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Microsoft vs. Google — Mutually Assured Destruction
jmcbain writes "Robert X. Cringely asserts that nothing good will come out of the ongoing war between Microsoft and Google: 'The battle between Microsoft and Google entered a new phase last week with the announcement of Google's Chrome Operating System — a direct attack on Microsoft Windows. This is all heady stuff and good for lots of press, but in the end none of this is likely to make a real difference for either company or, indeed, for consumers. It's just noise — a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check.'"
Kaboom!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That's true..in the sense that now Microsoft and Google now actually have competitors (God forbid). I say let 'em duke it out and may the best OS win.
The phenomenon you are witnessing is also known as competition in some circles. It has been known to exist in the world of business for a very very long time.
Their products suck badly, their licencing sucks badly, their monopoly sucks badly, their whole attitude sucks really badly.
They're so overdue to be brought down.
The only way to win is... CTRL+ALT+DELETE
Edison used to say that Tesla's newfangled alternating current was dangerous, unstable and just plain dirty electricity. I guess that's why a hundred years later, we don't use it anymo- oh wait.
How is competition between brands not good for the customer?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Nothing like a little war to advance the state of technology.
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
With any luck, Google and MS will battle it out for a long time in the OS department.
This is interesting but has nothing to do with Microsoft vs Google.
The dude probably knows a thing or two about useless noise.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I don't think the author of the summary understands the meaning of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
If the MAD policy were in effect and "shots" were being fired, both companies would fall...
If by MAD the author presumes that Google will somehow be able to use its operating system as an assault on Windows, that would also assume that Microsoft could/would use Windows as an assault on Google AND since Google cannot reciprocate in kind, Microsoft would somehow have the ability to kill off Google currently. The day Microsoft hardcodes into Windows the inability to access Google, that'll be the day Microsoft Windows officially begins its death spiral...
I just don't see this analogy making sense...
or, indeed, for consumers. It's just noise -- a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check
How is it MAD? MS, try as it might, simply can't make a search engine that is going to be used more than Google's. Google will still lose out to Windows on a few things even with Chrome OS, for one being the large amount of specialty applications out there for Windows.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Chrome OS will mark the first "real" year of the Linux desktop. Goodbye X.Org, and good riddance.
Similes are like metaphors
Sure, consumers won't care at first, but the fact that Chrome OS is open source will have, in my opinion, a long term impact on the industry and thus eventually the consumers. Sorry, I would bet Cringely is wrong on that one.
Animoog.org
"a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check"
And that's bad? ;-)
Seriously though, the competition between the two is only good if it also increases choice in the sectors where each company is *already dominant*. If MS and Google both have healthy search solutions that we can choose between, that's good. If MS and Google both have healthy OS solutions we can choose from, that's good too. If the two of them merely retain their traditional dominant position whilst rattling sabres and reminding each other they could make a *real* push into one another's core market, that's not really good for anyone other than them. Even if one of those companies maintains their traditional dominant area whilst also creating competition in the others' core competency that has dubious benefits for the market, since it'll imply one big player getting *even bigger*.
One thing that history has shown us and that recent years have shown us again: the status quo will not continue forever. MS are not going to control the OS market *forever* as they have done in the past, ditto for Google in search provision. What's now up for play is how soon these changes happen and whether they empower consumers or take power away from them. Should be fun to watch!
honestly, i dont know whether if he is. he surely sounds like one.
Read radical news here
Are not Ballmer intentions to destroy Google notorious ("I will fucking kill them")?
Why should launching a Web OS for netbooks be considered a declaration of war, while launching a search engine (Bing) be considered business as usual?
As another poster wrote, this is called competition and let the better OS win.
Does this whole thing remind anyone else of Spy vs Spy? From TFA: "But companies, like people, strive and dream and in this case both dream, at least sometimes, of destroying the other. Only they can't -- or won't -- do it in the end, because it is against the interests of either company to do so."
The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Googleâ(TM)s real interest to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success.
So Google doesn't make money from people running other OS's? Google ads don't appear in my browser when I'm running Ubuntu? Would the Google Chrome OS or browser presumably block its own ads? Now I understand why this has the tag diecringleydie.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check
But, isn't this what we want? Micorsoft has twenty+ years of uncompetitive behavior and Google is showing an ever increasing disdain for their corporate motto. Something about doing no evil. HA!
So, maybe this is exactly what we need to keep the behemoths reined in.
Clearly competition between the two companies is a bad thing. It'll be just like the cold war where both sides made huge technological advances without actually doing any harm to each other or those on the sidelines, very bad news indeed.
I friend of mine pointed out that Google is just like microsoft in terms of reach and brand awareness, but with a much better PR team. Google has made strides in announcing their stances on various tech-related policies (privacy, net neutrallity, etc.) and that's why people love them. Most, if not all, of their consumer products were made because they saw the frustration with current solutions. They not only improve upon them, but then offer it for free (ad supported, of course). Google's ads are very unintrusive. And more often than not, point you in the right direction. I don't see Google and MS destroying each other. I see Google BUYING MS before this happens.
We don't live in Shouldland.
I think Cringely's point is that it isn't real competition. Cringely is stating that a cold war of sorts exists between the two companies. Google points it's missiles (chrome browser, chrome OS) at MS, while MS points missiles back (Bing).
Cringely is stating that if one company decided to REALLY attack the other, they would start throwing serious resources into the projects (rather than 20 or 30 engineers they'd throw hundreds), and basically eat each others lunch.
Mutually assured distraction?
This is a healthy cut throat competion like AMD-Intel, that benefits the consumer.
I think google keeps MS more honest and forced to push new features faster then they might do without them around.
As far as OSs go, MS remains the premier platform for running the vast x86 app space. Chrome doesn't change that.
If it was about a technically superior OS, we would have dumped DOS PCs for Amigas or Macs, or the prop *nixes we had back then.
FRINGELY: You are a Microsoft Troll
Yours In Communism,
Kilgore Trout
i would use my mod points but...
.\|.||/..
+----------+
| PLEASE |
| DO NOT |
| FEED THE |
| TROLLS |
+----------+
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that troll has been everywhere recently.
O.o
Though fashion based marketing might fool you otherwise; Google has replaced Apple as the for-profit alternative to Microsoft. Both Microsoft and Apple are increasingly commodity hosts for Google.
Robert Hansen found a flaw in the first day of using it that Chrome allows Javascript to run in View Source, meaning you can't check potentially harmful pages without Javascript running off. Didn't Chrome market itself as the most secure browser? Anyway IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera all caught this, yet Google missed it with Chrome. I'm sure their new operating system will have tons of neat features just like their browser, but will they miss out on the security end again while boasting they are the most secure? I'll still with my Ubuntu and Firefox for now thank you and avoid both Microsoft and Googles security flaws.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
Hopefully, this results in MS making their OS either cheaper, or free and finding another way to make their money that doesn't suck. I expect them to sell space in a cloud OS like everyone else, by and by, since they too seem to share the hallucination of "always connected" internet.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Can somebody post updated OS wars image? The current one is from 2006
http://mshiltonj.com/software_wars/current/
I'm actually really excited about the idea of a Google backed Linux distro (which is what it seems like they're making). They've got the money to hire a team to make a wonderful looking desktop manager while also having the programming know how to make the thing beautifully slim and fast. Plus with Google's backing perhaps there's a chance more software will be ported to/made to run on Linux and perhaps more people will be enticed to try the new "Google laptop" which would just be a netbook running Google's flavor of Linux. I don't see how Google opening up Linux to a larger user base could be a bad thing.
..."with the announcement of Google's Chrome Operating System -- a direct attack on Microsoft Windows..."
I do not think so. Microsoft unlike Google, is involved in much more...that is Server and Desktop Operating Systems and Media Players.
Google's move is an indirect attack but not a direct one.
Jesus.
This is like bad science fiction, written before the internet was invented - by Dan Brown. Cringely is such a tool.
Chrome the browser wasn't much of an attack on IE. Is Chrome the OS an attack on Windows?
You can argue that Chrome the OS is more likely to cannibalize the Linux and Apple market. Consider that Chrome is supposed to be this fast, sleek, secure OS. It is built upon a posix-compliant kernel with a new windowing system thrown on top. Steve Jobs health is in question, Apple's stock keeps dipping and people are questioning the future of Apple. Honestly, I think Redmond is offended by Chrome. But Cupertino is the company that is more afraid.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Windows=Local Desktop
Chrome OS=Internet Desktop
Want Photoshop? Games? (local) Office? virustrojansmailwares? There Microsoft is king.
But want the fastest and more secure full internet based desktop? There that be microsoft or not is not relevant (well, the secure part could matter). You could run Windows, Linux, OS X and you'll get most if not all that will be used thru Chrome OS. What it will be doing is a base reference of speed and security. If Microsoft want to defeat that, should fix those 2 points, not doing a blog campaign all along the media criticizing Google for being big brother, or not being able to run photoshop, or whatever else that they are focusing it leaving away just the 2 critical points that matters there.
It's hard to believe that the Google Chrome OS will have any short-term effect since it doesn't come out for a year minimum. It's like saying that gasoline prices will change next summer -- who cares now?
The big deal about Chrome is that it will run on ARM, and that's more about breaking the Intel monopoly than the Microsoft monopoly -- which I think is a good thing!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Mutually assured destruction? Hardly. Chrome's guaranteed destruction? Almost guaranteed. Not saying that Microsoft deserves to stay on top, but that's what's going to happen. You would have to have balls made of plutonium to think you could take them down with anything less than endless litigation.
Distros like openSUSE have been cutting staff do to the economy. In many ways, I think the Linux desktop is very close, but still has some obvious warts. Someone with the wallet and clout of Google can squash those warts. We may literally be looking at an OS launching next year that boots in 10 seconds, actually runs fast on a netbook with 1 gig of RAM (as opposed to the Vista Starer basic netbooks it will compete against) and will be vastly more secure.
However, I'm not sure Google is known for advertising. They should hire Apple's advertising firm. One thing I think is brilliant about Apple is their brief commercials where they simply demo a feature. Those iPhone commercials are simple, but brilliant. If Google can market this well, they could have a winner.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The Network Computer was developed by Oracle and partners to take out Microsoft and Microsoft Windows.
The Network Computer was a diskless workstation that used the Internet for storage was supposed to take out or at least compete with Microsoft. It ran things like JavaOS, etc. It eventually flopped.
Oracle eventually bought out Sun, one of the Network Computers partners.
The Chrome OS netbook is basically another Network Computer type scenario, designed to take out Microsoft or at least compete with it. Good luck, but remember that others who did the same thing before have failed. The web browser for the Network Computer was Netscape, the web browser for the Chrome OS is Google Chrome.
If it wasn't for the Mozilla foundation, Netscape code would no longer be used, because Netscape was open sourced as the Mozilla, Seamonkey, and Firefox web browsers, it still exists in some form but the original Netscape is gone.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Here's what would be a "direct attack" on Windows:
Attempting to hack into Microsoft's corporate intranet and delete the source code and documentation for Windows.
Releasing into the wild malware that targets windows installed base and destroys systems that run Windows.
Taking on a project to come up with your own operating system isn't an attack on Windows. It's competition. Windows doesn't have any inherent right to its marketshare.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I initially scanned that as:
MS still fits the bill (e.g. Bing the most popular platform,
and was like...huh, since when???
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
WTF?! You mean if those users were running a different OS and/or browser, they would not have ever had to search for things?
Total bullshit.
I don't have any idea whether or not Google can cut info MS's marketshare, but doing so sure ain't gonna hurt Google's ad revenue. MS doesn't "facilitate" Google at all.
You could even argue that if it weren't for Microsoft, there would be more overall internet usage, since if you do happen to use Microsoft products, you've got to be pretty reckless to connect your box to the Internet. It's a risky thing to do. (Counterpoint: Nobody actually cares about the risks, and they do it anyway.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If it wasn't for Google Chrome and Firefox, we would still be using IE6.
If it wasn't for Linux, there would probably not nearly the investment in Vista and Win7 that there has been.
And, I guarantee you, that if there were no Linux free IDEs, there would be no Visual Studio Express. I doubly guarantee you, that, if there was no gcc, there would be no standards compliant C++ in Visual Studio.
Google may not conquer the world with Chrome OS, and I think will ultimately lose to Microsoft, but, competition benefits everyone.
What will Google do to bolster search to respond to Bing? How will Adobe respond to Silverlight... you can laugh at Silverlight 1.0, dismiss 2.0, but MS has away of just chugging away like the borg when they want to attack a market.
It's all bound to keep people on their toes. What would be the alternative? A treaty between Google and Microsoft keeping each other in the browser and desktop, respectively? That would suck.
This is my sig.
Chrome OS fills a number of needs. Whether these turn out to be the needs of end-users remains to be seen, but Chrome OS is not just some industry giants engaging in a slanging match:
1. Chrome OS will help segment Atom from Pentium and Core. That's a pretty big need right there, for Intel, anyway.
2. It could fill a not-yet-filled void: There is a very good chance Chrome will end up dominating netbook Linux the way Android is on the way to dominating handset Linux. Android is a really nice system, and deserves to win versus most other mobile Linux alternatives. Android is accelerating the use of Linux in handsets. Chrome might be that much better than other netbook Linuxes that it, too, ends up dominating and expanding it's market segment.
3. OEMs have been porting Android to devices that may not be the best match for Android. Chrome OS is a better answer than diluting or de-focusing Android to make it a more universal OS.
4. It completes the strategic picture for GWT, Gears, and Chrome: Google has a multi-layered strategy to make their applications run on any OS and any browser. If GWT and Gears on IE on Windows 7 are one end of the spectrum, Chrome OS is the other end. Microsoft has an OS platform where they can integrate search and the cloud and local applications. Now Google does, too.
I would not be surprised to see an Android application runtime on Chrome OS, alongside the browser/JavaScript runtime.
I wrote parts of this stuff
My perception (granted I'm not privy to in-depth knowledge) has been that MS wants to bury Google and that Big G has more or less shrugged its corporate shoulders and been doing business as usual with the exception that it picks up a few extra companies here and there spending only enough to keep a competitive edge. While in contrast, MS keeps re-branding, rebuilding and blowing wads of cash trying to find a competitive edge.
It reminds me a bit of the cold war where, in the end, it comes down to who can outspend who.
Ahh, there I said it. It feels good to say it.
He's the broken clock of pundits, he's right twice a day, but only by accident.
The problem with Google vs Microsoft is that Google should have made this move 6 years ago and it would have been in place to capitalize on the fiasco that is/was Vista.
The advantage Google has over, say, Canonical with Ubuntu, ls that everyone knows who Google is, sheesh, its used as a verb. Google docs is getting some uptake in smaller companies. OpenOffice is getting some uptake in others. The economy is helping the lower cost alternatives. People with skills are losing jobs and turning to lower cost or free alternatives in order to make money contracting.
Google can deal with Intuit, Adobe, and others to get their apps ported to Linux.
Google has the resources to make it happen. To beat Microsoft on the desktop market. The question is will they?
In short, are you saying that 2010 could be the Year of the Linux Desktop (TM)?
I am officially gone from
Google's not gonna make it as far as they thing. Just another attempt to get the bone-heads to stop using a poor, dangerous, fragile product because people are *used*to*it*. So don't worry about it.
And Microsoft has shown exactly how inept it can be when it tries to do anything BUT an operating system. Remember how their plush-toys took the world by storm? How about that WebTV everyone has?
Forget it; a one-trick, Mega-pony.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
It is about securing revenue stream for the future. Google Chrome and Chrome OS are not attacks on IE or Windows. Google does not give a crap what browser or OS runs its Web Applications. It is open source any way they wont make much money on it. Google only interested in assuring that its web applications will run smoothly with great performance.They made a browser (open source with existing community, no real cost for Google, they mostly just branding it) claiming it is faster and following better the latest standards than anything else, that might was a stretch, but still all other browser manufacturer came out with a "faster" browser. The result? Google's web apps now a running faster and more securely than before on ALL the browsers. Google now announced that they are making a new lightweight secure OS for netbooks, coming next year, MS will come out a netbook OS (either Win 7 or WinCE 7 or Midori ) (and probably Apple will come out with a secure and lighting fast netbook as well) What will be the result? Netbooks are etting more popular more hyped and running Google's web applications faster and more securely than before.
It is not about fighting, it is about driving the research and development into the right direction.
People need to be reminded of this over and over to put things in perspective. Lots people are putting Google on a par with MSFT now and that is just plain wrong. Right now 90% of Google runs on top of Windows. It's like renting a lemonade stand inside a supermarket. I think most people misinterpret what Cringely is saying, or plain did not read the article. People are animals. Train them a certain way and they respond to your command. I've found Chrome unstable on Windows and Safari (both based on WebKit) much much slower on Windows than on a Mac. It would not take much for the Windows OS to somehow make using Google products so much harder and inconvenient, and people will switch back to using 90% all MSFT software and think there is actually fair competition. Google has to keep at more than just Search to ensure it has a reliable platform and venue for its search business.
"The battle between Microsoft and Google entered a new phase last week with the announcement of Google's Chrome Operating System -- a direct attack on Microsoft Windows"
Since when was the release of a new Operating System seen solely in terms of the producers of a mediocre GUI OS working out of Redmond. It also begs the question as to all the negative press about a yet to be delivered platform and the total silence regarding Apples offerings.
davecb5620@gmail.com
The only way to win, is not to plug and play.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
MS would never do such a thing. It would utterly ruin their reputation as a company (especially among businesses), and expose them to massive legal liabilities, and they would gain nothing of any use from it.
Gain nothing? They'd cripple their biggest competitor in a market that they offered almost 45 billion dollars just to compete in.
Legal liabilities? The threat from those would have to be pretty big. Again, they were willing to drop 45 billion. How sure are you that the legal liabilities you're thinking of would cost them more than that? Particularly, say, if they were able to steal the top search spot from Google because of this kind of tactic? I'd think the only threat that'd be big enough to really be a deterrent here would be the breakup of the company, and I don't see any reason to believe the government would actually do that.
And reputation? There's a lot of evidence that Microsoft sometimes simply values winning and control over reputation. You force people to need you, you don't need to care how they feel about it seems to have been their operative philosophy.
I'm not saying it's a move you should expect to see tomorrow. But if for any reason Microsoft either gets scared or smells blood in the water, nobody should think it's impossible and certainly not that it's beyond the company's makeup to want to try such a thing.
Tweet, tweet.
MS would perish were their OS and Office sales to plummet. If the stars lined up for them, Google (or more likely someone else) do this with a competing product over many years.
Google would perish were a large proportion of internet users to get savvy and block all their ads. I wonder whether MS could get away with adding adblocking to Windows that would eliminate all Google Ad revenue from MS-based products. That would probably get them in hot water, but easy access to addons for IE (assuming good adblockers exist for IE) with a suggestion to install the adblocker would maybe be a bit more feasible. To get away with it they'd have to sacrifice their own ad revenue as well, but unlike Google, they don't need it. Imagine MS killing the ad-funded web. How would web content change?
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
TFA says that:
"The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Googleâ(TM)s real interest to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success."
This statement makes the implication that if Windows or IE did not exist, neither would Google. What a rediculous assertion. If Apple had 99% market share, Google would be running primarily in Safari. The browser used for opening google.com does not make a bit of difference to Google. If Google were a locally compiled application which had not been ported to any other architecture, that might be true, but it's clearly not.
Mutually assured destruction? I believe the term you're looking for is "competition." It's that thing where multiple companies produce similar products and try to out-do each-other in an attempt to make people buy their products.
How, exactly, is a glorified thin-client an attack on Microsoft Windows?
Sure, a lot of stuff runs on the web these days... And I've argued that the trend will only continue... But this is like claiming that Wyse terminals are a direct attack on Dell's desktops.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Attempting to hack into Microsoft's corporate intranet and create documentation for Windows. There, thats fixed it for you.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Nothing else really matters to either company.
In my opinion Google is much better positioned to gain future market share than MS. If you haven't had a chance to play around with GoogleVoice, you owe it to yourself to try it. The integration of the web, telephony and email. Amazing as it is now, they're just scratching the surface of the true potential.
With Chrome, Google will be in a position to integrate email, telephony, productivity, social media interaction, photo and video management, all in a device that costs less than $200. With cloud services delivered in a browser window, the underlying OS is meaningless. Whether you use Chrome or Windows, you'll have access to the services, but Google will be able to offer them for less. Google doesn't depend on OS sales for a big chunk of revenue.
MSFT's big strategy seems to be trying to carve enough fat off Windows to get it crammed into a small device, all that effort to offer users a slightly poorer version of what they have on their desktop. It's the same, slightly smaller candy bar in a different wrapper. Where's the innovation in that? MS has to work like mad just to stay relevant in the market.
Take a look at Google Labs sometime and look at all the neat services they're working on. And what has MSFT come up with lately? A table that costs $10,000.
In the fight between Google and MSFT, I'm putting my money on Google.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near...." - Sun Tzu
Isn't it possible that Google is simply refocusing the battlefield to the OS market as a tactic to keep MS scrambling on multiple fronts?
"The Network Computer [wikipedia.org] was developed by Oracle and partners to take out Microsoft and Microsoft Windows .. It eventually flopped"
.. We have been closely monitoring, attacking, and winning NC threatened accounts", FY98
.. yup, it would be crazy to Intel define this .. the only urgent issue I can think of is defining how it boots, if we let Intel do this in a proprietary way we're screwed .. having Intel draft this spec and take it to the industry will cause up more headaches in the long run if we don't get out in front'
Actually no, the NC was seen as a good revenue stream by the originators and only seen as a threat if you were living in Redmond and saw every new development as one less Windows license.
"The Windows Org marketing team has spent the past 6 months fighting the TCO battle, addressing the threat of the NC
'we have a conference call with them (intel) re NetPC today at 9
davecb5620@gmail.com
Ah, I know. The "war" that you need to make up, to sell your "news".
Well, here is some other "news" for you.
"Cringley makes up news! Could it be that he got an alcohol problem? Or does he just rape his daughter on a regular basis?"
And, Mr. Cringley? How does it feel? Bad, doesn't it?
See...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
how does M$ get people to "upgrade" one buggy, insecure OS to the next buggy, insecure OS? Maybe they push out "updates" that deliberately slow the performance of the old buggy, insecure OS so that people will spend the money to buy the new buggy, insecure OS. When they first install the new buggy, insecure OS they will be amazed at the improved speed- which will last a few months until a few updates to fix some of the bugs and security holes are pushed out, at which time the new buggy, insecure OS starts behaving like the old buggy, insecure OS. People are sheep and will never learn and M$ will continue to screw people at every opportunity.
Computer use is changing and maybe cloud apps will make owning software a thing of the past. In such an environment a browser based OS, if it can be made secure, may have a good chance of competing against the M$ monopoly. I am pleased to see the competition from Google, though it remains to be seen if Google will become the evil empire that M$ has become.
Finally, on the subject of ethics, forget it. Ethics is for individuals, not corporations. Corporations "care" about one thing. $. This goes for M$, Google, and every other corporation in existence.
What's curious is that that it took an Internet Search Company to produce the first/newest Operating System - in years !
davecb5620@gmail.com
To characterize Google's OS as a 'direct attack on MS' is way off the mark. Tabloid sensationalism at it's finest. Google saw a mobile future years ago, and like so many companies these day, took control of their destiny rather than to rely on partners to keep you relevant. No one is saying the same thing about Intel's OS? Or Nokia's or any. The future dominant hardware platform's will be 'mobile', phones to sub-notebooks, a space MS isn't even addressing.
The phenomenon you are witnessing is also known as competition in some circles. It has been known to exist in the world of business for a very very long time.
Exactly what I was thinking. There isn't much competition but hopefully what there is of it will encourage innovations and improvements.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"Google ads don't appear in my browser when I'm running Ubuntu?" :P
Indeed they don't.
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They don't appear when I'm running XP either - thank you AdBlock Plus.
Though in all seriousness, there's probably a significant skew of something like that somewhere.
That's a situation for Google, not Microsoft, to handle anyways.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Deleter there own documentation? That explains a lot.
I see it as a defense against a company that wants to "fucking kill" them. GoogOS isn't going to threaten Doze anytime soon, but it does give Google an OS that they, not their competitor, control.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Personally I think "google" will win this. I don't mean google when I say that I really mean Linux. Basically if google the company throws a ton of money at Linux, Linux will rapidly become more than good enough and microsoft will be screwed. Let's not forget that changes google make to Linux become open source code themselves. If Adobe and Autodesk get onboard then Microsoft and Apple can both kiss the high end 3D production/2D design markets gone. This is actually a pretty big threat to Apple's traditional core market. Of course if the design/multimedia market falls to Linux how long do you think before home users and gamers come across? Especially if Valve suddenly announce Steam and Source engine ports (Postal 3 is definately getting a linux port and it is source based so this isn't impossible.) As for game compatability, all google have to do is get their OS onto people's machines before directx 11 gets into full swing. Wine already runs directx 9.0c and when I say runs I mean I'm playing Assassin's creed, Overlord, and Burnout Paradise right now. throw 20 fulltime developers at the project for a year and wine will run any game. Throw 100-200 and most app compatability issues will disappear. Seriously though, aside from gamers noone else will have many problems switching especially with programs like virtualbox etc to virtualise software. The main thing is cleaning up the desktop/drivers a bit and getting partners to port their apps. Once that's done most places will be ready to jump.
Edison used to say that Tesla's newfangled alternating current was dangerous, unstable and just plain dirty electricity.
Edison was even cruel to an elephant to prove it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I always suspected that Cringely was completely clueless, but now I have something to point to which by his own words damn him more than anything I could ever say.
This is the kind of writing that you can point at as an example of how some people do not get it despite their pomp and bigdealness.
Yes+No. Yes, because it's already been done before. We've seen such OS's at stores next to MS Windows (see Linspire, etc.). No, because they are always worthless and fail, as MS just has too much experience/knowledge in OS's to be outdone/innovated over.** They just take a tiny market share away from MS for a couple years until they die, which has shown to be good advertising for the sham OS's company. That's all it is, a marketing campaign for the "G-Man" run company.
** Disclaimer: We are not talking about linux distro's. They honestly don't compete with MS Windows.
Someone please tell me how free online versions of MS Office in Office 2010 are not a response to Google Apps. It's likely that MS will have to make a similar response to Chrome OS.
Google makes money off of advertising, and MS makes money from software. If Google can get MS to lower prices or give software away for free (like Google does), it's a win for Google.
We all know that little gem of wisdom. . , "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
Well, I think of Microsoft as having accepted the truth of that statement and simply concentrates on making sure the one big variable, "Some" remains as large a piece of the pie as they can get. They also take the term, "Fool" and sort of merge it into the term, "Strong-arm". (Getting Asus to sell EEE's loaded with WinXP for less than Linux was pretty astounding.)
But I do see that changing.
It has been hard for people to adopt alternative OS's because they've been written by geeks for geeks. It's like trying to sell D&D to a boring office drone/exec. Won't happen. It's too fringe and too hard to grasp, and who the heck wants to emulate the office geek?
Google, however, will not call it Linux and they won't make it seem geeky. They'll give it the same sort of approachable air as a Pixar film. The market surveys have been done, I have zero doubt. Geeks and Office drone/execs will feel comfortable and unthreatened by it. It will come with Google's stamp of authority and past success, so everybody will feel confident in giving it a shot. And "Free" is hard to ignore, especially when you don't have the intellectually threatening IT geek just waiting for you to screw up. Google is friendly. Just look at those soothing colors.
And mutually assured destruction? Not going to happen. Microsoft is clinging to a worldview which is sliding away from them; the internet is more and more defining the user experience, and Windows sucks at it. They've consistently not gotten it. Remember; the roots of their business is still stuck in an age where there was no internet. --Bill was providing software to isolated machines so that people could give the fancy office printer something to do, and run the odd game now and again. The whole connectivity thing was a secondary bit of catch up, and given the fact that even after a decade and a half of development, my laptop and my tower still have trouble talking to each other when using Windows software. . , well that just goes to show how great a job the boys have done over at Redmond in working outside their domain. But their core business model is pretty good. I can run third party software on my Windows machine and I can manage my files with little trouble. They've gotten that down to the point where I don't even see it and barring thunder storms, it's completely reliable. And that's great. But this Internet thing. . ? Microsoft has made a bloody mess of it.
Google, on the other hand, is a child of the Internet. If they can get their OS to run lots of useful software as well as do the internet thing really efficiently. . . Well, sign me up.
I suspect that MS will be able to strong-arm their way into continued market relevance for a while yet, but if they find themselves fighting to sell something which you can get for free, then they really have nowhere to run. --And remember, this isn't like Windows v.s. Linux, where geeks are usually running a silent meta program in the backs of their minds whereby they deliberately/unconsciously try to make it hard for normal people to be like them. And it isn't Ubuntu, which despite Mark Shuttleworth's noble efforts, started with an immature product which STILL can't run a frickin' graphics tablet properly. This is Google. Google is the happy Lego Borg with WAY more money than Ubuntu, hires on the best of the best, and they're out to assimilate you. That's what they do. Google's up-front goal is to consume EVERYTHING. We just don't happen to mind, probably because they also have learned how to share. Sharing is what gives them all their power, and it's why they will exist long after Microsoft is another forgotten blip. A railway tycoon or that matchstick king guy.
Just my opinion
-FL
Yes, and I'm not making that statement as the usual joke.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
If I unplug the ethernet cable on my Windows machine, I can still get work done. It makes no sense to make things dependant on the network when they are inherently non-network functions. Or, as I've been saying for the past 10 years regarding this issue:
I can't use my word processor, the network is down.
If you don't understand what's wrong with that, you either have no clue, or you're a shill for some business that wants to force us into the SAAS model.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'd think the only threat that'd be big enough to really be a deterrent here would be the breakup of the company, and I don't see any reason to believe the government would actually do that.
Microsoft was almost stopped. The Clinton Justice Department had MS on the ropes. But when Bush came into office his Justice Department let them off without even a slap on the wrist.
And reputation? There's a lot of evidence that Microsoft sometimes simply values winning and control over reputation. You force people to need you, you don't need to care how they feel about it seems to have been their operative philosophy.
When it came to replacing my old Windows PC with a new computer I first evaluated what I needed to accomplish what I wanted to do. Did I need Windows? For anything? No, everything I wanted to do I could do on Macs or with Linux. So because I hate how Microsoft treats it's users I got a PC with Linux preinstalled I can use as a server. And for a laptop I got a MacBook Pro. In both cases I've been much happier than I ever was with Windows PCs, even having to learn how to use Linux and OS X.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I think he means "Stable Deterrent Balance." MAD would imply that both MS and Google no longer exist.
Worse yet, they've captured enough marketshare to where the idea of IE being the "only option" has mostly gone the way of the dodo.
I'm sorry, but this is just not true.
Outside of geek circles—and in this case, I'm using "geek" to mean "people who know what the phrase web browser means"—many, many people still don't even have a concept of getting on the internet by using anything but the big blue "e". That is the Internet to them.
Some of them will have noticed the name "Internet Explorer," but for a great many non-technically-savvy users, it's still true that that's just "the internet," and if you told them about Firefox as a potential replacement for IE, they'd just look at you askance and ask, "So...I open up the blue "e", then I open up this Foxfire thing, and it'll keep me safer?"
Yes, alternative browsers are gaining ground, and there are many fewer of this type of user than there were a few years ago. But please don't make the mistake of thinking that nearly everyone on the Internet now knows that they have the choice of switching to Firefox, or even realizes that they're using Internet Explorer in the first place.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
not silly enough to think we're immune
I met one, a salesman in an independent Apple store, that thought Mac were immune. Hay, I love Macs and am using one now but I will not say they are immune. Nor will I say Linux is immune either. They are both able to be broken. However until MS improved it's security with Vista they were both much better than Windows.
I use FF and Safari about equally, and have a hobby Ubuntu box. My primary machine runs OS X.
I use FF at least 99% of the tyme, Safari the rest, on my Mac running Leopard. I've been thinking about installing Ubuntu Studio on it as a dualboot machine though. And I have an old tower PC I've been thinking of upgrading the hardware then installing Ubuntu on as well. I could set it up as a server then have access to it with my MacBook Pro while on the road.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Cringely is always interesting to read, but I think he was having an off day when he wrote this. He says Google depends on Microsoft because most Google ad traffic comes from web browsers on PCs running Windows, so destroying Microsoft wouldn't be in Google's interest. But this is absurd. Google would get the same traffic if Windows disappeared overnight and all PCs suddenly became Linux boxes or Macs, or for that matter became internet nodes running a web OS. Cringely says Bing has primarily affected Google's competition rather than Google itself, but then he says "Google is too busy defending its own turf to seriously encroach on Microsoftâ(TM)s." I get the feeling he wrote this column on an airplane while waiting for the movie to start.
The idea of a Google OS has been floating around for years. When someone at Google first said, "Let's write our own OS," I seriously doubt that it was because someone had asked, "How can we keep Microsoft on its toes?" Microsoft's vast OS licensing revenue is an obvious target for a company with Google's resources and skill set. Cringely assumes Google would give away its OS, but this isn't a requirement. Google could simply undercut Microsoft's price and still make a ton of money, while forcing Microsoft to cut its own prices in its primary profit center. Microsoft has done this repeatedly in markets where Linux has threatened Windows, and Linux has never had anything like Google's marketing resources.
Even if Google's sights are set only on the handheld market and not on destroying Microsoft, that could change if their web OS becomes successful. It would be naive to think Microsoft takes this possibility lightly, or that the competition between the two companies is a largely pointless series of feints and counterfeints.
I found this article, and its sources, fascinating, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely.
If you think Cringely might be a Microsoft shill, it'd be convenient to know who Cringely actually is, today.
I think that presently Microsoft is more of a risk to Google than Google is to Microsoft. Why? Bing.com has real market share, and they've done a good job of copying most of their algorithms and techniques. Google is nowhere near being the same competitive threat. Chrome (my favorite browser) is a meager 1% market share. Switching browsers is dramatically easier than switching operating systems, and they have not been able to drive users to them even then. Switching search engines is trivial, and as such more liable to fads and more easily influenced. Not to mention that MSFT's earnings are roughly 4 times those of Google, even despite the Vista debacle. MSFT - one of the worst companies in the history of man kind - has massive staying power, and enjoys a heavily entrenched position. The risk that Google is the next has-been is much greater than the same thing happening to MSFT, IMHO. Which is why I am doing my part, diligently sabotaging every MSFT product I encounter, purging them from my life and the life of my friends and family. But I have no illusions and I am still afraid, very afraid.
If Cringely writes a column and nobody reads it, is he still wrong?
-
One of the big drivers of the dot-com crash was Greenspan kicking up interest rates six times in early 2000 to get the economy ready for Bush's election, and it certainly didn't help that people were starting to figure out that selling dogfood online wasn't necessarily a billion-dollar business model either (or putting things more conventionally, Greenspan's interest rate rises had a big impact on a capital-dependent business model, and the big growth driver to the dotcom boom, speculation about the value of internet advertising, was getting closer to discovering what the realistic values and prices were, which trashed everybody on the bottom side of the curve.) And of course the Y2K-driven replacement of lots of old stuff was done.
But a really big problem was that there were two main cash-out models for the venture capitalists who were funding the dotcom boom - either go IPO to sell your startup to the public, or sell out to a big company, which was Cisco for hardware and Microsoft for software/services. And with the Justice Department threatening to rip MS into two or three big pieces, MS wasn't going to be spending big bucks buying out anybody's startup for a couple of years - so if you'd spent two years in your garage hoping to become the next Hotmail, suddenly you were Toast, and that VC who'd been offering you Round B funding wasn't calling you any more.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Oh, come on, people, why did you mod that a +5? I was just trolling, because there was a 0-comment article there and I hadn't had a First Post in years :-) I suppose it's ok to leave it modded up now that it's done, since there's some actual useful followup, but really now!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
is because it can run "Legacy Windows Software" better than Vista or Windows 7 beta.
XP is still being used for more reasons than just that. It is more stable than Vista, though reviews I've read about Windows 7 is that it's pretty good, and it does not have the hardware requirements Vista does.
Does the Chrome OS run "Legacy Windows Software"? No it does not, so it is not a good replacement for Windows XP.
Neither does Linux or OS X, but people are still using them to replace Windows.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
hmm whoever wrote this needs to stop writing for slashdot imo. Nothing BUT good will come of this, not saying google will take over the desktop OS or MS will take over the web... But this will push both companies towards progression and keep them both on their toes. Lots of innovative ideas will come about because of this competition. (Duh)
I idly wonder if destroying Windows documentation would make much difference to understanding the code base :-)
I wonder whether MS could get away with adding adblocking to Windows that would eliminate all Google Ad revenue from MS-based products.
MS doesn't need to block ads, they are already easy to block. All anybody have to do to block ad, or any other server, is to use the Host file. It is a plain text file telling the OS where to look for certain domains. To block certain servers such as ad.doubleclick.com is to set it's address to 127.0.0.1 in the file. That is the local host and of course ad.doubleclick.com isn't there. So while I have their banner ads blocked I allow Google's simple text ads.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You have two near-monopolies here. It's not Mutual Assured Destruction. It's more like WWF. They're putting on a fake fight, with lots of noise, but little chance of either side making much headway over the other. They're not out to make any headway, just *headlines*.
It's a win-win situation. They both get to point to each other when the Justice Dept. comes around and say, "See! There's my competition right there!" Plus, they get tons of publicity out of it.
OS X does not compete in the desktop OS market at all as it is only sold bundled with computers.
No, OS X is sold individually. Anyone, with the money, can go and buy a DVD with Leopard on it. Of course it can legally only be installed on a Mac. When Snow Leopard is released people will be able to buy it on DVD and install it on their Mac. Not that I will, I waited more than a year before upgrading from Tiger to Leopard. And that despite having it on DVD all that tyme, I just didn't see the need to upgrade right away.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
computers that run windows are a lot cheaper than those running os-x!).
2009 calling, Mac prices have been comparable with Windows PC prices for years. Why does this mime continue? Perhaps because people fell for Microsoft's FUD.
They still own the office space by:
1) producing the best office suite
MS Office isn't the best office suite. Few people even realize there are alternatives, and think they need MS Office when the only reason any of them does need it is because of MS's proprietary file formats creates vendor lock-in. Though my Mac came with MS Office I use NeoOffice and I have not had a problem opening a Word document in years.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So lets see two companies competing against each other by creating the best possible products they can for their customers....
yeah this is sure to be a huge devastating holocaust for consumers
"And at least one of those (Hulu) probably isn't going to survive as a free service..."
What we are seeing is the normal development of new technology. For example, our use of styles of automobiles and of aircraft have changed due to the processes of development. We don't have many blimps now, but at one time they seemed to be the future of air transport.
Talking about "mutually assured destruction" is nonsense. There is an ignorant sub-culture of people who see everything in terms of violence.
Cringley seems to have very little real insight, except for this: "It would have to be an act of deliberate sabotage on Microsoft's part and blatantly illegal, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen." That's an exaggeration, but it exaggerates a fact, the fact that Microsoft's profit comes from adversarial behavior. When a non-adversarial competitor enters the field, the adversarial companies die. Who wants an unfriendly partner? No one, if an unfriendly partner can be avoided.
Google wants to make progress, and that progress is being limited by the limitations of the other players. For example, consider my comment on another story: "Linux desktop development seems like it's moving very slowly".
Google is entering new fields because it is logical, not because of adversarial intent. Google does have a SERIOUS problem, however. Google has not been handling its public relations well. The "Chrome Operating System" should have been released with better explanation. News writers have limited time to produce their stories. They cannot be expected to engage in creative thinking. When they don't have enough ideas, they sometimes write crazy things.
And don't call her Attila from Wasilla, Gov. Nowhere, Sarah Fey, Tina Palin, Sarahcuda, Governor Mooselini, Half-baked Alaska, Caribou Barbie, Sarah Quaylin, or Bible Spice, either.
Isn't the NY Times suposed to be a quality paper? The article is so full of siliness that it made my head exploid. "Chrome products are given away, so they bring in no revenue for Google, and they donâ(TM)t even provide a better search or advertising experience for their users, the company admits. So why does Google even bother?" - I can think of 100 reasons why Google Chrome generates money for Google like it has Google SE defaulted, pushing HTML 5 so people spend more time in online applications and thus more chance on clicking on a Google add, push Google Apps, ...
"But thanks to Microsoftâ(TM)s deep pockets and fierce screwball reputation, Bing has already accomplished its main purpose: reminding Google executives who theyâ(TM)re messing with."
- And keeping Google on it toes and creating even better search. Thats called competition and its better for consumers.
You can actually follow the Cringely predictions over the years, I picked 2007 for no reason in particular,
This is my 2007 predictions column, where I first examine my predictions from 2006 to see how well or poorly I did (my multiyear average is around 75 percent) then provide a list of predictions for the current year that are sufficiently vague that I may be able to squint and claim that they were correct, too, a year from now.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070105_001440.html
He makes predictions for the next year, and comments on the ones from the year that has passed. According to that 2007 article, he was ONLY 60% right, and hes normally fairly honest with what counts and what doesnt, if hes off by a few months then that doesnt count. He says there that 60% was very low for him.
That is my worst performance EVER. I got nine of 15 predictions correct for a 60 percent average. In my defense I'll point out that just because I am wrong now doesn't mean I'll still be wrong in another week. Three years ago I predicted Intel would support AMD's 64-bit instruction extensions, but they took 53 weeks to do so, making me off by seven days. I think that by the end of February, 2-3 of these predictions could still swing the other direction.
To all the people who bash popular writers in pithy comments online, if you think you are up to the job of making predictions about tech, why dont you write a column yourself? Think about all the big bucks you'd be making for what you already do! And its "sooooo easy" remember?
---
Where is the "Windows 7 Express Edition" to compete with ChromeOS
I don't think Microsoft would be allowed to give Windows away even if it wanted to. They get into trouble for giving away IE, and giving away Media Player. If they gave the whole operating system away, they would get sued like no tomorrow by various parties in the European Union. To a certain extent, governments looking to promote Linux would prefer Microsoft keep charging for Windows.
This is my sig.
This is Eric Schmidts way of destroying a company like Sun and Novell. Good luck Google.
Google isn't attacking microsoft at all, they are simply complying with the Anti-trust people that are telling them they need to be more competitive. You really think Google is gonna give it their best effort with this new OS? Definitely not.
No, I'm saying 2009 is the YLD (TM)