Microsoft May Be Seeking Protection From Linux With Dell Loan

alphadogg writes "Microsoft's $2 billion loan to Dell is a sign that the software maker wants to influence hardware designs in a post-PC world while protecting itself from the growing influence of Linux-based operating systems in mobile devices and servers, according to analysts. As the world's third-largest PC maker, Dell is important to the success of Microsoft's server and PC software. Even though Microsoft's loan does not represent a big part of the total value of the transaction, the software maker does not throw around money lightly and its participation in the deal might be an attempt by the software maker to influence hardware designs in the post-PC world of touch laptops, tablets and smartphones, analysts said. It may also be an attempt to secure the partnership and to stop the PC maker from looking toward alternative operating systems like Linux, analysts said. Dell offers Linux servers and in late November introduced a thin and light XPS 13 laptop with a Linux-based Ubuntu OS, also code-named Project Sputnik. Major PC makers in recent months have also introduced laptops with Chrome OS." HP has released a statement in response to the deal which talks about how Dell "faces an extended period of uncertainty and transition that will not be good for its customers." Perhaps they're right; HP is certainly familiar with such a situation. However, it's likely Dell is simply hoping to avoid the same struggles HP has faced over the past several years.

Comments

Its over.

[toygeek]

Everybody knows that Linux wins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njos57IJf-0

"I'm on Linux, bitch. I thought you Gnu."

It's not Linux, it's the tablets and smartphones !

[Taco Cowboy]

Microsoft's battle is not with Linux.

Rather, Microsoft's future battle is with the smartphones and the tablets and all other new wearable formfactors of computing.

Microsoft's OS is simply too large, too encumbering and too useless for devices that people will use in the future.

Their investment in Dell is that they hope Dell can come up with something that can sell

Microsoft tried their luck with Nokia, and Nokia is going nowhere fast

Microsoft tried to forge it by themselves by their "surface" thingy, but it tanked too

So now, it's Dell.

Ballmer is waging a shotgun approach of computing war --- trying anything and everything --- because the guy has no idea what to do now.

Go ahead, make my day

[Anonymous Coward]

Make Dell hostile to Linux. Good luck with that. Let us know how that goes for you.

You can't be in the server business and not support Linux. You can't be in mobile and not support Linux, unless you're Apple. Pee Cee's? I'm not sure they matter to the fate of Linux any longer.

But feel free to squander that bit of your Linux customer base, if you wish.

This is just some tech writer generating page views.

Microsoft's battle is with themselves now

[symbolset]

There is institutional inertia in Microsoft that demands product executives still "act as if" Microsoft were still the 800lb gorilla of technology, master of all they survey: an emperor so dominant that they demand their visitors be trained as supplicants wary of offending the Beast before they dare even approach.

Once upon a time this is what they were. 2x above the nearest technology competitor and master of all that is invented and all that is prevented, deciding quarter by quarter which of their partners live and die based on which is most helpful to them. The bodies of their foes are immense and numerous: Sun, Novell, Borland are but a few. The bodies of their allies fallen from favor are even far more numerous. Technology companies, particularly startups, did kneel before the king. Microsoft leveraged their various properties to defeat every foe by being deliberately incompatible with the challengers and innovators of the day a few at a time.

Today though Microsoft do not stand above the biggest company in tech by 2x. The biggest tech company is Apple which stands above them by 2x now. The second biggest is Google - a company Microsoft's CEO swore to kill when it was but a gnat, but somehow he failed and Google now is well ahead of them. Yesterday they were not even third biggest tech company. The IBM they thought they killed in the early '90s has in its quiet conservative way been creeping up on them and finished ahead in market cap again yesterday - soon a position to be made durable. Samsung is working on it too and may someday claim a solid fourth, relegating Microsoft to the fifth position in tech until Cisco spoils even that. Even Microsoft's mighty partners - the ecosystem that drove out innovation they did not control by proxy - is weakened beyond repair. It is just not profitable to make Windows client PCs. It hasn't been for a long time and they know it but are dependent on the revenue flow to maintain their size, clinging to that as they lose profitability permanently. Innovators are coming now not a few at a time to be vanquished and fed to the beast one by one, but in a flood that may drown the beast. They come bigger also now, so big the beast cannot wrap its jaws around them. The loss of the power to drive innovation isn't the most important thing for Microsoft. The loss of the power to prevent innovation they don't control is. That is what is killing them: Chromebooks that last all day, Nexus 10 tablets with insane resolution, iPads and iPhones and Android phones more powerful than a recent laptop that delight and amaze. And this is nothing compared to the fact that they're going into battle wielding their sword holding the wrong end.

For Microsoft to survive the transition to mobile they have to reorient to being a scrappy startup striving for a place in a hostile world, not approach it as if they were entitled to appear and claim it as an entitlement of their dominion, swaying all with their massive billions. They don't have it in them to do that. They literally can't do it. The very concept is so alien that they cannot grasp the need for it. Anyone there who proposed such a thing would be walked to the door by security immediately. That is the problem they face: their inability to assess the situation and respond appropriately. From here the end is clear.

All empires fall in the end. Usually for this very reason: the inability to see their own mortality.