Changing Climates for Microsoft and Google 393
ReadWriteWeb writes "Weather metaphors abound as this article looks at the evolving software environment — and in particular the competition between Microsoft and Google. Milan says that while Google enjoys relative dominance on the Web platform today, two fissures exist that will force them to move. The first is Microsoft's ability to use the exact same HTML based strategy as Google (like Microsoft's current Live initiative); and secondly Microsoft leapfrogging the current environment by solving rich application installation/un installation and enforcing an acceptable contract regarding what rich apps can do on a user's machine.
Unfortunately for Google, Microsoft is a lot closer to solving these two issues than people think. Microsoft has the best virtual machine with .NET, the best development tool with Visual Studio and the best access to developers with their MSDN programs. And they have a notion. Steve Ballmer himself has started touting the exact strategy they need — Click Once and Run."
and Google has ... (Score:2, Insightful)
click once and be pwned (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just about the worst possible news. Microsoft's strategy of making it all-too-easy to install and run questionably-trustworthy code is why the email virus, web browser malware, and -- worst of all -- botnet problems have become the unsolveable epidemics that they are. Does anyone believe that Microsoft will actually get it right this time, in terms of introducing some practically workable mechanism for allowing only trustworthy code? (Not to mention the difficulty of meaningfully defining "trustworthy" in this context...)
click once and run, but run what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Click Once (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar and all the others not because those two are not useful, because they are, but rather because they condition the user to install EVERY FREAKING "IE Toolbar" out there. No Toolbars, period!
Your average user is a clueless idiot, and will click install all sorts of crap as long as he thinks it is okay. IT IS NOT OKAY! IE7 is the latest and greatest FOOBAR automatic install from Microsoft. Hey Microsoft, having IE7 automatically install with automatic updates is a really stupid idea, fire the asshat who signed off on that one. Not everyone is running PIV with a gig of ram necissary to run IE7.
So, as for the "click once and run" crap, keep it to yourselves!
Re:and Google has ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The nice letter to the guy developing the google-map data interface was a great show. And no C&D, just asking nicely.
Im always amazed at companies acting ethically.
Re:click once and be pwned (Score:3, Insightful)
We're not talking about "will get it right
Do you in fact know anything about what you're talking about?
You can work against MS all you want, but blind ignorance won't help you do that. Know your enemy.
google is (Score:2, Insightful)
Qualify Best (Score:5, Insightful)
Using persuasive language without a qualification comes accross as marketing FUD. Please qualify "best" for us.
So please qualify "best". Because its not reduced complexity, increased quality, best reliablity, best scalability, best security, shortest delivery time, easy integration, or fastest performance...
Again (Score:4, Insightful)
Again.. If linux had any dev environment that was ANYWHERE NEAR as good as VC++, maybe I wouldn't despise working on it.
Re:and Google has ... (Score:5, Insightful)
People want their computers to run fast and easy. Aside from that, there are very few people that care how that is accomplished. So, if MSFT ensures that their computers are doing just that, they will have happier customers.
MSFT has been known to make sure that certain applications do not run w/o changes on their OS and if you think that they won't do anything in their power to shut Google out, you're sadly mistaken.
ClickOnce (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Visual Studio (Score:3, Insightful)
That being said I do my linux development under vi. But under windows I use VS. VS excels beyond any open-source replacement to date.
Re:Click Once (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, mister, let me know how many clicks make a trojan installer into a non-trojan.
3, 5, 20? Throw in shell commands? Throw in compilation? Throw in configuration, dependencies? And still nothing stops you from installing a trojan this way.
So what stops you? Trusted sources. And when it's truster, one click is just the right amount of clicks for it to be safe.
Also
Different companies, with different products. (Score:3, Insightful)
MS provides tools for creating rich web apps. Sure, they produce some of their own apps (MSN Search, Live, etc...) to compete with Google. But their tool-set for the most part the best IDE in the industry. This allows any Joe-Schmoe coder to kick out rich web apps. They have an an amazingly robust VM in the
So comparing the two companies is slightly irrelevant. Comparing MS's apples to Google's apples, Google wins, no questions asked. Comparing MS's oranges to Google's oranges... well, Google doesn't have much for oranges.
-Rick
relative dominance on the Web platform today? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Dominance" is easy as long as you don't intend to charge for it. If Google puts a price on Google's free-as-in-beer service offerings, alternatives will start to look more attractive.
(I don't run Google ad/spyware software (e.g., the Google toolbar) here because I don't like other people's software phoning home; I don't think the "advertising on everything" gambit will work on my dev tools either.)
Reductionist (Score:5, Insightful)
An advertizing company with a search engine [and other tools] to drive traffic to its advertizements.
Google's goal is to make information available and useful to people. They do so through a variety of means, and currently their profit model is based on advertising. It's tempting to reduce companies down to soundbytes, but it's not really useful for understanding how they operate or what they'll do in the future.
Re:Visual Studio (Score:3, Insightful)
You refuse to use the best application out there for the task at hand, and then you complain that there isn't a good application out there?
What do potential employers think when they see "Intimidated by complex software" on your resume?
Re:Again (Score:2, Insightful)
Let's look at those words:
Development: I'm gonna write some code to get some jobs done
Tools: Things I use to write the code to get some jobs done.
I wouldn't buy a hammer that's still "developing quickly" but not ready for prime time, I'd buy a hammer that's ready to use! In fact, if someone gave me a free hammer, and said, "It may or may not work for now, but in a couple of years it'll work great!" I'd go out and buy myself a hammer that already works in spite of the increased immediate cost to myself.
If development tools slow down the development process, then they aren't good tools.
Re:click once and be pwned (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. I said "Arbitrary files" not "any files". Go look up "isolated storage" - it allows a partially trusted app to read and write files, while ensuring that the only app that it is capable of messing with is itself. And what's so bad about remote servers? It works for gmail.
This is yet more argument from ignorance.
Additionally, single click 'installs' will eliminate the 'code running off the internet' problem.
Wrong. Such code runs with partial trust, in the internet zone.
Please, know what you're saying before replying.
Re:Visual Studio (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're a half decent programmer you'd be able to code just as well with a text editor as with an IDE. That fact that you imply you can't says more about you than the linux dev enviroment.
Re:Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Put it this way - if someone offered you a moderately featured family sedan for free, would you turn it down because you'd rather buy a formula 1 car that can go 80mph faster?
perhaps you need to go 200mph. most people dont.
its an even more tempting proposition when you factor in the the family sedan maker will automatically upgrade you car every year until eventually it does go as fast a formula 1 car.
logic errors abound (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The best virtual machine runs on my platform and preferably others.
2) The best development tool runs on my platform and allows me to write applications that run on my platform an preferably others. Visual Studio does not run on anything other than Windows and makes it difficult to write application that will run on any platform other than Windows. Therefore, Visual Studio could not be the best development tool.
3) The developers I look for write software for my platform and preferably others. The majority of developers available through MSDN are focused on developing Windows software using Windows development tools. Therefore, MSDN is not the best way to access developers.
Re:Visual Studio (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Denial....... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time to Throwdown (Score:3, Insightful)
I will give a fast list of companies. Some of them you may have heard of.
Apple
IBM (OS/2)
Novell (Netware)
Sun (Java, Solaris)
Lotus (Ever heard of Lotus 123?)
WordPerfect (I always thought that Microsoft DOS Word 3.0 was a brilliant WP. Very little interface. WordPerfect was clearly the big dog and it still has penetration in the legal field)
Netscape
It is true that many of these competitors were the #1 player and Microsoft managed to pass them. To suggest that none of them could compete with Microsoft seems to be based on the idea that if Microsoft won, then clearly the competitors were not even in the same league, whereas in most cases it has more to do with business cases. Google hasn't even started to compete against Microsoft in any meaningful way. While giving away software is a way to gain market penetration, (Microsoft gave away IE to beat Netscape), eventually you have to look at the way people make money. Microsoft does this through enterprise licensing, (wherein, they charge per user in environments that already have technical support staff so they have less to worry about as far as support), and through bundling their software on new PC's, where they charge less per copy but know that DELL will cover user support and software installation.
In any case to suggest Microsoft has never been in competition with companies with significant resources is nonsensical. The fact that their techniques of requiring PC manufacturers to sell their OS on every machine they ship or pay higher per machine licenses allowed them to shut out all other OS's (why buy two operating systems when I HAVE to buy windows) was unfair and predatory, or that their tradition of non-public API's allowed their own apps to have improved performance, or their tendency of announcing vaporware (did you put in 2006 or 2007 in your office pool for the release of longhorn?), and writing in specific code into windows to forbid it to run on top of DR-DOS. A company that had to cheat as much as Microsoft has, is not a company that hasn't faced competition. Rather it is a company that has used every resource it has to claw its way to the top.
The real question has more to do with whether Microsoft (or anyone) can constrain competition when the tools to create world-class applications are so inexpensive. I mean a pc for 300, linux for free, cheap broadband, cheap virtual hosting. Even Microsoft is giving away their development stuff for free. And with telephones becoming the new laptop, it just makes it even less clear how a big company gains. I mean it isn't going to be because of speed to release product if we are talking MSoft.
Re:Denial....... (Score:3, Insightful)
HTML is not code (Score:5, Insightful)
Repeat after me:
HTML is not code.
HTML is not code.
HTML is not code.
What is not shown is the C++ compiler and linker that turns code into executable. Also not shown is the web browser which takes HTML and makes it presentable. And that's really the only difference between these two programs.
That and, I don't know, Turing completeness?
Re:google is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and Google has ... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Microsoft has the best virtual machine with
Why did the author not go ahead and say, "MS has the best OS and the largest market share on the desktop, search, server arenas". I mean, if its on a blog, we have to believe it, right, right....
Re:google is (Score:2, Insightful)
The television companies may have started out attempting to offer quality programming for your enrichment (or some other noble goal), but the end result of 60+ years of business is this: Produce programs that grab a viable portion of the viewing audience as leverage to increase sales from the advertising market. Your quantifiable experience is irrelevant, except as it pertains to your repeat viewing. Sadly, the only thing that really keeps the programs in check is the stronghold the religious community has over hollywood and various government agencies.
Re:Here's a test... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you mean the last of those options (IE building a custom app that stores customer data in a database) I might take an extra day to build a simple app in Java...
My app will run on windows, mac, linux, be web accessible (via standard browser or handheld), and will scale to millions of users by simply adding hardware.
Now try using Visual Studio to match that..
Sure anyone can open MS Access or Visual Studio and build a little database app for a 5 person company, but the data is now locked up in windows, building in web access is a pain, and you can't run anything but windows on your desktops.
Re:google is (Score:3, Insightful)
What was the original topic again?
Re:click once and be pwned (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A few answers for you (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:google is (Score:3, Insightful)