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Is Google the New Microsoft?
ericjones12398 writes "Google's come up with its solution for Dropbox: If you can't buy 'em, copy 'em. The search engine and online advertising giant replaced its popular Google Docs service with Google Drive, a cloud computing storage service designed to directly compete with start up Dropbox. This raises the question, has Google become the new Microsoft? Us ancient folk who remember the 1990s and the Microsoft anti-trust trial can certainly notice some parallels. A big, dare we say monolithic, company doesn't bother innovating on its own. It just waits for other companies to innovate, makes some changes for legally significant distinctions and enters into competition with the innovator. Sound familiar?
I don't know, but Patexia seems to be a front for someone according to the bias in all of their articles over the past 2 years as seen by a Google search.
They just stole from Excite?
They stole email from hotmail?
Please, on a site that bitches about patents blocking innovation we are bitching about a company seeing an idea and building their own now?
The better snarky post would have been: "Is Slashdot the new Mashable?"
Are Google enforcing proprietary formats, bundling products to the detriment of their competition, and 'reinterpreting' standards such that third party options no longer interoperate properly? Although MS have been forced to improve more recently, I think that style of business was always the main problem that people had with them. Throwing another option into the marketplace without any element of coercion is fine by me, even if it is just a copy - genuine competition keeps everyone on their toes.
I remember when Microsoft was the refreshing, freedom-loving alternative to Big Blue.
My how times have changed.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Google is not yet in Microsoft's league of indecency. Microsoft, just to remind you, is a convicted abusive monopolist. Google has not reached monopoly status anywhere significant. Some of us are keeping our eyes open, and still recognize the difference between a human (Google) and a pig (Microsoft).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Come on, let's not overromanticize DropBox here. They didn't invent the online storage business either. There were several companies in it during the .com boom, even Apple got into it before DropBox (and back out).
DropBox entered into a business which is less a business dependent on client software but more on network infrastructure, something Google excels at.
So just to ask, when was Google the first into a market? Not search. Not ads. Not mail. Not voice (they bought Grand Central).
They're the same as they ever were. They aren't first, but sometimes they do a better job or change up the business model.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Can we moderate stories yet? Please? Can't we mark shit like this a -1 Troll?
Google is the new Apple.
Apple is the new Microsoft.
Microsoft is the new IBM.
IBM is the new Xerox.
I stopped using Google free services once they required my cell number to post videos to my very popular youtube channel. So I removed all the videos and deleted the channel http://www.youtube.com/altgro I'm still stuck using search but I can live with that for now.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I still remember GMail offering 1-2Gb when the competition had a maximum of 50mb (or thereabouts). GMail blew away the competition back in the day.
Fast-forward to today, G+ is several years too late to the market, and Google Drive offers less space than the 25Gb SkyDrive users have had for years and hardly anything worth even mentioning functionality wise. And don't get me started on the Ts&Cs about data privacy - there's a reason you'll never see a private cloud solution from Google - they want _all_ your data or they're not interested.
Google has a great search engine and have done some great web-apps before (gmail, google maps) but everything else just seems a bit "meh" at best at the moment.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Let's also remember that Microsoft also blatantly stole. Remember Stacker?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Because Dropbox was a totally innovative startup, and nobody, NOBODY ever thought of some sort of way of remotely storing files before, no siree! And certainly noone ever had even the slightest idea that synchronising files between different machines could be a useful idea.
All big companies do this. It's not proof that Google is Microsoft. It's proof that Google is big. What made Microsoft distinct was the way it competed. Google doesn't compete with the same level of carnage that Microsoft did. There has been some bloodshed, but the fact that Google+ is where it is, would be a good way to demonstrate the argument that Google is not Microsoft. Have there been allegations of predatory behavior? Yes, of course. Do you hear about it happening all the time? Not really. Google drive is kind of like Dropbox, but Amazon Drive is a lot more like Dropbox. Why is everyone talking about Google, when Amazon stole the service and copied it lock, stock, and barrel? Amazon is Dropbox's ISP for hosting this stuff. And yet, despite the fact that the case of Amazon is predatory, everyone's so concerned about the case of Google, which isn't? Why, exactly do people who care about predatory business practices care more about Google than Amazon? The mind boggles.
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No one can invent everything, and i still see Google producing new stuff all the time. They would be a fool not to pick up on trends, and include them in their 'suite' of offerings to remain relevant.
They are also not waiting until the last minute to adopt things, and then do it 1/2 assed, like Microsoft tends to do.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Is Google the new Microsoft that was replaced when Apple became the new Microsoft?
Hold it. Doesn't Google run most of their stuff on Linux?
Is Linux the new Apple?
"Is X the new Y" a way for people without much background or information to fill up a few inches of column space in a hurry?
How about we just ignore any "is X the new Y" from today onwards? Okay?
Another wonderful anti Google story - bravo!
Gotta get paid!
Not quite. Microsoft is indeed a convicted abusive monopolist. Honestly they've been a lot better lately - mostly due to being forced to follow standards by market forces (not through any intrinsic "goodness"). Microsoft never wanted to know everything about you in order to sell advertisements. Google on the other hand wants all your data and wants it now. (disclaimer: I use most of Google's services - perhaps foolishly). We do need to watch out for Google as they are becoming the next "evil facebook". Actually the two that have become worse than MS lately are Google and Apple. (One for collecting and warehousing all your information, one for trying to lock out hobbyists with their closed ecosystem).
It's the same story people have been writing for years.
Google as the Next Microsoft.
If you in fact Google Slashdot with the words Microsoft and Google, you'll find hundreds of results because people have been saying it for years.
It wasn't so much they stole as they infringed on patents.
Stac felt their patents covered software Microsoft bought from Vertisoft, improved upon and rolled into MS-DOS.
Stac was found to steal from MS though.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
IT is a field that is changing rapidly, and if you stick to only one service you may soon find yourself out of business. Therefore, big tech companies try to get a hold in every promising new market segment. Which is exactly how capitalism should work, developing a multitude of services for the users to choose from. Dropbox didn't invent renting online storage, and neither did Megaupload, it has been there long before them. The only difference is that they offer a limited bait service for free, and they have renamed it "cloud". And that hardly classifies as 'innovation' that could be copied. The author basically has problems that another company dares to compete with his favourite startup, raising shilling to a whole new level.
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2002 I stopped using Microsoft. 2012 I stopped using Google.
2022 stopped using porn, started using viagra.
Google does not have the same evil gene as Microsoft.
Posting as AC because until recently I used to work there. Words cannot express the hate and revulsion I feel for that company. Microsoft employees are truly on a different planet. They seem to really believe that the world outside Microsoft does not exist; that standards do not matter; that Microsoft itself gets to set the direction for everyone else. Even in areas where Microsoft is not even a player (e.g. scientific computing), they act as if their own obscure contributions (PowerShell; their HPC thing for clusters) are where it's really at. People will tell you with a completely straight face that Microsoft web-hosting solutions dominate the market; or that MSN search was at one time the leading provider of search-- and these assertions are for the most part not questioned by others. Anyway, there's no point really trying to express why I hate that company so much. I could go on for literally days. It's a gut thing.
What? Why do you say that? Online file storage being accessible way pre-dates Dropbox.
Inventing and innovating are not necessarily the same thing.
So what did dropbox innovate?
Not to mention that, in Google's case, they came to prominence through some real innovation. Microsoft borrowed an OS, scammed IBM, copied WordPerfect, strong-armed OEMs into bundling their apps with the OS, lied to the DOJ, etc. Google came up with an innovative way to monetize the internet without ruining it, and so far they haven't strayed too far afield.
Now that Google's a public company, though, their 'Don't Be Evil' ethic is harder to square with Wall Street's poisonous demand for increasing stock prices at all costs. So sure, we ought to be wary, but I think Google's actually trying to compete as fairly as possible. And I don't think it's Dropbox they're cloning. They have this little competitor named Microsoft that would like nothing more than to neutralize their business model by giving away its own Dropbox clone - not to mention patent suits (and spending billions cloning Google's primary business), etc. Remember 'suck the air out' of your competitors business model? That was a Microsoft expression.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Doesn't seem to know much about the products.
GOOG drive: great online office apps, can also store other stuff. No linux client (so far, or maybe forever, who knows). More space that DB
Dropbox: No built in file viewer/editor for office type apps. Excellent free linux client (no kidding, just install, start, it works. No memory leaks. No bugs. No weirdness. Just freaking works. Nice job guys)
Analysis: dropbox is the base product, beaten across all fronts. GOOG Drive is online office storing on the drive, now storing any file you'd like too. GOOG also has more space. If you use linux you can't use goog drive, so I don't, otherwise it beats dropbox across the board.
Both have nuts TOS etc, so just act like you're posting everything public to the whole world, and assume they'll steal ownership of anything you give them access to. Oddly enough, this doesn't reduce their usefulness very much at all, at least to me.
Online storage is a commodity. Its purefanboyism or audio-phoolism to claim your 1s and 0s sound better if you store your bits on Seagate drives or Western Digital drives. You're better off claiming that drawing a green marker on your ethernet cable makes your cloud stored mp3s sound better. Ditto GOOG or DB for storing 1s 0s over IP. Sounds like GOOG wins across the board unless you've got linux then its unusable so DB as the only serious entrant wins.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I've said this before. All three companies are/were monopolies formed from the ideologies of three of the major desktop computer players:
* Microsoft/Gates.
* Apple/Jobs.
* Google/Wozniak (but with better marketing savvy).
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
Google Drive does have some innovated stuff from Docs - it has awesome realtime collaboration, borrowed from Google Wave. I'd say that if you need several people editing a document at the same time, nothing beats Docs.
The only addition Google made to Docs before rebranding it into Drive is the desktop sync feature and bumping up free storage to 5 gigs. I'd say this is minor compared to existing document editing/viewing/collaboration features, which
a) Dropbox doesn't have;
b) Were steadily developed for at least 5 years.
Google is not yet in Microsoft's league of indecency. Microsoft, just to remind you, is a convicted abusive monopolist. Google has not reached monopoly status anywhere significant.
Google is probably at least as dominant in several on-line fields as Microsoft ever was: search (traditional Google), video hosting (YouTube), and mapping/geographical data (Google Maps) come immediately to mind. I don't know how dominant Google Mail is as a hosted webmail provider these days, but that might be a candidate too. And then there are all kinds of smaller/niche areas where Google has been developing and/or buying up early players, though the trend does seem to be much more about consolidation and focus since the change in leadership.
On top of that range of dominant services, there is far more potential for Google to use leverage from an existing dominant service to further its efforts artificially in another market, with the on-line advertising where it makes its real money being a prime example.
So I think you're objectively incorrect that Google is not yet in the same league as Microsoft were. They are actually some way beyond where Microsoft had got to, it's just that no-one has called them on it in court yet. That could simply be because there is no-one left to compete credibly and no-one new brave/foolish enough to try to disrupt a market where Google is already the dominant player, which is in practice almost the definition of a monopoly.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Come on, what's innovative about Dropbox?
Yes, the interface is all cute, it runs smoothly and doesn't spam the hell out of me. Still, filesharing isn't new. Syncing isn't new. Coming up with something similar is just what is supposed to happen in a competitive marketplace.
If Google launched a smear campaign against Dropbox and came up with some severely restrictive and sloppy alternative, maybe the comparison would make sense. But so...meh. Btw, I heard Google's financial statements are hard to read. They're totally the new Enron.
I dunno. The only products which have really made my jaw drop in the last decade have come directly from Google (Earth, Street View, ...etc)
Everything else has been pretty much evolutionary.
No sig today...
WOW IMAGINE THAT A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY HAS A COOL NEW IDEA AND DOES IT BETTER THAN ANYBODY ELSE DOES... SO LET'S DO IT WITH MOAR MONIES AND BETTAR!!! srsly ericjones12398, should five guys burgers and fries not exist because mc donalds does... and should mc donalds ignore how successful a smaller chain has become? they both serve the same markets with similar products... jack in the box, subway, burger king, taco bell, et. al - are they all 'ripping off' or 'failing to innovate' other ideas?
Dude, are you really trying to make UID counter overflow? Your last failed sockpuppet is just a few hours old. I'm sure you can lost longer than that.
Google is more like a chicken: they avoid liability by making their products "beta", and they avoid customer support by making their products free.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Google's Hangout service (which integrates nicely with docs -- now drive) also integrates nicely with YouTube.
Google+ may be "years behind", but Hangouts seems to directly benefit startups by offering a groupware "free" in terms of money that rivals corporate tools today.
All of my source code is mirrored on Google code, and has landed me 8+ contract jobs.
Copying? Yes. Microsoft? Not in my eyes.
Microsoft is better lately? Yeah, right. Except when it comes to suing people and companies for writing their own code to turn "bigfilename.txt" into "BIGFIL~1.TXT" and therefore being able to interface with their OS, which is only needed because they have an ill gained market dominance.
Better indeed.
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Microsoft actively battled, and still does, open standards. Google pushes open standards and puts a lot of weight behind them.
Microsoft has always (and was convicted of) using it's monopoly power to force other products and services on users. Even though it has a venerable monopoly on search and online video, Google does NO SUCH THING, in fact they actively open all of their APIs on both platforms and allow ample third party integration.
Microsoft does little more than pay lip service to the open source movement, and has even gone on record to say it's a cancer. Google actively peruses open source, they publish a huge amount of their work under open source licenses, and they put a lot of money into sponsor ships through programs such as the Summer of Code.
People like to give Google a lot of flack for knowing everything about you - HOWEVER Google actually goes out of their way to allow users to have total control over their data. You can log into your Google profile at any time and export all of your data and then delete the profile, leaving no trace. You can opt into having all your data anonymized, and you can opt out of all tracking on their properties, if you choose. Can you do this with Microsoft's products? I mean it is 2012 and you can't even access your hotmail via an open protocol, let alone export your data.
Microsoft and Google have always been polar opposites. All of this recent hatred toward Google is really unjustified.. it's basically perpetuated by people who simply like to vote for the underdog.. previously Google was the underdog, now it is other companies... Google is no longer "cool" and "hip", it is "corporate" and therefore evil... well, evil is relative. Compared to Microsoft, Google is a relative saint.
OK, I give up. What am I seeing here that should fill me with outrage? The fact that the web server knows someone visited the site and clicked repeatedly on a nonfunctional button? Sure, they have an IP address to go with that (unless you use an anonymizer), but there are so many more blatant abuses of my privacy that stuff like this doesn't even move the needle on my outrage-o-meter.
I also fail to see the connection with Google here. Any idiot can include an onkeydown event trap in their script. Heck, I can do that and I'm exceptionally stupid.
I do wonder about the scalability of such an enterprise, though. Assume 10-20 clicks per visit, plus a few dozen keystrokes if they start and/or complete a form... add to that the need to tie every keystroke and click to an IP address, and pretty soon you're talking about serious storage when your daily hit count is in the millions.
Google has not really done any innovation after their search engine and advertising platform. Everything else they have bought off from other startups. Google Maps and Earth come from KeyHole Inc.. YouTube was its own startup before Google bought them, just like Android was too. Chrome is based on work done by Apple. Orkut was bought. Hell, their whole business depends on using other peoples content.
The point being, Google has really left themselves go after the one initial project the founders did at university. Which is fine I guess, but people keep believing they are some kind of innovative company. They are not. Even Microsoft is more that than Google, as they have the largest R&D center on planet, Microsoft Research.
Like done in any other free market, Google sees an idea with potential, decides they can do it better, and makes their own implementation. They still respect the patented ideas (mostly), and when needed, re-engineer the implementation. This is competition, and without it, things would hardly improve in terms of innovation since there would be little motivation. People should be happy Google spends so much money in trying out new ideas and products instead of just sitting on it and watching it grow.
Google has not reached monopoly status anywhere significant
Google has 67% of the US search market and in other Western countries it has up to 94% of the market. If it walks like a monopoly and quacks like a monopoly...
"Us ancient folk who remember the 1990s" might recall a tactic that Microsoft employed at one point. It acquired the rights to a piece of technology developed elsewhere, a piece of technology that looked like it would be particularly useful in the exploding market known as "the World-Wide Web", and then gave it away for free to get people using it. It was able to do this because it had a monopoly in one industry, and it wanted to use that domaince to ensure that it would have a headstart in another.
For a more recent example of this tactic, see Android.
Shamelessly stolen from four years ago:
Google now has a full-blown case of the Microsoft Business Disaster Model. This model goes like this:
The most profitable company this year (2008) was Exxon-Mobil. A company that has to get its hands dirty and actually move a physical product had higher profits than Microsoft, a company that just thinks up bits that it then distributes, largely electronically. Imagine the profits if Microsoft were to sell off all its huge money losers, retain only enough employees to maintain Windows and Office, and pay out all the profits as dividends. It would be the most incredible stock the market had ever seen.
This is business as usual for Google. None of their flagship products were straight from the minds of Google, and that's certainly not a bad thing.
Why is it that Google is copying Dropbox? Dropbox was not the first, either. Isn't the whole point of innovation to take something and make it better? Dropbox did that by making cloud storage and syncing far less painless than it currently was. Google can further that goal even farther as the product matures.
This honestly just looks like a weak attack on Google. Would anyone even have cared negatively about a competing product had it been anyone other than Google? We'd probably be applauding the added competition to drive the various cloud storage providers to create better products.
Facebook were only the ones that have been caught. It's fairly obvious that there are more companies involved.
Dropbox needed to get patents in order to be successful .
Blame dropbox VC's not Google.
Google is still aok in my book.
They removed spam from my life, they gave me a free CR-48
and they trust me enough to sell a quality app on their PLAY-app market.
IMHO, all these internet $B companies are too big. Apple, Facebook, et al.
I imagine Congress will smack them like they did Microsoft.
Then I hope they move off-shore to send a message to our stupid leaders to
embrace openness, not their TSA-style future.
Help eliminate stupid speeding tickets
Companies steal - all companies do it. Apple stole from Android, Android stole from iOS, Windows stole from OSX, OSX stole from Windows - it's a never ending circle. Twitter and facebook have both stole from each other, Linux has stole from Unix and so on and so forth.
The companies that don't steal don't innovate either, they just piss off their users because company X has a great feature and the users want it. Eventually those users leave for company X.
If it's a good idea and you're not doing it, then you're doing it wrong.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Having a monopoly (at least in the US) is not illegal. Abusing that monopoly is. Bundling IE and tying it deeply into the OS is what got Microsoft in trouble.
They're similar in that they both seem to fear that some upstart or technology will supplant them so they're constantly moving into areas that have had nothing to do with their core business up to that point (e.g. Microsoft got into browsers because they were afraid of the web replacing Windows, and Google got into social because they were afraid that Facebook would replace search.) and generally done a half-assed effort in those spaces. However, they have had some successes like Android and Xbox so it's not as though these investments can't pay off.
Other than that, the similarities end. Microsoft's abuses make Googles pale in comparison, but as of late Google has definitely been heading down that path. The wi-fi snooping case is starting to look worse and worse for them, and they've been using their search to push their social network so I can see where the comparison's arise. In some ways Google's actions are also probably a little easier to swallow since many of their products or projects are open source which plays well with the community here.
I think what a lot of folks here are doing is jumping on the whole "OMGWTFGOOGLESTOLEMYBASEBALL" bandwagon. The reality is, if google's solution is even marginally good at syncing and sharing files (which it appears to be with my limited usage), it has potentially the missing link of a pretty damned good documents toolbox for text, spreadsheet, and presentations.
But let's back up here for a second. Ever since Google has had a documents platform from January 2010 on, they've been in want of an *easy* way to get your documents there. Sure, you could go in, upload them, and then pull them back out later, but that was cumbersome and annoying. You could email them to yourself, but again - cumbersome and annoying. They FINALLY added this ability - and just took a baby step forward to make it a "cloud drive" for all of your documents. Not that big of a deal for them, but a hell of a lot more useful to the average Joe.
I do understand that Dropbox has been around for a while - since 2007 in fact. But they never really picked up until the 2009 timeframe for the average user, and while they've been pretty innovative on the synchronizing front, they've not really expanded out very far. Not to mention, they have a bit of a strange market - They tout themselves as a sort of sharing and backup solution. However, the only reason there even needs to be a "sharing" solution is because emailing larger files can be inconsistent but the means to do so with Dropbox isn't particularly elegant even as they add features to make it easier. And to consider dropbox as a means to "back up" your documents is a bit of a joke when there are far superior services that don't try to get into the "sharing" market (and can therefore create a much better backup solution) that are quite a lot cheaper. I'm looking at you, Crashplan and similar services. Because when I want to back up my computer offsite, I don't want to pick a quite limited-capacity folder to do so.
So really, Dropbox is only particularly better than the competition at sharing files. But as I said, it's not even quite great at that. If Google can step up and put out a product that integrates with email for their millions of users (it does), integrates with Google Docs to persuade people to jump into the cloud documents market (it does), and can not lose your data (Google seems to be pretty good at this) - I'd say that's a *good* thing. Hell, it may even convince Dropbox to continue innovating. And isn't that the idea of free enterprise in the first place?
I hate sigs...
When Google starts using "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu to train its sale force, we will know it had reached the Microsoft level.
Google has not innovated. They are a fast follower with a big bank roll. Like Microsoft's office suit, their undeniably excellent search platform lets them weave new technologies in for an unbeatable combination. For example, their maps or online doc or shopping search or payment systemed were no better than what others offered, but they were easy to get to from any place in the googlesphere.
The one area one can give a credit to them is refining the implementation of active online web pages. Their work on Ajax and things like google gears made the browser more of an app backed by a huge database.
There is a certain irony to this move to more active web page portals however. They become unsearchable and unlinkable. Thus while the google sphere grows more integrated it becomes more of a walled garden. Worse it can't search other walled gardens like facebook.
Google page rank and text ads was a break through but everything else has just been due to the wads of cash and monopolistic leveraging of services by "integration".
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well that's how patents work.
Yes. And as Carmack said, using software patents is essentially mugging people.
Parents are supposed to protect innovation. Here, like in so many cases with SW patents, it's pure rent seeking.
You mean to say you cannot think of any other way to do that?
Irrelevant. The fact that I can take another path to avoid the thief doesn't make him any less of a thief.
But no, I don't see any other way which doesn't force the user to install compatibility software, since Windows doesn't support but proprietary and patented filesystems.
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Its not like dropbox doesn't already have competitors. This really only becomes a problem if Google starts unfairly leveraging its power in the search engine business to squish dropbox, at which point we're in an anticompetition situation.
things sure have changed when in so many instances MS is the underdog.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If Google is the new MS, then at least the trains run on time. (most days)
Saying the trains run on time has been a propaganda lie before....
The issue with Microsoft I think is that they have the policy, "if you don't want to join us we will screw you". I really prefer a "...go ahead and shoot yourself on the foot" policy ;)
I don't trust any online storage supplier to be around for ever so I will always have two online storage services going and will keep everything that I care about on both.
Anyone used yahoo briefcase before. Not the functionality of online sync but it has been around for almost a decade. Talk about failing to innovate...
My main use of Google is Gmail, which is the first webmail client that was worthwhile as a main interface. That seemed pretty innovative at the time.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Google Drive was rumoured since Gmail.
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
Except you don't have to use Google. Whatever its dominance you can always use another search engine. It has no monopoly on search or email, and is in no position to create one. It is in no way the equivalent of Microsoft, it's dominance is not based on force.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I dunno. The only products which have really made my jaw drop in the last decade have come directly from Google (Earth, Street View, ...etc)
Everything else has been pretty much evolutionary.
Actually, this comparison to Dropbox is largely irrelevant. Google has long had the stated intent to move everyone into the "cloud" (whatever that is at any given time.) If anything, this is another piece to their plan to unseat Microsoft as the dominant operating system supplier, and you do that by eliminating the very need for Windows and Office. Logically, if you want people to use your Web-based operating system and practice ubiquitous computing, you have to permit them to store their data online as well their applications. "The Network is the Computer." Oh wait ... that was Sun. But where Sun Microsystems failed, Google is succeeding.
... I got a 50 Gb. Box account awhile ago. It has certain limitations, but it's free and it's ten times bigger than what Google is offering.
This isn't so much competition to Dropbox as it is a logical and necessary step along the path they've been on for some time now. Now, whether you agree with where they're going, and whether it will ultimately be good for society is another issue entirely. But this is not Google being like Microsoft and deliberately stepping on a smaller competitor (although that may be the result), but rather Google being entirely consistent with their long-stated goals. It just took them a while to get here.
Keep in mind that there's already plenty of competition to Dropbox, besides Google Drive you have Box, SkyDrive, Amazon's CloudDrive, and a host of other similar services, both free and paid. Google isn't even giving away the most free storage, either
Ultimately, though, the key to Google's approach is not how many gigabytes their giving away, but the integration with their other services. If all you want is free online storage, there are many better options to Google Drive right now, Dropbox being one of them (functionally Dropbox is about the best of them, I'd say.)
This is Google going head-to-head with Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon for as big a piece of the online pie as they can manage to convince us to give to them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
One still has the choice to either use Googles products, or to not use Googles products.
There are other search engines, and other free email providers. Google became big because people chose to use their products, personally I have never "been forced" to pay Google anything... clicking on an ad or two has causes some-one to pay Google.
Microsoft became big by taking choices away from people, it may vary where you live, but if you want (or have ever wanted) a computer with-out MSWindows in Denmark your options are severely limited. Some companies even charge extra because you have to "customise" your computer to buy it with-out MSWindows.
More choices = good
Less choices = bad
I still haven't gotten a blue screen of death using any of Google's products. Until then I'd say the answer is no.
D
...is absolutely asinine.
Even today both are very innovative.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
2022 Started using Viagra, increased using porn
Not to mention that, in Google's case, they came to prominence through some real innovation. Microsoft borrowed an OS...
Don't forget Microsoft were already prominent before DOS. They created the first microcomputer implementation of BASIC. That was their initial product, the parallel to Google's search.
Sure they didn't invent BASIC, but then Google didn't invent internet search. They both innovated on what came before though. For that I give them both credit.
The problem is they both grew into scummy companies.
Google gives it all away for free. Microsoft charges insane prices and whines that people pirate it.
Big difference. Windows and Office should be free for home use. and charge the Businesses and those making money. It will significantly increase customer satisfaction and maintain install base.
But unfortunately, Microsoft has not had a CEO that understands that. Maybe next year when they are losing big time to google they might figure it out. Microsoft is already a major failure with their Phone OS, nobody wants it and nobody has any interest in writing apps for it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Google Maps and Earth come from KeyHole Inc..
Google Maps came from Where 2 Technologies. But that doesn't change the basic point you make.
Now that Google's a public company, though, their 'Don't Be Evil' ethic is harder to square with Wall Street's poisonous demand for increasing stock prices at all costs.
Google is one of the few publicy traded companies whose majority shareholders also run the company.
If you own Google stock and don't like what the company is doing, tough cookies.
On the flip side, if you don't like what the company is doing, you know who to blame.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
As a webmail client, yes. But webmail clients in general still lack the features we used to have with advanced native mail clients back in the late 1990s, or are just getting up to parity.
Google's insistence of reimplementing every single speciallized software technology that we already have, as an HTTP service running on a generalized web platform, may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.
dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Google introduced Google drive on April 24, 2012. And people have been illegitimately storing stuff on google servers for a long time
Email over the web was innovative. Perfecting it was iterative. Perhaps there are some true innovations under the covers of gmail which help keep the vast majority of the spam out, but its main interface was hardly innovative even when it was new.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Unsearchable and unlinkable?
Not true. You can put anything on your Google Drive and mark it as public. Further, this is far easier than hiring a hosting company, learning html, uploading, etc.
Its linkable. You can mark it as totally public, and delete it at will.
This capability is also available from several other online cloud storage providers.
If anything, this trend makes it far easier for the average person to get their manifesto on the Internet.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
There's a difference between locking people into your products and making products that people want to use.
I agree completely. Gmail was not innovative. It might had worked better than Yahoo or Hotmail at the time, but even then actual email clients were way better. I personally loved to use Eudora. It's sad that they changed it to Thunderbird based code, as it's just not the same. However to this date I still use desktop email client and it's much better. Websites are fine for things like Slashdot etc, but they just cannot replace native applications.
it's just the general computer/dataprocessing/IT company policy to screw everyone the second you get the chance.
That's not limited to the tech sector. Hell, I thought screwing everyone the second you get a chance was codified in the basic corporate charter template.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
And not the "modern" IBM - the old, 1960s IBM. The one where the users never actually owned the machine, could only run approved programs and could only get spares, upgrades and addons that were allowed.
Then they went and spoiled it all by inventing an open PC architecture.
Can't see Apple making that mistake!
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
While this practice is quite evil yes at least... #1 if googles attempt fails they give up after a year or so instead of just forcing us to adopt their crappier version of the software without choice #2 Google is not charging us $299 a license for their version #3 Google sometimes actually comes up with something better than the original which in the end benefits all of Internet-kind
As a webmail client, yes. But webmail clients in general still lack the features we used to have with advanced native mail clients back in the late 1990s, or are just getting up to parity.
Google's insistence of reimplementing every single speciallized software technology that we already have, as an HTTP service running on a generalized web platform, may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.
dZ.
Sounds a bit like Apple. Many of their great successes were just improvements on existing concepts. However they were the first to produce a great product of said concept. There were loads of 32mb mp3 players out there from many vendors when apple came along with a much-more-expensive 5GB iPod that allowed you to carry around more than 8 songs. Same with the tablet, Microsoft and others envisioned it years before the iPad, however it wasnt until the iPad that it became a good product people wanted to buy.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
MS was caught red-handed handing out bribes. And that was just one of the many irregularities in that obvious scam.
I think MS, and their buddies at ISO, still want us to beleive that OOXML. What a total joke.
I don't think you fully understand the term innovate, or you'd not say things like "Chrome is based on work done by Apple." By your logic, the Apple II was based on work done by NASA and Hewlett Packard calculators and hence no innovation, and well, Safari was based on work done by KDE... and you could well argue that Chrome innovated on the kthml codebase in much more fundamental ways than Apple did (per-process sandboxing, javascript engine, etc).
You either started with a conclusion you believe and added random data you heard somewhere or believe, or are spouting big claims from a position of ignorance.
Now, you could easily make a case that Google (or arguably Apple, or Microsoft, or anyone) hasn't been able to create any software innovations on the level of the pagerank algorithm since, but then who has? My hunch is revolutionary software innovations are exceptionally rare, and because familiarity breeds contempt you're expecting more pageranks instead of truly understanding (and appreciating) it in context.
I'm erring on the side of ignorance vs you having an agenda.
Google Goggles? Google Sky? Not necessarily innovative, but certainly big additions to my app collection, and offered by no one else. Finally, you're also completely underestimating the impact that Google Maps had on map users. Before Google Maps, we had scrolling via buttons, slow zooms and no satellite imagery you could switch from. Now, Google Maps is the gold standard when it comes to map interfaces.
I mean, do you also complain that Apple stole from Parc? That Gimp really is nothing but Paint with fancy layers? Finally, you're actually lying when you say that Orkut was bought. Or did you miss that it bears the name of its creator, a Google employee? Same with Android.
Ohhhh.... wait a second. Brand new user whose first post is on this story. 100% incorrect information in post. Google is Evil, subtle MS is good post. I've been trolled by bonch. Damn. This crap is really getting old
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Blue-Ray was better than HD-DVD
So if I open a Chinese restaurant, I am being evil because other's have already opened Chinese restaurants?
Is all competition evil, according to you?
Damn! Google for making their product free and optional.
Yea Stacker the only software patent case that /. supports.
GMail came out with 1GB storage at time when Hotmail and Yahoo offered 5-10 MB. In reaction everyone and their cousins started offering larger storage.
GMail had interesting presentation of mail over the web. Their interface was _way_ more responsive than competition at that time. They were the first to offer keyboard navigation. So if you have a habit of sticking with the keyboard, their interface was very efficient to use.
They were the first vendors to offer a threaded-view of mails on the web (I said on the web, not comparing to native clients). Perhaps they still are the only ones, I am not sure. Labels is a useful idea as it allows you to classify the same conversation under multiple heads. They came up with the idea of searching emails instead of sorting them for easy retrieval later.
I say thing were pretty innovative with GMail. Not sure how else you mean by innovation. One can argue about more prominent examples of innovation on the history of mankind, but GMail was innovation too.
How can you take this article seriously for even one second?
Google is going into the same business that others are already in . . . OMFG!!!!!! EVIL!!!! EVIL!!!
So if I open a hardware strore, am I evil because others have opened hardware stores?
What tech has not done anything like dropbox? Yahoo, MS, Apple, are all doing similar, and have been for some time.
If MS starts Bing, that's fine, no problem at all, no slashdot article screaming about microsoft being a monopoloy or anything. But if it's Google . . . OMFG!!!!!! EVIL!!!! EVIL!!!
Don't you people even recognize a Google smear when you see it?
Without making any judgement regarding Apple's actual technological innovation, what I said about Google is nothing like what you said.
My point was not that Google was offering improvements on existing concepts, quite the opposite: their "breakthroughs" were a step backwards from the state of the art, except that it was implemented over the Web.
Webmail clients sucked in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and GMail was better than most of them. However, it did not do absolutely anything that native mail clients did at the time, and in fact did much less.
If your goal is to reimplement everything as a web service, then this may seem as innovation. But there is arguably little advantage in doing the same things we did 10 years ago but in a generalized platform that serves as the lowest common denominator.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
monopoly operating system?
Oh? Well then no it's completely different.
I dont see google having the possibility of owning ALL of computing like the spectre we faced with MS. Microsoft wanted to whole pie, forever. Convicted monopolist does mean something and has greatly shaped how MS operates in the 21st century. Sure we didnt get the 'split the baby' punishement that most geeks wanted, but MS was effectively cowed by the judgement.
Good-bye
I love this revisionist history. Google is in no way as powerful or as evil as MS was in its heyday. Its not even close. Back in the day you couldnt even BUY a computer without windows on it. It could be said that MS ushered in a short era of computing dark ages.
Good-bye
My main use of Google is Gmail, which is the first webmail client that was worthwhile as a main interface.
I left fastmail for gmail, the only reason was the price.
Not until Sergei starts throwing chairs.
That's not fair. They have made lots of innovations, it's just that, as innovation normally goes, not everything sticks. Remember Google Wave? Google Health? As far as I see it, they still support (internally or externally), pretty weird stuff, like self-driving cars and mining asteroids.
They also have established products that try to cater to known markets, so what? Seem sensible to me...
...Is trolling the new news?
~Just as a thing fails if it lacks a kernel, so too it fails if it lacks a skin. ~ Rumi, Discourses
This "article" is a pure troll. I am not even going to bother reading the discussion because it will just be bickering over stupid shit which allows the troll to be more effective.
Microsoft makes a "cooperation" deal with companies to work together on their technology, steals the sourcecode/technology and then ends the contract.
This was the case with IBM's OS/2, Corel Word, Oracle's Database and Stac Electronics' "Stacker" where Bill Gates himself famously lied in a sworn testimony about the theft.
These are just from the top of my head, I am sure people can come up with other examples.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Also, Google's search engine actually lets me find what I want to find. MS Bing? Hell no. Just go away.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Not to mention that, in Google's case, they came to prominence through some real innovation. Microsoft borrowed an OS, scammed IBM, copied WordPerfect, strong-armed OEMs into bundling their apps with the OS, lied to the DOJ, etc. Google came up with an innovative way to monetize the internet without ruining it, and so far they haven't strayed too far afield.
Now that Google's a public company, though, their 'Don't Be Evil' ethic is harder to square with Wall Street's poisonous demand for increasing stock prices at all costs. So sure, we ought to be wary, but I think Google's actually trying to compete as fairly as possible. And I don't think it's Dropbox they're cloning. They have this little competitor named Microsoft that would like nothing more than to neutralize their business model by giving away its own Dropbox clone - not to mention patent suits (and spending billions cloning Google's primary business), etc. Remember 'suck the air out' of your competitors business model? That was a Microsoft expression.
http://vntimes.com.vn/
Microsoft has historically been very aggressive towards their competitors. They've frequently crushed competitors. Their users, who are their customers and pay them money, they treat reasonably well.
Google, on the other hand, focuses their aggression against their users.. Google's tries to collect as much info about its users as it can, which is a lot. Then they resell that data to advertisers. This has them in trouble with the EU privacy authorities and most of the US state attorneys general.
Then there's the drug dealing. Google had to admit guilt to multiple felonies related to advertising drugs. They had to pay a $500,000,000 penalty to avoid felony prosecution.
And no, it wasn't just "Canadian pharmacies". The FBI became involved because some drug dealer they were chasing ran an online pharmacy racket on the side and advertised with Google. The FBI then ran a sting operation against Google, running more and more outrageous ads for illegal drugs. Google execs met with the FBI's con man, who was pretending to be an agent for a Mexican drug lord. They extended him credit for AdWords ads. The U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island says Larry Page knew all about this.
Microsoft has had antitrust problems, but nothing like that.
Back in the day you couldnt even BUY a computer without windows on it.
Yes you could. Stop making up stuff.
And Android, while it was its own startup, was based on the Linux kernel (which is the work of a lot of people and groups, including Google). Everyone is standing on the shoulders of giants here.
As to "innovation", I don't think dropbox's business model (desktop folders synced to the cloud!) is all that revolutionary. I would be surprised if they were the first to try it. It's a damn obvious concept once you have a cloud, which we merely hadn't until recently. The bigger question is why Google took so long in adding this functionality to Google Docs.
But when we're talking pure in-house innovation: Google Translate was and is an unappreciated sensation. Yes, academia had tried statistical translation before, but not with anything remotely resembling the success of GT.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Gmail has search and spam filtering capabilities that no native client can remotely match. (Outlook's search functionality is a joke).
Searching and spam filtering are the two main features I need out of a mail client. The labeling system in gmail is just gravy.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I had a 6 GB Creative JukeBox mp3 player about 4 years before the ipod existed. All Apple did was make it pretty.
Oh, so did Lotus Notes R3 use a native client, or was it web based?
Are you beating down a web-based application because a native client is better than a web-based app?
What GMail brought to the table was functionality approaching a native app in a web-based app. If there were other similar web-based apps, then truly GMail was/is nothing.
For the same reason, google docs and skydrive are relevant because they provide reasonable functionality without requiring a native office suite. They will always fall short of something MS Office provides. If we one day wake up in a world where web apps surpass native apps in every way important, we will see the end of native apps.
Were it only so. Unfortunately, I'm confident the threat of minority shareholder lawsuits make Google a lot more "evil" than it would like to be.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Much closer to the "Old Microsoft". Produced languages (BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, ASSEMBLER, LISP) and tools.
Then, Microsoft got into environments. Which, when combined with tools and lock-in, made platforms.
Google? Not so much. Just tools. With easy exit strategies. I don't feel the need to stop using DropBox even if I use Google Docs. I am not forced to use Android or Chrome to participate in Google Docs.
The litmus test I am presently using is when Microsoft will support Microsoft Office on Wine. Just a mention, even.
Now the work has been done for Microsoft. Wine 1.4 supports MS Office 2010. There are potentially a million users out there. And each of these could pay as much as $500 (or as little as $50 after discounts). That is 50 to 500 million dollars on the table. Not taken simply because that would put a dent into the MS Windows as platform idea.
Google? I am still pretty sure they would take the money.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I'm sure there are plenty of people you can pay if you need support for a google product. Feel free to make me an offer.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
"This raises the question, has Google become the new Microsoft?"
The question is....who's raising this question? What public relations firm is raising this question? The answer though is a resounding NO. Google is NOT going around using sleazy tactics like Microsoft does. Google is NOT using software patents to kill open source. Google is NOT funnelling money to trolls like SCO or IV and others in an effort to as drive up cost or litigate open source and free software products out of the marketplace. Google is NOT a member of the troll group BSA let alone a leading member. Google doesn't stack standards committees with their own drones in an attempt to corrupt the standards process. Google does NOT spread FUD about open source violating their patents but refuse to come clean on what patents yet force people to sign non-disclosures about said software patents after they are cajoled into paying a license fee for software that they did not even write one line of code for.
Actually, what happens a lot is that Google employees leave Google to establish their own start up that's based on some new idea. After a while, if they're successful, Google buys them back up.
In this way, Google gets to keep the idea but minimize the risk of putting out a product based on the idea.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Btw, the human is the original 'exploiter' in George Orwell's Animal Farm. A reference that apparently few people got, or at least they don't share my sense of humor. I'm also of the opinion at Google has reached 'Microsoft'ian levels yet, but I'm already of the opinion that Google is already in that route. Just a matter of time.
their maps or online doc or shopping search or payment systemed were no better than what others offered
Imho, when it was introduced Google Maps was crushingly superior to all of its major web-based competitors. At the time, it was the only service where one could drag the map around - the others all required tedious clicking and refreshing to move location.
The Google innovation isn't the services they provide. It's the business model. Their competitors want to sell these services, withholding them from whoever cannot or will not pay. Google instead gets other people (advertisers) to pay them to provide the services to everyone in the world for free. That is disruptive, and to the point, profitable. It also tends to make them popular.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
IM not going to get into an argument over absolutes. For most people in the 90s, you flat out could not source a pre-built computer without a windows tax on it unless you assembled it yourself.
Good-bye
"For example, their maps or online doc or shopping search or payment systemed were no better than what others offered,"
Seriously? Because from my perspective they did an incredibly innovative user interface that made maps suddenly interactive instead of click-and-wait by quantum movements. It felt like I could access an installed mapping application from anywhere without actually committing huge resources to install it. As soon as I saw their interface, I never went back to mapquest except when websites would publish a mapquest link as their location. They also opened up the API, allowing others to use or layer the information (and I don't know how they made money with this API).
I don't know about their shopping or payment system improvements and I have not been as impressed with what I have seen, but if I were after the quick money I would focus primarily on this.
Were it only so. Unfortunately, I'm confident the threat of minority shareholder lawsuits make Google a lot more "evil" than it would like to be.
It is in their charter not to be evil, so no there is no risk there.
You don't have to use Windows either.
True, I'm using Linux. But I did have to buy Windows. And about the only way I could have avoided that was buying a Mac.
It is a true story, the good news, assembling it yourself is still the best way to get a good system. Assuming you spend some time researching and comparing parts. The bad news, yeah, "regular people" had to pay the MS tax even on systems purchased without an installed OS.
How does Google affect the adoption of Bing or Yahoo?
may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.
"Technically interesting and very clever" is the definition of innovation.
"That's either incredibly asinine or the most brilliant troll I've ever read. Not sure which." -Anonymous Coward
I started working in this industry before most of you were a gleam in your daddies eye (I'm 85 and still actively programming and evangelizing Microsoft). I was writing C and assembly language programs when they started. I helped an Oregon professor build a computer that used an ASR-33 teletype and 7400 series integrated circuits in circuit boards that I designed and built. I'm saying all this as a way of saying I think I have the background to make my choices reasonable. I don't like Apple, I don't like Google. I don't like a number of things but I don't bash them. I take a VERY dim view of Open Source - not because it's bad but I simply don't understand how I - for example - could put bread on the table if I gave my hours away. Open Source makes absolutely NO sense to me. Now for a long time I've used my.msn as my home page. The problem is that my layout has Slashdot occupying the middle of the screen. So I changed my home page to Bing. Now I can ignore this forum comfortably because I'm just sick to death or reading post after post after post bashing Microsoft and essentially saying how great other venues are. Now I went out and bought a MacMini, an iPhone and a Verizon account so that I can develop apps for iOS. The crazy thing is training material for Xcode says I should know Objective C. Training material for Objective C says I should know C and suddenly I'm writing C again realizing how ancient (and good) the language is. And believe me - I'm doing this to make money. Besides, I'm having fun programming the Apple because I could do well. SO if you want to contact me I'm budatdotnetchecksdotcom - otherwise all of you have fun with your f...ing MS bashing - I'll just quietly capitalize on it.
The thing is though, we're not really the customers. The customers are the companies that advertise on Google. If Google demands they do something then the other companies have to fall in line.
Good think I saw this before hitting 'moderate'
Its possible gmail search works grand for you, but its complete and utter shit for me! Their inept search doesn't find tons of words that I KNOW are in the mails!
I have to pop it all to do offline searching because the search i gmail is utter crap.
Now i suppose its possible I've run into a bug, but you can't report bugs to google because their whole "support" website boils down to "go away user"
(Now some fanboy may say that there is a "report bug" menu item from one of the "menus" on the site - NO - there isn't - perhaps that's another bug from the company who only cares about who you are, and nothing about what you want)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
So, while I do not like simple comparisons like "is Google the new Microsoft?", they have their share of morality issues like most large corporations...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
That was (maybe still is) Microsoft's model. Google doesn't seem to be at that point. They are open, even if it may allow a competitor to use their services. If the day comes where you have to have an Android phone to use mobile Gmail or something to that effect, that will be a big step in the MS direction.
Google has not innovated.
Who has? Innovation is overrated. By the standards you seem to be trying to set, the industry has hardly seen any innovation since the days of Dan Brinklin and Xerox PARC. Even the world-wide-web was no more than an incremental improvement over ideas that have been around since the nineteen-sixties, adapted to work with new networking technologies.
The one area one can give a credit to them is refining the implementation of active online web pages. Their work on Ajax and things like google gears made the browser more of an app backed by a huge database.
Wow, your ignorance of useful Google technologies is truly amazing. Let's just ignore all their work in large scale, high-availability, distributed systems, to start. If it doesn't run on your desktop, it doesn't exist, right?
There is a certain irony to this move to more active web page portals however. They become unsearchable and unlinkable.
Google didn't invent Ajax (though they did do quite a bit to improve Ajax technologies), and now, somehow, the side-effects of Ajax are all Google's fault? If anything, Google's work on Ajax has helped it maintain searchability, which is logical, since search is their bread-and-butter.
Now, I'm not saying Google is wonderful or perfect or anything. No company is absolutely good or absolutely evil. Microsoft helped free us from the tyranny of hardware vendors, and we should remember to thank them for it. Now Google seems to be trying to free us from the tyranny of software vendors, and, whatever else they may end up doing, I'm going to thank them for that. I'm also going to keep a careful eye on them. But so far, they seem to fall far short of the standards for predatory behavior set by MS, who managed to top even IBM, and came close to AT&T levels of evil.
It's not besides the point. Microsoft used its monopoly to force hardware manufacturers to put its operating system on their computers to the exclusion of other operating systems (just how many OEM Dr. DOS or OS/2 installs did you ever see on PC compatibles).
The only way Google would be the equivalent of Microsoft is if Google was somehow bullying DNS servers or ISPs into using its search engine to the exclusion of others. But of course, Google cannot do that because the Internet, unlike PC hardware, is diffused. It has no way to maintain a captured audience, to use whatever market position it has to get rid of the others.
It isn't the same thing at all. At any moment someone could out-Google Google and there's not a damned thing Google could do about it. Once its advertising revenue flew away, it would fall quickly.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Microsoft tax was basically paid on 9 out of 10 personal computers. Microsoft made huge fortunes out of its OEM sales. Google has nothing like OEM software, and really couldn't, as it has to operate in an environment completely alien to that business model (an environment, I might add, that Microsoft has failed to dominate for some 17 years despite throwing billions at).
The only companies that can hope to dominate the Internet in the way Microsoft dominated PCs would be the backbone and wireless providers.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
@TheThinkingGuy Didn't MS have agreements with OEMs that said the OEMs would get cheap copies of Windows if they would agree to only install Windows and no other OS? What percentage of pre-built x86 computers circa 1992-1998 came with another OS installed? I'm sure you could buy a computer with no OS whatsoever, but what were the alternatives for people shopping at popular electronics stores?
noun 1. something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum. 2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.
Technically interesting and clever not does necessarily mean a new thing or method; therefore it is not innovation.
Just as implementing a simple machine using Lego bricks is not an innovative transformation of such a machine, however interesting and clever it may be.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
They where trying not only to use their crappy software, but to LIKE it.
Now, google is not perfect, specificly big questions about their monitoring and privacy policies. They are hardly microsoft. While they certainly copy other ideas, they for the most part make great products, little bugs, treat their programmers well(MS used to run a sweat shop for nerds in the 1990s), and don't use their market position to prevent people from making competing products or services.
Apple if anything is the new microsoft.
No Apple is.
not does should have been does not, sorry.
Carol vs. Ghost
This has to be one of the dumbest artist reasons I've ever read. Was Dropbox unique? Were they the first ones to do cloud storage? NOPE. First one I remember was box.net. Probably were many, many more prior to that. This isn't copying. This is just taking an old idea, and adding your own spin to it.
I don't see what supposed cowardice (by a very strange definition) has to do with business. People enjoy using their products and so they "deserve" to be successful inasmuch as any company does.
Is it any better that Microsoft offers beta operating systems [e.g. original 98 and vista], branded as the Next Big Thing and then effectively forces people to pay for them?
--
Same with the tablet, Microsoft and others envisioned it years before the iPad, however it wasnt until the iPad that it became a good product people wanted to buy.
if you read the steve jobs bio, you'll see that apple was working on a tablet for 10 years before the ipad came out. hey were creating at the same time as others, they just didn't release crap and held off until they got it right.
Well if it wasn't for the MS OS Google would have had a much harder road to success from the start. MS, like Google, is a for profit enterprise and both have accomplished that in spades. If you have a problem with that then build your own fucking solutions and stop incessant whining.
Hotmail was just plain ol' webmail - none of the ajax goodness that made Gmail so much more like a desktop client.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Exchange relies on Internet Explorer for the "ajax" part, even to this day. Also, you have the minor issue of needing to run an Exchange server. Gmail required no server on my part, gave me oodles of storage space, completely took away my old habit of meticulously sorting email into folders, and responded almost as well as a real native application. It was amazing at the time.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If I were Apple, I'd patent everything because of Microsoft and Google.
The GP relied on the premise that just because something was bought from someone means that no innovation has ever taken place. Forget the big ticket names.
Android was bought? Sure, but just look how far the system has come. At the time it was acquired it was a borderline worthless platform. By combining it with other Google products it showed real innovation. A phone contact list that automatically syncs with your online email account, true multitasking, a useful and functional widget system, all that is innovation regardless of who actually came up with the original system.
How about evolving standards? SPDY? A Google innovation. A browser that is capable of doing Javascript fast enough to start becoming really useful, a Google innovation. So what if Chrome is based on work done by Apple (which is based on webkit), I don't see Safari browser as being the first to incorporate per tab threading, sand-boxing, or PDF rendering.
I also like it how the poster is missing Google's single biggest move in the last 10 years. Moving the entire productivity suite online. They didn't buy that of anyone, yet now we have an online productivity suite which is great from a collaboration / central data store point of view. Not to mention starting a webmail service which was lightyears ahead of the competition when it launched.
How about developer tools? Google Analytics anyone? It has changed the way webmasters design web pages with a far bigger focus on user interaction.
Yeah Google is such a copycat.
As mentioned elsewhere, innovation is not the ability to come up with a completely original product, it's the ability to improve on something that makes it better than the rest. The classic case is Chrome. Basically webkit including a lot of Apple's work. But after Google started playing with it, it fast became the the first browser which could do javascript at a useful speed, or could gracefully crash just the one tab without losing the entire browser, not to mention their sandboxing and security innovations.
Then there's work on protocols like SPDY.
How about the push of office suites online to help collaboration and provide a centralised data store? Sure the concept is nothing new, but the ability to do it in a browser from any machine anywhere in the world certainly is.
Orkut was a internal product: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut
There's nothing wrong with monopolies as long as it doesn't affect consumers. Google can have a 100% search market share and it won't matter as long as I can simply go to www.bing.com. It won't matter if IE ships with Bing as the default browser. It won't matter unless Google somehow magically forces itself down my throat.
You cite Android as an example of abusing dominance to bundle products? Funny because the way I see it:
The LG Spectrum comes with Bing as default search
Motorola's Citrus does too
That's not to mention that Windows phones and the Blackberries that come with Bing. A quick tip about competition law, to abuse your monopoly you need to have a monopoly in the area. Google does NOT have a monopoly in the mobile market so they can bundle whatever the hell they want with their Android phones. Also Google does not retain full control over Android and it is entirely up to the manufacturer / carrier to bundle what they wish to on the phones. There's one key exception and that is phones which say "Powered by Google" on the back of them, which is by a long shot not all of the Android phones currently on the market.
Arguably. Challenge accepted.
There is one overwhelming advantage. It works for non-pc devices. It works on tablets, netbooks, and most importantly, smart phones. Native clients must have an update cycle with a resulting bandwidth consumption by end user. I've got a good handful of apps on my phones and they're constantly updating. If the web version is good, I never have to update, it works on any device with a web browser and I don't need any special permissions to install it. If security is important, and it is to me, I also appreciate that my data doesn't have to be stored on my device. Plus, the online version is always the current version and doesn't have a security hole that I need to update to fix. (It may have security holes, but at least they're fixed ASAP, not on patch Tuesday.)
I don't really want to install a PDF reader and a Doc reader and an XLS reader on my phone, and thanks to Google Docs I don't have to.
Then there are all the things that they've just made better and/or free. I don't want to pay AT&T or MetroPCS $10/month for their navigation app, and thanks to Google I don't have to. I really liked Yahoo maps, but their interface was getting stale and now I can use Google street view to get a look at where I want to go and what I can expect to see and recognize when I get there. I used Yahoo mail (and still keep it) for years, but they were trying to charge for everything I was interested in and their space was getting constrictive, until Gmail came along. Thanks to Google entering the webmail market, Yahoo, Hotmail and others suddenly started offering reasonable amounts of space.
Dropbox and Box.net offer a good free service, but 2GB and 5GB aren't really enough to make me comfortable, so I don't use then often. Google offers me 10GB for email storage, so that's handy if I need to store stuff online, but now they're entering the online drive market... it reminds me of when Gmail started, they are offering the same amount of space as my favorite competitor, but I expect them to expand and force others in the industry to keep up or lose customers.
Finally, don't forget Android. Certainly it existed without Google and personally I wish they'd adopted WebOS (Google, you still could!) but it is hard to argue that anybody but Google could have made Android what it is today. The last numbers I saw for smartphones put Android on about 43% of the smartphones active. The nearest competitor was iPhone with about 28%.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Who would want to hire a hosting company or learn HTML; just use Google Sites.
Whether you're using Google Drive or Google Sites or Google App Engine the files still need to be uploaded if you create them on your computer. If you're creating them online, Google Sites is better suited to the purpose. As a downside and in support of the unsearchable/unlinkable concern, I've encountered a couple MS Office files lately that Google Docs couldn't handle, but I think your point is still valid, it makes it easier for the average man to share.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Not to mention if one wanted to give an example of MSFT being innovative it would NOT be DOS, but instead would be hiring Dave Cutler and giving him pretty much free rein on WinNT. The fact that the majority of desktops are still running a kernel first started so long ago just shows how well Dave Cutler was at design, and between that and DirectX (which before DirectX games were a MAJOR PITA to get running on PCs, often having to have serious tweaking done just to get sound and video working right) I would say those are the two major contributions MSFT made to the tech world.
Now before anyone screams or waves their Google or Apple fanboi flags i will now point out what Google and Apple have brought which I haven't seen pointed out in this thread...What Google gave us that was innovative was NOT search but to show that one could build a platform on neither software NOR hardware but on monetizing eyeballs. Before Google came around everything was based pretty much around the MSFT model of software or the Apple model of hardware and "free" was often looked upon as a scam, what Google did was show one could create a product AND give it away for free and still make money, which was pretty damned innovative in my book.
Finally what Apple did under Jobs was to actually look at things from a consumer perspective instead of an engineers. Look at what MP3 players were like before iPod, they were these big bulky blocks that were a PITA to navigate and had submenus up the ass. Even someone like me who has stuck with his Sandisk (because it does what i need it to and is built like a tank) can see the value in the ease of use of the iPod compared to the 5 menus and at least 1 submenu for each menu on my MP3 player. same thing with the iPhone, where most were using some God awful desktop metaphor that frankly was shit to control and a PITA whereas the iPhone was a model of simplistic yet functional design.
So as one can see all three companies have given us innovation which to me makes it all the more sad that it seems inevitable for a megacorp to turn into a douchebag at some point in their life, I don't know if its the threat of other companies that do it, the drive to continually get ever higher share or what, but it seems to me that all these megacorps start decent enough but then just get nastier as they go along. maybe its the size thing, hell if I know.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If you think Outlook's search functionality is a joke, you're doing it wrong. I use outlook as a way to help me remember everything. Their in line query helpers are great.
Google Maps was crushingly superior to all of its major web-based competitors.
Likewise Street View changed the way most of us use maps.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Google has not really done any innovation after their search engine and advertising platform.
I (and my business) found this incredibly useful during recent earthquakes and floods http://www.google.org/crisisresponse/. Who did they buy it from?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I loathe coming to the defense of MS. If MS was a person, I'd avoid any and all relationships I could, but MS is made up of many people, many departments and far from homogenous so when they are evil in one area, I try not to let it poison my opinion of others. That said, MS in the 90's wasn't as solid a monopoly as implied, and in fact, even at the time I wrote a newsletter explaining how after carefully reading Jackson's opinion I didn't think I agreed with his application of the Sherman Antitrust Act. There are real reasons to be critical of MS, and I'll get to those last, but first a moment to set the record straight.
Linux was alive and an option despite having very little market share. Apple didn't choose to compete in the x86 market, but they could have. BeOS was in the same boat, but as shown later, they could have ported to x86. I agreed with Jackson about the anticompetitive practices but bundling IE seemed like a reasonable choice to me then and still does. I used Phoenix (later became Firefox) and Opera and Netscape (until the horror of version 6.) I didn't feel like I was denied choices and if I wanted to buy a computer that wasn't subsidized by Microsoft OEM agreements, I could and did.
Milton Friedman thought the decision would usher in more government intervention in the software industry. I'm not sure that was the reason, but in retrospect he certainly got the timing right and I'm not happy to see it.
Pretty much every major software system tries to offer something that competitors can't. I like Smitty, but it's AIX only. I like iptables but have only ever had them when using Linux. I like Ports and think I'd like ZFS but I don't get to appreciate them often since I rarely work with BSD. There are usually ways to accomplish the same thing on each different OS, but it is hardly fair to criticize Linux because MS hasn't got something like iptables. In the same way, I hardly blame MS for having IE. (For making it use non-standard functions, the suckage that is ActiveX, the insecurity and anti-user features, yes, I do blame them for that.)
If I was hired to admin an AIX system but refused to run it, I'd be fired. If I took a class in MS Office and refused to use MS Office, I'd expect to fail. When those things came up, I used what was appropriate for the issue at hand. If I took a course on Apache or Cisco, I'd expect to have to use them too and criticizing MS for having products that you take classes in isn't fair.
By the same token, I can use Google tools or not and if I want something that Google has and nobody else can match, I have to. I don't blame Google for that. I use App Engine and can't port my work like I wish I could, but as frustrating as it is, it isn't fair to criticize Google. I use Google Sites and I can't just port my system to a competitor. If you're using Google's Picnik, Latitude, Sketchup or Orkut, I suspect you have the same non-portability issue, but I'm glad Google offers them and I don't think Google is attacking competitors.
Blame where blame is due: MS has made agreements with OEM restrictions on how many non-MS systems they could sell before being penalized. OOXML is an attempt to block the consumer's ability to interoperate with competitors and was unethically and possibly illegally pushed. They've pushed patent fears (FUD) to discourage people from seeking competitors. IBM was punished for selling competing systems by withholding support, delaying agreements and charging them higher licensing fees.
Lets compare the real issues:
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I had a 6 GB Creative JukeBox mp3 player about 4 years before the ipod existed. All Apple did was make it pretty.
And if that's 'all' they did and it was so trivial, you could have done it and been a gazillionaire.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Is Slashdot the new front for microsoft shrills to bag Google?
It is feeling more and more like it by some of the posters on here.
Are you really trying to pull what amounts to a "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." argument, and here of all places? ;)
Oracle? When did Microsoft steal Oracle technology?
SQL Server is the evolution of the Sybase ASE 10 code base.
And I think it's MicroSoft that got taken to the cleaners in that one. Sybase netted a pretty penny for the sale, and mere months later released ASE 11 which was a dramatic change to how the whole thing worked, adding record-level instead of page locking, more robust Transact-SQL facilities, and huge changes to the programming API used by non-Java languages.
Sybase pretty much sold MicroSoft their old used car, then opened the garage door on their new fleet of vehicles.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
2002 I stopped using Microsoft.
2012 I stopped using Google.
2012 - Nobody stopped using Google except for the obnoxiously paranoid crowd of /.
2013 - Google remained the juggernaut and this weird quasi-yellow journalism piece is forgotten
Rinse and repeat.
Google is always going to get involved in products that play to their strengths. We're not likely going to see Google buy out Proctor and Gamble or jump into the Motor Vehicle field. The real difference between Microsoft and Google is that Google is trying to build a product line up that uses the information gathered to sell products, essentially financing the internet like we financed Television in the 1950s. Microsoft simply went about buying up businesses to integrate into their core product like most manufacturers. Microsoft is just more high-profile because almost all their acquisitions were consumer-level rather than supplier-level and thus hidden.
The problem I see with this sort of talk is that it snowballs because a few like-minded people stop using Google while the vast majority of the world keeps moving on without even thinking about it. I imagine Dropbox and their competitors will hold on to the early adopters who see no reason to switch but the later players will most likely use the integrated Google drive as it syncs with their android device and plays nicely with everything else Google has released.
You are talking of 9 lines of code out of 15 millions, and contributed by a Google engineer?
Google's insistence of reimplementing every single speciallized software technology that we already have, as an HTTP service running on a generalized web platform, may be technically interesting and very clever, but hardly innovating.
Hmm, this is a bit off topic, no? OOoh, n/m... You mean like LDAP, rsync and/or FTP?
Herp! Hey guys Google drive's JavaScript authentication API is broken, so just MANUALLY craft a base64 encoded multipart form post with JavaScript and post that to an iframe proxy to do an upload! Derp!
And You Think I'm Joking!
Google Maps and Earth come from KeyHole Inc. [wikipedia.org].
Yes, and Google then proceeded to turn them into two of the coolest products around. The idea isn't unique, it's the execution that matters. Google saw the potential in the startup, and then did what few else could - they turned that potential into a real, fleshed out, *awesome* product.
Chrome is based on work done by Apple.
This one is simply false. Yes, Chrome uses WebKit, but that's only a piece of the puzzle. WebKit by itself doesn't actually do all that much. Chrome created their own, super simple UI (one of the things they get praised for - simplicity), created the innovative sandboxed multi-process architecture (something Apple then "stole" and put into WebKit2), contributed a ton of code to webkit (Google contributes more to WebKit than Apple does these days - even fixing Safari-only bugs), and, most importantly, created both their own HTTP stack and their own JavaScript engine - and that JS engine is what really put Chrome on the map.
The point being, Google has really left themselves go after the one initial project the founders did at university. Which is fine I guess, but people keep believing they are some kind of innovative company. They are not. Even Microsoft is more that than Google, as they have the largest R&D center on planet, Microsoft Research.
Microsoft *should* be investing more than Google does in R&D - they make double the yearly revenue. To say, however, that Google has "let themselves go" is just ridiculous. Google's network, data centers, and cloud computing infrastructure is second to none. They created their own mass distributed file systems called GFS, they continue to lead the way on data center design, and thrived on the unique approach to using cheap, commodity parts and creating fault-tolerant software instead. They created MapReduce, which Hadoop is trying to re-implement as open source.
And in terms of "pure" R&D, their is the recently announced glasses project, the self driving car, and even the 1GB/s fiber connection they are testing in Kansas City.
Google innovates all the time, it's just most people can't see it or appreciate it because much of it has to do with the incredible scale that Google operates at.
Gmail when compared to Hotmail, Yahoo! etc at that time ....
Chrome GUI
Picasa new versions after bought
Youtube new GUI and features after bought
Android (development side) and its commercial use (strategy of open source)
Google translation
Google goggles
Google maps
Google street view
????
And webkit is work done by KDE.... oh wait... it is Open Source!
Google has lots of fancy and cool projects and services, but most are not even known my avarage users because they only use google search and see ads chosen by site admins or use Android phones.
I even think that "innovation" is today overused word. Everyone tries to do such while what we need is just a small steps and small improvements and polishing. Not huge changes and new awesome features with AMAZING! slogans.
Lets not end there. Theres plenty to hate microsoft for.
Backstabbed IBM
Backstabbed Nvidia
Backstabbed Apple
Waited for Sony to finish making their cell chip then used the SPU tech in the xbox360
Gave away IE through Windows so it cost nothing, thus screwing Mosaic Spyglass out of royalty payments.
Broke Java standards
Joined and disrupted the OpenGL foundation while coming out with DirectX
Cried foul and for interoperability when MSN messenger was in its infancy (don't hear them calling for it now when they have top marketshare)
Used their puppet SCO to attack Linux
Used their puppet to turn the worlds biggest mobile phone maker into a factory for windows mobile
Held back PC gaming so it doesn't make their 360 look bad
Held back web development with their I-dont-even-follow-my-own-standards, exploit ridden, pop up galore browser
Constant FUD campaigns
Sends shills all over the web including slashdot to astroturf b.s.
Their unsecure oses which led to a decade of malware and bsod woes for the casual computer user.
Forcing people to pay for windows with their new computer even if they didnt want it. and punishing OEMs that shipped Linux or alternative browsers.
Using undocumented api so their own software had an advantage over everyone else
Paid Immersion for a 'license' on the condition that anything Immersion sued out of Sony, Microsoft would collect half.
Taking out hardware sound
Stupid shit like not properly closing off office macros viruses until Openoffice started taking off.
Stifling the uptake of Beos which could boot from within windows and play multiple videos without lag.
Trying to sue a kid for opening a website under his own name.
Backstabbing Stac (before you microsoft shills go on about Stac reverse engineering dos code, go look at who got awarded the most in damages when it went to court)
Backstabbing Sendo
Making windows and other microsoft programs not work with DR DOS.
Dethroning dominant programs via bundling with the os (eudora, winamp, netscape, aim/icq/ym
bling using google's search results so that it looks like it is just as good.
Doing a shitty job at blocking hotmail spam until gmail came along.
Suing Casio for using Linux
Collaborating with SEGA on the Dreamcast and then coming out with a rival console. The SEGA executive then moved to microsoft.
So much worse miscrofot is. Google has a long long way to go to come anywhere close to microsofts trickery.
Or you could install this: http://disconnect.me/ along with an Adblock. No?
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
Liking one idea invented elsewhere so much you copy it isn't the same as being utterly devoid of vision and innovation to the point where having an original idea of your own is so rare, you can date astronomical events by it.
Google has plenty of ideas of its own. That's what matters.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
A computer that can boot ChromeOS can boot other OSes. Wasn't microsoft trying to making UEFI and ARM platforms boot windows only?
Chrome is based on work done by the KHTML foundation
Fixed that for you. Also, if you think Google Maps and Earth weren't independently developed products, you've never worked with a competing GIS product like MapInfo or ArcGIS. Sure Earth does not have the same level of functionality but it blows both out of the water for ease of use.
Before Google Maps, people like you needed to hire $250 an hour GIS analysts to make a map to gramps' house. Lets not even consider the $2500 per seat license costs for ArcGIS shall we.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The differences between Google and Microsoft is very deep, especially when it comes to origin, management and how they do things.
Read through this "little" list of things Microsoft has done:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653
Then, compare that mountain of evidence against what Google has done so far. In comparison with most online business Google comes out very clean. Compared to Microsoft you have to compare to something like Monsanto before you even begin to come into the same ballpark as Microsoft.
This article is a sham and probably paid for by MS.
HTTP/1.1 400
irrelevant. That isn't what they got fined for.
They were sued/fined/charged for threatening OEMs who wanted to bundle Netscape instead of IE as I recall.
However, the GP is completely off base as well. You're allowed to package up whatever software you want with your OS or your hardware, it's only when you start actively abusing a monopoly position to prevent competition that you run afoul.
I'm not obnoxiously paranoid; I give out information to lots of companies that don't disgust me. I stopped using google as much as is reasonable 3 years ago. I don't think they're abusing their monopoly or part of some giant conspiracy.
What they are, is an advertising company; I don't give my information to ad companies.
No, they were literally sued because Microsoft forced manufacturers to pay for Windows on a computer, even if they didn't install it.
I'm sorry. On what planet is ChromeOS a success, let alone a monopoly?
I think reimplementing email as a web service was a big help to me. I don't have to plan ahead and bring a key with me, install ssh on a friend's machine to check my mail when traveling.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Yes, you don't have to use Google. You don't have to use Windows either.
Nowadays, you hardly have to use windows, indeed. In big part, thanks to all the on-line companies which managed to turn most of the important stuff into on-line services accessible from any standard compliant platform, thus rendering the whole question of OS irrelevant.
But in a not-so-long-ago past, Windows was the only way to go because most of the software one needed only existed as win32 application, lots of the hardware one could buy only came with windows drivers instead of being a generic USB class with generic drivers, it wasn't easy to buy computers without windows and replacing the OS wasn't easy either, and Microsoft had managed to leverage their OS monopoly to almost get a monopoly in office suite (everybody considering Ms-Office as a de facto standard, which was problematic because not only their format wasn't standard, it wasn't even consistent or compatible between versions) (or, buy pushing their bundeled-in Internet Explorer, Microsoft could almost have managed to create their own ecosystem of weird microsoft dialects instead of the standard driven web that we know today)
Of course, today, thanks to on-line service and opensources equivalent like LibreOffice or Firefox (or Google's own Chrome and Google Docs), thanks to gizmo vendor using stuff like UVC (Universal Video Class) for their webcams instead of obscure proprietary interfaces, thanks to reverse engineering efforts, thanks to developpers paying for alternative OSes (including Google's own support of Linux), etc. You can go without Microsoft.
It took massive effort from every one *else*, and it took some revolutionary shifts in paradigms (on-line services making the OS irrelevant), before we reached a situation where you don't need to go to Microsoft.
Now compare with Google: You don't have to use google's stuff, and google is indeed making it easier for you, by making it as easy as possible to interoperate with their service. Their e-mail servers speak standard IMAP and POP, so should you decide to move to another provider, it's damn trival to get your mail with you. And the contacts are easy to export, too. Their chat system is using XMPP/Jabber, so it's possible to interoperate with any other fully complient XMPP chat provider that does support federated chat (basically anyons but Facebook. FB's XMPP is just a compatibility layer above their proprietary chat system and a doesn't not interoperate with anyone else). Their Google Docs documents can be exported both to industry standard (Open Document Foundation) and de facto standard (interroperate with MS-Office). Most of their software is availble as opensource. (Android, Chrome, lots of libraries, ...)
At no point in time have they done anything to prevent people running to other solution. They insist in trying to be as much interoperable as possible, and people stick to them because they are damn convenient.
About your privacy considerations : well if you really want to keep your life secret, nothing prevents you from using encryption. You can even send and receive encrypted mails through your gmail account as long as you're accessing it with some standalone IMAP/STMP compatible client (say Thunderbird). You can chat with encryption as long as both ends support end-to-end encryption like OTR (Off The Record - supported by the whole libpurple family like pidgin, adium, etc.). In fact it's possible to use Google services without revealing much of your private life. (Unlike facebook where it's fundamentally much more difficule to avoid revealing anything, due to the nature of their service).
Google has a core business - advertising. But pretty much everything else they do, they do it nicely - use standards, publish source, etc.
Of course they play nice, not because they're pure-hearted angels, but also to avoid alienating their user base and thus loosing ad viewers. But no matter what their motives are, they mostly stick true to
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
OK so Apple has iCloud and Amazon has Cloud Drive so are they all the new Microsoft? Or is this just really dumb? Everyone has a cloud storage option these days. Dropbox has not been the only one for sometime. And I imagine Apples is bigger than Google's at this point since everyone with a Mac with Lion or IOS device has it already.
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." -- Isaac Newton
Casteism
You're forgetting the advertising budget for the Super Bowl commercials.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Hiring the guy that created VMS to recreate it in desktop form is hardly terribly innovative.
Unix is doing very well as a modern desktop platform these days for similar reasons. It's a solid well tested foundation with some genuine engineering behind it.
Microsoft's main problems have always been applications and userland libraries and services. The best kernel ever won't protect you from running total nonsense on top of it. The ghost of DOS still lives on.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No. Patents are supposed to encourage companies to disclose useful inventions that might not otherwise be disclosed.
It's not really meant for trivial sh*t.
The fact that it is primarily used for such trivial sh*t today is simply a corruption of the process.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Google supports innovation by giving one day a week to its employees to work on a project they come up with. A lot of new products were created this way. My favorite: Google News. I am sure Slashdotters can name quite a few of their own favorites. Not all of those projects become full fledged successful products, but this is natural when you try new things.
A mandatory Slashdot car analogy: calling Google non-innovative is like calling a Porsche a horse.
Google is the one which is expected to compete with Microsoft
(just how many OEM Dr. DOS or OS/2 installs did you ever see on PC compatibles).
Ah, OS/2 and DR-DOS. Remember the MS OS/2 2.0 SDKs back in 1990? Yes, the JDA was not particularly good, but the anti-competitive tactics used to attack OS/2 later on was even worse. And on DR-DOS, OS/2 never depended on DOS, and by the time Win3.0 was released, DR-DOS 5.0 was already released too. The Chicago project was delayed while MS was attacking OS/2 in the meantime, delaying the popularity of 32-bit programming by years! By the time MS finally released Win95, the 386 itself was almost obsolete, while IBM was able to release OS/2 2.0 in 1992! And on DR-DOS, the Win95 dependence on DOS for booting helped Caldera drag the lawsuit DR started against MS by another few years! Yea, I could write an entire article on this mess.