalker]

Many people said the same thing about IBM, and they haven't.
Seriously?
If IBM dropped of the face of the planet, would it..
A) Cause an economic downturn as people can't get their work done without IBMs support.
B) Stop the development of many major project that are anticipating IBMs next move, and trying to be ready to meet the world with complimentary products.
C) Leave a lot of IBM employees out of work.

I'm voting for C!

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[hey!]

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?

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[S.O.B.]

I think you're confusing relevance with visibility. IBM may not be a visible as they once were but they are relevant. There are a lot of things IBM does and services they offer that companies depend on for their day to day survival.

For example, IBM is one of the largest IT outsourcers and if they fell off the face of the planet there are a lot of companies that would have little or no IT area to speak of. Try getting a bank balance when the mainframe your account data sits on no longer exists. That's what I call relevant.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[danheskett]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[cshark]

IF Ballmer was smart, he would see a lot of things:

1. That it's never a good idea to be incredibly aggressive, and then back off. It just feeds the monkey boy persona everyone thinks of when they think Ballmer. I would say Ballmer himself, and Microsoft as a whole have some pretty serious PR issues. A good start: stop being such an ass. Calmly answer inquiries and questions the way any other professional CEO would.

2. By paying close attention to your competition, you are giving them the home team advantage. You're bringing the fight to their home. When it comes to things like Search, Microsoft has never done well, and they are by contrast... an upstart. Instead, focus on your product for a change. You want to talk about innovation? Freaking innovate for a change. Everyone's open to something better. If you can produce the best product possible, people will come. Ms has a lot of strengths. Usability tends to be one of them. Why not exploit that?

3. What a Siebel database is.

4. Google does not need to be caught. This is a market that Microsoft has already dismissed as "non innovative" and boring. Even in his comments, he said that no innovation ever happens in search. Have you used Google Earth Mr. Ballmer? My god man. If you believe there's no innovation to be had, then why even bother? It's like saying, "Yeah, I know my product is going to suck, but this other guy over there sucks even more but thinks he doesn't."

As far as giving up the fight... well, this is a fight they gave up long ago when yahoo won the first round of Search Engine wars. Ms's search engine was never a priority until Google showed that you can make money without annoying people. Yet Ms still don't seem to get that aspect of it. And it shows, the Microsoft MSN search engine is loud annoying, and produces crap search results ala Lycos, circa 1996.

To this day they haven't even been able to come close to what Google is doing, and they know it. Given their performance in this sector, there's no reason they should even be involved in it in the first place. They need to cut their losses and focus on real money makers like Xbox Royalties, Enterprise Apps, Databases, Smart Phones, and Mice.

5. Interoperability? What exactly does interoperability mean if you can't support Open Source? What IS supported? Also, if Microsoft can't support Open Source, then why have they released Open Source applications for Windows XP, Server03, and .Net? It seems the only logical conclusion that can be derived from Ballmer's statements is that Interoperability doesn't actually mean anything, and that it's his way of getting people to just shut up.

6. The real threat to Microsoft isn't Linux, it's KDE and GNOME. If Ballmer was smart, he would understand this, and that the OS itself is far less relevant to the consumer than the desktop environment which the consumer considers to be the OS. A move to BSD or Linux like Apple did would cement that and make them virtually unstoppable in this market for many years to come. Yet, they don't seem worried about any of that. That's what gets me.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[AKAImBatman]

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. ;-)

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[TorKlingberg]

What is it with slashdot and Apple? Apple's marketshare might rise a little but there is no way Microsoft will "lose their desktop dominance to Apple"

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[caferace]

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.

Ummm, nope. It's at 20.26 percent, and consistently falling.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[JackCroww]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[jasongetsdown]

Personally, I think that's a good thing. ;-)

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[bored]

The answer is that it Just Works(TM). Apple has made Mac OS X an extremely pleasent environment to use with little things like Alt-TAB through applications, then Alt-` through an application's windows/tabs. These little things add up into a much nicer user environment. M$ strayed from it around the 98/W2k timeframe when they declared an end to MDI applications, instead claming that each document should have its own top level window. Hence the foot dragging to add tabbed browsing to IE, and the evil word behavior. Previous versions of word defaulted to MDI you can turn this back on by disabing the "windows in taskbar option". The big hoopla over tabbed browsing is yet another case of MDI's resurgence.

I think you need a better example, windows has since 3.0 (maybe longer) the standard where alt-command works on the global application space while ctrl-command works on the application space. Very few people know this, but its true. For example, Alt-f4 closes the application, ctrl-f4 closes the window. Alt-Tab cycles through applications, ctrl-tab cycles through the current applications windows.

I will agree with you though that as far as 'unix' goes OS-X is light years beyond any other 'unix' desktop. When i'm using linux one of the reasons I use KDE almost exclusivly is because they have tranditionally done a better job keeping application keystrokes consitant. While OS-X is _VERY_ nice any its pretty i'm not so sure about the keyboard usability. I can use a windows box without a mouse, i can't do that on a mac, maybe thats because i'm just not smart enough to know all the hotkeys.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[danheskett]

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[badasscat]

Microsoft is becoming irrelevent in the same way that IBM is irrelevent.

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 .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.

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, .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.

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.)

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[Chalex]

Actually, MSN Search gives you the same first result.

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=microsoft+who +is+the+account+manager+for+the+Commonwealth+Bank+ of+Australia&FORM=QBHP

I love Google Search, but you need competition to keep them honest.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[AKAImBatman]

Your description makes it sound like it should work. But it doesn't. If I switch to Windows Explorer in Windows, I can't Ctrl+Tab to the next Explorer window. It just doesn't work. I can Alt-Tab my way across the different Explorer windows though, even though they're all the same application.

On OS X, I can CMD-Tab until Finder is selected. This is much faster, because it's by application and not the individual window. When I get to Finder, I can then hit CMD-` until I reach the Finder window I want. The difference in time to find the correct window is:

Windows: O(W)
Mac OS X: O(A + AW - 1)

Where W is the total number of windows open, A is the total number of unique applications open, and AW is the number of windows per unique application. O(W) is worst case. i.e. We may have to switch through every window in the system before finding the correct one. O(A + AW - 1) is far better, because you tend to only have a few applications open, but many windows per app. The worst case in this instance is that there is one window per application.

Using my current XP desktop as a common case, I find that I have 10 applications with an average of 3 windows per application. That gives an O(W) worst case of about 10*3 or 30 switches. Using O(A + AW - 1), however, I get a worst case of 10 + 3 - 1, or 12 switches. The OS X method is 60% faster!

Is that a bit clearer?

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[Dan Ost]

How big does Apple's desktop share have to be before commercial software
developers finally decide that they can't ignore that portion of the market?

Once that point has been reached, Microsoft's dominance will disappear. This
isn't to say that they won't still have the majority of desktops, but they
will no longer control the desktop as they have in the past.

Just my opinion.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[Nevyn]

What groupthink colored world are you living in?

Look, get out. Unix is popular, but so is Windows on the server. Really, really popular. [...] if you look around at Netcraft, you'll see that 30-40% of sites use IIS

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.

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[oGMo]

The fact is that Windows Server outsells Unix.

If so it's only because you need about 20 Windows servers to 1 unix server.

:-)

Re:Microsoft is now irrelevent

[electroniceric]

Excellent post overall. You are dead right that Microsoft has at their main market the basic tech needs of most enterprises. However, I do have to take issue with the following two points:

(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.

Yes and no. Absolutely, MS should not stake its future on some high-profile solves-all-the-worlds-problems technology, because their client base - corporate IT - will be the last to adopt this.

However, Microsoft's two core products are a one-time-only sale, and despite all their efforts to shepherd people into "Value Upgrade New Plus Value" plans, people only want to pay once for the same product. So far they've been able to slip 1 license per new computer in by demanding the sellers include it, but it won't be long before hardware vendors and corporate IT figure out how to come to terms and simply re-use existing Windows & Office licenses and cut MS out. This means MS needs to deliver something substantially different in order for people to buy again. Which takes us back to developing some kind of new technology. Merely getting more customer enthusiasm won't change that.

Some of it is plain bad luck. For example, they chose to view DRM as an integrated unit comprising both personal and corporate channels, when in fact buyers want very different approaches to DRM in those channels. Not to mention that the privacy and data control concerns are hitting public conciousness about 2 years after MS got into DRM. From here it doesn't really look like their visions of data privacy and control match up that well with what the market will need. The business consequences of your sales strategy escaping your corpnet pale in comparison with 5M customer profiles and credit card numbers making the nightly news because some sysadmin made a mistake or went home early. Perhaps if their DRM push had come at a better time, they would have gotten the product mix better and locked up the market early.

Some of it is baggage. Any tech company that lived through the 90's spent a fortune trying to plan for the content sales market (AOL-Time Warner anyone?). Google had the good fortune to approach content from a purely meta-level, like radio or TV, so they skip right by the difficult problem of how to make money actually producing and owning the content. Google is pretty close to immune to who owns the content - their plan is just to index it for searching, and cash in on corporate America's marketing budget as the content moves by.

I wouldn't rule out Microsoft getting into that business - over the years they've done pretty well as a second entrant into the market. Look for some kind of hooks for that in Longhorn.

But to rephrase your point 3, they need to stop swinging for the wall tech-wise, because that's a guaranteed strikeout.

its not going to work

[bigwavejas]

Folks..

It's not gonna work. Why you ask???

Because he failed to fire off this attack at Google with the passion and ferociousness ROAR!!! (Look Ma I'm a Lion) of some of his past over-the-top WWF wrestler/ MS superhero assaults like Windows 1.0 release http://www.dataflo.net/~mpurintun/videos/microsoft _Ceo.wmv or (Get on your feet) http://www.danzfamily.com/videos/videos05/dancemon keyboy.mpeg I suggest he get back on track with some hardcore dancing and screaming, maybe a body suplex or two where he's GUARANTEED success!! ...or a brain explosion. (We can only pray for the latter.)

"We'll catch Google"

[badmammajamma]

ROFLMAO

Damn that's good comedy. It's like a Ford Taurus saying it's gonna catch a Ferrari.

Re:"We'll catch Google"

[ProfaneBaby]

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.

Re:"We'll catch Google"

[Anonymous Coward]

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

More like an overstuffed mobile home being towed down the road by a huge smoke-belching tow-truck, with a broken axle and a beat up Yugo hitched to its rear, 15 suitcases on the roof, 6 bicycles barely hanging on a rack, leaking oil, screen door flapping in the breeze, read-faced driver shaking his fist at the Ferrari that cruised by in a nano-second and yelling "I'm gonna catch ya as soon as I git this thing fixed! You jes wait!"

Re:"We'll catch Google"

[Jeff Hornby]

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.

Re:"We'll catch Google"

[RavenSlay3r]

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?

Re:"We'll catch Google"

[cybersaga]

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.

Peter Principle.

[jcr]

If there was ever a clear-cut example of someone in over his head, it's Ballmer. If he hadn't been BG's college buddy, he'd be running a Denny's restaurant somewhere.

-jcr

Re:Peter Principle.

[jbuilder]

Hey only in America can you go from me BG's office manager to the CEO...

And his rise to power is more an example of the Dilbert Principle http://www.aquecorp.com/vincent/humor/dilbert.prin ciple.html than anything else.

Re:Peter Principle.

[gowen]

That's not really the Peter Principle, though, is it? He hasn't been promoted from his position of competence, because he has never held a position in which he was demonstrably competent.

It's more a case of the "promoting your mates over those better qualified is rarely a good thing" principle.

Re:Peter Principle.

[Spy der Mann]

If there was ever a clear-cut example of someone in over his head, it's Ballmer. If he hadn't been BG's college buddy, he'd be running a Denny's restaurant somewhere.

NO! Ballmer already proved himself as a WONDERFUL telemarketer! We shouldn't dismiss that possibility! :)

Re:Peter Principle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! I run a Denny's restaurant you insensitive clod!

Catch Google?

[Mz6]

Dog: I'll catch my tail

"We'll catch Google"

[Shadow Wrought]

Good luck with that. They have to first overcome the problem that people like Google and don't like MS.

problem

[seoYak]

Admitting you have a problem is the first step to solving it.

Re:problem

[Golias]

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.

Re:problem

[tshak]

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.

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 /., so ludicrous turns into "insightful".

Re:problem

[Golias]

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.

My point remains the same.

Pull up a Lexus/Nexis on his comments around the launch of .NET and things will sound very familiar...

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.

Ballmer hurts his own credibility

[yagu]

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.

Re:Ballmer hurts his own credibility

[lightknight]

Because Google is Netscape reincarnated. After you stop laughing, think about it.

With Netscape, it was essentially all about the web.

With Google, it is essentially all about the web.

Problem for MS is that if focus shifts from the OS to the web (Google will run on any OS), then they quickly become irrelevant. Companies will write web apps instead of regular apps. Ties loosen.

Google is starting to spread out into some of Netscape's old areas (server software). As long as they are ahead of MS, MS will see them as a viable threat.

You do remember that Netscapes whole goal was to move everything onto the web, and leave the user with (essentially) a thin client. That is why MS treated Netscape as such a dangerous competitor (and went ballistic). The same strategy MS is trying now, and the same strategy Google may succeed at.

Re:Ballmer hurts his own credibility

[metamatic]

(Google will run on any OS)

Well, except Google Desktop Search. And Google Picasa. And Google Toolbar. And Google Earth. And Google Hello. All of which require Windows and help support Ballmer's monopoly.

Re:Ballmer hurts his own credibility

[cyxxon]

(Google will run on any OS)

Well, except Google Desktop Search. And Google Picasa. And Google Toolbar. And Google Earth. And Google Hello. All of which require Windows and help support Ballmer's monopoly.

Except that all those you listed are not what defines Google. The web search engine with the vast database and the page rank algorithm tied together with its ease of use defines Google in the customers and /.ers view, maybe Google Ads as well. The rest is just gaining an audience due to the attached name, because people now think it will be as easy and transparent to use as all that stuff they already know under that brand. It Just Works(tm). Apart from the idea that a lot of these Google tools could probably be ported to Linux with not too much of a hassle, or that ports are already underway...

Obligatory Bin Laden parallel

[Creosote]

"In the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy". --Steve Balmer, 27 June 2005

"The U.S. military is 'sure' it will catch Osama bin Laden this year, perhaps within months, a spokesman declared Thursday". --Associated Press story, 30 January 2004

Confused

[kc0re]

I guess I am confused. Why must everyone "beat" Google? Isn't that what competition is about? You can't beat Google. Google didn't invent searching, but they did perfect it, and now with their newer products they are taking searching to a whole new level.

I don't understand why Balmer is all about trying to conquer every market, by shipping substandard products just so they have some kind of market share out there SOMEWHERE.

Some other market did that!! Anyone remember No Limit Records? Master P? C Murder, any of those guys?

They made their millions by shipping tons of substandard product becuase Rap was so empty after the deaths of Tupac and Biggie, that they were hungry for anything. Eventually, (yes the company still exists) but no one buys their music. Because it is sub-par.

Eventually Computer consumers will wake up and find the substandard OS'es (Windows) to be finally faulty (I think that's happening now) and people will transition to Quality products (Such as Apple).
Note to Microsoft: Quit trying to conquer everything and work on one thing at a time. Namely, right now, your OS!!

News Flash!

[Kierthos]

Ballmer admits strategy to "catch" Google consists of writing the word Google on a baseball, throwing it up into the air and catching it. When faced with the possibility of missing, or a complete lack of physical coordination, Ballmer advised that in the event of such limited cases, a patch would be available to correct the problem.

Kierthos

The Numerous Advantages of MS Services

[taskforce]

Hotmail over gMail - MS's handy adverts popup right infront of you, so you don't have to scroll to the bottom of the page. MS has always been at the forefront of UI design.

MSN Search over Google Search - WE PUT IT IN TV ADVERTS

Microsoft's Maps service over Google Maps - It never gives wrong directions. (Becasue it doesn't exist.)

Re:The Numerous Advantages of MS Services

[mopslik]

I know your post is being facetious, but...

Microsoft's Maps ... It never gives wrong directions. (Becasue it doesn't exist.)

It exists, and it does.

Who runs these press conferences?

[grahamsz]

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.

Re:Who runs these press conferences?

[mike_the_kid]

Read the article.

This wasn't a press conference, and the questions weren't from journalists.

The questions were from Microsoft's partners (ie, VAR's, stockholders, people who have large investments in MS products)

They aren't paid to ask questions, they're paid to implement solutions. They want to make sure that their chosen partner is doing their fair share.

Its a two way street -- the MS execs get real feedback from real customers who aren't afraid to call the shots the way they see them. The partners get some added measure of a pulse from the management of their very important business partner.

Google + Jabber + OS?

[caluml]

If Google pushed Jabber, let's say, and a Google-branded OS based on Linux, Microsoft would wither rapidly

Re:Google + Jabber + OS?

[Mr Pippin]

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.

Maybe its just a marketing and legal strategy...

[WebHostingGuy]

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.

Saturation point.

[suman28]

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.

They have no philosophy

[Colin Smith]

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.

Re:They have no philosophy

[Richie1984]

Microsoft's problem is that they're fighting battles on too many fronts. Instead of doing one area extrememy well, such as search or OS or an iPod competitor, they're fighting a multitude of companies on their own soil.

Microsoft may have the financial resources to throw at these battle fronts, but without public support and without the better product, they have no long term hope

Re:They have no philosophy

[Zphbeeblbrox]

Exactly right. It's a whole new world out there. Microsoft can't afford to be the only word in computing anymore. They can't control the whole desktop and internet it's impossible. If they keep trying to they are going to find themselves in a whole world of hope. They may have the financial resorces to try right now but they will in the end fail and make a whole lot of shareholders really unhappy.

What Microsoft really needs right now is to spin off some of these products into seperate companies and pick something to focus on. Diversification is good to an extent but they are stretched way too thin right now. I give em 5 maybe 10 years of throwing money away on this stuff and before Wall Street starts demanding action. (yeah I pulled those numbers out of nowhere)

A new era of Honesty in Marketing.

[team99parody]

A couple weeks ago you had Microsoft execs say that

• 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.

.net what

[Amouth]

i knew it was dead before it came out.. i have yet to see anything cool about .net that can't be done with somehting else.. sorry but the only way they are going to "catch Google" is to start an agresive take over at 300$ a share.. and every person wanting to kill MS.. that or start sending the wallys of the MS world to Google..

my prediction

[justforaday]

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...

Fighting on too many fronts

[nurhussein]

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 :)

Okay, this is in my ongoing WTF file collection

[suitepotato]

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?

Re:Okay, this is in my ongoing WTF file collection

[PintoPiman]

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.

You know, Apple isn't doing much for *Li*nux either, but they're beloved too. Why? Because they (Google and Apple) are releasing cool stuff. GoogleMaps is a new solution to an old problem that brings things to the table that were not there before. So is Tiger's Spotlight. I am and have for some time been a Linux user, but I recognize that most of Linux is not innovation in the feature space. Features are typically copied from proprietary software, generally Microsoft. Linux's innovation in the realm of freedom is a matter for separate conversation.

Why does Microsoft care who searches the web through which engine?

I visit Google's website every day, and I see the ads there every day. I cannot recall the last time I visited MSN. Microsoft.com for me is reserved for when clients call asking about MDAC issues (etc). Google's revenue is ad-based and it is substantial. MS wants a piece of that pie.

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.

You can patronize all you want, maybe you have never lost a file. Even still, you're thinking a little too small here. Those of us who have been devloping for some time, or writing, or for any reason have a lot of files have need for faster access. If I don't know where a file is, Apple's Spotlight is faster than looking for it. Frequently if I *do* know where it is, Spotlight is faster than specifying the path through finder. Who would ever use the start menu when they could use desktop search to run apps?

Another significant desktop search feature is stored queries. Maybe you group your pictures by date but not content. Maybe you group them by content but not date. How cool is a query based on whatever element you didn't use? Search allows you to create organization on the fly. Directories only allow organization along one attribute. This *is* significant.

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?

There are a lot of usability and feature innovations out there that you're ignoring because of a false distinction between OS and Web App. Search (not just finding what's lost, but getting what you want quickly, organized in the way you are currently interested in organizing it) is a Big Thing. Would you tell a DBA that he shouldn't need SELECT statements since he should already know what table the information he seeks resides in? MS and Google approach the problem from different angles, but it's a big problem with scope beyond their two narrow fields.

This is something that people do every day. That means that there is a lot of money to be made by the guy who does it well, first, or both.

And badly too..

[elliam]

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..

Google's best bet...

[HerculesMO]

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.

Ballmer at Denny's

[FunWithHeadlines]

Ballmer as a waiter at Denny's:

"Grand Slam Breakfast! Grand Slam Breakfast! Grand Slam Breakfast! Grand Slam Breakfast!!"

On The Ropes

[Ridgelift]

Later, a typically-enthusiastic Ballmer addressed approximately 500 partner attendees, who grilled the CEO on all things Microsoft.

...Ballmer admitted the platform "had stalled in the last 12 months"...

..."We can't support open source, but we can support interoperability,"...

...may be addressed in the next release [of SQL Server] in 18 months, Ballmer said, but conceded he "really didn't know"...

...when a participant asked why MapPoint had not expanded to South East Asia so such services could be built, Ballmer was stumped...

..."I didn't know we weren't doing well there,"...

..."In the next six months, we'll catch Google in terms of relevancy,"...

...I've never used that interface...

"Give up the fight? No, never," he said.

This is not the Microsoft I know. I remember when Office XP was released, staff was saying things like "this is not a revolutionary version, but rather an evolution in software". They quickly recanted and began preaching "REVOLUTIONARY! REVOLUTIONARY!" again. Microsoft doesn't have great software, is not innovative, and is not liked in the industry the way Google is. What they ARE good at is sales and marketing.
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.

Not learning from their mistakes

[Jugalator]

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.

We'll catch Google!

[cryptor3]

*Shakes fist in air*

*Twirls mustache*

"...if it's the last thing I do!"

Re:We'll catch Google!

[Anonymous Coward]

We'd have utterly dominated IT if it wasn't for you meddling kids!

Re:Peter Principle - Maybe

[Strudelkugel]

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?

Search inside MS-server-based websites

[G4from128k]

But Balmer said they could do "Interoperability" which essentially means giving up the "need for compatibility".

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, .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.

Monopoly != no competition

[MarkByers]

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.

Oftopic. Bush as Ballmer

[Sir_Eptishous]

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...

It's a Tissue Issue

[Quirk]

MS won't catch up with Google for the same reason Open Source won't catch up with MS on the desktop.

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.

Ford has caught Ferrari before

[asoap]

Ford caught ferrari years ago, back in the day when Enzo Ferrari was still alive. His whole entire engineering department quit on him because they were tired of his wife stickiing her nose where it didn't belong.

Becuase of this he was then willing to sell his company. One of the interested buyers was Ford. They had a meeting with Ferrari, with all the paperwork ready for him to sign. He looked it over, turned to his friend and said "Let's go get lunch" and never came back. This pissed off the guys at Ford and they vowed to beat Ferrari at his own game. That is when they introduced the original GT40 which cames 1st, 2nd and 3rd (I believe) at LeMans.

And thus, that is how Ford kicked Ferrari's ass. Although, I don't know how difficult that was considering that Ferrari's engineering team left him. Regardless though, it was still a massive accomplishment for Ford.

MS Has Lost Focus

[ehaggis]

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.

Instance not class

[SuperKendall]

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.

Suggestions for Microsoft.

[LWATCDR]

Some lessons for Microsoft to learn
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. .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.
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.

Typical jet-lagged CEO

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer made the classic mistake of US CEOs: jetting into Australia, scheduling meetings whilst lagged and relying on his engaging personality (the personality that just evaported due to jetlag) to get him past inadequate local briefings.

The meeting with Tony Abbott was a cute move -- Tony has foolishly announced that he wants a $billion national health records system running within 12 months. You'd have think he'd have learnt from the dismal cost overruns of health records systems in the UK and been cautious. But our Tony is a boots-and-all boy, and since the timeline is so tight MS and other COTS software suppliers are the only possibility.

You'd think Ballmer would have learned from his last visit. Then I was in a meeting with Ballmer and some senior university administrators (including a Nobel prizewinner and a few widely-read scientists, the sort of crowd where only MDs are called doctor as everyone has a PhD) when Ballmer told us all just how stupid we were. I couldn't believe it -- one of the world's best corporate marketeers making the basic mistake of insulting the customer. What was most amusing was that Ballmer's bad behaviour has done more to make those administrators look kindly upon "Linux on the desktop" than any amount of trials and pro-Linux PR.

Re:SQL Server shortcomings

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

[...]lack of spatial storage capabilities.
If these were needed by anybody they would have been implemented in mysql[...]

(DING!) Your wish is granted...

Searching has reached the end of the road.

[tolkienfan]

Ballmer says: does anyone believe that search will be the same as it is in ten years time?

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.

The same old tactics...

[NerveGas]

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

Jack of all trades, Master of One

[everphilski]

Microsoft is the master of the Desktop, any way you slice it or dice it.
-everphilski-

Wait, I know what we'll do...!

[MECC]

"Microsoft's vision for search would eventually make such data discoverable, without using the [actual] application."

Want to wipe out the competition? Integrate it into the OS! It worked on Netscape, and look at what an innovative and secure thing explorer turned out to be! In fact, that made the whole OS faster and more secure...

Re:Peter Principle - Maybe

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The big question - What will Microsoft do when it does have the right CEO?

Innovate?

<ducks>

maybe he meant "buy" google

[192939495969798999]

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.

Less talk, more walk

[jalefkowit]

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.

Just tried MSN search for the first time

[Adult film producer]

Had to see how well it worked (compared to google..) So I tried an image search and entered the query "anal linux".. MSN returns zero results :(

Google on the other hand was nice enough to provide me with quite a number of images, including many girls that apparently use linux.

Google wins hands-down yet again.

"SEARCH ENGINES! SEARCH ENGINES! SEARCH ENGINES!"

[payndz]

'Google' is already entrenched in the culture enough to have become a verb.

'MS Search', despite the fact that it even *contains* a verb already... not gonna happen. Ever.

pretty much why...

[zogger]

...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.

Re:pretty much why...

[robertjw]

...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.

Other Ballmer Quotes Not Mentioned

[Master of Transhuman]

"We're a bunch of crooked monopolists."

"Our software sucks rocks."

"Linux TCO is infinitely less than ours."

"Windows was never intended to be 'intuitive' - just stupid."

"Access corrupts its databases if you breath on it."

"Word is too complicated for anyone to use."

"Group Policy doesn't work and nobody can figure out how to make it work."

"Longhorn is a corporate disaster."

"We pay Rob Enderle, Laura DiDio, Maureen O'Gara and Daniel Lyons to be assholes."

"The Gates Foundation is a stock laundering scheme."

"Bill is an asshole."

"I'm an asshole."

"All of this is off the record."

Right and Wrong...

[rmdyer]

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.

Re:Not parent poster

[kpaul]

Or clover-tab, as my charming co-worker, unable to remember 'command', calls it.

Don't discount IE's impact on microsoft earnings

[ccoakley]

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?

RE:Ballmer: 'We'll catch Google'

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just like Wile E. Coyote catches the train in the tunnel.

Well that works as well as CTRL-C/V

[SuperKendall]

Alt-Tab cycles through applications, ctrl-tab cycles through the current applications windows.

That would be cool if it worked.

In Mozilla, Ctrl-Tab cycles between tabs - not windows.

In Explorer, Ctrl-Tab Goes from the file explorer to the address bar and back again. Not between Windows.

In Putty Ctrl-Tab does exactly nothing.

(that's all in Win2K - is that an exception?)

In Finder on the Mac I can toggle between windows. Actually in any app I can toggle between app windows reliably.

How about Windows Cut & Paste with Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V? Even that doesn't work all the time! I find many dialogues I can't even paste into with Ctrl-V, even though Ctrl-Insert/Shift-Insert works just fine. What the hell is that? How can you claim Windows has any kind of consistant behavior at all? I can even spell-check a dialogue text-box entry on the Mac if I really want to.

I can hear Balmer it now

[kmortelite]

"Search engines! Search engines! Search engines!"

Support or erode?

[SuperKendall]

Well, except Google Desktop Search. And Google Picasa. And Google Toolbar. And Google Earth. And Google Hello. All of which require Windows and help support Ballmer's monopoly.

I have a different take on this, that these tools more help Google erode the reliance on Microsoft for things than help Windows maintain market share. Google search is nice but not as good as Spotlight. Some of the other tools will eventually arrive elsewhere, but for the moment they are to make people look to Google for software and services first above any other player.

No problem at all

[SomeOtherGuy]

It is pretty clear based on current attitudes and past practices that Microsoft will soon be giving their .NET strategy and "product line" the ole' heave ho soon enough.

Much like animals in the wild, if a framework or strategy is weak and non self sustaining they do not mind feeding it to the wolves. In this case there is not much $$$ benefit for them to keep a sick horse with a broken leg alive much longer.

Goodbye .NET it was nice not getting (having) to know ya.