There's an element of truth in that, but you can't underestimate the power of Chinese whispers... With IE6 and IE7 Microsoft caused so much resentment amongst web developers (or the ones who built pages properly at any rate) that lots of people began some kind of crusade to get everyone they knew using a different browser.
As a web developer I've ended up doing the same. So, while the percentage of internet users who are also web developers might be pretty minimal, IE's broken standards created so many evangelists for the alternatives that the ripples have started to reach pretty far and wide...
George Lucas... new ideas... George Lucas... new ideas... nope, that just doesn't sound right.
Seriously, if George Lucas was any good at coming up with new ideas then maybe we'd have seen some new movies in the last 10 years instead of having to look on in horror as he mercilessly butchers old classics which he knows will keep him swimming in caviar for the next decade.
I mean, if left to his own devices next thing you know he'll have a camp Vader screaming 'noooooooooo' at the sky or something. Oh hang on....
I think you're right about the monopolistic potential of this deal being quite worrying, but I don't think a comparison to a mid-90s Microsoft totally stands up.
For me, the biggest difference here (and I imagine for a lot of people) is that with Microsoft we've historically had little choice but to use and BUY their software, no matter how much we disliked it, because that was what our friends and work colleagues were using. I'm in a similar predicament now because I'm getting sent docx files all the time and having to convert them each time is a pain in the ass.
With Google, you can't argue that for the most part their software is good, and it works. And, more to the point, I'm not being forced to buy the stuff. Google has got to the position it's in by providing better tools for people, doing it right and doing it for free. Compare this to Microsoft's lock-in business model...
Is Google becoming a monopoly? Yes, and you could argue that it already is. But as far as I'm concerned it doesn't bother me half as much as MS because their business ethos seems to be centred around delivering software that people actually want to use. Their ongoing commitment to open source can only help too.
If there really has to be another monopoly, sorry but I'd much prefer Google to MS.
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There's an element of truth in that, but you can't underestimate the power of Chinese whispers... With IE6 and IE7 Microsoft caused so much resentment amongst web developers (or the ones who built pages properly at any rate) that lots of people began some kind of crusade to get everyone they knew using a different browser.
As a web developer I've ended up doing the same. So, while the percentage of internet users who are also web developers might be pretty minimal, IE's broken standards created so many evangelists for the alternatives that the ripples have started to reach pretty far and wide...
..Or am I just being wildly optimistic?
George Lucas... new ideas... George Lucas... new ideas... nope, that just doesn't sound right.
Seriously, if George Lucas was any good at coming up with new ideas then maybe we'd have seen some new movies in the last 10 years instead of having to look on in horror as he mercilessly butchers old classics which he knows will keep him swimming in caviar for the next decade.
I mean, if left to his own devices next thing you know he'll have a camp Vader screaming 'noooooooooo' at the sky or something. Oh hang on....
Sorry, it's my first post; didn't realise you had to HTML format, which is why it reads like a 10 year old wrote it. Next time, gadget, next time...
I think you're right about the monopolistic potential of this deal being quite worrying, but I don't think a comparison to a mid-90s Microsoft totally stands up. For me, the biggest difference here (and I imagine for a lot of people) is that with Microsoft we've historically had little choice but to use and BUY their software, no matter how much we disliked it, because that was what our friends and work colleagues were using. I'm in a similar predicament now because I'm getting sent docx files all the time and having to convert them each time is a pain in the ass. With Google, you can't argue that for the most part their software is good, and it works. And, more to the point, I'm not being forced to buy the stuff. Google has got to the position it's in by providing better tools for people, doing it right and doing it for free. Compare this to Microsoft's lock-in business model... Is Google becoming a monopoly? Yes, and you could argue that it already is. But as far as I'm concerned it doesn't bother me half as much as MS because their business ethos seems to be centred around delivering software that people actually want to use. Their ongoing commitment to open source can only help too. If there really has to be another monopoly, sorry but I'd much prefer Google to MS.