Google has a very lucrative business writing OS-agnostic software. As an internet business, first and foremost, they know full well that the internet is the great equalizer in the tech world; it doesn't matter what OS you run, www.google.com looks and acts the same on all of them.
Google cannot beat Microsoft in the OS arena. Microsoft is too well entrenched for that. But what Google can do is to make OS's irrelevant, so that people can buy the $200 Linux PC's from Wal-Mart and run exactly the same productivity software as with a $600 Windows PC from Dell. Windows is not a cash cow for Microsoft; it's just something they have to do. Office is where they make their big money. Take away Office, and Microsoft is left holding the bag with the lower-margin products.
Writing an OS would be a frivilous, unprofitable chase for Google; they have have bigger fish to fry.
Here's my prediction, though... by this time next year, the price of MS Office Professional will have fallen dramatically. I'd guess under $200 for the full version, and probably less.
I never heard of 30gigs.com, they have no track record with me, and therefore I don't intend on trusting them with 30 gigs of my email and watching them become another dot com flameout.
Google, OTOH, is not going anywhere anytime soon. They are big enough that if they start to go under, they'll be bought out by one of the other major players (Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, etc), so even then I don't foresee Gmail disappearing in the next ten years.
there was an article about how Firefox is peaking out, but their marketshare is still in the single digits.
"'It looks like Firefox has hit the push-back point,' said Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory. 'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.'"
So, how is StarOffice going to be any different? Granted, users have to pay for MS Office, but it still comes as a pre-bundle option at a significant discount from all of the PC manufacturers.
Where is Sun's marketing campaign to raise awareness of StarOffice with the non-geek crowd?
Better Product != More Marketshare; Apple has proven this time and time again.
The problem is that people are afraid of spending money on a product that's not going to be 100% compatible. StarOffice could be 99.999% compatible, and users are going to be worried about the.001% of documents they receive from outside the office. Sun needs an aggressive marketing campaign to address this fear.
It's tough to compete against a browser that's preinstalled on every Windows PC out there.
I think it's safe to say that Firefox has saturated its core market of tech savvy, security-conscious users. At this point, they need to reevaluate who their target market is and adjust their marketing strategy accordingly. After all, they were never going to get 95% marketshare simply by virtue of *not* being Internet Explorer. At this point, they need to get their foot in the door with one of the major PC vendors (Dell, HP, Gateway, et al) and get Firefox preinstalled on all new machines, and set up as the preferred browser. That's a tall order, considering the amount of influence MS has over these companies.
Kind of reminds me of Apple's Newton eMate 300, which was killed, along with the rest of the Newton line, by Steve Jobs.
Too pricey to survive the competition from desktop PC's, but Apple had the right idea. A ruggled little portable for schoolkids that offered basic functionality, and would be a complement to a Mac desktop system at home.
Reminds me of when Sony launched the PlayStation. They sent out a guy in a Crash Bandicoot outfit to harrass Sega execs on the golf course, and caught it all on film.
Apple doesn't want the ROKR to compete with their iPod line!
Hence, the 100 song limit, the lack of a click wheel, etc.
I'm sure Apple gets some sort of licensing fee for the ROKR, but I bet they get significantly more profit off of their own iPods.
The fully-featured iPod phone isn't going to roll off the assembly line until some other MP3 phones hit the market. I have no doubt that the completed next-generation phones are already occupying a shelf somewhere in Motorola's labs.
Isn't this the first non-PDA cell phone, candy bar form factor, that has a fully-featured MP3 interface?
Granted, it seems like they could have done a lot better, but 512 MB and 100 songs is still pretty good, considering the competition.
I bought a Motorola e815 flip phone, with 40 MB built-in and a transflash adapter for another 256 MB. It plays MP3's, but has no jukebox interface. For me to play music on it, I have to select the songs one at a time. (There might be another way; I've only had it a month, but I haven't seen another way.)
I'm sure once the hackers get the ROKR, they'll break the 100 song limit.
I'd trade in my e815 in a heartbeat for this thing.
I recently ordered a cell phone from Amazon (Motorola e815), and I selected 3-5 day shipping. The phone was on backorder for a week, though at the time I placed the order the product page said that it was in stock and ready to ship.
After a couple of days of waiting, I decided that I needed it fast, so I logged in and upgraded the shipping to two days. At that point, I lost my place in the backorder queue, and had to wait an additional 10 days beyond the initial estimated shipping date.
Amazon's customer support told me there was nothing they could do about it.
Moral of the story, Don't ever upgrade the shipping on backordered items on amazon.:-P
Company A thinks acquiring Company B might be a good idea.
They look at the market value of Company B, and how much revenue Company B is expected to generate over x number of years, as well as how much synergistic value Companies A and B would have if they merged.
Company B looks to be a tremendous value, so Company A would do well to buy them out, right?
The problem is that Company B's shareholders are well aware of their value, and they are not going to be bought out on the cheap, particularly if they can find other suitors to make competing bids. And federal regulations require that acquisitions be announced to the public, so there's plenty of lead time for other companies to offer bids.
The amount that Company A has available to bid for Company B is determined by the estimated value of Company B, post-acquisition.
In these situations, almost all of the additional value that Company B would bring to Company A ends up going to Company B's shareholders in the bidding, and it becomes an almost break-even proposition for Company A. And many times it's even a losing proposition.
Therefore, Company A's stock price goes down, and Company B's stock goes up, regardless of what industry. Almost every time.
All commerce has come to a screeching halt. All citizens have been ordered to evacuate. All properties have sustained significant damage. Restoring power and phones, pumping out the flood waters, and decontaminating the drinking water is going to take a long, long time. There is no New Orleans economy anymore. New Orleans as an ongoing concern has ceased to exist.
People can't wait months and years for New Orleans to be rebuilt. They will collect their insurance checks and their federal disaster relief checks, and build new lives in other cities.
Rebuilding the city might take a few years. Rebuilding the population and the economy (rebuilding the confidence) will take many decades, and there's no guarantee it will ever happen.
I live in Charlotte, NC, and it's often difficult to place a cell phone call during rush hour traffic here. If we had a major disaster, no doubt the same thing would happen to us. The cell phone networks obviously were only designed to support a small fraction of the total number of cell phone users in the area at any given time.
Google was not first to the search engine game, either. The field was already dominated by AltaVista, Lycos, and a few others. Google simply introduced algorithims that produced more relevant results.
GMail rocks, if for no other reason than the fact that they aren't constantly bombarding you with email offers and newsletter sign-ups. With Hotmail and Yahoo, you have to wade through several pages of offers that you don't want between signing up and actually seeing your inbox for the first time, and then they allow you to filter out every one else's spam but theirs. Google's advertising in GMail is very discreet.
Your complaint about Desktop Search is similar to the complaint I have about GMail Notifier... you have to install it for ALL users, regardless of whether you're the only user on the computer who has GMail. Well, that and the fact that they didn't simulataneously release a Mac version of Notifier. Ah well....
Come on, why are people acting like there's no stigma attached to having been a stripper or a porn star?
I find it fascinating that everyone who challenged what I had to say posted as AC (with the exception of you, which is why I chose to respond to you).
What people are expressing here is their ideal reality, not the way things really are. For every one middle-aged woman that you can show me who's proud of her stripper heritage, I can show you 500 women who would look down on such a thing.
A more important question... When will GMail support WAP?
I just got a Motorola e815, and right out of the box it has bookmarks for Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and a few others, but no GMail. Browsing to GMail allows me to log in before giving me an error message.
Yes, but when you're talking about pollution and power generation, you also have to look at the issue of efficiency.
Combustion engines are horribly inefficient, burning an excessive amount of fuel. Power plants are far more efficient, and therefore less polluting -- especially nuclear plants.
Another thing to consider is the fact the power plant can be located far away from densely populated areas, as opposed to auto polution, which increases with population density.
While Apple did have a few big-name universities in their pocket, the largest segment of their educational market was always K-12. And yes, there were PLENTY of K-12 schools that were all Apple. About ten years ago, I was involved with the local Apple Users' Group, and almost everyone there was a teacher.
About the beginning computer classes teaching MS Office... what those classes are really teaching is basic computer skills. "This is a mouse, this is a pointer, this is a drop-down menu," etc., etc. The beauty of this Linspire deal is that it shows how ubiquitous computer skills have become, as well as how homogenous software has become. Aside from a few cosmetic differences, a word processing or spreadsheet program is going to be virtually the same on a Mac, PC or Linux distro.
Really, though, it's more important that kids understand the concepts of how these programs work, because by the time they graduate high school or college and get into the work force, the interface of MS Office will likely have changed again.
Ok, fine. A car in Iraq is heading towards a checkpoint and not slowing down. The soldiers flag him down. He doesn't stop. Do they whip out their assault rifles and riddle his car full of bullets, or do they try a non-lethal tactic first like the microwave gun?
You know, I would think that the left would be in favor of anything that is saving more lives in Iraq, but then I think that it's probably more important to them to have a body count that they can get "righteously indignant" about.
I know the lefties tend to lose focus of this, but POLICE OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS ARE ALSO CITIZENS IN OUR SOCIETY. Funny how lefties always assume that police and military are on the wrong side and that rowdy protestors are automatically totally righteous and blameless.
So, you think that just because we pay them a salary that their lives are disposable?
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Why would they want to do that?
Google has a very lucrative business writing OS-agnostic software. As an internet business, first and foremost, they know full well that the internet is the great equalizer in the tech world; it doesn't matter what OS you run, www.google.com looks and acts the same on all of them.
Google cannot beat Microsoft in the OS arena. Microsoft is too well entrenched for that. But what Google can do is to make OS's irrelevant, so that people can buy the $200 Linux PC's from Wal-Mart and run exactly the same productivity software as with a $600 Windows PC from Dell. Windows is not a cash cow for Microsoft; it's just something they have to do. Office is where they make their big money. Take away Office, and Microsoft is left holding the bag with the lower-margin products.
Writing an OS would be a frivilous, unprofitable chase for Google; they have have bigger fish to fry.
Here's my prediction, though... by this time next year, the price of MS Office Professional will have fallen dramatically. I'd guess under $200 for the full version, and probably less.
is longevity.
I never heard of 30gigs.com, they have no track record with me, and therefore I don't intend on trusting them with 30 gigs of my email and watching them become another dot com flameout.
Google, OTOH, is not going anywhere anytime soon. They are big enough that if they start to go under, they'll be bought out by one of the other major players (Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, etc), so even then I don't foresee Gmail disappearing in the next ten years.
IE is flawed?
I don't believe it!!!!
there was an article about how Firefox is peaking out, but their marketshare is still in the single digits.
.001% of documents they receive from outside the office. Sun needs an aggressive marketing campaign to address this fear.
"'It looks like Firefox has hit the push-back point,' said Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory. 'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.'"
So, how is StarOffice going to be any different? Granted, users have to pay for MS Office, but it still comes as a pre-bundle option at a significant discount from all of the PC manufacturers.
Where is Sun's marketing campaign to raise awareness of StarOffice with the non-geek crowd?
Better Product != More Marketshare; Apple has proven this time and time again.
The problem is that people are afraid of spending money on a product that's not going to be 100% compatible. StarOffice could be 99.999% compatible, and users are going to be worried about the
It's tough to compete against a browser that's preinstalled on every Windows PC out there.
I think it's safe to say that Firefox has saturated its core market of tech savvy, security-conscious users. At this point, they need to reevaluate who their target market is and adjust their marketing strategy accordingly. After all, they were never going to get 95% marketshare simply by virtue of *not* being Internet Explorer. At this point, they need to get their foot in the door with one of the major PC vendors (Dell, HP, Gateway, et al) and get Firefox preinstalled on all new machines, and set up as the preferred browser. That's a tall order, considering the amount of influence MS has over these companies.
Kind of reminds me of Apple's Newton eMate 300, which was killed, along with the rest of the Newton line, by Steve Jobs.
Too pricey to survive the competition from desktop PC's, but Apple had the right idea. A ruggled little portable for schoolkids that offered basic functionality, and would be a complement to a Mac desktop system at home.
I suggest outsourcing the naming to India, and at a much lower cost.
Hurricane Punjab
Hurricane Krishna
Hurricane Patel
etc...
Reminds me of when Sony launched the PlayStation. They sent out a guy in a Crash Bandicoot outfit to harrass Sega execs on the golf course, and caught it all on film.
Apple doesn't want the ROKR to compete with their iPod line!
Hence, the 100 song limit, the lack of a click wheel, etc.
I'm sure Apple gets some sort of licensing fee for the ROKR, but I bet they get significantly more profit off of their own iPods.
The fully-featured iPod phone isn't going to roll off the assembly line until some other MP3 phones hit the market. I have no doubt that the completed next-generation phones are already occupying a shelf somewhere in Motorola's labs.
Isn't this the first non-PDA cell phone, candy bar form factor, that has a fully-featured MP3 interface?
Granted, it seems like they could have done a lot better, but 512 MB and 100 songs is still pretty good, considering the competition.
I bought a Motorola e815 flip phone, with 40 MB built-in and a transflash adapter for another 256 MB. It plays MP3's, but has no jukebox interface. For me to play music on it, I have to select the songs one at a time. (There might be another way; I've only had it a month, but I haven't seen another way.)
I'm sure once the hackers get the ROKR, they'll break the 100 song limit.
I'd trade in my e815 in a heartbeat for this thing.
...but does it have pictures?
I recently ordered a cell phone from Amazon (Motorola e815), and I selected 3-5 day shipping. The phone was on backorder for a week, though at the time I placed the order the product page said that it was in stock and ready to ship.
:-P
After a couple of days of waiting, I decided that I needed it fast, so I logged in and upgraded the shipping to two days. At that point, I lost my place in the backorder queue, and had to wait an additional 10 days beyond the initial estimated shipping date.
Amazon's customer support told me there was nothing they could do about it.
Moral of the story, Don't ever upgrade the shipping on backordered items on amazon.
Here's how it really goes.
Company A thinks acquiring Company B might be a good idea.
They look at the market value of Company B, and how much revenue Company B is expected to generate over x number of years, as well as how much synergistic value Companies A and B would have if they merged.
Company B looks to be a tremendous value, so Company A would do well to buy them out, right?
The problem is that Company B's shareholders are well aware of their value, and they are not going to be bought out on the cheap, particularly if they can find other suitors to make competing bids. And federal regulations require that acquisitions be announced to the public, so there's plenty of lead time for other companies to offer bids.
The amount that Company A has available to bid for Company B is determined by the estimated value of Company B, post-acquisition.
In these situations, almost all of the additional value that Company B would bring to Company A ends up going to Company B's shareholders in the bidding, and it becomes an almost break-even proposition for Company A. And many times it's even a losing proposition.
Therefore, Company A's stock price goes down, and Company B's stock goes up, regardless of what industry. Almost every time.
All commerce has come to a screeching halt. All citizens have been ordered to evacuate. All properties have sustained significant damage. Restoring power and phones, pumping out the flood waters, and decontaminating the drinking water is going to take a long, long time. There is no New Orleans economy anymore. New Orleans as an ongoing concern has ceased to exist.
People can't wait months and years for New Orleans to be rebuilt. They will collect their insurance checks and their federal disaster relief checks, and build new lives in other cities.
Rebuilding the city might take a few years. Rebuilding the population and the economy (rebuilding the confidence) will take many decades, and there's no guarantee it will ever happen.
I live in Charlotte, NC, and it's often difficult to place a cell phone call during rush hour traffic here. If we had a major disaster, no doubt the same thing would happen to us. The cell phone networks obviously were only designed to support a small fraction of the total number of cell phone users in the area at any given time.
Google was not first to the search engine game, either. The field was already dominated by AltaVista, Lycos, and a few others. Google simply introduced algorithims that produced more relevant results.
GMail rocks, if for no other reason than the fact that they aren't constantly bombarding you with email offers and newsletter sign-ups. With Hotmail and Yahoo, you have to wade through several pages of offers that you don't want between signing up and actually seeing your inbox for the first time, and then they allow you to filter out every one else's spam but theirs. Google's advertising in GMail is very discreet.
Your complaint about Desktop Search is similar to the complaint I have about GMail Notifier... you have to install it for ALL users, regardless of whether you're the only user on the computer who has GMail. Well, that and the fact that they didn't simulataneously release a Mac version of Notifier. Ah well....
Come on, why are people acting like there's no stigma attached to having been a stripper or a porn star?
I find it fascinating that everyone who challenged what I had to say posted as AC (with the exception of you, which is why I chose to respond to you).
What people are expressing here is their ideal reality, not the way things really are. For every one middle-aged woman that you can show me who's proud of her stripper heritage, I can show you 500 women who would look down on such a thing.
How about all of the 18-24 year old girls who are too damn young to know any better or to think of the long-term consequences of their actions?
A more important question... When will GMail support WAP?
I just got a Motorola e815, and right out of the box it has bookmarks for Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and a few others, but no GMail. Browsing to GMail allows me to log in before giving me an error message.
Yes, but when you're talking about pollution and power generation, you also have to look at the issue of efficiency.
Combustion engines are horribly inefficient, burning an excessive amount of fuel. Power plants are far more efficient, and therefore less polluting -- especially nuclear plants.
Another thing to consider is the fact the power plant can be located far away from densely populated areas, as opposed to auto polution, which increases with population density.
While Apple did have a few big-name universities in their pocket, the largest segment of their educational market was always K-12. And yes, there were PLENTY of K-12 schools that were all Apple. About ten years ago, I was involved with the local Apple Users' Group, and almost everyone there was a teacher.
About the beginning computer classes teaching MS Office... what those classes are really teaching is basic computer skills. "This is a mouse, this is a pointer, this is a drop-down menu," etc., etc. The beauty of this Linspire deal is that it shows how ubiquitous computer skills have become, as well as how homogenous software has become. Aside from a few cosmetic differences, a word processing or spreadsheet program is going to be virtually the same on a Mac, PC or Linux distro.
Really, though, it's more important that kids understand the concepts of how these programs work, because by the time they graduate high school or college and get into the work force, the interface of MS Office will likely have changed again.
Apparently, he built his webserver into the wall as well, and his house in on fire.
The Lisa 2 had 3.5" floppies.
Ok, fine. A car in Iraq is heading towards a checkpoint and not slowing down. The soldiers flag him down. He doesn't stop. Do they whip out their assault rifles and riddle his car full of bullets, or do they try a non-lethal tactic first like the microwave gun?
You know, I would think that the left would be in favor of anything that is saving more lives in Iraq, but then I think that it's probably more important to them to have a body count that they can get "righteously indignant" about.
I know the lefties tend to lose focus of this, but POLICE OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS ARE ALSO CITIZENS IN OUR SOCIETY. Funny how lefties always assume that police and military are on the wrong side and that rowdy protestors are automatically totally righteous and blameless.
So, you think that just because we pay them a salary that their lives are disposable?