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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.
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!
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
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.
Ah yes, the infamous MS "innovation" of follow the leader (badly).
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
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)
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
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.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Next, it then becomes our burden to make sure we wean ourselves off Microsoft's formats an to popularize this move.
What's next is advertisements in Vista.
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.
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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.
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?
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?
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?
.png rendering, so I have to give them some credit there.
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
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.
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I have to see my proctologist next week. I hope he doesn't microsoft me up to his wrist.
I don't know about that. Last night WoW microsofted on me twice. Had to reboot the computer to get it going again.