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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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."
Hurting Microsoft IS helping consumers.
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
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.
It was very clear in his writing - overt PR and not journalism. There's no "conspiracy theory" here since it was all so blatantly obvious in the SCO situation.
I don't know about his relationship with Microsoft and don't really care like the above poster does, all I consider is that this person has written a lot of very obvious lies in the past and cannot be trusted as a technical journalist. Using the fake Steve Jobs blogs to push an anti-linux agenda hard was also somewhat unprofessional and ultimately made it obvious as to who was writing it since he was doing SCO pieces at the time as well that overlapped.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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 #!
"Corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win." Robert Baer / Stephen Gaghan - Syriana
Do you honestly think the lawsuits that make headlines are the only instances of corruption? The only reason Microsoft's unscrupulous business practices make headlines is because they're Microsoft, and not because it isn't standard practice for each and every corporation with over $1M legal budget.
If you want a reason to dislike Microsoft, start by looking at how they employ more lawyers than programmers. But unfortunately it's just more profitable that way. Much more. They have a responsibility to their stockholders to exploit it.
Don't hate the players, hate the game.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Yeah, well. That's what I don't get. I don't actually see how the grass is getting hurt here. Quoting the summary itself:
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
So I have the option of getting a product on the cheap (but I'll get bombarded with ads), or I can get the same product still on the cheap, and pay a surplus to get rid of the ads? As long as that surplus doesn't move the price above today's, the consumer isn't getting shafted. It's getting one more option.
I would think that should be obvious. Microsoft's current OS is being used as a vehicle to install IE8, Bing, Silverlight, Messenger, and MSN on most every new PC sold. IE8 & Bing are installed along with the OS. These other things arrive with Windows Updates. Seems clear they are leveraging their monopoly on the desk top to unfairly compete in another market - the internet - wouldn't you think? Really strange, because the original "conviction" in the US was about integrating IE with the operating system in the first place. In fact, isn't that what the latest ruling in the EU was about? BTW: I don't think the person you are responding is a lawyer, and therefore used the word "convicted" in the laymen's sense of the word. Actually, I don't even know what the correct legal term is. You would have done us a service had you provided that.
To our friend from Germany, who finds this so hard to understand, I'll say this: Microsoft has become an arm of US Foreign Policy, and as such, has earned immunity from prosecution. The military, CIA, NSA, FBI, in fact all government departments including the White House are locked into Microsoft's products. This way Microsoft has a back door for their lobbyists, disguised as "sales reps", to gain the ear of people in high places throughout the US government, with having to register as lobbyists. Rather then gain the attention of the DOJ for the unfair bundling of IE with their OS, they had only to snap their fingers to put Google onto the DOJ's carpet in their stead.
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.