Well, Microsoft's got lots of money, to be sure, but it has no big ideas. It has reached a point in its evolution where it just rakes in licensing fees from OEM and volume licensing sales for its flagship products and then looks at what everybody else is doing and starts up a division to copy it and throws unbelievable amounts of cash at the division. I hear XBox is actually making a profit now, but is a long ways from giving any kind of return on investment, and analysts don't think Bing can plan on making money for three or four years, and how long before the 12 or more billion dollars that it has flung at it ever get a payback?
I'm sure Google will ultimately head in the same direction. It does seem to be the natural evolution of large successful companies. IBM was stuck in that model for decades before it went through massive shakeups in the mid and late 90s.
Too many divisions that just got endless streams of cash piped into them with no foreseeable ROI and I think Ballmer's the one who is going to have be ducking flying chairs.
And that's been Microsoft's story for years now. At one time it could use its platform domination to shove through its technology copies, but now suddenly there are platforms it does not dominate, and at least as far as the Web goes, it has absolutely no hope of ever dominating (that dream was pretty much extinguished by repeated failures of its web portal to gain serious traction). I really do think it's going to hit the ceiling of growth. It will still have the business and corporate world, will still dominate with PC gamers, but the PC as a consumer product is going to take a second seat to limited use computers like tablets, smart TVs and the like.
Let's face it, the bulk of PC users over the last fifteen years have really not needed anything more than a decent web browser, media player and mail app, with some sort of basic word processor (I've known people who were quite happy to use Write for years) for those who do any kind of letter writing beyond email. Those can all be delivered through the browser now, and now that standards compliance has finally become the holy grail, the operating system has become a meaningless variable.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
But the only major company Microsoft is driving out of the market is Yahoo, which is their bloody customer. They certainly are not doing any substantial damage to Google.
But how long can MS expect its shareholders to put up with it just pissing money down every hole in the hopes that somehow it will stumble on another magic money printing machine? Their attempts to gain web dominance have surely seen them throw away a lot more than nine billion dollars, that's for Bing and its Live Search antecedent. They've been trying to muscle in to this market for years. If I were an investor, I'd seriously start asking what I was getting out of these vast bold money hemorrhaging products.
Why don't they do something really cool, like exponential release numbers. I'd love to install Firefox 10^81, meaning there are more versions of Firefox than atoms in the observable universe
I've stopped using Firefox. I was a constant user of it since the Firebird days, but somewhere down the line the whole project has lost sight. I find Chrome a good deal faster and more agile. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were a plugin developer, but as it stands, Firefox seems to be a project that has lost its way.
I don't think the situation was that different a decade ago when Google began its rise to the top. It was battling a nest of pretty embedded and dominant market players; Yahoo being at the top of that list. Google didn't have vast amounts of cash reserves or huge amounts of capital, but it did have a unique design paradigm and, most importantly, a product that actually delivered far better than anyone else. It built things up as it went along, rather than starting with huge fistfuls of money to throw at the problem. I'm sure at some point they'll become the next Microsoft, and maybe, to some extent, it's already happening. But this idea that building a successful web site requires huge sums of money is pure bunk. I look at sites like Google and Facebook, and its not like their creators had billions in the bank to fund their success, both of them started very modestly indeed.
The reality is that the cost of entry into the web market is pretty damned cheap. Some decent hardware, a tolerably fast connection with a minimum of downtime. If you've got a proper revenue model, or at least a good steady supply of money coming in somehow, you can build capacity as you go along.
Like I said, if money was all it took, then Microsoft should rule the web. I can tell you it's spent a helluva lot more than $9 billion since the MSN portal was first put together in the mid-1990s. Microsoft has battled every dominant search engine/portal since its inception, and has yet to ever come out on top. Bing has been as successful as it has because Microsoft is basically raping Yahoo front ways and back ways to get it. That's sort of like a car manufacturer buying a failing competitor, just so it can stick the competitor's decal on their chassis. Yes, it's a kind of growth, but not a kind of growth that answers the fundamental problem "How do I take on the market leader?"
Considering that the vast bulk of PCs purchased in the last fifteen years default to one iteration or another of Microsoft's web portal, can you explain to me how that means Google can abuse its market position?
I think you've pretty much hit in on the head. In five or ten years, will anyone give a shit that Linux didn't take a big chunk of the desktop market? It simply won't matter. Most home users, save for specific kinds of hobbyists (ie. gamers) will either be using discrete devices like smartphones and tablets or being using their entertainment systems (smart TVs, or hell, some punched up variant of the bloody Raspberry).
Microsoft has been trying to build a web portal for what now? Fifteen years or so? If throwing money at this problem were all it took, they'd own the web by now. And as the article notes, at least some of its increased market share has come from Yahoo, which is using the Bing engine, which means they're basically cannibalizing their largest web infrastructure customer.
If I start eating my own body parts, does that mean a net increase in protein?
I'm guessing if you built a plugin AC device that just sort of created random draws on your electrical supply, say ten times a minute, for random durations, I imagine that would pretty much kill any leak of such information.
Do you really think they're going to get more exposure for, say Office365 on Bing then they would if they just bought ads off of Google, or hell, just put ads in major newspapers?
Called iMoon, and then Apple promptly sues the Japs and Americans for sending probes there and violating its IP because "they clearly ripped us off by booting thrusters on the ass end..."
That's Microsoft's big problem. There's nowhere to go but down...
Frankly, I think dumping 9 billion bucks into your online offerings and still not being able to shake an any substantial way the market leader, no matter how you measure it, cannot be referred to as a successful strategy. I suspect that, if you include all of Microsoft's expenditures all the way back to its original MSN portal back in the Win95/Win98 days, the amount of money it has spent is far more than nine billion dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Microsoft's got lots of money, to be sure, but it has no big ideas. It has reached a point in its evolution where it just rakes in licensing fees from OEM and volume licensing sales for its flagship products and then looks at what everybody else is doing and starts up a division to copy it and throws unbelievable amounts of cash at the division. I hear XBox is actually making a profit now, but is a long ways from giving any kind of return on investment, and analysts don't think Bing can plan on making money for three or four years, and how long before the 12 or more billion dollars that it has flung at it ever get a payback?
I'm sure Google will ultimately head in the same direction. It does seem to be the natural evolution of large successful companies. IBM was stuck in that model for decades before it went through massive shakeups in the mid and late 90s.
Too many divisions that just got endless streams of cash piped into them with no foreseeable ROI and I think Ballmer's the one who is going to have be ducking flying chairs.
And that's been Microsoft's story for years now. At one time it could use its platform domination to shove through its technology copies, but now suddenly there are platforms it does not dominate, and at least as far as the Web goes, it has absolutely no hope of ever dominating (that dream was pretty much extinguished by repeated failures of its web portal to gain serious traction). I really do think it's going to hit the ceiling of growth. It will still have the business and corporate world, will still dominate with PC gamers, but the PC as a consumer product is going to take a second seat to limited use computers like tablets, smart TVs and the like.
Let's face it, the bulk of PC users over the last fifteen years have really not needed anything more than a decent web browser, media player and mail app, with some sort of basic word processor (I've known people who were quite happy to use Write for years) for those who do any kind of letter writing beyond email. Those can all be delivered through the browser now, and now that standards compliance has finally become the holy grail, the operating system has become a meaningless variable.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
But the only major company Microsoft is driving out of the market is Yahoo, which is their bloody customer. They certainly are not doing any substantial damage to Google.
But how long can MS expect its shareholders to put up with it just pissing money down every hole in the hopes that somehow it will stumble on another magic money printing machine? Their attempts to gain web dominance have surely seen them throw away a lot more than nine billion dollars, that's for Bing and its Live Search antecedent. They've been trying to muscle in to this market for years. If I were an investor, I'd seriously start asking what I was getting out of these vast bold money hemorrhaging products.
Why don't they do something really cool, like exponential release numbers. I'd love to install Firefox 10^81, meaning there are more versions of Firefox than atoms in the observable universe
Question: "What version of Firefox are you running?"
Answer: "I dunno, is it AM or PM?"
---
Question: "I hear they're replacing the Planck length as the smallest measurement. What are they replacing it with?"
Answer: "Mozilla release cycles."
The problem of how to blow as much market share and the shortest period of time.
I've stopped using Firefox. I was a constant user of it since the Firebird days, but somewhere down the line the whole project has lost sight. I find Chrome a good deal faster and more agile. Maybe I'd feel differently if I were a plugin developer, but as it stands, Firefox seems to be a project that has lost its way.
I don't think the situation was that different a decade ago when Google began its rise to the top. It was battling a nest of pretty embedded and dominant market players; Yahoo being at the top of that list. Google didn't have vast amounts of cash reserves or huge amounts of capital, but it did have a unique design paradigm and, most importantly, a product that actually delivered far better than anyone else. It built things up as it went along, rather than starting with huge fistfuls of money to throw at the problem. I'm sure at some point they'll become the next Microsoft, and maybe, to some extent, it's already happening. But this idea that building a successful web site requires huge sums of money is pure bunk. I look at sites like Google and Facebook, and its not like their creators had billions in the bank to fund their success, both of them started very modestly indeed.
The reality is that the cost of entry into the web market is pretty damned cheap. Some decent hardware, a tolerably fast connection with a minimum of downtime. If you've got a proper revenue model, or at least a good steady supply of money coming in somehow, you can build capacity as you go along.
Like I said, if money was all it took, then Microsoft should rule the web. I can tell you it's spent a helluva lot more than $9 billion since the MSN portal was first put together in the mid-1990s. Microsoft has battled every dominant search engine/portal since its inception, and has yet to ever come out on top. Bing has been as successful as it has because Microsoft is basically raping Yahoo front ways and back ways to get it. That's sort of like a car manufacturer buying a failing competitor, just so it can stick the competitor's decal on their chassis. Yes, it's a kind of growth, but not a kind of growth that answers the fundamental problem "How do I take on the market leader?"
Considering that the vast bulk of PCs purchased in the last fifteen years default to one iteration or another of Microsoft's web portal, can you explain to me how that means Google can abuse its market position?
That's a good point. A UPS isn't a bad idea for your electronics, and can save you from nasty things like lightning strikes and overloads.
Would you like CNN's phone number so you can bitch to them directly?
I'm a little confused. How do you do that on something like the web, where you can't actually force anybody to go to your website?
I think you've pretty much hit in on the head. In five or ten years, will anyone give a shit that Linux didn't take a big chunk of the desktop market? It simply won't matter. Most home users, save for specific kinds of hobbyists (ie. gamers) will either be using discrete devices like smartphones and tablets or being using their entertainment systems (smart TVs, or hell, some punched up variant of the bloody Raspberry).
Microsoft has been trying to build a web portal for what now? Fifteen years or so? If throwing money at this problem were all it took, they'd own the web by now. And as the article notes, at least some of its increased market share has come from Yahoo, which is using the Bing engine, which means they're basically cannibalizing their largest web infrastructure customer.
If I start eating my own body parts, does that mean a net increase in protein?
I'm guessing if you built a plugin AC device that just sort of created random draws on your electrical supply, say ten times a minute, for random durations, I imagine that would pretty much kill any leak of such information.
Do you really think they're going to get more exposure for, say Office365 on Bing then they would if they just bought ads off of Google, or hell, just put ads in major newspapers?
Called iMoon, and then Apple promptly sues the Japs and Americans for sending probes there and violating its IP because "they clearly ripped us off by booting thrusters on the ass end..."
That's Microsoft's big problem. There's nowhere to go but down...
Frankly, I think dumping 9 billion bucks into your online offerings and still not being able to shake an any substantial way the market leader, no matter how you measure it, cannot be referred to as a successful strategy. I suspect that, if you include all of Microsoft's expenditures all the way back to its original MSN portal back in the Win95/Win98 days, the amount of money it has spent is far more than nine billion dollars.
Yeah, and see how many websites built in the last eight or nine years work without Javascript... Hell, for real security, go back to using Gopher!
I was posting on Usenet in the days of Archimedes Plutonium. This guy is an amateur.
It's a Mozilla product. It'll be version 38 by the end of next week.
And what was the mortality rate from breast cancer fifty years ago?