Microsoft and Google Duke It Out For the Future

Hugh Pickens writes "There is a long article in the NYTimes, well worth reading, about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the Web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based 'cloud.' Microsoft faces a business quandary as it tries to link the Web to its existing desktop business — 'software plus Internet services,' in its formulation. 'Microsoft will embrace the Web while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable,' according to the article. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by startups, and it is 'unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating.' David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, 'a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.' Microsoft used to call this 'cutting off their air supply."

So if google is really cutting off MSes air supply

[Anonymous Coward]

When is the party going to be?

The answer is obvious

[FoolsGold]

Microsoft will just try to buy-out this "Internet" thingy so it's no longer a threat.

Re:So if google is really cutting off MSes air sup

[someone1234]

I guess, it will be thrown right after the funeral.

your whole model needs to be re-evaluated

[turing_m]

Really? I think you can only leverage the thin client model so far before the synergies dry up and you reach fundamental architectural limitations. As the envelope is stretched from web 2.0 to web 2.1 and expanded to breaking point with web 2.1 service pack 1, we may see a resurgence in peer to peer abstracted database solutions enmeshed in a pastiche of performant but robust virtualization layers.

In other words, take the consulting model of highly topical verbose lexicon, and apply it to a popular internet forum to dampen the signal to noise ratio. Think of the possibilities!

Re:Why choose?

[jc42]

Maybe my assumption that people actually check their spelling is wishful thinking :(

This mite bee a good thyme too post this famous common tarry:

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

(Funny thing: The spell checker in this browser - no, I won't say which one - told me that "chequer" was mispelled. ;-)

(Also, I've never learned who wrote it. Anyone know?)