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Changing Climates for Microsoft and Google
ReadWriteWeb writes "Weather metaphors abound as this article looks at the evolving software environment — and in particular the competition between Microsoft and Google. Milan says that while Google enjoys relative dominance on the Web platform today, two fissures exist that will force them to move. The first is Microsoft's ability to use the exact same HTML based strategy as Google (like Microsoft's current Live initiative); and secondly Microsoft leapfrogging the current environment by solving rich application installation/un installation and enforcing an acceptable contract regarding what rich apps can do on a user's machine.
Unfortunately for Google, Microsoft is a lot closer to solving these two issues than people think. Microsoft has the best virtual machine with .NET, the best development tool with Visual Studio and the best access to developers with their MSDN programs. And they have a notion. Steve Ballmer himself has started touting the exact strategy they need — Click Once and Run."
That's just about the worst possible news. Microsoft's strategy of making it all-too-easy to install and run questionably-trustworthy code is why the email virus, web browser malware, and -- worst of all -- botnet problems have become the unsolveable epidemics that they are. Does anyone believe that Microsoft will actually get it right this time, in terms of introducing some practically workable mechanism for allowing only trustworthy code? (Not to mention the difficulty of meaningfully defining "trustworthy" in this context...)
Run where? Screaming from the room? For the border?
Click once and run, sure, but run what? The program I wanted, or some spyware installing, DRM-adding beast app? Google has a huge competitive advantage in that they don't need to lock people in with that stuff in order to enjoy success. They simply make apps that perform well, and for some reason people continue to use those. Over time, .Net's massive overhead and microsoft's high licensing costs will cripple upstart developers. These developers will turn to OSS alternatives for cost and other benefits, it's only a matter of time. Microsoft may maintain a large market share, but Google will not "lose" because they're doing something different, even if the end result is a similar set (from a stratospherically high-level view) of apps.
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Click Once is the biggest problem with MS software. Already we have zero click and back door click software installs. It is the bane of my daily chores to remove and recover from web based installs and applications. As a system administrator, having to run in a windows environment I struggle daily to remind the users to NOT INSTALL SOFTWARE FROM THE INTERNET.
I hate Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar and all the others not because those two are not useful, because they are, but rather because they condition the user to install EVERY FREAKING "IE Toolbar" out there. No Toolbars, period!
Your average user is a clueless idiot, and will click install all sorts of crap as long as he thinks it is okay. IT IS NOT OKAY! IE7 is the latest and greatest FOOBAR automatic install from Microsoft. Hey Microsoft, having IE7 automatically install with automatic updates is a really stupid idea, fire the asshat who signed off on that one. Not everyone is running PIV with a gig of ram necissary to run IE7.
So, as for the "click once and run" crap, keep it to yourselves!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
[Microsoft has the best virtual machine and IDE.]
.NET is a suite of tools, some old, some new. Each has a set of strength and/or weakness depending on your point of view. For example, C# and its ability to sidestep strong typing and security server/client side, VBA client side and its ability to drive a lot of client side integration (Office Automation), complicated by the fact most enterprise make this almost impossible with default desktop security, Studio with a serious bent on good integration with anything Microsoft but not so good with anything else... coupled with documentation that is completely outdated on MSDN (OLE Object Stream initialization for embedded controls). There are some serious architectual flaws in the whole attempt to integrate OLE/OCX with web pages and services (including support of archaec pre-web stuff.) Extended clip board support... Complexity injected via SOAP/XSL...
Using persuasive language without a qualification comes accross as marketing FUD. Please qualify "best" for us.
So please qualify "best". Because its not reduced complexity, increased quality, best reliablity, best scalability, best security, shortest delivery time, easy integration, or fastest performance...
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
"Click Once And Run"...Away?
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
Yes they do, until their applications stop running. People aren't going to blame MSFT for their Google apps not working. They're going to blame Google. "It's Google's responsibility to make sure our stuff works on the MSFT platform. Not the other way around."
People want their computers to run fast and easy. Aside from that, there are very few people that care how that is accomplished. So, if MSFT ensures that their computers are doing just that, they will have happier customers.
MSFT has been known to make sure that certain applications do not run w/o changes on their OS and if you think that they won't do anything in their power to shut Google out, you're sadly mistaken.
I agree that Microsoft does have a very nice development approach, but to claim that ClickOnce is comparable to todays HTML/Javascript applications is really reaching. Corporate Users will likely have this ability (once the organization deploys .NET 2.0 runtime), but expecting Windows Live or Yahoo to give up on the AJAX binge for ClickOnce deplyoments is not likely. ClickOnce is more like Java Web Start. We've had that technology for years now, but for some reason, these web apps persist.
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They have .NET which is greta and all, but for the Web they leverage ASP.net which is still a dinosaur of an idea.
Google has GWT, which only about 100 people on Earth get right now. Google has an understanding for the Web, Web applications and how users should interact in the World Wide Web far surpassing MS's "reactive" method of toolkit design.
I see two companies. One which is using old methods, not innovating or developing new ideas and assuming stability in something as fast moving and cutting edge as the WWW. I see another company challenging old ideas (relatively old anyways) and proving the WWW is more than Web Pages and stateless client/server communication.
I see a company that think they get this but only see flashy UI's as the means to the end here. I see another company that understand the UI is just a view to this new idea that the Web is a series of intercommunicating applications users can access from anywhere.
But then, I don't expect many people, especially a monolith who's made their fortunes through brute strength rather than new ideas, to see this until it's apparently obvious. The search for the holy grail of the Web's next "killer app" is right in front of peoples faces.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
You can try for yourself:
on www.google.com search for 'microsoft':
Results 1 - 10 of about 393,000,000
on search.live.com search for 'google':
google page 1 of 751 results
I like my search results 'unbiased', so I choose google.
An advertizing company with a search engine [and other tools] to drive traffic to its advertizements.
Google's goal is to make information available and useful to people. They do so through a variety of means, and currently their profit model is based on advertising. It's tempting to reduce companies down to soundbytes, but it's not really useful for understanding how they operate or what they'll do in the future.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Have you actually used visual studio? it degrades to a useless piece of rubbish after a few months.
.NET I would say that they are on equal footing, except Java is more mature, open source has things like EJB etc....
It may be better than Googles offering (nothing) but probably isn't better than eclipse/jbuilder.
And after using both Java and
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
no, but an IDE isnt a hammer. You are implying that Eclipse wont function as an IDE because it isnt finished yet. That isnt true. It simply hasnt matched every single feature of VS yet.
Put it this way - if someone offered you a moderately featured family sedan for free, would you turn it down because you'd rather buy a formula 1 car that can go 80mph faster?
perhaps you need to go 200mph. most people dont.
its an even more tempting proposition when you factor in the the family sedan maker will automatically upgrade you car every year until eventually it does go as fast a formula 1 car.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
I'll concede on the third allegation which I interpreted as the denial of access to the source code. This is one of the reasons that I have Linux running on my home box since I like to know how things tick on the inside. But I develop with M$ at work and I wanted to point a few things:
Actually, I don't know if I could say that it is the best ever but it is a damn good virtual machine! It can run as well or even better of its equivalent JVM http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/compare/Benchmark_rJust b/c it's made by M$ doesn't mean that it is a horrible product. The company itself makes some really shady ethical decisions but there are a lot of developers working for M$ just like us who want to release a great product.
Microsoft has the best virtual machine with .NET, the best development tool with Visual Studio and the best access to developers with their MSDN programs.
.NET only runs on Windows. Therefore, .NET could not be the best virtual machine for any platform other than Windows.
1) The best virtual machine runs on my platform and preferably others.
2) The best development tool runs on my platform and allows me to write applications that run on my platform an preferably others. Visual Studio does not run on anything other than Windows and makes it difficult to write application that will run on any platform other than Windows. Therefore, Visual Studio could not be the best development tool.
3) The developers I look for write software for my platform and preferably others. The majority of developers available through MSDN are focused on developing Windows software using Windows development tools. Therefore, MSDN is not the best way to access developers.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I can't tell you're serious or not. I've always found navigating MSDN to be pretty frustrating, from the 100 copies of documentation for the same function (none of which are the version you want), to the hours I've spent searching for something only to find that it's not documented anywhere, to the same convoluted thinking that brought us VB and batch file syntax. At least with open source apps, I know there's some upper limit to the amount of frustration I have to endure, since you can just look at the code to get your answer if it comes to that.
Consider two classic applications for two platforms. One is more or less owned by Microsoft, the other more or less owned by Google. The apps are familiar to every programmer: 'Hello World' done in C++ and HTML.
Repeat after me:
HTML is not code.
HTML is not code.
HTML is not code.
What is not shown is the C++ compiler and linker that turns code into executable. Also not shown is the web browser which takes HTML and makes it presentable. And that's really the only difference between these two programs.
That and, I don't know, Turing completeness?