Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Battle of the Tech Titans

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the in-this-corner dept.

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...'"

7 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Dell+Google = Overblown by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "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...

    1. Re:Dell+Google = Overblown by dave562 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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.

  2. The Empire by Xentor · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...

    --
    "The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
  3. Internet Ad Market - don't we all block ads? by us7892 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Internet Ad Market - don't we all block ads? by goodminton · · Score: 4, Informative
      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

  4. Re:Google Competing with Microsoft? by technomancerX · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    .technomancer
  5. Sooo.... by blackbeaktux · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.