Battle of the Tech Titans

garzpacho writes "BusinessWeek has a look at the big tech alliances that have been announced recently. From the article: 'In the war for dominance of the Net, May 25 turned out to be a big day for alliance making... The pairings highlight the importance the fast-growing, $12.5 billion Internet ad market and the race to get in front of as many Web surfers as possible. The alliance with eBay gives Yahoo a way to narrow a lead by Google in generating advertising sales. Paring with Dell, meantime, helps Google muscle in on Microsoft's dominance of the desktop. These alliances are predicated as a response to a looming threat...'"

Comments

Dell+Google = Overblown

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

"Paring with Dell, meantime, helps Google muscle in on Microsoft's dominance of the desktop."

Um, it's a search toolbar, not an OS. I'm sure M$ still happily cashes Dell's checks for each copy of the OS that ships with nearly every model...

Re:Dell+Google = Overblown

[dave562]

Um, it's a search toolbar, not an OS. I'm sure M$ still happily cashes Dell's checks for each copy of the OS that ships with nearly every model...

The larger issue in this case is the 12.5 billion dollar online advertising market. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are trying to generate revenue by serving up advertising. Because Google is integrating their toolbar and desktop search on Dell PCs, Microsoft is losing potential revenue that would have been generated by Dell shipping PCs with their browsers automatically feeding people into MSN.

On the subject of advertising, Microsoft is obviously flailing. They are trying to do too many things at once. That is good news for people who are taking aim at their core OS / application business, but bad news for people using Microsoft software.

So it's...

[eviloverlordx]

...YaBay vs. Doogle vs. Microsoft. Normally, three-ways excite me, but not this time...

Google Competing with Microsoft?

[oostevo]

Where did writers of buisness publications get it into their heads that Google is trying to directly compete with Microsoft?

"The Dell deal, on the other hand, gives Google prime real estate on desktops -- a space dominated by Microsoft (MSFT) ... [Microsoft] drew the ire of Google ... Google now is taking matters into its own hands"

I very well could just be missing something, but I just don't see them competing in a direct, substantive way, at least just yet. I mean, Google makes most of its profits by online advertising, and Microsoft makes most of its profits through licensing of software.

There's obviously some overlap in that some of their products overlap, but what's with all this war drum talk?

Re:Google Competing with Microsoft?

[technomancerX]

Considering MS has pretty much said they intend to kill Google as the dominant search engine, the competition is pretty obvious. Though to be more specific it's really more like MSN vs Google competing for web supremacy.

The Empire

[Xentor]

Is it just me, or did the ending of the blurb remind anyone else of the text at the beginning of Star Wars?

I started humming the empire music...

Internet Ad Market - don't we all block ads?

[us7892]

How will these alliances really effect my browsing experience? Seems like these efforts will just be met with more efforts to block their ads.

Except for the simple microAds from Google, and which now appear all over the place, everything else I, or my company, block. Popups are blocked, ad sites are blocked. Sites that get too annoying with javascript ads, or use annoying pass-through ad pages too often, I stop visiting.

How much more $$$ can there actually be for advertisers on the web? Isn't everyone doing all they can to block these annoyances? Seems like the alliances will be irrelevant.

Re:Internet Ad Market - don't we all block ads?

[Evro]

The people who block ads account for maybe 5% of total web users. The market is enormous. Even if 90% of Slashdot readers actively block ads it's a drop in the bucket compared to the worldwide population of web users.

Re:Internet Ad Market - don't we all block ads?

[goodminton]

The site I run caters to businesses and I don't see lots of javascript being blocked. I'm not sure if that directly correlates to the blockage of ads but it seems to me they should be pretty closely related.

Javascript Stats: 98.66% Enabled - 1.34% Disabled

Operating System Stats: 71.83% Windows XP - 19.03% Windows 2000 - 6.64% Windows 98 - 1.10% Windows NT4.0 - 0.75% Windows ME - 0.43 PPC - 0.13% Windows 2003 - 0.05% Mac OS X - 0.03% FreeBSD

Browser Stats: 90.08% MSIE 6.0 - 4.06% Firefox 1.5.0 - 2.10% MSIE 5.0 - 1.75% Firefox 1.0.7 - 0.89% MSIE 5.5 - 0.38% MSIE 5.01 - 0.38% MSIE 5.23 - 0.16% Firefox 1.0.1 - 0.08% Opera 8.51 - 0.05% Safari 1.2 - 0.03% Netscape 7.1 - 0.03% Firefox 1.0 - 0.03% Mozilla 5.0

Sooo....

[blackbeaktux]

Google: Will you marry me?
Dell: But it's so sudden.... I love your earnings and advertising potential, but how do I know it not just my desktop you're after?
Google: I understand your fears, baby, but here's a wad of cash to smooth things over. And a prenup drafted just so our breakup won't be so bloody.
Dell: Wait, you're not interested in making and nurturing a family with me? And you're already thinking of our divorce?
Google: Weren't you?
Dell: Actually, I was. Sorry. Aww, you came ready with the prenup, how nice of you. Let me run it by legal first.
Google: Sure baby. [mutters] You're goin' down, Bill Microsoft.
Dell: [mutters] Our kids would've been hideous. Might as well take the money and run.

I was watching soap yesterday, involuntarily. Spare me.

trivial nitpick

[bunions]

from the just-because-the-spellchecker-doesn't-complain-doe sn't-mean-it's-right dept.

Pairing with Dell. Paring with Dell makes it sound like they're making pies.

Mmmmm. Googledell pie.