Slashdot Mirror
Google's Love For Small Businesses
bariswheel writes "The Fearless Frog is at it again: In his latest post, Cringely aims to slap some sense into Microsoft, Apple, and IBM altogether. From the article: 'What counts is that for Microsoft the platform is the PC while for Google the platform is the Internet and nobody can hope to control the Internet -- not Microsoft OR Google. Google is making a ton of money from people [small/medium sized businesses] who never were even in business before. This is not only a fundamental change in how advertising is done; it is a fundamental change in how BUSINESS is done.'"
...If Microsoft's business theory is antiquated, then Apple's- - which is for the most part derived from Microsoft's -- ought to be antiquated, too.
So what's antiquated about making a product and selling it? Sure it's been done for a 1000s of years but that doesn't mean it's outdated... people will be doing exactly the same in the next 1000 years
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
For the life of me, I still do not get America's obsession with small business. Sure, smaller businesses are less powerful, but they're also problematic from an economic standpoint; most small business either don't hire very many employees, or do not pay for their health insurance, or even both.
I understand they're "living the american dream" and all that, but how much is that worth us as a society? It seems to me that people have just automatically assumed that larger businesses are bad (by associating them with some bad actors among the super-big actors) and that smaller business are somehow intrinsically "good," regardless of the costs to society a large number of small business vs. a smaller number of larger business incur.
This is a testamonial to the shortsightedness of America and specifically the business and political communities. This is happening all over the country. Most local governments give huge breaks to "big" companies to locate in their towns, while ignoring or hasseling the small businesses with too much buracracy. And they wonder why they don't generate as much tax revenue or big companies pull out, relocate, shut down or outsource out of the country? It may seem like some quick-fix or quick-cash but it's never worth it in the long and run.
For anyone who read the article, the author suggests that Microsoft should license Vista and Office for no more than $50.
Visual Studio 2005 Express was originally thought to be priced $50 a copy, then Microsoft made it free (as in beer) for anyone who downloads it before November 2006. The express editions have pretty much anything that you get in the real thing, except Microsoft's analog for CVS and a few other enterprise things. Express is a great product for anyone who wants to have fun with coding or even write commercial applications. I think Microsoft may be heading in the right direction, because I'd never pay more that 50 bucks for Windows in the country where I live in, because the pirated version of XP Pro Corporate Edition costs $2.5 and because it's corporate, you'll never need to activate it - installs on any number of PCs without cracking anything.
And because I prefer to be on the safe side, I'm currently using a perfectly legal version of Kubuntu.
For the sake of argument, let's put aside the total absence of numbers in that paragraph... But, if one company is going to be credited with "making a ton of money from people who never were even in business before", surely it's E-Bay!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Microsoft can build software for a handheld or tablet computer, a mobile phone or a TV set-top box and even though the wrapper is different, the feel is always very much the same -- that of a fat PC client. Microsoft can't allow a phone to be a phone because they can't dominate and control a plain old phone unless it is more Windows than phone. That's a problem.
It surely is. That was obvious in 2000 when they came out with "Pocket PC", their most successful spin on the handheld, and "Stinger", their fialed attempt to get into the cellphone market.
The Pocket PC meant the end of the Windows CE micro-notebooks and the Windows-CE-based tablets. They were pushing Windows NT as the new tablet... the problem is that while Windows CE felt like a spin on Windows 95, and the Pocket PC felt like a Palm on steroids, the Tablet PC was just an overpriced notebook.
Luckily for Microsoft, Palm had no idea what their product was, and has been trying to turn Palm OS into Pocket PC... and failing, big time. If Palm was smart they'd be selling black-and-white 68000-based Palms for $30-$50 in every grocery store in the USA, and they'd still own the business... because Microsoft couldn't do that. But, no...
But, anyway... Microsoft's platform is Windows. If you're not Windows... even if you look like Windows, Microsoft just wants to make you an annex to the Windows desktop. And if you don't even look like Windows, Microsoft doesn't want you to be a platform. That's why they completely redid the XBox, people were turning it into a platform.
But what's Apple's "platform"? It's not the Mac, and it's not Mac OS, or Mac OS X, because their "handheld/..." is the iPod, and it's nothing like a Mac. It's not even tied in to the Mac. Apple's platform is, near as I can tell, "whatever they can make money selling". That's not something they can control like Microsoft can control Windows. Microsoft isn't Apple's proxy, but what is?
Ms uses their monopoly in OS's to allow them to lose lots of money in consoles, apple uses their monopoly(AFAIK it technically is one) in mp3 players to keep their PC business safe.
Both also like bundling, ms bundles various stuff they want to push in with their OS, apple bundles together hardware, an OS and a platform for 3rd party programs(though you can't blame them for not encouraging a wine type API for other platforms, and they probably don't even resist it as much as ms).
I work for a small company. I used to work for several big companies. I don't make as much money now as I used to, but I have ten times more freedom and ten times more happiness and ten times less stress. I do more work than I did at the big companies, but it seems less like "work." Even though, technically I don't make as much money as I did working at some larger companies, somehow it feels like I do have more money. Maybe this is because the quality of my life has improved to the point where I am not engaging in consumeristic, distractive or self-destructive behavior as much as in the past, and this leaves me more resources as well as more peace of mind?
When I worked at big companies, there always was an illogical hierarchy that insured good ideas would get buried behind the ambitions of politically-motivated managers. People used internal memos to talk in lieu of face-to-face conversations. We had way too many meetings that didn't get a goddam thing done. And half the staff's specialization involved blaming others for things that went wrong. Normally accountability and responsibility go hand-in-hand, but not in big companies. And things constantly broke down and got lost in the cracks. When I was young, this was huge hit to my idealism and I had to make a decision: Did I want to live my life this way and end up being programmed to accept mediocrity as the status quo? Or did I want to find an environment where the people were truly appreciated and weren't constantly living in fear that some corporate boss would cut their job without even introducing himself?
I would never go back.
Show me a large company and I will show you an organisation with huge inbuilt inefficiencies and vast inertia. In the long term it is going to die or split up. That's part of the business cycle. To drive the business cycle, you need new dynamic startups and a regime in which, when they become medium sized, they can still grow. You need strength in depth, like the German Mittelstand. Some will be winners and turn into large companies. But if you only have large companies, in the long run there is nowhere but down. Small companies cannot monopolise their markets, so they have to do something well to survive.
I am surprised myself, but I find myself agreeing with Cringely - over the long term. Until recently it has taken a very big enterprise to build cheap computers, phones, or volume software. The problem is that these things are now commoditised to such a degree that they do not command a premium. It's like the transition from a world in which iron was a scarce commodity and the man who could afford a steel sword could be a military leader, to a world in which iron was a cheap building material and the emphasis moved to poeple who could think of new things to do with it. That this transition is happening over a couple of decades rather than a couple of millenia is a sign of some sort of progress.
Pining for the fjords
you would really rather have a couple people own big companies and small businesses be non-existent? that would generate the smallest percentage of rich/wealthy people in the united states, leaving the rest of the people (more than 99.9%) in the middle/low class. i guess this would be fine if it didnt sound stupid.
I'm counting on Google and eBay to save America"
While it is wonderful that ebay and Google are offering large scale exposure and nation wide distrabution to small businesses, let's not demonize all giant corporations. Some things are better done on a huge scale. Think Boeing and FedEx. While other things are best done on a small,even personal,scale. Like fine dining or health care. The real hope for America is finding the appropirate scale for different industries, instead of business success being defined as becoming a huge market-dominating multinational, success can become about a balanced harmonious place in the economy and community.
We are all just people.
The way software and products are funded is definitely changing. The days of licensing software products on widespread scale (certainly with Microsoft) do look as if they are going to be pretty untenable over the next ten years. With licensing for Windows, licensing for Office, licensing for servers, licensing for other spin-off software like Sharepoint, licensing for Exchange and CALs etc. there are small businesses who will never in a million years be able to use this software in a full, useful and productive manner. Even if they were to, by the time they did the next fifteen versions would have been brought out, leaving theirs unsupported.
Google funds its activities and development through advertising and spin-offs based on that from the services they provide, provided by their development. Small businesses and individuals have got several times the chance of using Google Calendar or Google Groupware than they have of using Exchange. That's what makes them a bit dangerous to Microsoft. Even then though, Microsoft still makes its money through licensing. There's no real way of getting around that.
Ditto with open source software, and that's why it will not be brought to the masses by Red Hat or especially Novell. They charge license fees in all but name. If someone can find a way of taking open source software, and finds a business model that allows them to fund their development whilst giving it away for free, it's bye, bye Microsoft, Novell and a few other companies who make their livings from pure software licensing. Seriously. IBM are a little bit different in that they do more than just that, so they have a chance. There I disagree. But, if you're a pure software licensing company you better hope damn hard that you're providing an adequate service to your custoners and you're in a specific well defined market.
Cringely aims to slap some sense into Microsoft, Apple, and IBM altogether
Um, IBM makes its money through enterprise-level applications and services, with some hardward. Apple plays the hardware/music/software game. You may as well "slap some sense" into Boston Market, Sears, and Starbucks for not joining Google's model.
I work in a small bussiness.
;) Otherwise, you can only lose by giving your patronage to the big corporate places.
People in town know me, and I know them. The people who run the other small bussinesses in town all know me, and I know them.
With a relatively small number of customers, I have to treat them right, or we'd be out of bussiness really really fast.
When I do treat the customer right, I know that they'll tell their friends... and I also know that the other small bussinesses in town will stear people my way, just like I send bussiness their way.
Occasionally, I'll get customers who are complete assholes. Over a certain level of assholeness, and they're not worth my time or trouble... and I make certain to send them off to some large corporate store so I can concentrate on the customers who actually respond to being treated well.
The customers I want, I treat like gold.
Now, take your typical corporate environment. The workers could give a fark about their customers, because almost none of the workers in a corporate environment have a direct stake in how well the bussiness does overall (beyond making sure that it doesn't go belly up).
Your typical corporate employee treats the customers at a certain minimum level of service, because he'll be fired if he doesn't.
So, EVERYONE who goes to do bussiness with the corporate places gets treated in a "lowest common denominator" sort of way. They're not quite treated as badly as garbage that blew in off the street, but they're never treated like the "good" customers that I treat like gold.
Everyone in the corporate places, employees and customers alike, gets treated as just another cog in a big machine.
So, if you spend your money at big corporate places, you're in effect voting with your dollars to be treated just slightly better than assholes get treated. But, if you spend your money at small bussinesses and act like a decent human being, then you'll be treated much better.
Every dollar you spend at Wallmart or Blockbuster, is a dollar that you're "voting" with, to be treated as a disposable nothing who gets the bare minimum of courtesy... and nothing else.
I guess if you're a complete asshole, then you'd come out ahead in that bargain
This is not a phenomenon solely for local governments. All levels of government are just as bad. This is also not restricted to small businesses.
For example, if you're in Pennsylvania and take Interstate 81 south you'll suddenly see a number of major corporate buildings in all fields - manufacturing, financial, consulting - across the Mason-Dixon before you even get a chance to cross the border. This is because various states also have different ways of handling corporations. As a Pennsylvanian, I can state for a fact that the Commonwealth of PA is *not* tax friendly and instead treats its citizens and businesses as an endless money pit that is constantly subject to increasing taxes. It's no wonder why corporations mock Pennsylvania by having so many offices across the border. Same with Delaware. Their tax laws are much friendlier than Pennsylvania's, which is why so many financial mega-corporations are headquartered in DE.
One thing that I have noticed, however, is that PA municipalities, particularly in the more rural areas, are becoming increasing hostile towards big corporations. Wal-Mart has been defeated no less then three times in the past two years from building their mega-stores in the Harrisburg/York/Lancaster area due to citizens fighting them. I know that Wal-Mart is a favorite anti-corporation whipping boy in the past few years; however, the reasons that were cited for stopping W-M include undesirable increase to local traffic and destruction of local, small businesses, both of which are commonplace after-effects of W-M.
Of course, the U.S. itself is very hostile to businesses because of the on-going mentality that if you're rich, you've done so solely through ill-gotten means and therefore need to be punished through taxation. The increasing conversion of the U.S. from capitalism to a federal socialism is also not conducive to corporations or frankly anyone who wants to work hard to achieve wealth because if you're rich, you're living unfairly and need to have your income forcibly removed so that the local, state, and federal governments can give it to others more deserving of your money than you. This is one of the reasons why so many companies have their corporate headquarters off-shore where they can't be subject to the taxes and regulations. Whether or not people think that's ethical, I think that anyone with any sense of economics can at least understand why corporations do that, particularly with so many other countries offering greatly reduced taxes or no corporate taxes at all.
I agree with you completely that small businesses are the ones that get hurt the most. They don't have the clout and financial support that mega-corporations can fall back on. However, harmful taxation is not limited to being subjected to small businesses nor are local governments the only ones who create an environment that is hostile to small businesses. All levels of government are too blinded with short-term greed because of tax dollars that they think they can collect in the here and now.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
posting Cringely's articles. They're nothing but flamebait and don't deserve to make slashdot's front page.
Meanwhile they'll still be selling desktop software of course, but this area will start to decline in profitability. Windows and Office are their cash cows and the software-as-service stuff is their new direction which will eat cash for a number of years.
As far as Cringely's suggestion that MS offers a lean and mean, high performance, secure version of Windows, fully compatible with XP applications and peripherals, that could be sold for $49 without major loss of revenue and internal disruption, well, would that it were that easy. That's Cringely's advantage of being a blogger.
So America's savior is a company that is entirely dependent on advertising revenue? Does Cringely remember 1999? Has he read anything about Google's problems with spammers hacking the PageRank algorithms, and polluting Google's cache with useless auto-generated sites?
No offense to Google - I'm a regular user - but I'm not pinning the entire nation's future to this one tech company. That's absurd hyperbole. Something that we know to expect from Cringely (and Dvorak, et al.)
...for they are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
[Yeah, it's an old one, but do I get bonus points for spelling 'ketchup' correctly?]
Actually, MS is pushing pretty hard into the small business arena.
They have retail management and point of sale software for small businesses. Plus many offerings for business accounting, like SBA. They actually have some pretty cool offerings in this area, compared to the competition anyway.
Suppose that Google had 95% of the search market. Then, if Google either denies advertising space to a small company or lowers its page ranking (so that the company appears at the bottom of a list of 666 other businesses selling the same product), then the company could be hurt irrevocably. There is no viable way for the company to use an alternative search portal since since its tiny search of the search market reaches too small an audience. "Too small an audience" means "too few potential customers".
"Apple is just Microsoft with a sense of style" - Robert Cringely
You are making a very mistaked assumption. What you are calling "marketing" is actually "advertising". And advertising is only a tiny fraction of marketing.
Without marketing, you would have no product (or service). At all.
And yes, the kind of advertisement we have these days also annoys me. And yes, I too think they spend too much money on it.
morcego
Thanks for putting this story under the Apple category... we almost missed our daily quota of Apple related stories.
Note: we're also lacking the monthly story about AIDS finally being cured.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
It became virtually impossible to put a new product on the market without paying hefty advertisement fees thru AdWords. The Google competitors in this space simply do not work so not doing Google ads is not an option. If you dont pay Google for this form of "product placement" - you do not exist and you get zero traffic.
This is monopoly Microsoft could only dream of.
They'd not only charge for a licence each time the doorbell is rang, but also it'd be DRM'ed so much that it only worked on one house. You give the house a new paint job, some renovations, and you've gotta get a new doorbell.
You have to have something on which to run the internet. Can we really compare Google and M$/Apple? They started in very different fields with very different goals. Of course their business model is different; they're in different businesses! Of course, M$ is trying to move more into what has become Google's domain, but that's nothing new, nor should it be discouraged. Competition is always beneficial. We just shouldn't be surprised when different companies that have different goals also have different business models.
This guy subscribed to slashdot just to spam this shit?
WTF, sir. WTF indeed.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Now if Google would only apply all those smarts to something not evil.
You would have to relocate the main offices all somewhere such as Detroit(or somewhere in the Midwest/Rust Belt), and remove the exclusionism in their culture - the most obvious example of it is the Stanford Nexus II product.
Only when you have removed the culture of excluding on a whim, is when you can start believing that what intelligence that exists at Google is doing something Not Evil. Anything else is a corporate "Animal House" with hollow friendliness mixed in.
You are asking for a tall order there, sir. If it happens, there will certainly be some that would think that it'd be on the decline that they do this. Somehow I doubt it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.