So it sounds like Canonical is putting users first, which strikes me as a very good policy in the long-term, if they want to grow the user base.
I always wondered if Canonical would run into issues around Firefox trademarks. I know that Mozilla policy is sensitive with regards to what things downstream can change and still use the Firefox trademark. In particular they want to make sure that downstream vendors are not shipping buggy features and tarnishing the Firefox brand. I would expect that shipping a Firefox derivative that did not default to the Google search engine would not make Mozilla (or Google) happy. This is why I was so surprised when Canonical first announced the change to Yahoo.
You know, some times is can pay off to have principles and to stand for them. Who says that DK's company can't make any money while avoiding Microsoft's internet platform? Maybe his company isn't interested is writing enterprisey code for large corporations that are stuck in their old way. Maybe he isn't interested in working with customers that are going to force him to work in a closed platform.
Sometimes it makes sense to drive customers places they don't yet realize they need to be. I think DK's customers will thank him in a few years when their entire infrastructure isn't based on a proprietary system, just because the customer thought Silverlight looked cool.
This is just some guy trying to sell a book. The "news article" is just some publisher trying to draw on the hype around Google to sell this book. The book is actually only available in.pdf format and according to the publishers site is: "Written for business readers, especially senior executives of mid to large-sized, knowledge-based corporations".
Reading the free sample chapter it is even more apparent that most of the claims he uses to back up his argument just don't make sense. For example, he claims "Google's ability to read data from many computers simultaneously is reminiscent of BitTorrent's technology." Honestly, there is probably little similarity between an algorithm optimized for reading data from multiple computers and an algorithm optimized to spread the pieces of a file to many different computers so that they can all share in the bandwidth of distributing the file. Rather, Google's technology tries to organize many copies of data across multiple computers, and then balance the load between the cluster while creating additional backup copies of data when one of the computers dies and stops responding. Such a statement sounds good to senior executives at a large corporation who probably do not understand any of the underling technology, and the author seems to only be riding on the hype of other high profile technologies. I don't see skype mentioned anywhere in the sample chapter, but would be surprised if it isn't mentioned in one of the other chapters.
Plus his "unauthorized snapshot of Google's computing framework" makes absolutely no sense and the second figure shows the "fission occurring" as Google's "software engineering for higher performance" and "hardware engineering for reduced costs" come crashing together. Is this guy for real?
What he has is guesses about some of the exciting things that Google might be developing, but I do not believe history is about to repeat itself and turn the tables on Microsoft, or that Microsoft is in any danger of being run of out the software industry anytime soon.
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So it sounds like Canonical is putting users first, which strikes me as a very good policy in the long-term, if they want to grow the user base.
I always wondered if Canonical would run into issues around Firefox trademarks. I know that Mozilla policy is sensitive with regards to what things downstream can change and still use the Firefox trademark. In particular they want to make sure that downstream vendors are not shipping buggy features and tarnishing the Firefox brand. I would expect that shipping a Firefox derivative that did not default to the Google search engine would not make Mozilla (or Google) happy. This is why I was so surprised when Canonical first announced the change to Yahoo.
You know, some times is can pay off to have principles and to stand for them. Who says that DK's company can't make any money while avoiding Microsoft's internet platform? Maybe his company isn't interested is writing enterprisey code for large corporations that are stuck in their old way. Maybe he isn't interested in working with customers that are going to force him to work in a closed platform.
Sometimes it makes sense to drive customers places they don't yet realize they need to be. I think DK's customers will thank him in a few years when their entire infrastructure isn't based on a proprietary system, just because the customer thought Silverlight looked cool.
This is just some guy trying to sell a book. The "news article" is just some publisher trying to draw on the hype around Google to sell this book. The book is actually only available in .pdf format and according to the publishers site is: "Written for business readers, especially senior executives of mid to large-sized, knowledge-based corporations".
Reading the free sample chapter it is even more apparent that most of the claims he uses to back up his argument just don't make sense. For example, he claims "Google's ability to read data from many computers simultaneously is reminiscent of BitTorrent's technology." Honestly, there is probably little similarity between an algorithm optimized for reading data from multiple computers and an algorithm optimized to spread the pieces of a file to many different computers so that they can all share in the bandwidth of distributing the file. Rather, Google's technology tries to organize many copies of data across multiple computers, and then balance the load between the cluster while creating additional backup copies of data when one of the computers dies and stops responding. Such a statement sounds good to senior executives at a large corporation who probably do not understand any of the underling technology, and the author seems to only be riding on the hype of other high profile technologies. I don't see skype mentioned anywhere in the sample chapter, but would be surprised if it isn't mentioned in one of the other chapters.
Plus his "unauthorized snapshot of Google's computing framework" makes absolutely no sense and the second figure shows the "fission occurring" as Google's "software engineering for higher performance" and "hardware engineering for reduced costs" come crashing together. Is this guy for real?
What he has is guesses about some of the exciting things that Google might be developing, but I do not believe history is about to repeat itself and turn the tables on Microsoft, or that Microsoft is in any danger of being run of out the software industry anytime soon.