Google a "Wake-Up Call" For Microsoft

wooha points out coverage of a talk Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, gave at a Goldman Sachs conference in Las Vegas. Ozzie said that watching Google rake in advertising revenue was a wake-up call within Microsoft. He said Microsoft plans to do more than simply follow Google's lead by creating Web-based versions of desktop programs or duplicating its search and advertising model. (Despite Microsoft's massive investment in promoting and improving Web-based search, the company still has less than 10% of search engine market share, compared to Google's ~50% and growing.) Ozzie, who has only made a few appearances since his promotion last June to replace Bill Gates as CSA, told analysts and investors that he has been laying the groundwork for programmers across the company to build Internet-based software.

Comments

Moo

[Apocalypse111]

And thus, Microsoft continues its grand tradition of being late to the scene, introducing technologies we've been seeing for years in a new and annoying format, and generally maintaining the status quo in the fashion to which we have become accustomed. Mediocrity, ho!

Re:Moo

[tha_mink]

And thus, Microsoft continues its grand tradition of being late to the scene, introducing technologies we've been seeing for years in a new and annoying format, and generally maintaining the status quo in the fashion to which we have become accustomed. Mediocrity, ho! But what about the "ribbon". Surely you find that a new technology. There's NO WAY anyone could consider THAT an annoying format.

Re:Moo

[sumdumass]

It's call inovation! Silly.

Don't you remeber your brainwashing?

Re:Moo

[hey!]

Except for one thing. Google (and Apple) are adept at something Microsoft is terrible at: making products consumers want to use.

Microsoft's strength has always been sellign to people who buy technology for other people to use. The only success they've had seling to consumers is the XBox. I'm not a gamer, so I wouldn't know why that would be, but I'd guess it has something to do with the importance of developers to game consoles. In a sense, it's just another platform to sell. If that is true, then consumers aren't buying the XBox for an XBox experience, but to experience games written by third parties.

The question is whether they can crack the corporate market on the basis of their bottom up appeal. I think they can, because they have credibilty with IT departments because just about every IT guy is a regular user of one or more Google services.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

I always picture a half dozen angry senior executives poring over analyst reports and press clippings showing how well some competitor is doing (where "competitor" is defined as anyone doing anything related to software or digital technology, however distant from operating systems and office suites) until Steve or Bill looks around and declares, We should be getting this.

Not some of this, or another big opportunity like this one. They mean Microsoft rightfully owns all of this business that the upstart has created for itself. That's what drives Bill and Steve, and that's what drives the top software company in the world.

Re:Moo

[tomstdenis]

This is what happens when you're no longer in the business of solving problems.

They [they being all sorts of people not just msft] often use the term "solution" when they really mean "product." I question what problems they think they're actually SOLVING with their "solutions."

I think both companies lost a firm grip on reality when they think that a web-based office suite makes more sense than say Office or OpenOffice. Sure there will be a good initial blast of popularity, but unless people like lag and absolutely no privacy, I can't see web-based "solutions" taking off.

Tom

Re:Moo

[mikeisme77]

Google has never claimed that Google Docs was an office replacement--they've always said it was meant to supplement traditional productivity suites. The main advantage of Google Docs (if you've ever used it) is the ability to easily collaborate with other writers of a document that are miles away. Yes, you can do the same thing with a wiki; however, many wikis lock users from editing a document if one user is already editing it--Google Docs doesn't (although if two users are editing the same section of a document, it will warn a user that their changes will be discarded and pop up a Window displaying the changes so they can be copied and re-added). Google Docs, unlike a wiki, also allows easier, more intuitive formatting that will stick when you export it to a traditional productivity suite (wikis don't allow you to export--you must copy and paste into the productivity suite). Plus, not all users need a full featured productivity suite and for those who don't, Google Docs serves as a great alternative solution. I also greatly enjoy the ability to have access to my document no matter where I am as long as I have access to the Internet--yes I can do the same thing with a flash drive, but I really do find Google Docs to be the more convenient solution.

Re:Moo

[tomstdenis]

latex + CVS + input files == multi-user editing of a single document. :-)

And it will look better to boot.

FLAME ON!

Re:Moo

[thrillseeker]

But what about the "ribbon". Surely you find that a new technology. There's NO WAY anyone could consider THAT an annoying format.

Let me see what the Bob thinks ...

Re:Moo

[mikeisme77]

Point well taken, but then you don't have the portability I mentioned (as you have to have CVS and Latex installed on all the computers you want to edit the document on). You also lack the ease of use of Google Docs (although that, admittedly, needs some improvement still--changing the name of the documents is non-intuitive and some people who have never used GMail that I've collaborated on documents with have had problems finding some editing features--such as highlighting text). You're definitely right about the Latex solution looking better though--for one it's Latex, for 2 Google Docs needs some serious improvement in the layout end of things--it's far too limited so I pretty much just do it for getting the words on the paper and then reformat it in Office/OpenOffice later if it's a document that has specific formatting criteria (such as a two column formatted abstract/paper).

Re:Moo

[Zantetsuken]

yes but how many average joe's that can barely use Windows are going to know how to use latex, even know what it is, or even know what Linux is?

Re:Moo

[rubycodez]

haha, you have to have a good imagination to have any idea what the doc will look like. LaTeX is all about the logic of the document, and most people would rather worry about the appearance. Horrible collaboration toolset there, might look better but be wrong if someone forgets or ignores another's cvs update.

Re:Moo

[sarathmenon]

You are forgetting the biggest innovations of Microsoft - Clippy, and UAC!

Re:Moo

[charlieman]

Actually that ribbon looked a lot like blender's tool bar to me. Only blender's is way more flexible.

Re:Moo

[mdozturk]

latex + CVS + input files

vs. the simplicity of using google apps? What you suggest doesn't even come close.

Re:Moo

[rubycodez]

whether there's privacy or not depends on ethics and security of service provider. there's also the possibility of google web service software running on a private server (maybe they even open source the stuff someday). Some web based services have taken off hugely, like email and http servers. The delay and lag depend on the network infrastructure, been getting better over the last 20 years. The real barrier to office-type software being web based I think is mostly getting people to use what is necessary rather than bloat and cruft to accomplish 95% of what office docs need to do. We're mostly doing what used to be done with a single-font typewriter or printer and a copier and scissors/paste, but in full color, multiple fonts and visual effects, and taking five times as long to produce these (f)artworks.

Re:Moo

[snottgoblin]

"Sure there will be a good initial blast of popularity, but unless people like lag and absolutely no privacy, I can't see web-based "solutions" taking off."

There are more and more people who value availability and accessibility than those who even think about privacy. Just look at the widespread adoption of email, with people putting out their entire personal lives in the hands of the email providers.

If there is enough exposure to such web-based office suites and folks start considering the fact that the chances of loss of data might be lesser this way than having to store it on their disks and back it up, I would think that there might be more widespread adoption.

Re:Moo

[RyoShin]

That's what I thought when I read the synopsis. Microsoft isn't waking up, it's just working harder to play catch up.

On another forum I go to, someone has as their signature (roughly) "IE7- a 7th generation browser in a world of 8th gen browsers", and it's true. Microsoft didn't include tabs in their browser until FireFox and Opera had already been doing it for a while.

As Linux becomes a more viable OS, especially if Google's new apps take off, Microsoft is going to find itself more and more strained as it offers less and less innovation and improvements- the leap from Win98 to Win2K was quite a large one, the leap from 2K to XP less, and XP to Vista even less than that.

Re:Moo

[BrokenHalo]

Well, as a matter of interest, how about a quickie thumbnail survey?

(1) How many Slashdotters have used Microsoft's Search more than once?
(2) How many have ever used it at all?

FWIW, my answers are "not me" and "yup".

Re:Moo

[BrokenHalo]

The only success they've had seling to consumers is the XBox.

You're forgetting the Zune, of course. The brown one. :-P

Re:Moo

[tomstdenis]

What else are you doing that crafting professional documents is a waste of time? Honestly, sometimes I think people forget the nature of existence.

Pshaw, I can't possibly make a proper looking document, I'm just soooo busy with my social life. Lah-di-fucking-di-da-doo.

Tom

Re:Moo

[khallow]

Depends on the circumstances. I wouldn't even consider google apps for my math papers, but I think we all know that's a microscopic niche market. And if you're a company with trade secrets? Google apps aren't the way.

Re:Moo

[tb3]

Your comment reminds me of the scene in "Pirates of Silicon Valley" where Bill Gates is charging though the corridors of Microsoft, pushing a trolley with a prototype Mac on it. He's screaming something like, "I want this! Why don't we have this!?"

Re:Moo

[clickclickdrone]

>(2) How many have ever used it at all?
Tried it a couple of times and to be honest quite liked it and it produced good results. However, Google is my home page and well, it's there when I fire up my browser and intertia sort of takes over.

Re:Moo

[GeePrime]

Microsoft has a search?

Re:Moo

[MajinBlayze]

Microsoft's strength has always been sellign to people who buy technology for other people to use. The only success they've had seling to consumers is the XBox. I'm not a gamer, so I wouldn't know why that would be, but I'd guess it has something to do with the importance of developers to game consoles. In a sense, it's just another platform to sell. If that is true, then consumers aren't buying the XBox for an XBox experience, but to experience games written by third parties.

Interestingly, the 360 is the first console I've seen that isn't just a "platform on witch to sell software". Instead, the Media Center Extender is pretty neat, my father has a 360, and runs picture slideshows at family gatherings. Additionally, the whole profile concept is fairly new to the console world, and it makes having a family that shares one console very convenient. Additionally, the xbox firmware (there's a fancy name for it, can't remember) interacts with the game more than others that I've seen. As much as I hate to say it, especially here, the 360 is an interesting and well-designed console.

hmm, probably should change my sig to avoid seeming to be a Microsoft shill :)
I personnally don't have an xbox, my father has one, and we will get on it together when I'm over there. also, I use Gentoo at home; and have mostly gotten rid of all things microsoft in my life :)

Re:Moo

[Pollardito]

You are forgetting the biggest innovations of Microsoft - Clippy, and UAC! it seems like you are [trying to make a joke on Slashdot], would you like to start with one of the [Slashdot Joke Templates]?

1. "in Soviet Russia..."
2. "...you ignorant clod!"
3. "Natalie Portman & hot grits"
4. "We welcome our overlords"

-Clippy

Re:Moo

[rainman_bc]

But what about the "ribbon". Surely you find that a new technology. There's NO WAY anyone could consider THAT an annoying format.

Actually as stupid as I think the Ribbon is, I've heard some pretty positive feedback from users actually using it, claiming that it increases their productivity. How I don't know, but still...

Honestly, I thought the OSX dock was kind of stupid, but lots of users love it.

Re:Moo

[darthgnu]

It's "you insensitive clod", you ignorant clod !

Re:Moo

[joshetc]

I've used all 3 major engines (Yahoo!, MSN, and Google) several times. Here is what I found:

Yahoo -> tons of annoying ads
MSN -> tons of annoying ads
Google -> a few text based ads

To me it really doesn't even matter who has the "better" search engine.

Re:Moo

[DogDude]

something Microsoft is terrible at: making products consumers want to use

So, has Microsoft become the world's largest and most successful software company by making products that consumers don't want to use? I'm confused by how something like this is possible.

Re:Moo

[hey!]

Why should this be surprising?

The key is that consumer != user.

When your IT department won't buy you the laptop you want, it's because the consumer is them and the user is you, and in this case you have different interests.

I was working professionally in IT in the era 1983 - 1995, the rise of Microsoft, and this was a very common scenario: senior managers got Macintoshes, everyone else got PCs. The reason was that senior managers had enough clout to steer the acquisitions. The argument that the incremental value of equipping two users with PCs was greater than the incremental value of equipping one user with a easier to use system didn't cut it when you were talking to the boss.

With the exception of the people in accounting, nearly everybody who saw both systems side by side, and was not already a user of one or the other platform, nearly everybody was more attracted to the Mac. We even had TCO data showing that Macs were cheaper. But nobody wanted to admit that training was a cost, and nobody knew how to measure differences in productivity, so the equip two users with a PC vs. one with a Mac carried the day. I was there, and I saw it happen.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

"And thus, Microsoft continues its grand tradition of being late to the scene, introducing technologies we've been seeing for years in a new and annoying format..."

By annoying do you mean an incompatible format as usual?

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, has Microsoft become the world's largest and most successful software company by making products that consumers don't want to use?"

I think the post implied that Microsoft is more "successful" with people who don't make a conscience choice on what operating system they use. For those who do, Microsoft is not as successful.

Re:Moo

[ILikeRed]

Especially with a wide format screen. Leave it to Microsoft to steal an UI element from Adobe (see Illustrator or anything from the CS suite), and then lock it into the most undesirable position possible (Adobe allows the user to position it's ribbons either horizontally or vertically where ever the user wants) just as wide screen monitors are becoming generally popular.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot Chimes! CHIMES!!!

Re:Moo

[thelenm]

I, for one, welcome our Slashdot joke template posting, ignorant instead of insensitive, non-naked and non-petrified, using we instead of I, for one, welcome our Slashdot joke template posting, ignorant instead of insensitive...

Re:Moo

[the_womble]

Yes, I make a point of trying the other search engines occaisionaly. So far:

1) All three usually produce similar results
2) When there is a significant difference, Google usually produces the best results
3) Yahoo sometimes produces the best results
4) MSN search rarely produces the best results.

Yahoo did at one time have a beta of a search with a slider that could be used to tilt the search towards e-commerce or information sites. If they had kept that available, I would probably use Yahoo as my primary search engine.

Re:Moo

[rujholla]

Nah -- but if you have 7 people on a team where you use google to quickly hash out a document and mark it up then export that out to the one person on the team that has a latex / MS word install who then turns your thoughts into a professional document. 90% of the MS word users don't need word -- they could get by with a slightly more advanced word pad which google apps fills nicely. If google can continue to achieve "good enough" operability with other document apps it doesn't need to produce professional documents.

Re:Moo

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's strength has always been selling to people who buy technology for other people to use. The only success they've had seling to consumers is the XBox.

That's not the only success they've had. Most of their hardware forays have been pretty decent. Their keyboards and mice are all quite good. I've also found their gaming controllers and such to be more than adeqate. And (I almost feel dirty for typing this), their drivers for their hardware are often much less odious than those of similar manufacturers.

Re:Moo

[rtb61]

That is absolutely not true. I use the four major search engines all the time, I like to compare results, I can't help it I'm a computer geek.

Google.

Yahoo.

Ask.

MSN.

Google is way ahead in cleaning false results, you know, all those crap fake search engines that lead nowhere. You find them infesting results coming out of the last three and fairly rapidly cleaned up out of Google. Now you think the others would wake up, because of course those fake search engines just suck away revenue, but they can be pretty slow. The order given for the main search engines, reflect the real popularity, which is really embarrassing for M$, what with IE embedded all over the place in their latest (P)OS, generating as many pseudo hits as possible.

Re:Moo

[rtb61]

Never confuse your tenses. Yes people did want to use M$ software in the previous century, they do not want to use it any more, they are just temporarily stuck with it as an OS that is the default and compulsory install on most computers that are available to buy. As for their latest (P)OS the end user reaction is rather hostile to say the least.

Re:Moo

[sglines]

All your bases ....

This is news?

[DelawareBoy]

Come on.. This really isn't news. Does anyone not believe Google is a wakeup call to Microsoft? And if Steve Balmer's Chair throwing is any indication, they were aware of it long before Ray Ozzie was promoted to CSA.

Re:This is news?

[Apocalypse111]

Cry Havoc, and let slip the chairs of war!

Re:This is news?

[zappepcs]

Yes, this time it might be news, if you consider this: Mr Ozzie might be recognizing something, that brand recognition and locking consumers and PC manufacturers into your product is not enough. You *ALSO* have to be a company that people *LIKE*. (note the Mac and PC ad campaign among other things)

No matter how much you make or how much market share you have, you will eventually lose it if consumers don't like you or your new products. There will always be a "new kid in town" that will take center stage.

If MS had a good reputation and were a company that people liked on a level par with their market share, they would have nothing to worry about from Google, Mac, iPods, or anyone else. The trouble is that they don't have what they really need to grow profits against "the new kids in town" anymore, or so it seems.

Re:This is news?

[skoaldipper]

> Does anyone not believe Google is a wakeup call to Microsoft?

Yahoo is the only search engine that appears to be holding Google off.

Does anyone not believe Yahoo is a wakeup call to Google? Why have all others declined while yahoo's cleats are so firmly entrenched at the 3 yard line? That should at least give google inc some pause for concern. I say the reason is in small part because yahoo mail is so popular - driving so many users to their other services in part from clickity click convenience alone. Personally, I still find myself using yahoo mail exclusively over gmail. That thing ever gonna move from beta?

Re:This is news?

[peragrin]

Google is a wake up to MSFT. Just like the Internet was a Wake up call to Win95. Just Like Netscape was a Wake up call to IE. Firefox starts taking marketshare, MSFT releases IE 7 which was supposed to be for Vista only for XP too.

MSFT is a medicore following company. They will always get a wake up call after a new industry has been established. MSFT then moves in using their money to buy out or kill the competition, bleed the market dry and say the idea was a bad one to begin with as it is lying around dead.

Re:This is news?

[dc29A]

Come on.. This really isn't news. Does anyone not believe Google is a wakeup call to Microsoft? And if Steve Balmer's Chair throwing is any indication, they were aware of it long before Ray Ozzie was promoted to CSA.

This is news because some highly placed honcho at MS is finally recognizing that their monopoly might be slowly eroding. Not saying MS is dead next year, but IMO MS will slowly die over the next 10 or so years, unless of course major changes occur within MS.

- Their competitors have brand names that are associated with "cool" or are simply dictionary words. MS has Zune squirting!
- Google is taking on Office that works on multiple platforms. Yes it's nowhere near as good as Office, it's a start with a recognized brand name.
- Google is dominating the search market.
- There isn't much growth left in OS and Office markets, in fact MS is his own enemy.

Re:This is news?

[truthsearch]

That thing ever gonna move from beta?

What's going to change when it "moves" from beta? At this point isn't it merely semantics? It's just a way for Google to say it's not officially supported (and maybe save a little money).

Re:This is news?

[Jtheletter]

I still find myself using yahoo mail exclusively over gmail. That thing ever gonna move from beta?

I do believe that's what happened last month.

Re:This is news?

[dch24]

Interesting that you should single out the Mac. That would seem to be the "reading between the lines" that Ozzie is not saying, and for a reason!

You *ALSO* have to be a company that people *LIKE*. (note the Mac and PC ad campaign among other things)

The problem with what you're saying is that Microsoft has tried (see: XBox, Zune) to get people to like their product. And the first thing they learned was drop the Microsoft brand from the product. (Especially obvious with the Zune.)

As inevitable as the "New Kid In Town" phenomenon is the phenomenon of "bondage, even by silken ties, will inevitably chafe". It's pretty obvious that a lot of people have a bondage fettish, but once Billy has been on top for a decade, we're starting to see a sea change, and everybody seems to be clamoring at once, "my turn on top."

So is that Apple's / Google's secret marketing strategy by going with Intel CPUs, iPods with light DRM or none at all? And Google's "Do No Evil," China Censorship aside, seems to be clearly focused at winning customers by letting customers "be on top," a complete reversal of Microsoft's "Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer."

(I feel a reference to German psychology is relevant, since the entire post is most Freudian in nature. Apologies to Godwin.)

Re:This is news?

[skoaldipper]

> What's going to change when it "moves" from beta?

Speed, hopefully. Gmail literally takes 10 seconds after logging in before I can even see the actual interface, and another good 10 seconds or so after logging off and switching to another gmail account.

Hey, I love gmail - especially since it has free POP access (while yahoo requests "30 pieces of silver" for it). I agree that beta really is just a matter of semantics here; although, gmail also keeps adding many other rich features (like the chat feature) every so often. Maybe they should put a release freeze on it and iron out the interface a tad bit. I like the nested thread structure of posts and replies, but sometimes I find it difficult to determine what is actually new in a massively threaded post.

Re:This is news?

[R2.0]

You've been waiting months to post that, havent' you?

(Just bitter I didn't think of it first)

Re:This is news?

[blamanj]

As someone already pointed out, Gmail just recently did move from beta into a fully open service.

Now, if you think about it, that might also be a reason why Yahoo mail has more users. Gmail was open only by invitation until last month, whereas there were no bars to entry at Yahoo. I'll lay odds that a year from now, Google will have advanced on Yahoo's share noticeably.

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Google is a complete wake up call to Microsoft. Look at the power they have:
http://wonkette.com/politics/wtc/bbc-cnn-employ-ma gical-psychic-news-announcers-240564.php

It's only getting worse.

Re:This is news?

[apt142]

Definitely agreed.

I would also add that Microsoft has sort of painted themselves in a corner with their current business model. Microsoft wants it's user to get stuff done the Microsoft way. Google and Mac both seem to be approaching the consumer/user with the idea the consumer just wants to get something done. To hell with who's method. Microsoft can't compete with that. They also can't change their tactics without taking back on God-knows-how-many-years of business strategy. And that's highly unlikely. That's not because they couldn't if they really wanted to. It's because they won't because their culture is so entrenched.

To top it off, Google and Mac are both surprisingly agile to consumer needs. Instead of pumping out one big product every few years, both of them have mastered the process of small but significant improvements. This allows them to keep shorter goals and to stay more in touch with what the user wants.

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Yahoo wipes out 7 years of your e-mail out of the blue, like they did with mine, you'll move permanently to gmail too.

As much as Ray Ozzie has the technical chops

[gelfling]

To go and develop a truly underappreciated application such as Lotus Notes, I have to wonder what on earth qualifies him to make pan-Industry statements like this? I honestly don't believe that Ray Ozzies understands anything more of this apart from what his bosses at Redmond tell him, than I do. Ok so Google is 'significant'! They pay you to think that up? Because any idiot would draw the same conclusion. Maybe it's more indicative of Microsoft that it TAKES, a senior uber Executive vice president to know this that this is precisely where the real problem with Microsoft is.

Re:As much as Ray Ozzie has the technical chops

[Anonymous Coward]

Ray Ozzie also developed Groove. You should take a look at it. Then re-read what he said about network applications and get back to us.

"build Internet-based software"

[Anomalyst]

Ah yes, the infamous MS "innovation" of follow the leader (badly).

Snooze button....

[blankoboy]

I think Microsoft hit the snooze button a few times too many and the wakeup came too late. The train has already left the station and Microsoft is too far behind. No amount of throwing chairs is going to bring that train back to the station either Ballmer.

Re:Snooze button....

[Trillan]

As someone who slept in today, I agree with you, though I do think you mixed a few too many analogies in there. :)

Waking Dream?

[griffjon]

Microsoft didn't "wake up" to the right set of ideas - it's not google's services that are beating Microsoft into the ground, it's their general openness and interoperability. Microsoft can put Office online and create a search technology that can find a needle in a haystack not even linked by RFID tags to the tubes, but if they continue to play their embrace/extend/extinguish games instead of opening up, as an internal cultural change, what they produce will continue to be hindered by this proprietary mindset.

(It's not even like they have to jump ship into OSS - Google's technology by and large is closed source, they just play ball better)

Re:Waking Dream?

[canuck57]

(It's not even like they have to jump ship into OSS - Google's technology by and large is closed source, they just play ball better)

But built on open source Linux is it not? Google proves Linux can and does scale well.

Re:Waking Dream?

[thrillseeker]

Google proves Linux can and does scale well.

It's not only a "scaling story", but a stability story too ...

Yesterday I visited a small charter school I helped get started when they had no money. It's been six years. I setup an email system for them using various Linux software. I showed their full time IT guy how it all worked, but he came from a Microsoft world, such that his knowledge was. I left the area for awhile and didn't check back with them. Six years later, I'm back and check to see how they are - three IT guys later. They're still using the same system - unchanged - and unrebooted - running on an old Pentium 166, serving a staff of 30 with sendmail and ("slow, but good enough") imap. They're afraid to mess with it - it simply works. I'm aghast at the lack of backups, etc., but there you have it. I hope to (carefully) bring them a little more up to date.

Re:Waking Dream?

[mdozturk]

So that is the cause of the increase in spam ...

Re:Waking Dream?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's possible that embrace/extend/extinguish will not work for Web2.0 at the app level. This reminds me of analysis made within the Halloween documents (http://www.catb.org) to the effect that FUD will not work against Linux.

I don't know if interoperability is really the key, rather it is developer mindshare. I could imagine that the embrace/extend/extinguish strategy might work if it is applied to AJAX, rather than any web app. in particular. To do this, they would have to build AJAX support into .NET, aggressively roll this out in their own ecosystem, and somehow have a version that is so cheap and compelling that it is used by everyone.

Re:Waking Dream?

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically what you are saying is unless you open source your shop you can never compete? Am I hearing this clearly?

Re:Waking Dream?

[init100]

But built on open source Linux is it not?

Just because you build your business on Linux, your products does not magically become open source. What he probably meant is that most of Google's products, such as their search engine, Gmail, Google Earth, their in-house extensions to Linux, are not open source.

Re:Waking Dream?

[griffjon]

Exactly. Sure, Google is the poster child for Linux stability, raw power, and flexibility, but Google Earth (admittedly, bought with Keystone) ain't exactly open source, nor are they opening up their actual code for their web services.

Remember, Hotmail ran on FreeBSD for years even under Microsoft's ownership.

First Chimes!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft products get on my chimes.

But will they actually wake up?

[Andy_R]

Google: Simple compatible web pages that do what customers want, not evil, everything is beta.

MS: Messy incompatible monolithic apps, scofflaws, ship the alpha version if the deadline arrives.

Yes, it's a wake up call, but I can't see any signs of MS actually waking up and learning anything from Google's succeess.

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[sumdumass]

Don't fall alseep just yet. Remeber that skit back in the 80's were microsoft was touting the web browers as a programs front end or GUI?

I think they called them web apps back then too but the idea was you could use a web browser instead of all the other fascinating things microsoft had their hands on at the time. I think this lead into some of the IE security problems too. It is likley, This was a ploy to just lock in IE and create a need in 98 past what critics were aying. But they do have experience in this area in more then one way. (MSN games and such)

So, to discount microsoft for being asleep at the switch when they did alot of this stuff in the late 80's could be disasterous. Outside the being on another computer part, Some might says they were farther along then Google and whoever else are right now.

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I'm curious as to which "web apps" you think Microsoft was developing in the 1980's?

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[sumdumass]

They were calling them web apps but it was basicly a buzzword associated with using IE as the front end to some program. IT definatly isn't the same web app as we are seeing today. But this doesn't mean they are irelevent.

How this is relevent, They have experience in getting programs to display properly in web browsers and retaining the full functionality as if the programs were regularly designed as we see them today. Office 98 relied a lot of this in their installer and stuff. MS has somewhat of a leg up in these depertment were Google or anyone else is still leanring. The idea MS is sitting back and whating everyone else inovete might be misleading. MS could in fact be sitting back and watching everyone create a market then jump in adding their extras. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they cn regurgutate what they did in the 80's and expect it to fly. But they do have some of the bugs worked out that others had to do and they will have an easier time going to market if the market is actualy there.

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the late 80's?

Have you checked your coffee lately? Does it taste strange?

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[clickclickdrone]

I think you missed the point. The query was regarding the 80's, you know, long before the web...

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[clickclickdrone]

80's. You know, DOS, 128k-512k RAM, CGA or maybe Hercules? Not web apps.

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

In related news, I heard that Motorola was relying heavily on their development of the cell phone in the 1820's.

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[ArsenneLupin]

In the late 80's?

Have you checked your coffee lately? Does it taste strange? Sorry that was me. Y'a know, sumdumass is such a hottie, but unfortunately he is straight :-( Jacking off into his coffee was the next best thing to do.

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[sumdumass]

Don't hate me because I'm beautifull..

But seriously, The ability of a program to do something is only part of the problem. Getting it to do this in a way the consumer likes to use is another. Their escapade with using IE as a front end for Apps even though the only web thing about it was the web browser gives them a leg up in this department. Microsoft has done the terminal service thing too so they have experience in running apps remotley. If they wanted to go into this, they could somewhat easily compared to what everyone else would need to solve first. And they could do it using Office too.

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[sumdumass]

ahh.. well the 8 and 9 are so close on the keyboard. It is strange though, Many other people knew what was trying to be said.

Re:But will they actually wake up?

[ArsenneLupin]

Don't hate me because I'm beautifull.. Hehe. No, I haight you for being strate. Such a waste of beauty ;-)

But seriously, The ability of a program to do something is only part of the problem. Getting it to do this in a way the consumer likes to use is another. Their escapade with using IE as a front end for Apps even though the only web thing about it was the web browser gives them a leg up in this department. Microsoft has done the terminal service thing too so they have experience in running apps remotley. If they wanted to go into this, they could somewhat easily compared to what everyone else would need to solve first. And they could do it using Office too. People are not mocking you for pointing out that Microsoft's web apps were bogus, but rather because you got the timeframe wrong (isn't that obvious by all the other answers you got?). The eighties were way too early for the web. Although the internet existed, the first Web site only went online on August 6 1991.

Internet-based?

[TWX]

Ozzie, who has only made a few appearances since his promotion last June to replace Bill Gates as CSA, told analysts and investors that he has been laying the groundwork for programmers across the company to build Internet-based software.

You mean, ActiveX-based software, right? It's not like these applications are going to really function on any platform other than Internet Explorer (and even then, probably 6.0 MINIMALLY) and Windows XP, and there will be no support for Linux, UNIX, OSX, Windows 2000, etc...

Google offers a great opportunity for those who want to break themselves of the Microsoft habit. Cross-platform, functional on multiple OSes, web browsers, and with minimal requirements.

Re:Internet-based?

[ednopantz]

Yep, cross platform like Google Earth and Picasa...

Re:Internet-based?

[StrawberryFrog]

You mean, ActiveX-based software, right? It's not like these applications are going to really function on any platform other than Internet Explorer

1996 called, and they want their view of Microsoft back. Things have changed rapidly, better get used to it.

I haven't seen anything new promoted by Microsoft lately that used ActiveX. ASP.net 2 generates xhtml and targets 4 browsers (IE6+ Firefox, Opera, Safari) and WPF/E is explicitly cross-platform.

Re:Internet-based?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Earth runs on Windows, Linux and Mac, and Picasa runs on Windows and Linux. Better than most companies' offerings.

Re:Internet-based?

[CodeBuster]

You mean, ActiveX-based software, right?

They might be able to do something with that shiny new AJAX framework of theirs, ATLAS instead of using ActiveX.

"Integrating" them into the OS.

[khasim]

Remember, Microsoft still has their desktop monopoly. That gives them the edge is "integrating" new tech.

Which is also why Microsoft cannot follow Google's lead on this. Microsoft's revenue is based upon the concept of:
one user
per physical box
per licensed OS copy
per licensed office suit copy.

Microsoft will not do anything that could harm those revenue streams.

Re:"Integrating" them into the OS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, Microsoft still has their desktop monopoly. That gives them the edge is "integrating" new tech.

That may be true, but I think that what will play a part is the fact that most people did not consciously choose Microsoft software and most people don't "love" their Windows environment. Windows is just what came with their computers and if the news media told the truth and said, "Folks, we have another Windows virus/trojan/spyware instead of another "computer" virus, etc., then people would hate MS software even more.

Google is cherry picking MSFT's lunch

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The most difficult market to take out of MSFT's grasp is the Office software, with legacy files, macros, APIs, integration with workflow etc. And since Office is tied to Windows OS, it allows MSFT to continually tweak the OS, foist upgrades in a never ending cycle. But another big cake in MSFT's plate is the license revenue from the Microsoft Exchange Server. It is not bulk priced, every email id created by the its corporate clients not MSFT, creates license revenue for MSFT. This is the market most easily wrenched from MSFT's grasp.

A good browser is all the interface needed to deliver email. And not being tied to a machine but being available over the net is a useful thing. So the Google Calender and email can compete with MSFT. That is where is Google is making a move. The corporate email market is so big and is such a huge revenue generator, there is place for both Google and Exchange and Lotus Notes and may be yet another player. If Google corners anywhere between 20% to 33% of the corporate email market, it can outfox MSFT. If the next upgrade of Vista is not compatible with Gmail's corporate clients, they would even consider not upgrading. Already there is some reluctance in the marketplace to upgrade and people are getting upgrade-weary. If the OS upgrade forcing Office grade cycle gets broken, and if some corporations demand true interoperability instead of settling for MSFT compatibility, cracks will develop in MSFT's dominance. But it is all well into the future. Might take 5 years for this to happen.

Re:Google is cherry picking MSFT's lunch

[popeye44]

We use notes at work and while it's not my favorite client we run it for 25,000 users at a cost of 9.00 per user. There isn't anything that compares to that price. "in my very limited knowledge of enterprise clients" The new web based Notes is almost the same as your desktop and they can share address books etc. It's very functional has a wysiwyg text editor much like gmail. Now I'm saying NEW.. but of course this being government we're a couple of versions down from the current Notes release. We're at 6.5. Notes client is still a bit of a resource hog.

Re:Google is cherry picking MSFT's lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

How about your salary+benefits. At least 100K?
Then that's already another $4 per user?
Maybe there are few of you that's no longer needed if your company move to google mail?

Next "home work" for Google

[bogaboga]

My suggestion to Google is to take multimedia its next "home work." Why not find a way to popularize open video and audio formats like ogg? As an example, the popular Google summer of code would have a project specifically geared to creating plug-ins that enable windows based multimedia players play ogg based formats.

Next, it then becomes our burden to make sure we wean ourselves off Microsoft's formats an to popularize this move.

Ads in Vista

[moxsam]

What's next is advertisements in Vista.

Re:Ads in Vista

[UnknowingFool]

Microsoft would like to send you an ad. Cancel/Allow. [Cancel]
Are you sure you want to cancel? Cancel/Allow. [Cancel]
Microsoft has added you to the list of people who will receive ads.

What the hell just happened?

Always too little too late

[JoeCommodore]

As the story states Microsoft is after the advertising revenue, not really actually interested in providing the rich content that google strives for.

There is where the difference lies, Microsoft does not see this or many of the other markets it shoves it's foot into as a "we can do this better because we care", it's more like "hey, there's someone making money on this, lets do it too!" and that's how they approach it. They make a shortlist of competitive features and try to cover those.. and little else. Then talk the talk of what people are saying about thier competition ("we're secure, you can share, we're open, we got what you are looking for. etc.")

Microsoft hasn't been innovating for years, it's more like they play a continual game of catch-up.

Re:Always too little too late

[nuzak]

> Microsoft hasn't been innovating for years

Microsoft Research innovates like crazy. It's just rare that anything ever escapes alive and in recognizable form from MSR.

Hell, what has Linux innovated lately? Desktops on spinning cubes?

Re:Always too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, what has Linux innovated lately?

- DRM-LESS Kernal.
- Price.
- Pirate users welcome.
- Doesn't treat the user like a thief.
- 64-Bit.
- Speed.
- Reliability.
- /proc interface.
- profit.

Re:Always too little too late

[notaprguy]

I'm sorry but what "rich content" does Google provide? Google is the yellow pages so I guess if you consider advertising "rich content" then your statement is accuraet. If you think that Google isn't motivated by financial interests then you're a very scary type of pollyanna. Also, if I were the paranoid type (which I'm not) I'd be way more scared of Google than I am of Microsoft. Google knows who you are, what you do on the Internet, who you conduct transactions with, who you send email to (if you use Gmail) etc etc.

Re:Always too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone want to try listing some real innovations?

Any list that includes 'welcomes piracy' as an innovation isn't worth the pixels you're reading it on.

Re:Always too little too late

[The Notorious ASP]

Speaking of Microsoft Research... Andy Wilson - Check out the videos for Touchlight and PlayAnywhere - very cool stuff.

Re:Always too little too late

[lubricated]

>> Hell, what has Linux innovated lately? Desktops on spinning cubes?

Linux is an operating system kernel, not a person or a company, it's not sentient, and it's not going to innovate anything. I'm glad you were able to turn a microsoft bash into some kind of anti linux comment. You also forgot to bash apple and bsd.

Re:Always too little too late

[Paul Bristow]

How about (for free):

a single OS that scales from tiny embedded systems up to supercomputers
many CPU architectures supported
pluggable filesystem support
pluggable scheduler support
ALSA - a decent multi-interface audio system
Low-latency support for media
Useable kernel level Software RAID
Oh and a Unix compatible system that replaced things costing $1000s back in the mid 90's.
affordable NAT
affordable firewalling

There's probably more, and some of these things appeared elsewhere first, but Linux got them deployed widely.

Re:Always too little too late

[malevolentjelly]

The extent to which linux fails on all its basic desktop/multimedia workstation fronts makes the price tag for windows or mac seem quite acceptable.

Wasn't 'lately' a key term here? Linux has always been technologically lagging professionally developed kernels. It's still a horrid mess. It takes money and corporate organization to make a massive technological software project worth a damn.

See: Any open source project not developed by a corporation.

Where are these fairy-tale innovations that corporate OS's don't have?

Re:Always too little too late

[rolfwind]

The extent to which linux fails on all its basic desktop/multimedia workstation fronts makes the price tag for windows or mac seem quite acceptable.

Hi,

I see you are stuck in the year 1997 - I probably can't pull you out to our time, but I'll be happy to provide any needed help or news from home.

Re:Always too little too late

[Anonymous Coward]

> Linux is an operating system kernel,

It seems to be whatever's convenient for the argument at hand. Is a kernel going to Take Over The World?

Re:Always too little too late

[malevolentjelly]

And the market share backs me up.

So, since 1997 Linux has gone from laughably-adapted server as a desktop system to poorly adapted server as a desktop system.

Why, now-a-days media professionals prefer linux to...

oh wait, no... linux is only used as a desktop system by enthusiasts. :(

It's good for render farms, though. It's good for servers. It's okay for certain types of workstations.

The only open source operating system that seems to have the right idea for a consumer desktop/media system is HaikuOS. I wish more linux desktop developers would jump off the retard wagon.

Re:Always too little too late

[nuzak]

The only specific item in there (/proc) did not come from Linux, it's from Solaris. Linux can take credit for what its version of /proc became in the 2.4 series. No one else wants it, not even Linux 2.6.

And if Linux was first to 64 bit support, Microsoft invented the Internet.

Re:Always too little too late

[WhiteWolf666]

Well, as other posters have said, Linux is just an OS kernel, not a distribution; having said that, there is a great deal of innovation going on in the open source world.

Linux:
1. User-space file systems. FUSE. This stuff is neat. Linux supports a panoply of filesystems that Windows users can only dream of, and a lot of these are worlds and worlds ahead of Windows stuff. Take a look at FunionFS, and Wayback FS.
2. Abstract, granular CPU and I/O prioritization and scheduling. Linux can be realtime in ways that NT can only dream of; which is impressive considering the scale of Linux.
3. LinuxBIOS. Anyone stuck an NT kernel into Motherboard firmware? No? Why not?
4. KVM. Linux kernel virtualization. Microsoft is talking about duplicating this for the NEXT version of NT.
5. A fully relocatable kernel. New in 2.6.20
6. How about a native IPv6 stack? Linux did it first.
7. How about boot time switching between 64-bit and 32-bit, or ACPI and noACPI? How about probing/autoloading of modules on boot? How about all possible drivers being installed, all the time, even ATI and NVIDIA's closed-source drivers now, using the Novell KMP system?
8. POSIX compliance (uncertified), AND Win32 compliance (uncertified). First OS to do this.
9. Support/scaling for an unlimited number of processors?
10. How about a flat memory model (4GB/4GB split), even on 32-bit?
11. Don't forget about ALSA. Wanna change how your sound is mixed, in userspace? No problem. Wanna reroute your mid-rear-left speaker to your record slot? No problem. Want 3D sound in older applications? OpenAL is there for you (unlike DirectSound in Vista). Here's a list of ALSA plugins, all of which are utilized in userspace: http://alsa.opensrc.org/ALSA_plugins .
12. Vast improvements in Kernel security all the time. Things like selinux, and AppArmor (AppArmor is really cool stuff) are worlds beyond UAC and group policy.

And that's just the OSS Linux kernel. Wanna talk about other subsystems?
CUPS versus Windows printing?
1. Autodiscovery of local subnet printers? Not possible in Windows, even Vista.
2. End to end Postscript printing, even on $15 crapprinters?
3. Out of box support for IPP, CUPS, LPR, SMB, and other kind of printing system you can dream of.
No matter how you slice, CUPS is worlds away from Windows printing. Never, ever have to deal with printer drivers as you move from network to network; this is a dream avaliable for years in the CUPS world.

X? Xorg is a thing of beauty.
1. Full network transparency (2D/3D). Not avaliable in Windows. Best of breed network performance using NX.
2. A fully modular windowing system. Remove or add components at will. No Internet Explorer required.
3. Extremely high performance, with decades of support for both 2D and 3D operations.
4. The sky's the limit in terms of scalability. 1 monitor? 4 monitors? 64 monitors spread across 12 systems? No problemo.
5. Xgl is the beginnings of a pure 3D windowing system with legacy support. Xegl is the future of this pure 3D windowing system, at performance levels that put Aero's hybrid 2D/3D setup to shame.
6. Yes, spinning cubes. And a whole lot more eye candy. On a whole lot less hardware than Aero requires. Geforce 5200 mobile with 32 MB of RAM? No problem.

GUIs?
I don't know much about Gnome, as I'm a KDE guy, but:
1. KIO-slaves. ftp:// ? of course. bzip2:// ? torrent:// ? fish:// (this one is amazing, directory browsing over plain SSH). beagled:// ? how about man:// or programs:// ? how about klik:// ? KIO-slaves are one of the coolest features in GUIs out there, hands down.
2. Kparts. Click on a PDF url, and you get KPDF in your Konqueror window. Click on a DOC url, and you get Kword in your Window. Click on an RPM, and you get either YaST2 (for SuSE), or KPackage. And all of these are user configurable, of course, on a user-by-user basis. This is something that neither OS X or Windows have worked out correctly.

Re:Always too little too late

[nuzak]

That's an excellent response. I don't agree with everything in the list (some items I outright contest), but at least you took more time to respond than my off the cuff post even really deserved.

WinFS will never see daylight, but as for Monad, it's out, it's called Powershell, and Exchange 2007's backend is basically scripted entirely in it. It's still a little klunky to use until there's a good set of short command aliases built up into a standard library though. Powershell Analyzer (a third party thing, google for it) is about eight million degrees of cool, just watch the video demos. Compared to the functional programming research output of MSR, Powershell (nee Monad-- it was named for a FP device, it doesn't use it) is not much, but as a shell it has no equal at this time.

Re:Always too little too late

[Mex]

Do you have any particular projects in mind? I know about Google Labs, and I find it fascinating. Does Microsoft have an equivalent that is public?

Re:Always too little too late

[JoeCommodore]

From my persepective I see Google doing a lot of investing in information technology and data (google groups being very significant data aquisition) in which leads to a lot of people finding information which leads them to be tops in advertising revenue. Microsoft on the other hand seems more sligned with the "We have the destination for advertising to users" instead of "we are the destination for users who want to find lots of information (and will see adverting)"

Look MS is a company that makes an OS (and secondly a business suite), that is thier core business, everything else is either a vehicle to boost sales of thier core product or to just generate extra revenue using thier core technologies. Everythng beyond the core seems to be treated as a satellite, and they add and drop those at the blink of an eye.

Re:Always too little too late

[Breakfast Pants]

Does 'PlayAnywhere' play anywhere? 'PlaysForSure' certainly doesn't play for sure.

Re:Always too little too late

[notaprguy]

Newsflash: Windows client OS's now account for about 30 pct of Microsoft's revenue. Office a bit more. Their server business (SQL, Exchange, BizTalk etc.) alone would be one of the largest software companies in the world. You're right that MSFT's success is still very much linked to Windows client but that has been changing for a long time and will continut to be less important.

Lotus Notes meets Web 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I have this image in my mind of a large dirigible approaching a mooring mast in a thunderstorm?

Hiring woes

[pohones]

As it seems, they are really trying to fool people about Google. A lot of posts about Google in the Microsoft hiring blog:

http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog

Re:Hiring woes

[Sneakernets]

From that site:

So, when candidates ask me if I am afraid of Google, Facebook,

Holy shit, when you make any successful site or business on the web, you're considered COMPETITION?

On the bright side, Search "google" on the msdn tech careers blog. You'll find them laughing at Google for "horrible business ideas" and other misc. idiocy. They sure are eating those words now!

ozzie eh..

[SohCahToa]

Ozzie, who has only made a few appearances since his promotion last June to replace Bill Gates as CSA, told analysts and investors that he has been laying the groundwork for programmers across the company to build Internet-based software.

He did so by bitting off the head off a bat, then making a reality show about himself.

Love the google adwords ads shown here

[DoctorEternal]

I bet slashdot is raking in it's share from Google too. :)
Dr.E
http://www.turingshop.com/ -- 3D Space Opera

We are lucky...

[Anonymous Coward]

That MS can't afford to buy Google.

Why play fair when you don't have to?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

He said Microsoft plans to do more than simply follow Google's lead

...they plan to also leverage their monopoly.

Google only has 50% of the search market?

[creationer]

Huh, I thought it would be higher...I guess yahoo isn't that bad after all.

Re:Google only has 50% of the search market?

[thrillseeker]

Huh, I thought it would be higher

Well, one could argue that they have the important 50% - the 50% that also has excess cash to spend on advertisers offerings. Look at who's making money and who ain't ...

Also, I question the 50% number. According to zdnet

According to estimates close to 90 percent of Google's visits are search-related, compared to about 10 percent for Yahoo. Google has also proven that search offers better financial rewards, outpacing Yahoo in revenue by close to $3 billion for the first three quarters of 2006.

Re:Google only has 50% of the search market?

[neminem]

Yeah. I go to google for search, 100% of the time.

On the other hand, I still use yahoo for things like checking what movies are out, cause I know their information on stuff like that is easy to find, and that they'll conveniently link me to a random sampling of reviews on each movie. Yahoo is still good for some things - just not for searching. Wonder how long it'll take them to drop out of search entirely, and just concentrate on what they provide that google doesn't?

Either that or google will continue the trend of trying to be good at everything, and Yahoo will die there too. Course, the same part is, unlike most companies that try that, google actually does seem to be good at everything it tries.

Business

[RahoulB]

The key phrase was that "business customers won't like it". MS doesn't actually care about consumers - they are just after the multinationals

Re:Moo (you missed "appropiating")

[apodyopsis]

The last stage of your apt introduction is the bit where Microsoft appropiate the technology as their own having removed the original innovator.

They remove the original innovator by a number of means: outright purchase and asset strip (stacker?), use their monopoly (netscape, firewalls, antivirus), FuD (linux - thats not working so well for them)... Have I missed any?

But once the original innovator is gone they can claim it as their own. And force us to use their cack-handed implementation in (to paraphrase the parent) "an annoying format". And what is worse, we let them.

Fume. Froth. Soapbox.

Googled

[Anonymous Coward]

Dutifully, I did Google "a wake up call for Microsoft", and, wouldn't you know it, I found TFA!!!

Re:what if?

[xonicx]

what if MS wraps a x11 client in HTTP as a IE7 update and start delivering bunch of application which is pain to replicate in browser. Users will get better application in short time and MS can take a lead.

I assume MS will make sure that x11 client works with MS only.

No it's not

[WingedEarth]

Microsoft doesn't appear to be anywhere close to woken up. When was the last time Microsoft actually offered something new, rather than copying other people?

Re:No it's not

[Serapth]

Sharepoint 2007
Office 2007
Sql 2K5 w/ CLR .NET 3.0
XNA
Tablet PCs

Need I keep going, or do you not want your happy anti-Microsoft fantasy shattered? MS has tons of "new", ironically, all of it will be copied by the open source world in the next few years, but hey... whats a few double standards between zealots, eh?

Google is Evil now. of COURSE m$ is interested...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google says "Be Not Evil" and schedules rigorous drama classes to build sham 'goody feely' nameshare.
Google allows and uses evil practices to garner 'additional' advertising revenue for zero additional value.

When are the advertisers going to learn that the "CONTENT NETWORK" is garbage? Stop paying for people's missed clicks in gmail.

It's sad that bad ethics are not considered evil these days.

It's a brand problem

[BlueCoder]

Evidently no one at the top at Microsoft has a clue about brand names and company image. By Microsoft trying to be a one size fits all we do everything company, it's losing it's identity. People just don't trust the name Microsoft or that one company can be good at many things. The brand Microsoft isn't even recognized as making good software, just as being dominant in the industry and cut throat.

What people instinctively know is that for every product and business you need a leader and a vision. It would just be way better if Microsoft started businesses as DBA's all with their own organizations or just spun off new companies. It would still be the same people owning the companies and receiving the profits but they would be real brands and have identities of their own.

Sure Goggle many have it's fingers in many pots but when it comes down to it I recognize them as an Internet and web services company. If they tried to sell me a desktop operating system I'd look at them cross-eyed.

Google simply the best

[nevvamind]

I was looking for the typical new.gif for my company's Intranet webiste, tried searching on both Google & Live.
Results were amazing.
Try it out for yourselves, search for new.gif in Google Image search Vs Live Image search.
What you realise instantaneously is that microsoft's search operates in an entirely different dimension (and wrong context(s)) !
No wonder google has the lead.

You know...

[superbus1929]

The last time I checked, "Microsoft" had not become a verb. When we search for something, we "Google" it nowadays. We can't say Microsoft has achieved that status with anything... not yet. Maybe when someone overprices a new product that does virtually nothing new, we can say they "Microsofted" the product? Oh! How about when someone releases a product that limits what you can do with said product and locks it up if you don't follow the rules? Is that "Microsofting"?

All I know is that whenever someone is so successful that they break the rules of English, then they've kinda-sorta surpassed you on the relevancy scale. ;)

Re:You know...

[clickclickdrone]

>The last time I checked, "Microsoft" had not become a verb
Speak for yourself. Here we have lots of systems that are Microsofting their data. And it ain't pretty.

Re:You know...

[TraumaTrout]

I have to see my proctologist next week. I hope he doesn't microsoft me up to his wrist.

Re:You know...

[SL Baur]

I don't know about that. Last night WoW microsofted on me twice. Had to reboot the computer to get it going again.

First Lamer!

[Anonymous Coward]

How's the astroturfin' working for ya?

Google - really 50%?

[clickclickdrone]

Every site I look after typically has 90-95% of incoming search engine hits coming from Google. People I talk to report the same. I'm surprised Google's share is said to be as low as 50%.

Re:Moo (you missed "appropiating")

[init100]

They remove the original innovator by a number of means: outright purchase and asset strip (stacker?), use their monopoly (netscape, firewalls, antivirus), FuD (linux - thats not working so well for them)... Have I missed any?

Maybe Spyglass/IE. Microsoft acquired the rights to distribute, provided Spyglass got a percentage of the profits from IE. Microsoft then set the price to zero, so they didn't have to send any money to Spyglass.

Part of the blame would be on Spyglass, since they didn't require a minimum amount of money per copy, just a percentage (any percentage of zero is zero).

Microsoft is NOT an Internet company

[ScaredOfTheMan]

I don't mean to point out the obvious but MS is not an Internet company (even with OZ's help). They are OS and standalone application developers...who are able to use TCP and UDP in their products but certainly do not have the corp. balls to do something really innovative to get them noticed on the net.

The reason they are getting their @ss handed to them this time around (in search, social networking etc), is they can't bend the will of users to use their sub par products like in days gone by. No more proprietary formats or files, they really have to compete if they want to win, and to compete means take risks...and its for that reason that they will not win.

They got lots money...and a nice chunk of the desktop market...but that's not as important as it used to be. One final example, flash video basically demolished wmv as the defacto standard of video sharing overnight. First it was hardware abstraction...now its OS abstraction...and then what will MS do?

First advert out of the gates:

[Anonymous Coward]

(announcer's voice) A brand new installment of mymemo.doc is coming right up. But first a word from Clippy!

(cue cheesy music) Da ta ta ta da da, daaaaaaaa!

(really irritating whiny voice) "Hey folks, I'm your old friend Clippy. You know me as that loveable little animated paper clip that caused both ammunition and replacement monitor sales to rocket to an all-time high. But did you also know that I suffer from ......... diarrhea? That's why I take Dysprosium, twice a day. And you should too!

And now, back to mymemo.doc " [blink, blink]

Objective vs. Result

[JacksBrokenCode]

Google has never claimed that Google Docs was an office replacement--they've always said it was meant to supplement traditional productivity suites.

You must've missed the Google manager: Google Apps replaced Microsoft Office at 100,000 businesses article. Yes, the Google rep uses a political "it's a supplement, not a replacement" line, but he also says, "We have hundreds of thousands of small to medium businesses that have already...switched their entire infrastructure over to Google Apps." Whether or not they are claiming Office-replacement as a goal, they certainly are touting it as a result.

What the hell?

[kimvette]

Why is it that when Microsoft, dominating an entire industry, sees another company doing well in a quasi-related niche, feel compelled to enter and dominate that industry as well?

I'm a capitalist through and through but I'm so fucking sick of Microsoft.

I'm sick of hearing how secure Vista is, when their Vista security features are so annoying 99% of users will probably disable them.
I'm sick of hearing how much of a vast improvement Vista is over XP, when OS X and KDE on x.org have been there/done that for ages now -- ESPECIALLY when the truly major "improvements" in Vista restricts' customers' Fair Use and Right of First Sale activities.

Oh, and what about MSIE 7.0? Where are the improvements? It does not pass the acid test (even though every other browser on the planet worth mentioning passes now), designers still have to bend over backwards for modern techniques to render correctly in MSIE, and it breaks differently than MSIE6, so things are more interesting. On the plus side, at least they DID fix .png rendering, so I have to give them some credit there.

I used to be a Microsoft fan, and I've hated practically everything they've done after Windows 2000, because I see it as predatory, self-serving, and providing FAR less value to the customer, all while prices are tripling and quadrupling for Windows. For what? restricted activities on the computer? Revocation of First Sale rights? Restriction of Fair Use?

Sorry, I had to vent. This is not intended to be insightful, informative, or even interesting; it's merely a good opportunity to vent in a place where hopefully some Microsoft drone will read this and say "Hey, are we REALLY that bad? I guess we are alienating our customer base." In summary: Fuck Microsoft. There is no need for them to dominate advertising, and quite honestly, I rather they didn't even try, because if there is one thing Microsoft truly excels at, it's annoying and alienating customers.

Posted using Firefox 2.0 on Linux.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, I used to be MS hater and in the past few years (ever since i started making money seeling my own software), I started to appreciate Microsoft. I hear that IE was lacking in features, namely the famous tabbed browsing, but MS made the IE engine available to developers, and many small time developer started making living creating software were microsoft fell short ( deliberately or not). Things were good. Seems MS likes to cultivate "programmer making a living" while linux crowd likes to give away milk for free. People complain that every version of Windows' has increased hardware requirements, well,.. it is part of responsibility of a #1 software maker to drive equipment sales, otherwise the markets go stagnant. MS is attempting to drive the economy as well.

Re:What the hell?

[carrier lost]

Fuck Microsoft.

You've got a long ways to go before you are a true Microsoft fan boy. There are reeducation camps in remote areas of Washington state for that.

Re:What the hell?

[GWBasic]

Oh, and what about MSIE 7.0? Where are the improvements? It does not pass the acid test

From: http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/guide/

Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification.

The Acid test is rather, uhm, contrived. Don't get me wrong; I'd like to see IE7 properly implement standards. It's rather irresponsible to use the Acid test as a judgement of standards complience because a browser could pass the Acid test, yet botch every other page.

Microsoft COULD Do it "Better"

[Greyfox]

They have the technology. All they have to do is redirect domain name mispellings to their ad-laden page of crap. They already do THAT. The next component of the technology is one that randomly introduces errors into the URL when type it in. Most users don't do that often though, so they'd also have to figure out how to get you to that page some percentage of the time when you use bookmarks. Lets see... They could also show ads while a web page is loading, put ads in various currently unused space on the desktop... the possibilities are limitless! And it's all so easy when you have control over the operating system and all its applications!

Ads in Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

"watching Google rake in advertising revenue was a wake-up call within Microsoft.". So what does this mean. I log into my operating system and am bombarded with Microsoft Ads. This Error Message brought to you by Viagra. You click on Solitaire and an ad for Lavalife pops up.

Google evesdropping?

[tim90402]

who you send email to (if you use Gmail) And, also, if my understanding is correct, what you say in your e-mail. I am not concerned about issues of personal privacy. But, what kind of power does Google obtain by the ability to analyze our communications in the aggregate? The kind of information they might track and analyze for the purpose of ad targetting would seem to have all kinds of other commercial implications. E.g., if everyone is talking about a certain new web site, Google could move to buy it, or launch a competitor. Information is power, and Google is amassing unprecedented amounts of it.

File under "Duh"

[agentcom]

'nuff said.

Opportunist

[jawahar]

Microsoft used be an ambitious company.
Now they are opportunistic.

Value of "good will" and trust.

[Maxo-Texas]

Microsoft is a VERY competant company.

My corp had to deal with the DST issue.

Java: hard to manage. "Not sure we can update this without breaking the application" "no idea how many we have" there were no reps. (Really a corporate problem of not putting resources into managing Java sinces its "free").
IBM: decent but a bit messy and no centralized reporting. (but they are very reliable for production work). Reps felt a bit surly.
M$: easily updated tens of thousands of machines and were able to report on this. The rep responded instantly and aggressively to any problems-- was simply amazing (going to write up some glowing recommendations)

---

I *WOULD* never and *WILL* never use microsoft search engines.

I DO NOT TRUST THEM. They have repeatedly proven to me and others that they are not trustworthy since the 1980's. They are scammers.

---
So we have the two microsofts.

One is just fabulous to it's customers (and as an individual owner, I had a similar response with a sound card issue years ago going to win98- they called in 5 engineers and spent 4 hours on the phone with me and figured out exactly what the problem was).

The other is a cheating weasel. I think it has reached a point that the cheating weasel microsoft is hurting the good guy microsoft's business a lot.

I don't even consider MSN searching. I didn't even decide not to use it at a concious level. I knew it was written by weasels and later articles confirmed that their search results had wierd filtering and censorship.

I think Microsoft needs to stop the juvenile scamming bullshit and turn Pro everywhere (not just in their treatment of their customers).

The development model

[snowwrestler]

A fully open development model for an OS is the #1 innovation of Linux. It proved that not only could it work, it produces a better operating system than the proprietary model. #2 is probably the pluggable filesystems, which is related to #1.

With the cube joke, maybe you were looking for user-end innovations? Those tend to come more from apps than OS though.

So...

[DaveDerrick]

So M$ is going to develop internet based apps, laden with adverts ? Great, just fugging great. :#

Yes, yes...

[Eric Damron]

"Ozzie, who has only made a few appearances since his promotion last June to replace Bill Gates as CSA, told analysts and investors that he has been laying the groundwork for programmers across the company to build Internet-based software."

But what I want to know is if Microsoft plans to leverage its monopoly muscle in the OS and browser marketsto brute force its way into an unrelated market.... yet again...

They got the wake-up call...

[guruevi]

...but they overslept anyway, in their bed built of cash, FUD and chairs.

WPF/E

[mounthood]

From the WPF/E site: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/asp.net/bb187358. aspx

...within multiple browsers and operating systems (Windows and Macintosh)...
Consistent with Web architecture, the XAML markup is programmable using JavaScript and works well with ASP.NET AJAX. Broadly available for customers in the first half of 2007, "WPF/E" experiences will require a lightweight browser plug-in made freely available by Microsoft.

This is major parts of .NET3 and Vista Foundations being released in a (non-linux) browser plug-in.


(What happened to you slashdot? You used to be cool.)

Microsoft isn't a verb but PowerPoint is a ...

[I'm Don Giovanni]

PowerPoint is the common noun for presentations.

But such advantages are fleeting. Kleenex is the generic noun for tissue paper, but when someone goes to a drugstore and intending to buy "Kleenex"
and walks out with some other brand, yet still referring to it as "Kleenex", it doesn't do much for Kleenex's bottome line. Generic noun/verbs are an advantage to the corresponding company for about 10 years, at the most.

Open Source is commodity software

[jesterzog]

Hell, what has Linux innovated lately? Desktops on spinning cubes?

Presumably you mean Linux-based distributions rather than Linux the Kernel.

There are a lots of opinions about this and different distros have their own innovations here and there, but personally I don't think Linux distro's need to innovate much at all. Open Source represents the commodity base of what's available for free and without restriction, unless you want to redistribute it in which case there's still less restriction than most software. In a real free market, it'd be what commercial software had to stand out from through innovations to be useful for customers. Sometimes commercial closed source software does stand out from Open Source, but sometimes it just gets popular through commercial manipulation over which the end user has little say.

Google Niche

[infonote]

Google exploited a niche (internet advertising) in an unique way and won. Unless you are a big company who can acquire another company,you have to differentiate yourself.

Google Apps replacing Microsoft Office bigtime

[Scott7477]

Here is the text of the article you linked to with a couple of the key bits highlighted:

Google manager: Google Apps replaced Microsoft Office at 100,000 businesses
By Stan Beer
Friday, 23 February 2007

Google's newly released online productivity suite Google Apps has already replaced Microsoft Office at more than 100,000 small to medium enterprises and has been deployed at two of the largest companies in the world, according to the search leader's enterprise product boss.

Kevin Gough, product manager, Google Enterprise, told iTWire that prior to its official launch today businesses have already moved off their desktop systems to Google Apps, which includes wordprocessing, spreadsheet, calendaring, email and instant messaging capabilities. Gough also said that a number of large enterprises have also commenced deployment and pilots of the online system that is looming as a threat to Microsoft's desktop-based office productivity dominance.

"We have hundreds of thousands of small to medium businesses that have already done that," said Gough. "They've already switched their entire infrastructure over to Google Apps. We have just released the Premier Edition of Google Apps today and today we already have GE, Procter & Gamble, Prudential and Loreal. If on the first day of the launch we have two of the top 25 companies in the world. Imagine what's going to happen in a month or a year from now."

According to Gough, expensive desktop-based office productivity tools are now being viewed as unnecessary non-core infrastructure for enterprises.

"There is a core versus context argument," says Gough. "CIOs are increasingly looking at what can they safely outsource to a trusted partner and what is a core function that is going to give them a competitive differentiator. They're realizing that email and productivity tools and the staff that have to maintain that is not a competitive differentiator for them and they can redeploy that staff on things that are more core to their business. These large companies have proven that they're confident with Google and that email and productivity is something that they're comfortable outsourcing."

Gough believes that desktop office tools are anachronism from a different age when people worked in a different environment to the present.

"Prior tools for productivity were really designed for a different way of doing business where it was type of a serial kind of collaboration," says Gough. "The Internet, people working from home, telecommuting and going on vacation changed how people needed to interact with their applications. Also the ability to share content rapidly with teams that form and disband as rapidly is the key in a killer productivity tool."

"Really what we did was pick that the email inbox is the hub of a productivity tool and with Google Apps that's what we've focussed on optimising.

"Things that you can do from the inbox are different - things like in-browser instant messaging to quickly contact a colleague without having to pick up the phone or wait for an email.

"Another thing is tight integration with our calendaring solution. If I were to send you an email asking if you wanted meet up for a coffee tomorrow at 4PM, the technology is smart enough to realize that is a meeting request and would prompt me to add it to my Google Calendar and share it with you.

"The ability to have that kind of central hub for all your information with search in the center is the key. Search really is the key because when project teams form and disband you don't want to lose the knowledge and intellectual property they've created. The best way to access that is the search interface because everyone knows how to search."

According to Gough, users don't necessarily have to replace to their existing office systems. However, he says that many workers are being under serviced because of the cost of desktop solutions.

"We're not saying get rid of your exi

Talk about lazy...

[StikyPad]

Five pages of posts and nobody's even bothered to Google a "wake-up call" for Microsoft.

Was that so hard?

I've read that somewhere...

[gumtree]

A bit off topic, I just read the article (http://tinylink.com/?uOeWDfYtis) and it sounded a lot like an article I read earlier: http://tinylink.com/?kefbc1sjTz. What's the go with copying articles such as this? I have no idea who was first, I'm assuming the former link, but shouldn't there be a reference? And especially so if it's a national newspaper (The Age). Or am I mistaken...

Re:I've read that somewhere...

[gumtree]

Well, the previous post sort that. Everybody copies someone, I'd just never noticed. :(

Boycott the XBox 360

[gamer4Life]

If Microsoft controls this, they'll have an easy time dominating computer hardware as well as software.

MS has a search engine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, I mean it. I never thought of them for search. It's gotta have some campy name and lots of blinking things, right?

Gmail still beta

[beguyld]

When I'm logged into Gmail the logo still has the "beta" on it...

I haven't signed up for the full suite of apps, but it would be pretty strange if that made a difference...

Yes

[abcdefghjik44]

Best Online Casino Bonus Gamble Online Online Gambling

That's not my experience.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not my experience. Here's mine:

Yahoo -> no ads
MSN -> no ads
Google -> no ads

To me it *completely* matters who has the "better" search engine. My first "go to" search engine is Clusty, then Google.