Microsoft and Google Duke It Out For the Future

Hugh Pickens writes "There is a long article in the NYTimes, well worth reading, about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the Web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based 'cloud.' Microsoft faces a business quandary as it tries to link the Web to its existing desktop business — 'software plus Internet services,' in its formulation. 'Microsoft will embrace the Web while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable,' according to the article. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by startups, and it is 'unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating.' David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, 'a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.' Microsoft used to call this 'cutting off their air supply."

Comments

Why choose?

[damburger]

I don't trust Microsoft running software on my computer and to be honest, after what happened with China, I don't trust Google to store my information online. This isn't tin-foil hat paranoia, I am simply very aware that data is vital to modern free speech (given the advances made in propaganda by those that would deny us the ability to voice our opinions), and its only going to get moreso as time goes on.

Re:Why choose?

[NeverVotedBush]

I agree.

Besides, with a perfectly good, free, open source alternative (i.e. OpenOffice) why should anyone put their data at risk by using some web based application? I'd rather have the software local so I can do the work online or not.

I think the web-based model falls flat as soon as people actually look at what is available for free.

Re:Why choose?

[bigman2003]

Google makes an incredible search engine.

They also make a LOT of crappy software.

I've got a Google Search Appliance (the hardware/software combo to have a personal Google search). The interface is so bad, I can't believe it was made by a software company.

I run Adsense/Adwords- the interface for that is also atrocious.

Just from those quick examples, I can say that I do *not* welcome our new Google application developer overlords.

Re:Why choose?

[damburger]

Exactly. I didn't want to be seen doing an overt plug, but OpenOffice is what I use to avoid placing my trust in either closed-source or an evil document overlord. The good news on this front, is that frankly Google Docs sucks balls as an office package, and the new MS Office interface has alienated a lot of long time users. Its a good time for the free alternative to shine.

Re:Why choose?

[edwdig]

The people who don't like Office 2007 are mostly people who are not computer savvy enough to even know about the existence of OpenOffice.

I take that to mean you like Office 2007 and don't see why other people wouldn't like it.

Office 2007 has a drastically different UI than just about every other GUI software ever made. The UI goes against every prior set of UI guidelines. You've got major functionality placed in a menu that normally only has window management features. You've got core functionality (save, undo) placed in the title bar. The ribbons are a mish-mash of controls with no obvious logic on how it was designed. You go across the ribbon and you'll see each set of buttons has a different style. Button sizes aren't remotely uniform. Some buttons are labelled with text while others aren't. Even within a set of related buttons (say cut/copy/paste), you get completely different styles for the buttons.

You've also got things like options organized into categories such as "Popular". It's hard to make things harder to find than that, as there isn't any way to know what category an option would fit into with categories like that.

The people most likely to not like the Office 2007 interface are the people who are familiar enough with computers to have expectations of how a UI is supposed to be designed.

People who are totally computer unsavy are just going to think it's different, neither good or bad.

Define "cloud."

[palegray.net]

Whether applications and data predominantly reside on servers controlled by corporate entities may be asking the wrong question. Considering the exponential increase in Internet connected devices, coupled with increased processor power and bandwidth attached to single devices, the very definition of "server" may be about to change. Let IPV6 get rolled out on a massive scale, and the line between what's a server and what's a client device may become extremely blurry. This creates an environment ripe for the development of new client layers and application models, operating on a much more distributed scale than we're seeing now.

In other words, take the Google model of massively distributed computing and apply it to the whole ecosystem of net-enabled devices. The future will probably be a lot weirder than we think.

Re:Failure is likely

[Columcille]

But some of us still like the desktop. My ideal world has me keeping all my data on my computer yet synchronized between my desktop and laptop. So far I haven't found that world but some things have gotten close. Microsoft does a pretty good job of keeping things organized locally, but some of what I need it doesn't handle too well (RSS reader in Outlook is quirky at best, etc). Google has some great online products - I love gmail and google reader - but I want to keep things with me, something more than google gears. iMap for gmail solved that one, but a good, synchronizable RSS reader is still somewhere in dreamworld. As for docs, various sync programs work. Google Docs and other online word processors simply are not an option. Despite what the critics say Word 2007 is a great product and no online product comes close, plus none of them travel with me (I'm aware of upcoming solutions using Google Gears but I still prefer the power of Word 2007).

Just recently I've started playing with a Mac and so far I'm pleased with what it can do. .Mac almost gets my synchronization taken care of. There are several quirks in Mac that I'm trying to figure out, but it might end up being my solution. I'll lose Word 2007, but there are decent enough options on the Mac. We'll see.

All that to say, Google is decidedly not making the desktop moot. I'm sure there are quite a few people out there like me who prefer managing and storing information locally.

Don't be stupid.

[Macthorpe]

Actually, if you'd taken 5 minutes even to check the stories on the front page, these posts appear on all kinds of articles, not just 'anti-MS' ones.

They probably appear more often on anti-MS articles because you're guaranteed more 'eyeballs' on those comments, so it's a more widespread audience for these trolls to hit.

Mod me off-topic if you like, I just wanted to correct yet another silly Slashdot assumption - this time that Microsoft somehow has a team of people posting stories about black guys with huge cocks. There's never been an iota of proof that they have anyone on here at all, other than in a casual capacity like the rest of us.