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Financials Indicate Microsoft Prepping for War
SpaceAdmiral writes "Microsoft has surprised analysts by forecasting significantly higher expenses in the next fiscal year, an indication that the company might be getting ready to do battle with its online rivals. According to analyst Eugene Munster of Piper Jaffray, 'It looks like Microsoft is going to war with Google.'" From the article: "According to Mark Stahlman of Caris & Company, the fact that Microsoft plans to spend significantly more in 2007 was an indication of renewed aggressiveness in its competitive strategy and an indication that the company was returning to the kind of actions it exhibited before the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit in the mid- and late 1990's. 'It's pretty clear that Bill is running the company again,' Mr. Stahlman said, referring to Bill Gates, 'and they are going to remake the business. They are being much more combative and much more strategically managed.'"
Business / Microsoft
Spot the dinosaur
Mar 30th 2006 | REDMOND
From The Economist print edition
Microsoft’s core business is under threat from online software
IMAGE
RECENT advertisements for Microsoft show office workers as dinosaurs, stuck in a bygone era. Aptly, it is an accusation that some are now making about the software company itself.
Microsoft earns more than half its $40 billion or so of annual revenue—and the vast majority of its profits—on just two products: the Windows operating-system and Office, a collection of personal-computer (PC) applications including word-processing and spreadsheet programs. Both, however, are coming under threat from new technologies.
The pressure Microsoft is facing in its core businesses is similar to one confronted by IBM—another firm that was once synonymous with computing. At the beginning of the 1990s IBM had to face up to the shift from a computing world dominated by mainframes to one dotted by personal computers. In this new world hardware became a low-margin commodity and Microsoft’s operating system took the privileged position. Today, Microsoft still dominates the PC market. But like IBM before it, today’s giant knows that its position is under threat.
The threat to Microsoft comes from online applications, which are changing how people use computers. Rather than relying on an operating system and its associated application software—bought in a box from Microsoft, and then loaded onto a PC—computer users are increasingly able to call up the software they need over the internet. Just as Amazon, Google, eBay and other firms provide services via the web, software companies are now selling software as a subscription service that can be accessed via a web-browser. Salesforce.com, the best known example of this trend, offers salesforce management tools; other firms offer accounting and other back-office functions; there are even web-based word-processors and spreadsheets. This lowers the economic and technical barriers to entry for firms wanting to compete with Microsoft, as well as diluting the advantages the firm gets from controlling how the computer works.
These huge shifts in computing take a very long time, because there is so much inertia in the marketplace—the idea of online applications has taken years to get even this far. Microsoft is still in a position that most firms would kill for. Its two main products—Windows and Office—remain fabulously profitable quasi-monopolies. Even if online applications and open-source software make rapid progress, Microsoft would retain a powerful and profitable position for some time.
For all that, however, online applications clearly threaten the way Microsoft makes its money. Its licensing agreements are geared for a world where software is a physical product, purchased on discs, and paid for at once or in regular instalments. But its online competitors charge each user a subscription: some like Google are even supplying software as a free online service, financed by advertisements. Last month Google acquired the firm that created Writely, a popular online word-processing program that is an obvious potential competitor to Microsoft Word.
Online competitors have also mastered quick development and deployment times that Microsoft cannot match. Meanwhile open-source software—developed co-operatively and distributed free of charge—is also gaining ground. George Colony, the boss of Forrester, a technology-research firm, believes Microsoft faces the biggest challenge in the firm’s history: “Bill Gates knows how to compete with anyone who charges money for products,” he says, “but his head explodes whenever he has to go up against anyone who gives away product
Vista will be out in 2007... doesn't an increased in spending by Microsoft reflect marketing they'd have for a new OS?
From the end of TFA:
This may of course change in the future, but I somehow doubt they can touch Google or Yahoo. The whole race for the crown is about the search based ads, not about who uses which search engine. So Microsoft has not only to get a lot of users to use MSN search as their standard search engine, they also have to convince all the advertisers that their system works at least as good or better than those from Google or Yahoo/Overture.
When Microsoft entered a market late in the past, they always could leverage their market position. It was easier to use the already installed IE then to download another browser, it was easier to use Windows Media Player than to download and install RealPlayer or Quicktime. If Microsoft had no leverage in the market, they used their money: They bought shares in cable companies, started cooperations with mobile phone makers or massively subsidized XBOX/360.
But what could they use this time? Desktop search integrated into Vista? Standard search in IE7? Lower prices for advertisers? Most likely all, but nothing will give them a real advantage. They will have to really compete and innovate this time, and that is not something they are good at.
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'It's pretty clear that Bill is running the company again,'
/. and their desktop outfitted with three screens.
It's true.
And to increase productivity, everyone at Microsoft now has their homepages set to
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
According to recent rumors, Bill Gates is purchasing a Bradley Fighting Machine. He believes that it will provide Microsoft a leg-up in their war with Google. When asked about the situation, Larry Page responded with "we don't make forward looking statements." He was standing in front of an M-5 tank.
In other news, Google has announced the release of the F-22 Raptor Beta(TM) program which allows for anyone with an internet account to remotely control an F-22 fighter. Anti-war groups have expressed a fear that teenagers remotely flying armed warplanes could pose a threat to world peace. Google responded by stating that the weapons systems are locked out except when over the testing range at Latitude 47.6 by Longitude -122.1.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Here are the issues, pick anyone:
1. Launch the most expensive product in your history (in terms of development dollars)
2. Try to prevent nearly-free server operating systems from eating your lunch
3. Pay off the EU fine (just a paltry $700 million or so)
4. Launch a new version of your flagship application (Office Vista?)
5. Stem the losses from your flagship gaming appliance (Xbox360)
6. Make your Longhorn into steak
7. Continue to avoid the wrath of various litigation efforts, some which you will lose...
And there are many more, but these are sufficient to need to build a war chest, Google's success notwithstanding.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It was unfair to mod you down, but at the same time, your's is not a universal experience. I have used *nix software for some time, and while there's no doubt problems with the interface, it's not really like Windows has some sort of foolproof one. What seems to be the key difference is that people are used to the Windows GUI, and that the metric being used isn't actually usability, but rather familiarity.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Seconded. I "get" Linux and use it for some things I do. I am very proficient in getting it to do what I want it to do. BUT the usability of the OS as a desktop stinks. It is nowhere close to Microsoft in that realm. KDE/Gnome/whatever....I don't care. It's still not close (Aqua excluded).
/etc/fstab"
Great for servers. Terrible for desktops. And I don't even want to imagine taking support calls from my employees using Linux. It's hard enough to walk someone through "simple" things in Windows, much less Linux.
I can only imagine the call:
Me: "Yea, so go in and edit your
them: "What do you mean edit?"
Me: "Open Gedit, and modify the file"
them: "So how do I open Gedit?"
Me: (sigh) "I quit"
I am just now starting to see most people grasp the concept of files and directories. And that's people who have been working on "business" computers for most of their adult lives. Never underestimate how clueless the typical computer user is and always overestimate how much time you have to spend with them to do the simplest things.
Your file association problems are probably a result of Gnome's overzealous dumbing down of its features. I suggest sticking with KDE. At least none of the Linux file associations have trashed hundreds of thousands of systems due to security holes with buggy file association auto-launching the way Windows has.