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Google-Microsoft Crossfire Will Hit Consumers
theodp writes "Newsweek's Dan Lyons doesn't know who will be the winner in Google and Microsoft's search battle, but that's not stopping him from picking a loser — consumers. As we head towards a world where some devices may be free or really cheap, consumers should prepare to be bombarded by ads or pay a premium to escape them. 'The sad truth is that Google and Microsoft care less about making cool products than they do about hurting each other,' concludes Lyons. 'Their fighting has little to do with helping customers and a lot to do with helping themselves to a bigger slice of the money we all spend to buy computers and surf the Internet. Microsoft wants to ruin Google's search business. Google wants to ruin Microsoft's OS business. At the end of the day, they both seem like overgrown nerdy schoolboys fighting over each other's toys.'"
The sad truth is that Google and Microsoft care less about making cool products than they do about hurting each other,' concludes Lyons. 'Their fighting has little to do with helping customers and a lot to do with helping themselves to a bigger slice of the money we all spend to buy computers and surf the Internet.
For anyone else joining the real world, enjoy your stay. A business making money? This is madness!
This seem to be just an another story of a Google fanboy in his basement discovering that their do-no-evil "friend" is a normal company, a normal business which purpose is to generate revenue. He hasn't yet understood that money doesn't grow in trees and this is how our economy works. For him Microsoft seems like a bad guy because they dare to sell products at a price. Google is the 'cool and hippy' friend who offers everything for free. And what he doesn't understand is that the revenue is just generated other way, and he loses her privacy to an advertisement company. Google is not a search engine company, it's an advertisement company that uses internet searching to 1) gather very detailed information and usage statistics about people all over the internet 2) sell targeted ads to advertisers.
It's unnecessary to blame the companies how it is. "Making cool products" and not caring about business sounds more like a public service or some teenagers naive thinking before he comes contact with the real world. Of course two competing companies are going to.. eh, compete. That's how it works, that's how they generate income, but that's also how they're always on a run to improve their products.
If there weren't competing companies, it would be a lot worse situation. Just look at how the adsl and cable internet is in USA. People pretty much have only one choice of operator, and it's shitty. In lots of European countries there's many competing ISP's and you get faster and better service.
At the end of the day, they both seem like overgrown nerdy schoolboys fighting over each other's toys.
They're the exact opposite. They're businesses that have a clean plan and understand what they are doing. Microsoft wants more marketshare on search, Google wants more users locked in to their services to keep their 70% marketshare. Oh, you though Google wants to fight for OS marketshare? Just see how limited Chrome OS is. It's designed to offer people Google's services so they will be locked down in them. That's the whole idea behind it, not fighting to destroy Windows.
I spent my childhood living in Naples, Italy. The city and community was filled with competition. My dad owned his own pizza place next to his cousins pizza place. They were angry at each other, many times going to the street in their white cooking clothes and yelling at each other. Other one took off customers from the another. They could had sold many more delicious pizzas, but couldn't because there just wasn't enough customers. What I learned from it was that you need a clean playing field, so I moved to New York and started my pizza place on the fifth avenue. But competition came there too. Then I decided to become a pizza consultant and just make pizzas for the fun of it. I've never been happier.
What I'm saying here is that in the end customers won't get hit by competition. It will be bad for the pizza place owners, but there will always be pizzas for everyone. And they will be even more delicious, because the pizza place owners have to fight harder.
I don't recall this so called consumers loosing, when Microsoft tried to compete with Google with their last 2 (or was it 3) search engines. The only way you might loose is if you inflict pain upon yourself by using Bing. I give it a year maybe 2 before Bing is gone.
When Elephants fight, it's the grass that gets hurt.
This is a boring sig
If you've been following Groklaw over the last few years, I should point out that Mr. Lyons is a huge SCO supporter. I can not say Microsoft pays him money, but anything and everything he says is designed to hit Microsoft's opponents from the side. He likes to say bad things about both Microsoft and Microsoft's opponent of the day, but in a way that Microsoft comes off the better of the two.
I'd put more trust into something John Dvorak had to say than Mr. Lyons.
Anyone who thinks that a device will be free underestimates how willing people in 3rd world countries are to build houses out of such devices, or nerds willing to wall paper their rooms with it, well you catch the drift I'm sure :)
On the other hand being able to have a 13" device without running into the fact that that requires a full Vista/Windows7 license (there's restrictions in the xp & cheaper netbook versions that limit them to 11" screens on netbooks) does make them a lot cheaper, but I fail to see how that would hurt the consumer?
Also some competitive pressure on Microsoft/Apple to lift such artificial restrictions that are designed to maximize their profit margins seems like a win for consumers in my book, or did we loose faith in this whole competitive market thing?
The only thing that does slightly worry me is the whole Murdoch / Microsoft assault on the open web, the alternative to robots.txt they propose (which allows partial pages to be indexed without being allowed to read the text around it) would allow spammers to create pages where only a popular search term bit of text would be surrounded by virii, scams and spam. It just won't work and it won't bring back the distribution monopoly's that Murdoch enjoyed for most of his (very long) life.
Adblock plus! I love breaking business models.
Normally the reaction to someone saying this kind of pinko commie crap is to laugh and tell them to go fuck themselves back to Russia.
But Lyons has a point. Competition, in this particular case, may not be the best thing for customers. Why so, you may ask. It is because of the lopsidedness of the market that makes this situation so precarious.
From the end of WWII until the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were two sides to every geopolitical debate. The side of good, right, and the American Way and the side of the Soviet Union. Countries aligned themselves along these very clear geopolitical boundaries. Though it was easy enough to declare allegiance to one side or the other, many countries found their own geopolitical aspirations dashed to smithereens on either the broad wings of the American eagle or the hard, solid face of the Iron Curtain.
However, with the end of the Cold War, vassal states are now finding their own voice. Countries that were previously shackled now find that the lack of a superpower competition has resulted in more opportunities for growth. Take two countries that America fought wars in as examples. Korea and Vietnam are now booming with economic and technological growth.
These opportunities don't come because they are subservient states to a particular superpower, but because they no longer need to pledge allegiance and are able to make their own way.
So when two superpowers like Microsoft and Google start duking it out, the fallout is going to hit partner companies AND consumers alike.
When two people quarrel, a third rejoices. Any bets on Apple i guess.
I'm afraid we may be headed toward a world where some devices will be free or really cheap, but when you use them you'll be bombarded by ads—or pay a premium to escape them.
Wait, what? How's this different than what's out there now? Pay full price up front or a reduced price in exchange for ads, contract/product lock-in or whatever else they cook up. Nothing new here, move along >.>
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Microsoft
The network externalities locking in Microsoft's control of the OS standard are exceeded only by the Federal Reserve's control of the world's reserve currency.
Google has nothing comparable to Microsoft's network externality.
Seastead this.
Microsoft has always cared far more about crushing competition than providing anything of value to consumers. They buy up cool products just to shut them down, have a massive FUD engine, and promise the next version will be better but instead deliver Windows ME and Vista. Even if Google is just a money-grubbing competitor, it is a real competitor that Microsoft can't crush. Which means both companies will have to compete by offering something better to the consumers. Consumers win.
From the article: "Apple recently applied for a patent for a technology that not only shows you ads but also forces you to watch by freezing your device until you comply."
Shyeah.
1. Why the heck is something like this patentable? (No, don't answer. That's basically a rhetorical question. All kinds of insipid concepts get patented. I just hope this one does not make it.)
2. This behavior will basically make the Apple product behave like a single-threaded device, at least for the duration of the ad. I've got news for Apple: The world is going multi-threaded. Consumers are coming to expect the flexibility that multi-threading provides, even if they don't know the underlying reason for it. If Apple products start acting like single-threaded devices, it will reflect poorly on the quality and capabilities of those products.
Microsoft wants to ruin Google's search business. Google wants to ruin Microsoft's OS business.
If they were to truly ruin each other, additional competitors would come out of the ashes to offer something consumers want more. You say they're too big for a competitor to emerge? Hey, aren't you that guy 20 years ago who was complaining about how large IBM was and how they controlled the whole PC market?
Really. Google has never wanted to damage Microsoft, but they sure want to take every step possible to make sure that they 'play nice'. Yes, I suppose that this could be 'damaging' to MS's usual business methods.
Already Microsoft is swinging deals behind the scenes to better promote their new search engine (ref: Murdoch/MS search exclusions). I say let's get rid of the 'behind the scenes' deals - for both of them.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
I can not say Microsoft pays him money
Then don't.
The geek drags his conspiracy theories around like Linus and his blanket. It becomes a substitute for thought. It becomes a substutute for proof.
What I took away from this story is this:
"MS is worried about Google, and so they're paying someone to say that Google is just as bad as MS is."
Quoted from TFA: "It's easy to see why Murdoch might like Ballmer's proposal. Murdoch has been grumbling for a while now about Google getting a free ride on his content. Google creates abstracts of news articles, places ads next to them, and keeps all the money." (Emphasis added.)
Maybe I'm missing something, but I hit Google News pretty much daily and I cannot recall ever seeing an ad on that page. It *looks* like a page of straight hypertext links that contain the story headline and a few words from the beginning of the original story being linked. I don't recall seeing many complete phrases in the text blurbs, much less a complete sentence, let alone a paragraph, or Xenu forbid, a story!
As for Macrocruft buying Murdoch's business, why Xenu bless them both! Far be it from me to interfere when one con man tricks another con man into paying for a new set of clothes for the Emperor.
I do not have any problems with Google's business model. They provide valuable services and treat their users with respect. They have always had the best search engine because it is free of clutter (remember yahoo)?
Microsoft, on the other hand, attacks the users' right to first sale of products we purchase. Microsoft also puts back doors into the OS for the entertainment industry. I'm talking about that broadcast flag stuff that allows Hollywood to sabotage your TV recording experience if you rely on Windows.
It is as clear as a window... One company is evil, the other is not.
Hurting Microsoft IS helping consumers.
Yes it would be awful it companies competed with each other, and made alternatives to each others' products. That would be disastrous. Consumers would be the ultimate losers from that kind of infighting.
> Wait, what? How's this different than what's out there now?
In that if he is right (not something he has a stellar record of) consumers will have even more choice. This he apparently considers bad.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Cut throat competition is always good for the consumer.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Dan "lyin'" Lyons figures out that companies aren't the warm fuzzy things he thought they were.
Dan also figures out that water is wet.
--
BMO
but just as reprehensible as two market leaders attacking each other would be the alternative: a good 'ol boys backroom deal to divide up the spoils (collusion).
eh.. competition is good
and of course they don't have my best interests in mind. Who does except me, anyways?
people this is Dan lyons he is the guy who said SCO not only had a case but would win.
I would trust him being right about as much I would trust darl mcbride to be right. once a liar always a liar. Some people can change but the most will not have the strength to.
Besides it is almost anti-gogle for google to push even more ads on people. Google ads are almost always simple text based items that are off to the side. unlike MSFT which brands everything it touches two or three times.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
That, or he thinks we should pay full price, get full lock in and have all the ads. Did I mention shoddier service that comes from monopolies?
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Exactly, and I see it as a very good thing.
I personally don't mind ads, especially Google's ads (which are apparently far more effective than the ugly banner ads). Most of the time I don't see them, and I'll gladly take free + ads over a paid service in almost every case.
For example, if I could get free cell phone service by agreeing to the occasional text advertisement or a banner on the background I'd jump at it. That would save me $80 per month, it's a huge value to me. If I get sick and tired of the ads, or I get a raise and the $80 savings is less of a deal, I might pay for the service to remove them.
The fact is, the Microsoft/Google battle has been very good for consumers. Bing, while not as good as Google yet IMO, is ten times better than searches were 5 years ago, and Google is far better than it was 5 years ago. The battle encourages each company to create innovative products for the consumer's attention so they can sell advertisements and a whole host of other services to advertisers and consumers alike.
Look at Google's line of web apps - a lot of them compete directly for the low to mid tier users of Microsoft's products in a way that is completely different than anybody on the market, and it's a boon to consumers. Seriously, who would have thought 10 years ago that you could create a document on one computer, edit it on another, and print it from a third without ever having the document on the hard drive? It works so well in most cases that whole businesses are switching to Google's apps from the MS Office line, and they are doing so for far less per-seat than ever.
Does anybody remember email before Gmail? Unless you had your own web server, it was pitiful. 7gb of storage with a 20mb message limit? Seriously? My corporate email has a 150mb total limit and only recently bumped up to a "massive" 15mb message limit. If you have basic arithmatic skills you'll not that 10 maximum sized emails will fill that storage limit. MS was forced to seriously improve hotmail, which used to be plain shitty for the free users (you WISH you got 150mb of storage), but now it reasonably competes with Gmail.
So where are the losers here? Excluding the hits they took from the recession, Google makes more money, Microsoft makes more money, advertisers get better exposure, and the consumers get better service at lower cost. Hell for the folks who hate the ads in Gmail and Hotmail, you can pay a premium to remove them for less than a paid email account cost 10 years ago.
I don't see where anybody lost at all with this arrangement. I see where they had to work harder, but both Google and Microsoft's expansion into new markets shows that they are only growing and improving.
It's not a zero sum game, there is a possibility for everyone to win, and stiff competition is the most efficient way to find it.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Hey, aren't you that guy 20 years ago who was complaining about how large IBM was and how they controlled the whole PC market?
The IBM PC wasn't patented, and the part that was copyrighted (BIOS) was so small that a company could clean-room reverse engineer a 99.44% compatible version. Compaq did this, and I seem to remember that IBM sued, but Compaq's legal team got a federal judge to not only tell IBM to go to hell but draw them a map on how to get there. Windows, on the other hand, is a much more complex and thoroughly copyrighted platform. The closest contender for 99% compatibility with apps and device drivers made for Windows is ReactOS, and that's nowhere near prime time.
Speaking as a consumer of netbooks, I am fed up paying the Microsoft tax, having them puke windows Vista all over my hard drive and vandalizing it with nasty plastic stickers on it. I format the drive, pull off the stickers and install Ubuntu. I hope Google wins and wipes MS out. Hardly fair when you cant choose not to have windows and are forced to pay for something you dont want.
my kingdom for a mod point!
open source!
at least, once we get open-source search engines utilizing peer-to-peer distributed processing techniques...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Google will win the search engine war because you don't tell your friends to Bing! the latest flash game or Yahoo! that one sports video.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
Why would anyone expect to be given a free or highly discounted device and have it come with absolutely no restrictions? If Google hands out highly discounted Chrome netbooks it's because they think they can recoup the cost through advertising. Complaining about that advertising is ridiculous; it comes with the netbook. If Google or Microsoft start trying to lock down full-priced devices, they'll get hit with anti-trust suits (as Microsoft has).
No when you're using ChromeOS the way google describes it deployed on the ARM-based netbooks ... everything climatologically signed, and no unauthorized software, no local applications, not even an installed print driver; if the netbook detects tampering, it re-images itself "from the cloud."
I'd rather pay the $25 Microsoft tax and buy a netbook that I can wipe down and install what *I* want on it.
Netbooks are $250 ... by Christmas 2010, they'll be $200. The only people that are going to want a "free google 'welfarebook' with your 24-month wireless internet data contract - some conditions apply, yadda yadda yadda rip-off contract" will be those who can't come up with $200. Far from "do no evil", this will be "gouge the poor."
Megacorps aren't charities.
Which is one reason I love using Free Software only in my computing ventures, I'm nobody's bitch.
If it comes down to the lesser of evils, Google wins by a big margin. If Google challenges Microsoft's OS dominance, the consumer benefits. If Microsoft and NewsCorp succeed in making the Web a collection of walled gardens, the consumer loses out! (Though I say that people will just switch to search aggregators. Heck, you could even run an aggregator as a local proxy! Would make a great GNU project.)
Google may be a "Megacorp," but it's still far less harmful than Microsoft. I say we side with Google and use it to knock Microsoft down a few more pegs.
I don't know or care if Lyons is a shill or an idiot. It's always good for consumers to be reminded that there is no free lunch and that companies are trying to make money. Corporations serve the shareholders and/or management not the people. People need to think about the trade-offs they are making. This good versus evil view of vendors is naive and self-defeating. Understand what a company is offering you and what they expect to get from that and then make your decision on your own self interests. Even "nice" companies are only being "nice" because they see some way to profit from that. That's o.k. , but don't anthropomorphize corporate entities.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Thjis is the guy who did the "Fake Steve Jobs" blog, bitching about Yahoo "lying" about how long Yang was going to be CEO
http://valleywag.gawker.com/5091609/newsweek-reporter-yahoo-pr-lying-sacks-of-s+++
Groklaw archive of all the pro-sco fud from Lying Lyns: http://www.groklaw.net/quotes/showperson.phtml?pid=30
The guy is scum. He also has no clue when it comes to the inner workings of technology (sort of like a lot of the "analysts" that you see getting it wrong all the time).
"they both seem like overgrown nerdy schoolboys fighting over each other's toys"
they both seem like deviant perverts who want to be the dominant. One wants to be the Giver, while neither wants to be the Taker. Meanwhile consumers will end up covered in the fallout.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
I'm rooting for google. I don't think they're a perfect business at all. They're a big business, so that's never going to happen. I do like their essentially "free" business model of providing things for free and or as open source when it helps them, and not doing so when it doesn't help them.
Ads and crap will always be there, but I'm not too concerned. Even with the ads, Microsoft and Google now have more motivation to show innovation in their products. I don't think either one is very likely to topple the other's main source of income ANY time soon, but they're giving each other reasons to make the best products they can, so the customer will, in the end, win.
I'm not a US citizen, I'm German. So can anyone please explain to me how this can be legal?
Microsoft has a monopoly in one market and is already convicted multiple times of illegal practices. So now Microsoft is saying that they will pay somebody to not go to the competition. Isn't it using a monopoly in one market to hinder competition in an another market?
Google have a nice book to read: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=oT07hNxzMwQC&pg=PA302&lpg=PA302&dq=using+a+monopoly+in+one+market+to+hinder+competition+in+an+another+market&source=bl&ots=Z2oK-26Xqf&sig=sLQIoG-abfgthpHWeEAWiEGzag8&hl=en&ei=uLUSS_bULYSBkQWKz4mjBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
If it comes down to the lesser of evils, Microsoft wins by a big margin. If Microsoft challenges Google's ad-based search dominance, the consumer benefits. If Google succeeds in making operating systems completely locked down with a single company's products, the consumer loses out! (Some would also say that Google's harvesting of personal data for advertising and marketing purposes is a far greater evil than not releasing the source to an operating system.)
Microsoft may be a Megacorp, but it's still far less harmful than Google. I say we side with Microsoft and use it to knock Google down a few more pegs.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
At the end of the day, they both seem like overgrown nerdy schoolboys fighting over each other's toys.
And /. is the group standing around chanting, "Fight! Fight! Fight!"
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That's grade school econ.
Google also syndicates those ugly banner ads. I specifically uninstalled adblock so I could keep an eye on all the scams my friend were sending me emails about ("look at this great opportunity", etc), and a LOT of them are from google. Including banners here on slashdot for "I got a government check for $INSERT_TENS_OF_THOUSANDS_OF_DOLLARS" scams.
And I can get a computer for A LOT LESS than what a dvd burner cost 10 years ago. So what? I can store a terabyte of data on my local hard disk for less than the cost of a modem a decade ago. And if that data happens to be my email, I can search it locally, which is a lot better than trusting it to google (and I can back up 16 gigs of email on a $25 usb stick).
Some people will be happy letting google or microsoft or apple run their lives - for the rest of us, there are alternatives. You get what you pay for.
they should just stick to what they're doing best, Google in searches and Microsoft in oh wait..
Really?
"Very consumer friendly" - tell that to the dissidents who got outed.
"NEW ideas" - like?
Free email? Nope. Plenty of others before them.
Phone calls over the internet? Even skype doesn't claim it was their idea.
Web-based apps? Nope - plenty of prior art going back to the spreadsheet applet in the Java demos.
Maps? Nope.
Indexing stuff? Nope.
Phoe operating system? Nope.
Payment services? Nope.
Affiliate advertising? Nope.
Google is an advertising company. You are their market research subject material. Their products are the alien anal probe. (okay - that last is an exaggeration - for now).
Daniel Lyons doesn't have a clue what he is talking about. If Microsoft and Murdoch want to gang up on Google it will harm both of them far more than it will hurt Google. The business Murdoch is in just isn't relevant in the modern world.
Mr Lyons claims that ChromeOS is a knockoff of a Microsoft product. This guy really needs to be whacked with a clue stick.
Consumers are not the customers here. Advertisers are. Competition in Search will also be good for content producers who can bargain for better deals for themselves than they could with only one game in town.
Consumers are only incidental to the whole thing.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Both Microsoft and Google do less innovating than they claim to. Both companies take existing ideas and turn them into their products. There is an important difference though... Google tries to attract people to their products by actually making better products while Microsoft works to stifle competition.
Google might be an advertisement company and not a search company, but they created and implemented the whole concept of unobtrusive text ads. Remember what the web was like before Google ads (and AdBlock)? You couldn't type in a url without a dozen pop-ups or a punch the monkey game. Can anyone really envision Microsoft or any other advertising company making ads LESS obtrusive if Google hadn't done so first?
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Microsoft would like us to all forget history, and instead regurgitate their revisionist view. He who forgets the past is condemned to relive it! Thank you for providing us with the historical perspective on this. It appears there are many younger people in IT these days who know little of this.
How is Chrome OS locked on to Google's products? The products are the webapps, and you can use ChromeOS without ever using Gmail, Google Docs or whatever. Yes, you have to use Chrome (the browser), but in that OS the browser *is* the OS. Chrome OS without Chrome is just the Linux Kernel and few more. Install Firefox/Opera/wtv wouldn't make sense.
Dilbert RSS feed
You should always assume the worst. It's the only way to keep a company in check.
Damn you and your logic.
The "premium" this particular consumer will have to pay will be a refinement of the Purgatory section of my hosts file.
Damn those pesky terrorists
OK - seriously - how is this a troll? Is it really trolling to take a differing side of an argument? Sounds like mod abuse to me.
I'm sorry if it is because of my typo that you missed the point. I meant to say "people are still cursing IE6". Indeed you will find many still cursing it in any discussion among web developers, because they still have to live with the thousands of installations still out there. However, that is not at all why I brought up IE6. It will die soon enough. The reason I mentioned it was because IE6 was developed at a time when Microsoft did not have strong competition in the browser market. They showed their style by immediately taking advantage of this opportunity to attempt to reshape the internet to their own advantage - appropriating the commons. Microsoft has demonstrated contempt for standards in the past, IE6 being a good example. If they have their way, they will do it again in the future. If they succeed with their current attacks on Google, while at the same time converging on the internet from every angle, with all these internet applications now the default on their OS, they just might manage to tear off a big chunk of internet real estate and wall it off. That was my point.
The idea that competition between Microsoft and Google in both the OS and search engine markets will end up hurting consumers in the end is completely and utterly laughable. It's the exact opposite of how the real world works. In the real world, when there is no competition, there is no incentive for a company to improve things for the consumer and that is what will hurt the consumer in the end. If the consumer wants what the company has got there aren't any real alternatives.
Now along comes another company who wants to compete with them and suddenly there is an incentive to either improve the quality of the product, lower the price of the product, or both. If one company doesn't, and both companies are genuinely battling for market share, then the other company eventually will and that forces a cycle of response and counter response that is ultimately very good for the consumer.
have you actually TRIED chrome-os? that's not an operating system, its a fullscreen browser... that might be enough for some netbooks or smartphones or maybe extremely undemanding PC users, but I doubt that it will have a serious impact on windows' sales...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
if they start bombarding people with ads, expect patches to disable them to come. to the frostwire! [batman theme music here]
Uh, no. Microsoft's objective has always been to eliminate competition and choice - by any means, legal or not.
In the other corner, Google wants to give people more choice in operating systems that doesn't presently exist. (The idea that Google (or Apple) aspire to "eliminate" Windows is not credible.)
you had me at #!
what will happen is the toy/app/devil_sign will not sell/achieve market penetration/damage sales of anything it's bundled with.
in the war between pestering a customer with "can not ignore" crap and turning off the switch, the switch will always win. VCRs have silent fast forward, TiVo has auto-skip, browsers have ad blockers, mutating and multiplying pop-up windows face the Big Red Switch... and in the final battle, all consumers have other choices and trash cans.
there have always been commercial interruptions. consumers have always been able to opt out. it will not change, no matter what devilry somebody tries to force something you don't want down your orifices.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
You say that like it's a bad thing. I guess since Google is a for profit, Microsoft can actually try to compete in some way, even if it is dirty pool.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
"... Google appears to be gaining ground by making knockoffs of Microsoft products and giving them away."
O M G :S
> and have all the ads
I've always been annoyed by this.. click on 'start' in windows, hover over 'programs' and count the number of times 'Microsoft' appears. To the point where the actual name of the program is hidden because it's too long (i think, in vista; I could be wrong since I use windows maybe once a month).
Now add the fact that we read left to right. To locate 'Office' I have to read through 20-30 instances of Microsoft ... before I hit 'Microsoft Office'. I get it. The OS and a bunch of programs were written by Microsoft. Do I need a constant reminder? 20-30 repetitions at a time? Multiple times a day?
If that's not Advertising I'm missing something. At least in my mind, that's the most brilliant idea out of MS (for MS). They are, after all, a marketing company that just happens to use software as a vehicle. Kinda like Google and ads.
At the end, we will have more commoditized products, which is quite good for everyone. Stop whining. Google is trying to commoditize the Internet at all it's levels including the user end terminal, which means also the OS. At the end we will be much better off.
im a customer, and the sad truth is some people talk bullshit in my name :
The sad truth is that Google and Microsoft care less about making cool products than they do about hurting each other,
google makes a lot of usable products that makes my personal and work life easier without much effort.
another sad truth is, microsoft makes defective products which i HAVE to use in my personal and work life, and I have to pay effort to keep them in working order.
Lyons, please either change your career, or stop bullshitting online in other people's name.
Read radical news here
> unlike MSFT which brands everything it touches two or three times.
What's wrong with Bing! MSN Windows Live Search? I mean, just because they have to pay people to use it doesn't mean it's not a superior product...
If Microsoft did that, you'd see a rise in Linux and Mac faster than you could turn your head, and Microsoft would be embroiled in a huge court battle for years. No one would trust Microsoft again, including the government, who would increasingly regulate Microsoft, or break them up, to prevent something like that from happening in again. It's Mutually Assured Destruction, they would both lose in the end.
I just think he's a terrible journalist. Earlier this year he wrote a blog post about my employer that was so poorly researched, so overtly biased, and just plain wrong, that it boggled my mind. Had nothing to do with Microsoft. He's just bad. He got the gig at Newsweek because of the popularity and visibility of Fake Steve Jobs. And I have to say that I loved to read Fake Steve when it started. Dan is a very good writer, especially when he has free reign to just make stuff up. The big problems come when he tries to write about real people and real companies.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
mainly because the winner of this contest is the one who panders to the consumer's desires most effectively. of course there are million negative effects on consumers from this competition. as if there is no such thing as negative effects from near monopoly on OS or search?
the negatives from monopoly are worse than the negatives of competition. and the positives from competition are better than the positives of monopoly
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This isn't a school yard fight... Google doesn't give a damn about Microsoft. Microsoft is at war with Google, while all Google cares about is service (advertising) delivery, whether the platform is android, iphone, windows, or os2.
Bottom line, Dan Lyons is an idiot.