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Ballmer Admits Google Apps Are Biting Into MS Office
twitter points out coverage of a discussion between Steve Ballmer and two Gartner analysts in which the Microsoft CEO admits that Google Apps is enjoying an advantage over Office by users who want to share their documents. He points to Office Live as their response to Google, and adds, "Google has the lead, but, if we're good at advertising, we'll compete with them in the consumer business." Whether or not they're good at advertising is still in question, if their recent attempts are any indication. Ballmer also made statements indicating some sort of arrangement with Yahoo! could still be in the works, but Microsoft was quick to step on that idea. Regarding Windows Vista, he said Microsoft was prepared for people to skip it altogether, and that Microsoft would be "ready" when it was time to deploy Windows 7.
Ballmer was supposed to fucking kill Google. He's like Chuck Norris and stuff ... only with chairs. No way is this happening. I won't believe it. Slashdot is all lies.
Google Apps has the MAJOR advantage of having live document collaboration, which AFAIK isn't even close to available in MS Office or OpenOffice.org. For some people/companies this doesn't matter at all, but for others it'll make it the obvious choice. You can think of it like the collaborative features offered by Sharepoint and the like, but implemented in a way that is actually usable.
On the flip side, you're going to need a lot of love from Gears if a hosted solution scares you. While Docs is fine for what I do most of the time (and the rest of the time I really need more of a layout tool, like Apple's Pages), I envision them seeing a lot more adoption if there were a desktop app that synced up with the cloud (whether Google's, or your own internal setup which could be as simple as a network share). And of course, pretty much anything that's not MS Office tends to have compatibility issues with the MS Office-using rest of the world, whether you like it or not. You can whine all you want about the lack of truly open standards for document exchange (besides plain text) and I'd agree with you all day long, but that doesn't fix the problem.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
I was there at the talk. What Ballmer said (and I'm paraphrasing) is that Google Apps have no audience; user growth plateaued months ago and that in their (MS's) own studies almost all college students buy MS Office and use it. He said the only time students are using Google Apps is when they need to collaborate on projects but he talked about how MS is working to beef up their own collaboration tools in Office 2007/08.
Really guys, this is reaching.
Ballmer is a good entertaining speaker, and Gartner analysts are not going to outfox the guy.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
As much as I am loath to say this, I seriously doubt Microsoft has to worry about Google-apps. Corp-America is not going to go Google-apps. But mind you, they WILL worry. Because Microsoft is so fucking egotistical as a company they can't envision anyone having something successful besides them. It pisses them off, esp. Balmer. They just can't accept that they should stick to what they're good at (were good?). If they put as much effort into making Windows better it WOULD be. They chased the search market in vain and the mp3 player in vain. They're a spoiled company that thinks they should have it because they want it. Microsoft never innovates. They copy or buy. They usually fail at copying. The XBox is a noted example of something they copied and succeeded at gaining market. Keep at it, MS! Pursue! The more money you waste on shit like online apps the more that won't go into Windows! Which is fine. The world would be better off if more people would move on to another OS.
easier for the average user to do what?
someone who's used KDE or Gnome since 1995 would find it easier to use KDE/Gnome than !KDE or !Gnome. what does that prove? unless you're trying to argue that people should stick with the same operating system that they've used in the past because users are too stupid to deal with change, i don't really see your point. that has nothing to do with UI uniformity or the usability of a particular OS.
there's more to software user-friendliness/usability than just resistance to change.
Everything you say must be considered a lie. You lost your credibility a long time ago. The only reason this story made it to the front page after your well-deserved yearlong blacklisting is because you had to misrepresent what the article said, and the /. editor happens to be relatively new, so he doesn't know about you.
Why don't you get a blog or something? You can use all those things you learned from the FUDster in Chief Roy like "SweatyB" and "Silverblight", and you won't have to put up with the collective derision and ridicule of the largest free software community in the world.
Really, think about it.
I hate to give a long response to an AC ...
Like what? And why should customers care about it? Your responses will show if you're a troll, or if you have anything technical reasoning behind it.
Linux, like Mac OS X and really all modern Unix-derived systems do not crash. I've only run production quality Linux systems since the late 1990s and I cannot remember the last time I've had the system crash. That equates X Server crashes with system crashes by the way. The last reliable X server crash I had was in the late 1990s when XEmacs was trying to display the Mule hello page. I got patches into XEmacs to fix that side and patches into the X server to fix that side and Life Moved On.
* Viruses - THis is not a OS problem, its a user problem. I could create a .sh file that deleted .config files or something equally evil and tell your grandma to run it and she will.
True, but deceptive. Before Microsoft Windows 95 vulgarized the internet, it was long known that running arbitrary executable code coming across the wire was A Very Bad Idea. The decision by Microsoft to jump into internet support *and* provide default unprompted execute support for that poisoned enough minds to make it an industry standard.
* Malware - Again not specific to Windows.
No, but it was Microsoft Windows that popularized the idea of execute any old thing including malware by default.
* Crashes - Yeah, comeback with real proof.
It's your reputation, not ours. My best anecdotal evidence was something that crossed an internal corporate email group where I wrote something like "Microsoft Windows XP is the most stable O/S they've ever released because it only crashes 1 or 2 times a week." and among the responses I got back were "I wish it were that few ...".
In my opinion, it doesn't really matter where the blame actually lies (perhaps it does lie on enterprise crapware that the Microsoft Windows users are forced to use, but whatever). It's the fact that the platform does crash and people are conditioned to it. The last supposedly all intranet web meeting I had to attend at work, was delayed due to software issues on Microsoft Windows XP. Money was lost while a bunch of highly paid engineers were looking at a blank screen. Says a lot about True Cost of Ownership too...
In the meantime, my desktop machine (running RHEL) has only ever been rebooted on power failure or moving the equipment since it was deployed.
* Drivers - Add all the drivers to the kernel? So the manufacturers of devices have to wait till the kernel maintainer decides on his own sweet time when to integrate patches. AND THEN wait till picks them up downstream. Nice solution. Doesnt scale, buddy.
Greg KH has gotten into the latest Linux kernel a staging area where half-worked drivers can get wider code distribution and more eyes and hands to fix them up. It remains to be seen how well this work, but they are trying.
I used to think the amount of code changes that is currently going on in the Linux was unsustainable with control of the final tree in a single person's hands. Linus proved me wrong.
The amount of code that goes into the Linux kernel every day (on average) is astonishing.
* Applications - All the software in the world at a single spot. i.e. Google for applications. Who addresses commercial software? Who handles payments for this? Who will handle updates?
While I have no problem with proprietary software, like games, on something like Linux or OpenBSD/Mac OS X, I do have a problem with the Software As A Service model. It sucks and I agree with you on this point.
The one and only thing I thank Microsoft for is that at the time it was strangling the PC market, it also killed X terminals, which were cheap, but an abomination to use, in my opinion. I thank them for that.
Viruses - THis is not a OS problem, its a user problem.
If Windows can be infected with viruses or malware within hours of installation, with almost no user input, that is an OS problem. Lame excuses not accepted.
Crashes - Yeah, comeback with real proof.
Having just spent the last few hours rescuing a friend's computer when Microsoft had advised her to re-format and reinstall (which would have blown away her PhD thesis in the process) after a crash from which it wouldn't reboot, I think I'm in a good position to answer that. This lady was only running MS Word at the time, and last time I looked, that was MS code.
I have been using Linux on all of my desktop machines since 1995, and I have never had a kernel crash. No, NOT EVEN ONCE. Sure, I have had the occasional panic on bootup when I've done something stupid like forgetting to build in support for my root filesystem type, but I don't think that counts.