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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."
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.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
When is the party going to be?
Microsoft will just try to buy-out this "Internet" thingy so it's no longer a threat.
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.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I remember reading that the big reason Microsoft went after Netscape by making Internet Explorer free, then cross-seeding parts into the OS, then their monopolistic trade practices was for exactly this reason - Microsoft saw Netscape as a way to undercut their desktop monopoly.
It's kind of fun to watch them get hit with it again and this time by a much more mature and cash-rich adversary.
If we need proof that MS is the new IBM, i.e. delusional in the belief that it is the one and only solution for the customer, this is it.
It is certain that MS now has one of the best solution for corporate on the PC. It is equally certain due to the overhead incurred to defend and maintain the PC, MS does not have the best solution for the home PC. By maintaining the applications on a central server, for free or nearly free, Google has the benefits of the central server in IBM days with the cost benefit that MS supplied. Add to that the idea that many people would now would be happy with an appliance, recall that many people do not work in an office, and one has an opportunity for competition. MS is not doing well in the living room, only in the game room.
I wonder if MS can live in a world where it does not get a cut out of every PC sold. Where more machines, like the OLPC, are not designed to run MS Windows, and therefore cannot be catagorized as a pirate's dream machine if sold naked, or with a non-MS OS. I wonder how many web designers are going to continue to design IE only websites if only 10% of the population browse using a non-MS compatible hardware.
MS creates adequate products, but like IBM they have it wrong. Google is not the arrogant company. MS is. By creating a new os that costs more than the computer. By not suppling IE to all major OS. By waiting 5 years to admit that multiplatform means more than just running on different versions of MS Windows, and interoperability is not bad for the end user.
Let me also say that I would not use Google Apps, not for anything important, but I am not the target audience. I can maintain my own machine and download and install OSS. The world where everyone uses google is not much less scary than the world we are in now. OTOH, at least my office might not tell me that everyone uses MS, and that is all they will support on the website.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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).
.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.
Just recently I've started playing with a Mac and so far I'm pleased with what it can do.
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.
I love my sig.
I guess, it will be thrown right after the funeral.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Never. Replacing Microsoft with Google will ultimately mean nothing. Come meet the new boss, same as the old boss. You're just replacing one monopoly with another. Proprietary closed-up code and vendor lock-in is bad no matter whose name you attach it to.
My blog
As an IT Director my primary concern it the productivity and uptime of my clients. Network based software is IMHO not reliable enough to rely on. Any number of connectivity issues could cause a complete loss of use. With certain applications this is not an option. While developers could mitigate these problems (a small footprint executable that allows me to print something even when the host application is down, for example) I would have a hard time recommending migrating to a primarily web-based office/productivity suite. Too many things out of my control for my comfort. Google isn't who the CEO is going to come to when his secretary can't produce something he needs RIGHT NOW.
The Netscape point shows a great knowledge of computer history. A surprisingly large number of people here probably don't remember when Netscape was not only the dominate browser, but an important development platform. Microsoft will try to hinder innovation whenever the desktop is threatened. Gaming consoles... introduce a product and link it to the PC. WebTV ... buy the company.
The next question is, when Google has it's cloud computing monopoly threatened, what will it do to protect itself. Kill net neutrality? Buy it's own wireless spectrum?
The whole drive to do this seems to be only to facilitate comapnies in making more profit.
What about the users interests?
Honestly it seems very clear to me that suddenly having to be connected to the internet (with all its associated performance and security issues) just to do do something like write or store a document would be a giant step backwards.
They have tried Windows CE which still has a shrinking market share in phones, but attempts to leverage the desktop experience, so is doomed.
They've tried tablets... at least 4 times now... and these still get mindshare at MS because they are Billy-boy's pet PC format. Again, doomed because they try to make the tablet into a desktop-like device.
It is often said that excessive success brings about a downfall. For MS this is true. The desktop has been so successful for them that they are not able to see past it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Why run application off the internet or even store data online unless its directly an online internet all accessible use thing like in web pages, blogs, message boards, etc.?
Its not like any company today can't have their own inhouse server for inhouse control and security and online limited access.
With todays desktop system power and terabyte drives isn't it more likely that what's online now can become offline accessible. In other words, its more likely that we move data from online to offline than vise versa. I've recently put together a localhost LAMP/desktop system just because I found wordpress on firefox to be versatile and simple enough for my aging mother to write her autobiography on while dealing with some eye sight problems (ctrl-+/- zooms) with easy pictures addin. And just because its on a system not connected to the internet the export/import function of wordpress allows the data to be put online should she so chose (she could send me a cd for me to import to a family site I set up - but by her choice, not due some leaky internet).
So even internet applications can be moved to the internet disconnected desktop, where there is security and performance in not being connected,.
Certainly any businesss applications no more needs the additional possible failures and security breaches of internet connection, ISP problems and weakest link connection than does home applications with slower or no internet connections.
Sorry Google, but really, your search engine suffers more and more from ad based listings rather than what I'm looking for (i.e. looking for specification information on an old Dell Latitude xp 450c laptop results in endless finding for batteries, power adaptors, etc sellers.... and virtually no links I could find of any use to me.... I can only wonder who all these sellers are selling to.)
I'm waiting for the game Age of Conan to be released so I can check it out on my bad ass desktop. Someone from Google can let me know when things like this game and such run in the browser I guess.
Any one who says the desktop and it's software are going away is blowing smoke up your ass.
Microsoft has 380 Billion in shares.
Google is only worth a paltry 80 Billion in shares, etc.
..........FULL STOP.
Remember the JavaStation? No? Remember how all the applications would reside on the network? No? Well, it's been said like seven billion times before and the problem is that the real trend is exactly the opposite one. Applications are becoming increasingly personal. And that, my dumplings, will just continue. Fine, it's just those personalized menus now (which generally are just annoying because it really pisses you off not to be able to find that one thing that you need for that one particular document when you actually do need it) but it will become oh so much more. And this is something which you will want to carry with you. Yes. On you keychain. Together with your desktop. And applications. And documents. You don't want to end up somewhere in Guangzho without your desktop. That would be horrendous.
Storage is cheap and becoming cheaper. CPU cycles are cheap and becoming cheaper. Software is expensive. So what. Most companies don't really mind. And it's not Joe Blow that is earning Microsoft their Office dollars. It's JB Inc. And JB Inc doesn't care if it pays Microsoft 200 dollars. They care if it makes their employees efficient or not. Get dependent on the network in order to do business. I think any company would kill that one in the first SWOT they did.
I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it -- Groucho Marx
Really? I think you can only leverage the thin client model so far before the synergies dry up and you reach fundamental architectural limitations. As the envelope is stretched from web 2.0 to web 2.1 and expanded to breaking point with web 2.1 service pack 1, we may see a resurgence in peer to peer abstracted database solutions enmeshed in a pastiche of performant but robust virtualization layers.
In other words, take the consulting model of highly topical verbose lexicon, and apply it to a popular internet forum to dampen the signal to noise ratio. Think of the possibilities!
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
The desktop monopoly gave them the billions of dollars needed to enter a market, sell units at a loss, and buy developers to write games for their platform.
You probably could have come up with that if you'd given it a half second's thought.
No advantage to web apps?!? Then why didn't you just write this post as a word document, and email it to us?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
That's very true, but if everything's online, you still need a desktop or sorts to be able to get to it. If you've got a desktop of somekind, you'll want to be able to do other stuff with its capabilities too, not just access the web.
Without a desktop - be it Windows, OSX, iPhone, Symbian etc. - Google wouldn't be accessible, or exist.
I think that long-term you'll see a compromised middle ground appear. Information needs to be centralized and always available, and the computing power used to act on it needs to be localized. Information in a single place can end up being virtually useless if you can't get to it, and the frustrations of not having local computing power to hand are exactly what killed mainframe and thin-client computing.
So, I think you'll see a dominant online Google (aren't they already?) and a still-powerful client/server-bound Microsoft. They're both companies that have their fingers in a lot of pots - some successful, some not, but it's in the public interests that they both exist, if either one extinguished the other, it would be bad for everyone.
... so will the OS. This is because virtualization will render which OS is "underneath" moot. Applications will be delivered with a fully customized OS tightly coupled to it. Big, binary blobs of code+hostOS will be delivered and stored locally in multi-terabyte drives. Data will remain locally stored because nobody will trust having their data flying around the internet for anyone to see or steal. And applications (in the form of pre-installed VMs) will be stored locally so they can be used even when no internet connectivity is available. This, IMHO, is the next wave, and will take 5 to 10 years to play out. Once wireless connectivity is ubiquitous and can provide sufficient bandwidth (gigabit or more), *MAYBE* web-based applications will become more viable, though there still remains the security issue.
If this prediction is true, then Microsoft is still in the driver's seat relative to Google. They are a player in the virtualization market, and they have applications that people will want, albeit in a slightly different form, so they can be run on their Macs, Linux boxes or Windows boxes.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
NYT covers the issue well. What struck me from reading it was the impression that Google do have a quick turn around on an idea and an ultrafast motivated and reactive set of employees. While reading the section on Grand Prix I couldn't help but imagine what the development path would have been for such an idea at MS - weekly meetings with 4th tier of management, monthly reports for the 3rd tier of management, quarterly presentations for the second tier of management - then a year into the cycle 1st tier find out about the project and bin it as balmer has been hurling some chairs about and he wants to copy something google or yahoo did 6 months ago.
What also struck me was the tired old soundbites from MS representatives - "The focus is on competitive self-interest; it's on trying to undermine Microsoft, rather than what customers want to do," says Mr. Raikes of Google. Yeah Raikes - your development cycle (or rather complete lack of it for 3+ years after you had destroyed Netscape) on IE fits that quote very nicely. The words from MS all sound a bit wooden - they are trying to come out with all the "we are cool" "googleplex" mentality of roller blading employees who are living the dream - but it doesn't stick - we know how things go on in MS land - the coder who spent a couple of years jumping through bureaucratic hoops of reviews, reports and presentations to simply code the log off button on the start menu for vista tells us that. Gabe Newell got it spot on - MS has become what IBM was when MS were starting up - one vast bureaucracy - MS chided IBM in those days just as Google can rightfully do of MS today. I don't think Gabe extended the analogy, but it fits perfectly that IBM were attempting to cling on to the last of the "mainframe days" back then, just as MS are attempting to cling on to the "standalone desktop days" now. We are entering another paradigm shift - and the more MS say that we aren't the more it confirms that we are.
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.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Microsoft faces challenges from Google and Linux. That's two fronts. It is also in a battle with itself. The nonsense about trying to protect DRM using the OS is a real handicap.
Thusfar Microsoft has obtained and held its position using the classic strategies of a monopolist. Those won't work against Linux because Linux can't be bought. Microsoft can't even cut off its air supply.
Even if Microsoft wins its battle against Google, it can't kill Google because Google is a giant even if its online applications don't fly.
Microsoft is in real trouble. Google and Linux are both disruptive technologies. As is typical with disruptive technologies, they will eventually become 'good enough' for the majority of Microsoft's customers.
At this point, given the choice between giving my mother (who lives a thousand miles away) a computer loaded with Ubuntu or one loaded with Vista, I would easily choose Ubuntu. I suspect that many of us would make the same choice. Next year, things will change and more of us would choose Ubuntu. That's the way it works with disruptive technologies.
I have a suggestion for Microsoft. Give the customers something that delights them and doesn't get in their way every five minutes. As it is, Microsoft is driving its customers into the enemy's waiting arms.
A big problem is Microsoft is not just looking for internet search/data market they want the internet search/data market to run on and only be browsable by Windows (or something other that is totally MS or provides a revenue channel to MS).
While the web apps department may be all OK with just service revenue and advertising the big wigs in other departments will make sure that the 'embrace and extend' goes into their on-line offerings in order to 'encourage' use of Microsoft enabled PCs and servers to fully utilize those services.
I for one am very resistant into inserting intentional quirks and other bits of muck in my web apps to satisfy a non-standard approach to displaying HTML/CSS and help enable it to be more popular. Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, Opera, Galeon, etc. all render my pages fine with the standards, and I don't have to use MS servers, browsers or OSs (though they work fine as well, only not IE, but there are free alternatives).
Also as far as services, from my point of view (Firefox on Linux) many of the MS technology based sites show up as like broken crap to me (does not support my browser, features not working, pages render poorly, etc.)
Google gets it's high marks because they are not locking the customer (business or user) into a specific application or platform; got Linux, Xserve, MS IIS, that's OK, just add this and you are good. Browser? - is it up to date? Then you are good there too. Like many say of OS X, Google internet tools and results usually "Just Work" and if you start there you probably aren't concerned into looking for other places after that.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
So if google is really cutting off MSes chair supply...
Here, fixed that for you.
I use Thunderbird to check my gmail account so i don't have to browse to the website and load all kinds of crap I won't use anyways. I'm sure there are others who do the same thing with outlook
and someone who was going about implementing one
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1997/05/msg00835.html
And what has this to do with web apps?
And why the fuck is this crap modded to +5 (informative of all things?)
Hint: My browser is about as much a desktop application as it gets (hint: that textbox isnt some fancy ajax wordprocessor). And yes, just to annoy you, i didnt even write this in the browser, but in notepad.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
You're joking, right? When on Windows, I use Outlook. When on Linux, I use Evolution. I'd rather have my calendaring/address book/email client both archive information locally and access servers via a protocol like IMAP than rely soley on an online service which relies predominately on advertising revenues that are derived from scanning my documents. I can't count how many times my internet connection's been down in the past 4 months, but I've nearly always been able to retrieve what I've needed because my clients store information locally. Plus, I don't have to worry about anyone making money off of what I consider private, not public.
Beyond the obvious issue of the need for continuous connectivity, there are some serious issues with hosted apps that make them much less attractive than they could be.
... they're OK for consumer use and for specialized tasks, but for general work I doubt I'll be interested in web apps for quite a while.
The biggest one, blessing and curse in one, is that there's a 1:1 relationship between client app and service. The hosted app provider controls the client used to access the app as well, something that tends to result in smoother integration, but also a lack of choice.
Consider mail. Few of us would like to have a specific mail client forced on us by an ISP - yet that's exactly what web mail providers do. For mail, people are happy enough to just move to the provider with a client they're happy with, but that won't be possible for all types of app. I'm very dubious about the unification of storage, communication protocol and client into a single entity.
Web apps also make it harder to apply policy. How can you, with web apps, have a shared working directory with snapshots taken every five minutes (aged out progressively) that gets automatically archived into another part of your system & indexed at the end of the week? It's not easy, that's for sure. Businesses with access control requirements, data retention issues, etc also face issues.
Even if the provider tries to take care of those problems, they'll have a hard time making it easy to integrate things like archival with the rest of your network.
The admin also tends to lose insight into the system with web apps. If I hosted my business's mail with Google, I wouldn't get access to the mail logs, control over spam filter sensitivity, or other important facilities. That's not inherently the case, in that Google could offer these facilities, but in general web apps tend to take more of a black box approach.
In short
--
Craig Ringer
From the day they decided they needed to crush Netscape and replace the web browser with something inherently tied to the OS that just so happened to not match everything else, they had been planning for this. The quote they sought (and still would like to see) was "My apps work when I use IE, but they don't work when I use ... ANYTHING ELSE." They wanted webapp developers to totally embrace VBScript/ActiveX controls and all sorts of goodies as they could think of that would keep people tied to an MS OS instance, *even* if all it was doing was rendering a foreign application. They even continue today with SilverLight to try to displace Flash.
Of course, the vast majority of the general internet application landscape didn't play out that way (most ignore those things as they don't bring much that other technologies that are more universal do not). But they have been bitten by their own strategy. There is a Pocket Internet Explorer discussion out there where they explain that despite having flash support, they don't implement the VBScript a few select sites did implement to detect IE/flash. So they were bitten by the very sites that drank the Microsoft Kool-Aid.
But all that aside, it's clear that IE isn't being specifically bitten by any spec deviance (I've not seen things in actual mass deployment not work with IE on the desktop), but it is true that most have avoided the MS-only featureset, and that leaves Microsoft rightfully worried that they will not be able to differentiate in a world where the OS for 90% of the users is merely what the web browser happens to be sitting on.
For my part, I'm not crazy about a vision of a near-100% webapp-only world. It sounds like the dreamworld of tyrannical content providers (your meda player is a webapp, and thus we never give indefinite licenses). The seperation of data and presentation evaporates (today, mutt, evolution, thunderbird, or Google's web interface are all different ways of interacting with your mail, with useful differences). Webapps need to override drag and drop and right-click contextual menus to compete with the desktop paradigm, and today that doesn't work too well, and when it does I'm personally aggravated that I can't user my browser specified context menu. Privacy becomes even more complicated to protect. Yes, data backup and such becomes someone else's problem, but they won't necessarily protect for free your data from yourself (you delete something, it's gone without a recovery fee), whereas if you can own your data and back it up yourself, you have the option of protecting against that as well.
All in all, long haul if it were only one of Microsoft or Google, then no matter who won, the users would ultimately lose.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Every attempt of Microsoft to find a new and profitable business has relied upon leveraging Microsoft's desktop monopoly.
Oh yeah, that explains the success of Microsoft Games and Microsoft Hardware in a nutshell. Oh wait no it doesn't... I seem to have no problems at all playing my Xbox 360 or using my Microsoft-branded keyboard on my Apple G5 computer.
(Christ, do you people engage your brains for even a fraction of a second before modding BS like this up?)
Comment of the year
All those goddamned fucking web 2.0 retards need a serious history lesson.
Web 2.0 IS the old paradigm, the paradigm of the days where everyone thought we would be using light PCs terminals connected to big mainframes, plugged to the network like when you plug a power cable.
Ajax itself is "new" but the paradigm its using is the old one. Do you remember time sharing with dumb terminals ?
Sun once had a slogan : "The network is the computer". It truly had been a success for Sun, has it ?
There was a time where ISPs were offering "free" underpowered PCs for net access. We all know how great a success it was.
People wanted to own and be in control of their machines. They wanted PERSONAL COMPUTERS.
You can fucking stick your fucking paradigm in your fucking ass.
The future is in smaller, portable but powerful computing devices. Not dumb terminal with only a web browser inside. Better laptops, tablets and PDAs are the next paradigm, not webapps.
"Microsoft saw Netscape as a way to undercut their desktop monopoly"
It was actually one of the big cheeses at Netscape Communications (I think it was Marc Andresson, but could be wrong) who publicly stated that Netscape made operating systems, and Windows in particular, irrelevant. Microsoft had shown little interest in the Internet up until that point (Gates said it was a fad in the original version of "the Road Ahead", although that bit was removed from subsequent reprints), but this put Netscape firmly in their sights as a potential threat that had to be neutralised, so they starting looking for ways to do so.
Note that at the time (1994 to 1995 if memory serves me, although it could have been slightly earlier or later), Netscape's statement didn't look anything like as bone-headed as they do in retrospect. The Internet was undergoing a rapidly mounting hype frenzy, and Netscape was the default gateway to it on nearly every platform, while Microsoft was a late entrant with an initially weak offering that wasn't a part of retail and upgrade Windows packages prior to Windows-98 (although it was included in the OEM-only Windows-95 OSR1 and OSR2). It wasn't until some time in 1999 that IE displaced Netscape as the dominant browser, so many people both inside and outside the IE industry thought that Netscape rather than MS would be the likely winners of this particular battle. Subsequent talks between MS and Netscape about dividing up the Internet between them (with MS having Windows, and NS everything else) indicate that Microsoft themselves doubted their ability to win for several years, so this wasn't just another case of the usual culprits (analysts) reading their tea leaves wrong.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.