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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."'"
in 2020, everyone in /. will be bashing google. History will repeat itself.
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That's OK. According to Baldy, Google will not be around long enough to enjoy it.
2 i'll+kill+google%22&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=microsoft+%2
Comparing MS and IBM is flawed imo. IBM was the big company before the rise of personal computers that felt it was unstoppable in its world, and did not have the foresight to see that personal computing would someday overtake server style computing. They truely thought that only big corporations would need computers.
MS on the other hand is aware, paranoid actualy that they will be dethroned. While their leaders may act out in stupid and juvinile ways (throwing chairs anyone?), they are aware of the problem and will fight tooth and nail to keep from being dethroned.
Microsoft write an operating system and Office suite - their cash cows.
Google's cash cow is google adwords and google adsense.
Where's the competition between the two? where's the overlap in markets with REAL income, not late 1990s tech bubble crap that doesn't actually bring in $$ to the companies.
"The Google Legacy" (Infonortics, $180.00 per download) is available in online PDF version only.
$180 for some guy's opinion on google, go fuck yourself.
From TFA
"In a broader sense, Arnold believes Google is building a "patent fence around search" technology as the firm moves to codify its unique competitive advantage."
Is this good or bad?
Google Maps is good, but would I rather have it running on my machine? Damn right I would!
No, i don't think you would. You would probably find it a bit of a resource hog.
During my studies in history I've learned that history _never_ repeats itself. Simply because if there's a situation _similar_ to one from the past there are a lot of factors that are simply completely different.
Regards,
Dennis B. Schramm
Sigs suck!
By selling advertising? Great for google. But what about me? I'm going to be inundated with advertising and products that never come out of beta? Or will they release "Google OpenSolaris"? Oh, maybe they'll introduce "for pay" google? That's when I switch to yahoo.
.. I'd be shitting bricks over Apple.
Anyway, if I was Microsoft
When they release OS X for x86 that can install on general computers, people will be screwed. Corporations may switch to Apple because there won't be fear of single vendor hardware lock in (no need to pay $$ for xpensive replacement parts). And most damning for microsoft the overall cost of Windows will have to drop to $49.99 resulting in mad revenue decline.
Plus due to Napster's totally lame advertising, and mp3 player competitor's lack of design ability, Apple will make buttloads of $$ off entertainment devices like how Sony did in the 80's and 90's. Only way Apple can lose momentum is if the price of flash drops to $1 or less a gig. And they have to compete with $9.99 mp3 players.
Simply ship Internet Explorer with a adblock feature that blocks Google's ads, then Google's revenue stream gets turned off overnight.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I wasn't really worried about Google's intentions until I've seen the latest "features" they added to their homepage.
You might have noticed the: "Personalized Home" thing at the top left of your browser.
In order to implement this feature, Google, obviously needs to know who is actually looking at the page, so that it could then personalize it - therefore, you need to "Sign In" to use the page.
To me, this seems like a way to masquerade their true intentions.
By "Signing in" you're actually letting Google know more information then it requires...
You're not only "Personalizing" their homepage, but you're actually creating a mapping between a "user" and a "search".
In other words, Google would now have the ability to know (same account as GMail) which user looked for what - beyond GMail (where they know what each user read).
If you combine all this data, you get a HUGE database containing personal information.
You'd be surprised how much one could learn just by looking at another person's search queries.
I'm sure that in the following years Google would unveil many more features that would practically lead to them having access to ALL of our personal information.
They're just taking it slowly, one step at a time.
This seems to me like a privacy nightmare.
Are we to let Google have all this information, while we sit aside, hoping they'll protect our data based solely on our good faith?
Remember, that by not using their services, you're private information is not protected.
It's enough that 1 person would have your contact information on his GMail account, another would have your e-Mail and some questions you asked. Google would just have to cross-refer and find whatever they like.
Sigs are for the weak.
Yup. They invented the search engine. And web based e-mail. And keyword based advertising.
Nothing wrong with using other people's ideas. They have implemented them better than their competition (I use gmail, personalized search, etc). But their products are not revolutionary despite what their fans may thinh.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Google rules the web, Microsoft rules the desktop (and has a sizeable arm in the server market). I think it's fair to say that Google isn't all that related to Microsoft. Sure, Microsoft and Google have overlapping interests, but Microsoft's main income comes from Windows, and from Office.
/. article). Linux is a Windows killer, we don't see Windows being used less. We see that people are stopping the switch to Firefox, switching back from Linux, staying with Windows and Microsoft Office, despite these "MS-Killers". Google will stay, but it's not going to compete with Microsoft unless it starts an OS war.
Does Google have Google OS? No.
Does Google have Google Office? No.
Does Google have free email? Yes.
Does Google have a search system? Yes.
Where Google competes with Microsoft, it succeeds, where Google doesn't, the industry is owned my Microsoft. And don't say OpenOffice or StarOffice or Linux is going to be killing MS anytime soon. StarOffice 7 was an MS Office killer, what happened to it? Nowhere. StarOffice 6 was an MS Office killer, what happened to it? So was version 5. Linux is meant to be better, but it's not gaining inroads in anywhere but the server market. It might be getting ready to approach the desktop market, but it's not going to do it successfully. And in the server market, Linux servers are used less than Windows servers (35% Windows, 35% Unix, 30% Linux, FreeBSD's in there somewhere SOURCE:
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
Uh... IBM's revenues for 2004 were in the $96B range, with profits in the $8.4B range. http://www.ibm.com/investor/1q05/1q05earnings.phtm l Pooooor IBM, Pooooor MS...
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
What is that? The real time guardian in talk? Nothing obvious here: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define:rtg
MS thinks they are the king because they think software is the real source of value. Google is out to prove that services (search, gmail, froogle, adwords, etc.) are the real source of value.
MS knows this and is trying to get into services, but I wonder if MSN search et al are the OS/2 of the day -- a dinosaur's attempt to compete on a changed playing field.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
"According to 'The Google Legacy,' history is about to repeat itself."
History never repeats itself. I guess this guy is a little optimistic if he thinks folks will pay 180 dollars for a cliche that isn't true in the first place. Ebay is the place to sell cliches, I guess.
"When you have a problem with Windows, always reformat and reinstall" - what am I bid, $150, $180, $200??!
"Linux is the wave of the future" - opening at $8, no $10 to the gentleman on my right with the beard and sandals
"No one ever got fired for buying IBM" - we have telephone bids for $500
Besides, it's a bit premature to talk about the "legacy" of an outfit that's till in its infancy. Microsoft has $50 billion in cash, annual profits of around $12 billion and a vast monopoly. They aren't just going to roll over, stick their legs in the air and die.
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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
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
IBM was fully aware of minicomputers and personal computers and the threat they represented, and they did everything they could to stop them taking away market share from them. IBM was paranoid and well-informed.
In part, that's why IBM picked both a rather substandard hardware design and a rather substandard vendor to supply the operating system (IBM didn't have a choice but to go outside for their software--they were under antitrust scrutiny). This was no secret at the time--how badly the PC architecture and Microsoft's operating system sucked, and what IBM's motivations were, was obvious the day the PC was released.
And it worked as IBM intended: it took 15 years for PC software to catch up with the state of the art of the mid-80's. That translated into a lot of extra sales for IBM's mainframes, servers, and workstations. Of course, the PC business ended up being bigger and more important, but even if IBM had know that at the time, they couldn't have acted on it.
And Microsoft is about to repeat this. Microsoft would have to cannibalize their operating system and MS Office businesses in order to move ahead, and there is no way they are going to be able to do that.
We all like to hate & bash the big guy, Microsoft, Intel, Wallmart... Will we hate Google? Is it possible for a company to be the biggest and not be hated, bashed or vilified?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
This is modded *interesting*? Google would clearly win a boatload of cash in a lawsuit, Microsoft would have the worst PR nightmare of their career on their hands, and it wouldn't work to begin with since Google can just change the DNS name of their ad servers.
No comment.
I for one welcome our new search engine overlords
Close. I think you mean WordPerfect never worked properly on Windows. WordPerfect for DOS worked quite well. I remember the Windows version being a buggy beast though. Also wasn't there a version of Lotus 123 that wouldn't work well with a specific version of DOS? That I think was thought to be deliberate as well.
All things being equal I think it's a case of that was then, this is now. I don't think Microsoft can get away with that in todays world quite as easily as they could back in the day. Today there would definitely need to be some stealth involved because getting caught would crank up the anti-trust machine one more time. Sooner or later if they keep crossing the line someone is going to bust their ass for doing it.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
1) Web based office suite - Web based total office solution .
2) IpSCSI RAID storage and remote backup or a variant thereof .
3) GoogleNET - Dark fiber is currently being bought by them nationwide - the extent of this is not known.
4) GoogleWIFI - currently a pilot project in bay area, may roll out nationwide
5) Google IpTV - Multicast/Broadcast video streams that work thru their google video player .
If 3 of 5 of these fly it is a doomsday scenario for more than just M$ .
They could become the fastest growing ISP in the US, and could displace cable and satellite TV .
I don't know if they want to go this big out of the gate, but the google video player debut
of the matrix sequel played smooth as glass here at my house via the net .
A long shadow could be cast, and the great would tremble, and a new sun rises over google, heheh .
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
It could if Google came out with a spreadsheet or word processor that works over the web in something like xml and saves files in gmail. If its made to web standards and works in any platform browser than they they'll be indirectly taking on ms's os as well since people wont have to have windows to use it.
Anti-monopolist whining and blather to the contrary notwithstanding, the secret to M$FT's dominance on the desktop is COM/DCOM cut-n-paste functionality. You can cut a few rows from an Excel spreadsheet and paste them in a Word document. You can cut a picture from a Word document and paste it in a Powerpoint presentation. You can cut a Powerpoint graphic and paste it in a Paint window. Etc etc etc...
Last I checked, neither OSX nor Linux had anything that even remotely resembled COM's flexibility or third-party vendor support. Hell, I tried using the Adobe Suite on OSX 10.2 last year [helping some idiot "scientist" put together a conference presentation], and I couldn't even cut and paste simple pictures from one Adobe application to another - I had to save to disk and use "File | Open" instead.
For that matter, do any of you even know how Acrobat works? All that Acrobat does, and I mean ALL that it does, is simple import Word documents and paginate them [or, to be more precise - spiffify their pre-existing pagination]. That's it. For all intents and purposes, Acrobat has no word-processing functionality whatsoever - all the heavy lifting and straining is done in Word [and the rest of M$Office], and afterwords, Acrobat simply imports the Word document and [re-]paginates it. [For a mere $500? What a bargain!]
Frankly, I don't see Google [or anyone else] replicating M$FT's COM/DCOM functionality anytime in the near future.
Remember that IBM didn't lose it's market, in fact, all the competition in its market segment (mainframes) essentially died out. Nobody cares about anti-competitive practices in that market anymore. IBM simply failed to win the *next* market segment.
:-).
If the analogy really stands up, then Microsoft will own the desktop forever, and all the rest of the competitors in that space will shrivel and die as the market becomes less relevant. The next market (network applications) will overshadow the desktop market.
It would seem to me that if one was really interested in the desktop market and wanted to see continued competition, then it's quite possible that Google winning the next war could be the worst thing that could occur. Linux could be the next Amdahl
If google manages to become as disgustingly predatory as Microsoft was, then yes, history will probably repeat itself. However, it's possible that Google could shepherd in a new paradigm (actually, an older paradigm that has been reworked), and still maintain a decent set of ethics. I'm not certain that being a scumbag of a company is a requirement for success.
It was not Microsoft who dethroned IBM. It was the minis then distributed computing that did so.
IBM was the king of the mainframe: highly reliable and expensive centralized computing that is accessed from terminals.
The trouble for IBM started with the minis with proprietary operating systems, such as DEC VMS and the like. Then it was the UNIX minis made by several vendors like Sun, Pyramid, HP.
Much later it was client server computing that finally toppled IBM from the position of dominance they had. There was Novell Netware and Banyan VINES there as well, way before Windows networking was something to go by.
They changed from the arrogant top player to a much humbled, yet respected company. This was in the early to mid 1990s as I recall.
Microsoft's role in all this is not that great, apart from providing the operating system for PCs in the client server world.
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