Google's Patents Reveal Strategy To Beat Microsoft

linumax writes "According to 'The Google Legacy,' history is about to repeat itself. From the article: 'Microsoft today is where IBM was years ago. And Google is in a position to do to Bill Gates what he did to IBM. The result could be a new industry kingpin. Arnold, author of The Google Legacy, said in an interview this week that it appears that Microsoft doesn't understand Google in much the same way that IBM didn't understand Microsoft 20 years ago. "It will be the Googleplex from 2004 to 2020 - a network paradigm," said Arnold. "It will be enabled by Google's approach to innovation."'"

Comments

$180 for a PDF

[porksoda]

"The Google Legacy" (Infonortics, $180.00 per download) is available in online PDF version only.

$180 for some guy's opinion on google, go fuck yourself.

What's this RTG office killer?

[tcoady]

From TFA He notes that Google's RTG feature already implements some 70 percent of the functions of Microsoft Office;.

What is that? The real time guardian in talk? Nothing obvious here: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define:rtg

(Something insightful goes here)

[SuperDuG]

Here's my problem. Well let me list my precursor problems first. 1.) Why is it that everytime someone writes some stupid story about google that it ends up on the front page? 2.) Why is google any more different than any other successful IT company? 3.) The search engine war is never EVER going to end.

Google is in no way shape or form a Microsoft company. Microsoft is a solid company that makes software, hardware, and a crap-ton of other things. They are not a "one really whizbang product" kind of company. I'm not an MS fan boy by any meas, but lets face facts here, MS is bigger, stronger, and richer than google. No questions asked, they are, period.

However, this brings up an interesting problem. Everyone thinks that MS is going to fail, but give them time, they have just recently announced that they plan to topple google. Let me remind everyone of some past MS "failures" and company's that "Couldn't be beat". Lets start out a little early ...

*Cue the flashback music*

Remember when the PC was something that was really expensive and that no one really knew what to do with except it could be used as a fancy typewriter and play games? Remember when there were a few company's at the time (for this flashback we'll only acknowledge two) Microsoft and Apple. Apple was going to revolutionize the world with the MAC. Moral of the story ... how many Mac's are there in comparison to PC's running windows?

*Cue more flashback music*

Remember when Mosaic and Navigator were the best kids on the block for viewing gopher:// and http:/// sites? Wow, those were the days. You had to pay for a copy of netscape ... PAY FOR A BROWSER. Life was good, then Mosaic's IP got bought by this weird company called Microsoft. And ... wouldn't you know it, they released Internet Explorer. Well one thing led to another and ... Moral of the story ... how many people use Internet Explorer now?

*Cue a Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the fire*

Now we find ourselves in the world of Office suite software. No longer is the office suite a word processor! No! In this world there is email, word processing, typesetting, flyer making, and who knows what else. Anyways There used to be this bastard of a product called Word Perfect (by bastard follow who all owned it ... Novell Corel ... etc) and then there was Microsoft Office. I'm not going to do anything catchy here, but lets face it, no one even really remember Word Perfect or Word Star or Star Office, or any of it. They use Microsoft Office ...

*Cue the rest of We Didn't Start the Fire*

Remember when if you wanted a network server, you used Unix or Novel? (Again for arguments sake we'll focus on the big boys). Remember when MS announced it was going to be bigger than Unix and Novel? Remember when everyone was sure that there was no way to ever be bigger than any of the network operating solutions? How many NT/Server 2k0/3 are out there now?

*Cue something classical ... Aerosmith perhaps*

Back to a generation some of you youngsters might remember. Remember when the three big players for video game consoles were Nintendo, Sega, and Sony? Remember who sold almost a comparable amount of X-Box's to the PS-2 (by year not in whole). Yup, Microsoft again.

What I'm getting at is this. If there's one thing Microsoft knows, it knows how to create a market for itself and give the market what it needs. When it wants to dedicate resources to taking something over, it does it, and it does it full out. The new MS search isn't really all that great right now, but lets just look at the facts ...

Google has gmail, which is pretty popular. Microsoft has hotmail, which is more popular.
Google has gtalk (or whatever the hell its called). Microsoft has

Re:(Something insightful goes here)

[pavera]

What I think you forget, is that in 1980 there was this company called IBM, they had billions in sales, billions in cash, and any time a large company needed computers they called IBM. Suddenly this little company called MS appeared and changed the rules, and the unbeatable goliath of IBM took about 5 years to fall completely apart into a smoldering wreck. Yes they reorged, no they didn't go out of business, and I don't think MS will go out of business either.

MS won in the 90's because they made network computing simple, and easy enough for an attorney or accountant to set up their own network without having to spend thousands on a Novell or Unix consultant. Google is the first firm with the resources (cash and network resources), reliability, developers, and interest to develop fully internet based apps. MS has the a couple of the above list, but they don't have the reliability, and they certainly don't have the interest/desire. Google will make internet computing simple the way MS made network computing simple, and it is this paradigm shift that MS doesn't understand, and loathes. They will fight it tooth and nail, but that is where computing is going, just like in the early 80s when IBM fought the PC tooth and nail because mainframes were their business and there couldn't be a paradigm shift away from that (in their minds).

You nailed it

[lheal]

I hope you get modded up. I would add that Microsoft is a top-down company, a cult of Gates and gold. The troops really believe in the vision of Windows and Office everywhere, and the culture refuses to accept anything else.

Free software will kick their assets.

Re:Secret to M$FT's Success: COM/DCOM cut-n-paste.

[mini me]

Frankly, I don't see Google [or anyone else] replicating M$FT's COM/DCOM functionality anytime in the near future.

Perhaps you should check out KDE again. It's entire system is based on small COM-like objects (known as KParts) that are joined together to make full applications.

Also, COM/DCOM is deprecated.

Re:Not really accurate

[wkitchen]

Companies buy MS Office licenses. Probably the vast majority of MS Office licenses. And that's not likely to change just to facilitate a switch to Linux desktops. But it's also not likely to change just because some of their users are running it on Linux instead of Windows (if a Linux version existed). I think that if a company's MS Office site license included both Windows and Linux versions, the resistance to allowing at least some of their users to switch to Linux desktops would be reduced. So, Office for Windows might not "drive" linux adoption, but it would remove a significant road block.

Of course, that's not the only road block. So, all by itself, it wouldn't magically make Linux a viable desktop OS for everyone. But it would almost certainly result in SOME increase in useage. It wouldn't be overwhelming, but it might be enough for other software publishers to start feeling some pressure to support it. It doesn't have to be a majority to be worth supporting. A significant minority market share, say 20%, would be hard for software vendors to ignore. Because many environments are mixed, ignoring 20% of the platforms could drive away much more than 20% of your customers. All else being equal, which are they going to choose: a product that supports 80% of their desktops, or one that supports 100% of their desktops? And as it gains wider support, that paves the way for growing even more market share. Though I would actually hope that it never achieves quite the dominance that MS enjoys. Diversity and competition are good things.

"Office for Linux" may not be enough to get Linux to that point. But it would be a very good step in that direction.