Slashdot Mirror


Redmond Yawning at Apple-Google Alliance?

Debra D'Agostino writes "Despite the media hype around Google CEO Eric Schmidt's appointment to Apple's board, CIO Insight Executive Editor Dan Briody says it's not that big a story. 'Apple and Google are already plenty tight,' he says. Arthur Levinson, CEO of Genentech, has been on both boards for years. And Al Gore and Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell are both Apple board members and advisors to Google. 'While it's fun to speculate about what an Apple-Google alliance could produce (GoogleMacs? MacGoogle? GoogleTunes?) this move is far from an alliance,' Briody writes. 'And even if it were, it wouldn't be first time that two upstart powerhouses have joined forces in an attempt to unseat Microsoft. Remember AOL-Netscape? Boy, they just steamrolled the team from Redmond, didn't they?'"

18 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. this article is tiresome by User+956 · · Score: 5, Funny

    These are exciting times for Microsoft Haters. Google is growing in strength, serving up online ads by the bucket, even making headway in the corporate software market.

    What adult writes like this?

    Blogs are the new Op-Ed page, only with no journalistic standards.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  2. so... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    apple is an upstart now?

  3. Percpetion != reality by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Perhaps Apple & Google have been tight for years, so this is not news for MS. However, for Joe Sixpack this **is* news and Apple & Google are now two well known names (which they really weren't a year or so back).

    I think a lot of people bought and listened to MS because they were the biggest and seemed to be leading the way, so you bought their stuff and did things their way because that was the easiest... Now with two giants providing a different path, MS will start to look far weaker and people will feel that they are now entitled to make non-MS decisions.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
    1. Re:Percpetion != reality by shadowdodger · · Score: 5, Interesting


      Perhaps Apple & Google have been tight for years, so this is not news for MS. However, for Joe Sixpack this **is* news and Apple & Google are now two well known names (which they really weren't a year or so back).


      If anyone really thinks that Google and Apple were not well known a few years ago they really need to have thier heads examined. Granted that Google search took a while for it to catch on but at lesat by 2002 it was well known enough. And Apple... don't even get me started.

      But on more relavent note, M$ knows what's going on between these two at least as well as the general public, if not better. And I assure you they are not yawning at what's happening, but what precisely do you expect them to do? Go cry to their Mommies and Daddies? Microsoft is doing the only thing that any good company can do when faced with someone better than you catching up with your tails and trying to knock you down. Looking for what to do next. Not trying to hide from what's coming. They are also going one step farther and trying to learn what they can from these two companies. Weather or not they are succesful is something that can be debated amongst your selves.

      On a more hopeful note, if Google and Apple ever made any sort of actual loose partnership, it's be the coolest company ever. :)
  4. Question from a Mac user by NTiOzymandias · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If Apple and Google are so tight, where the hell is that Mac-compatible Google Talk voice chat client we were promised a year ago?

    Not to mention... well... ALL the rest of Google's software.

    I'm not blaming Google specifically, mind you.... Apple should hurry up and fix those Javascript bugs in Safari already so that stuff like Writely will finally work.

    1. Re:Question from a Mac user by tajmorton · · Score: 4, Informative

      They don't actually use KHTML. Instead, they use a codebase called WebKit, a forked derivitive of KHTML.

      Apple doesn't use much new code from KTHML anymore, but does contribute some back, although merging it into the KHTML tree is hard, because of the way the WebKit team makes patches. See the Wikipedia article on KHTML for more info.

      If you want stuff fixed in Safari, report bugs to the WebKit team.

      --
      Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
  5. Board connections != product collaboration by Infonaut · · Score: 5, Informative

    If Apple and Google are so tight, where the hell is that Mac-compatible Google Talk voice chat client we were promised a year ago?

    Likewise, how come Intuit has waffled back and forth over Mac support during Campbell's tenure on Apple's board? How come the presence of Ellison on Apple's board never resulted in any staggering Oracle+Apple ventures?

    Boards of directors are supposed provide outside perspective and serve as a safeguard for shareholders. Whether they actually do this in the era of the massively overpaid chief executive is debatable, but it seems obvious that membership on a board doesn't lead to actual strategic connections between the two companies.

    --
    Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
  6. Re:Slashdot lies. by MustardMan · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've never known a mac user to be outright stupid

    As a mac user myself, who reads and posts on many mac-centric websites....

    You obviously haven't looked very hard. I've seen apple fanbois who would brag about the opportunity to bend over and have steve jobs fuck them in the ass with a baseball bat with the letters "DRM" spelled out in razor blades.

  7. Re:Slashdot lies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This illustrates the need for a moderation class of +1: Vivid and Disturbing Image.

  8. Re:Slashdot lies. by kingkade · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If we're lucky, we can all see the fiery explosion that will be the downfall of M$.

    Where do you guys come from with all this venom and FUD? God, complete with a $. Your type really seem to think so much alike that I'd swear every one of you are the same person. It's so ironic, it's sad.

    Anyway, getting to the point: Maybe I agree or disagree but you should provide some reasoning along with a statement.

    Let me try: I don't think there is an alliance, and even Google and Apple together are not going to just "crush" Microsoft. MS' sheer size, marketshare along with its diverse involments in many more markets that Google nd Apple combined coupled with its admittedly dubious business practices are going to ensure they'll be around a *long* time.

  9. MS Threat by gamer4Life · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No one is going to be a threat to Microsoft until they challenge Windows as an operating system. Microsoft can always include any product they make into their operating system "for free" (actually subsidized by the cost of Windows), and push them out, like what they've done with all before them.

    The key to "beating" Microsoft is the OS. Something that's easy to use, runs on cheap/common hardware, and compatible with current software.

    1. Re:MS Threat by _Sprocket_ · · Score: 4, Interesting
      No matter how much you like Redhat or Mandrake or any other flavor of Linux, they're not as supportable as Microsoft or Apple. Remember what it was like before plug and play? Most people couldn't handle installing hardware like speakers and scanners. Driver/Hardware support sucked balls. And it still does for some OS's. And let's not get into the support for Dev's and IT professionals or the books and websites devoted to making peoples lives easier.


      History does not agree with your premise. If ease of use was so important, Apple would be dominating the industry. MacOS had far superior "plug and play" support well before it came to any environment Windows ran on ("Microsoft" and "Apple" are not OSes). And even with the state that WinXP is in today, there is still a very large market for supporting end user desktops. It would seem that Windows (and even OSX) falls short of your ideal. Don't get me wrong - Linux (since you brought it up) as a desktop platform does have various short-comings. But I don't find "supportability" as much an issue as you make it out.

      The only company that could topple MS is Apple and Apple continues to refuse or fail at opening up it's OS to other OEM's.


      Apple lost in the early years because IBM lost. When IBM lost control of its "personal computer" architecture and it became a commodity platform, it set the stage for Microsoft's success and the demise for Apple who managed to "win" and keep control of its own platform. Tough break for Apple. They failed to bootstrap their own version of a commodity platform years later. And I'm not so sure any attempt today to support the x86 platform today would be successful (not that it wouldn't be interesting to see it attempted).

      MS will never be challenged on the OS level until a company out there can bring a competitvie supportable OS to manufacturers.


      You're assuming that Microsoft has to be unseated at the OS level. I disagree. What has to be done is to remove the OS as the lynch-pin to any given strategy. Web apps would be one piece to that - although I'm not convinced that alone will do it.
  10. The key to beating Microsoft by Heir+Of+The+Mess · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The key to beating Microsoft is to unseat Windows. Having a new board member at Apple isn't going to do that.

    If Apple was serious about unseating Windows then they would copy Microsoft's strategies. Microsoft can see threats coming. The Playstation was a trojan horse into the living room. MS pumped a lot of money into putting a machine into people's living rooms that would stop them from needing to buy a Playstation. This is a long term strategy.

    What Apple should do is buy Sun and put those hardware engineers to work on making the worlds best game console. That console should be a server with thin clients around the house, it should serve up great games and movies to the tv, and also let you wirelessly connect a Monitor and keyboard thin client and use Googles internet office suite for working on all your work like needs. TV and music on demand would be served up through Apples iTunes store. With this strategy Apple/Google/Sun could take over the entire household computing needs. And you know it would be cool because it comes from Apple.

    Of course in the meantime I'm going to end up buying Vista, Office 2007, a Nintendo Wii and think about an Xbox 360.

    --
    Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
  11. Why? by nascarguy27 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would anyone compare AOL-Netscape to Google-Apple? Aol and Netscape were both failing before they joined. Google and Apple are both doing very well and aren't exactly the same type of merge/join the AOL and Netcape. If memory serves me right AOL bought Netscape. Neither Apple nor Google is buying the other. It's just the CEO of one company serving on the board of another. It happens all the time with businesses.

    --
    Funny createSig(Witty remark, Odd reference)
    {
    return (Funny)remark + (Funny)reference;
    }
  12. MacGoogle by jx100 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Comes with a mullet, a swiss army knife, some little toy magnets, a straw, a rubber band, a paperclip, and a couple wires.

    You make the computer yourself, or the bad guys get away.

  13. Microsoft's Two Big Weaknesses by Famatra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "MS' sheer size, marketshare along with its diverse involments"

    Microsoft has at least two achilles heels: Windows and Office. This is so since these are the only two money makers for Microsoft, the rest of their 'diverse involments' lose money hand over fist. If Microsoft were to be harmed in either of these two markets then it would be a severe blow.

    I'd guess that the first of these weaknesses that will be exploited is in the Office market since it is easier to switch to another suite, i.e. OpenOffice, then it is to switch operating systems. Switching over to other non-Microsoft products paves the way towards helping people rid themselves of Windows as well.

  14. nothing to see here by Pliep · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, it's just a CEO that sits around a board meeting a couple of times per year giving advice. It's NOT a merger, it's NO co-operation in products, there IS NO alliance.

    It's just that the media and a lot of lame bloggers make a big hype out of this. Everybody else just yawns along with Redmond.

  15. I love this by shaneh0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    The guy calls someone a douche bag and it's moderated "redundant." That's gotta be a blow to the GP's self-esteem. It's so self-evident that he's a douche that it's redundant to actually say it.