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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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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
Facebook
2002 I stopped using Microsoft. 2012 I stopped using Google.
2022 stopped using porn, started using viagra.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Dilbert RSS feed
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.
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.
Facebook were only the ones that have been caught. It's fairly obvious that there are more companies involved.
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.
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.
Dilbert RSS feed
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
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....
You answered your own question in the next sentence. First-time-anyone-did-something almost aways sucks royally. The trick is: to do it right. That is innovation too.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
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 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.
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...
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
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.
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.
"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."
"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.
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
Considering the user ID, Khasim isn't a new anything.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?