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."

Re:Desktop For Me

[Chabil Ha']

Our company decided to switch a portion of IT over to these wireless thin clients. They reasoned that maintenance costs would be lower since all the machines would be virtual instances inside a rack of blade servers. Plus, it would make them more mobile inside the building. Good idea, in theory, I suppose.

Then things quickly would grind to a halt because of network bandwidth issues, someone accidentally unplugged an access point, etc. It's a mess. For the first few months we would get periodic emails saying how great it was, when *we* would be moving to 'the workspace of the future', et all. I've stopped getting those emails all of a sudden...

Last I heard they're rethinking the whole ordeal, have now issued everyone *real laptops*, and are remoting into a real PC.

Now, for the real post.

Did we learn anything in the world of main frames? It seems that we've come full circle from the time where we all had to take turns for CPU cycles...We've gone from 'dumb terminals' to the PC revolution, to the 'network' and now back to centralized, smart-dumb terminals again. Please, lets go back to the desktop PC before its too late...

Who has more money? Google vs Microsoft

[spineboy]

Microsoft has 380 Billion in shares.
Google is only worth a paltry 80 Billion in shares, etc.

Re:MODERATORS: Inconsistencies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Erris = twitter. He is a well-known nutbag that makes genuine open-source advocates cringe nearly every time he posts. It's kind of like how you're trying to talk about your cool comics like 100 Bullets with a hot chick, but then your comic-nerd buddy with the loud, nasally voice comes running over and excitedly showers you both with spittle.

Re:Anyone still using Outlook (Express)?

[Cyko_01]

I use Thunderbird to check my gmail account so i don't have to browse to the website and load all kinds of crap I won't use anyways. I'm sure there are others who do the same thing with outlook

Re:Why choose?

[Macthorpe]

With a perfectly good, free online alternative (i.e., Google Docs), why should anyone put their data at risk by having it stored in only one place (i.e., at home) and likely not backed up?

Because, and of course this is my opinion, Google Docs is not 'perfectly good' unless you want very, very little.

Take their presentation software. Say I want to create a simple square on the screen, something that a lot of presentations need. On Google Docs, I have to go to a graphics package, make a picture of a square, and then import that as a picture in to the presentation. You'd better hope that it's the right size too because it's a picture, and if you resize it your line thicknesses will be changed as well. Next simple thing is fading. Snapping from one slide to another is hard on the eyes for a long period - fading from one slide to another makes it easier. Google's presentations have no transitions whatsoever.

That's just the first two obvious things that sprang up when I tested. The spreadsheet app supports enough in the way of Excel formulae to be usable but it's incredibly slow to update with changes I make, sometimes up to 2-3 seconds to do something that a desktop app would do instantly. Conditional formatting is incredibly limited and macroing is right out the window. Similarly the Word app does enough to be usable but doesn't do anything that I would consider normal on a day to day basis.

The keyboard shortcuts don't work on Firefox 2.0.0.11. A choice of somewhere between 4 and 10 fonts without the option to import any more. I mentioned the interface lag which is annoying enough to mention twice. No support for Opera, which generally means it's not web standards compliant. No spellchecker that I could find.

I could go on and on, but I won't. It might be fine for somebody to pull together a few quick sums, or write a very basic list of things to do, but for anything more than that it's crap. I've used more functionality than Google Docs provides compiling City of Heroes data on a spreadsheet and writing my resumé, and that's saying something.

So yes, use Google Apps to store your documents, but sure as hell don't try and edit them. If Google Docs is the future of web-based applications, Microsoft aren't in for any problems at all.

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

[SL Baur]

Replacing Microsoft with Google will ultimately mean nothing.

Perhaps, but it's just not in the same league. You can say no to Google by just not visiting them. You can only say no to Microsoft (if you're buying a PC class machine in the US) after you've paid them for a license.

Proprietary closed-up code and vendor lock-in is bad no matter whose name you attach it to.

True, true. As is typical in discussions of technology like this, it was all hashed out on the Cypherpunks mailing list years ago. Ross Anderson has the right idea - the Eternity Service. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/eternity/eternity.html [cam.ac.uk]
and someone who was going about implementing one
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1997/05/msg00835.html [venona.com]

Re:Anyone still using Outlook (Express)?

[r_jensen11]

You're joking, right? When on Windows, I use Outlook. When on Linux, I use Evolution. I'd rather have my calendaring/address book/email client both archive information locally and access servers via a protocol like IMAP than rely soley on an online service which relies predominately on advertising revenues that are derived from scanning my documents. I can't count how many times my internet connection's been down in the past 4 months, but I've nearly always been able to retrieve what I've needed because my clients store information locally. Plus, I don't have to worry about anyone making money off of what I consider private, not public.

Re:Failure is likely

[Weedlekin]

"Microsoft saw Netscape as a way to undercut their desktop monopoly"

It was actually one of the big cheeses at Netscape Communications (I think it was Marc Andresson, but could be wrong) who publicly stated that Netscape made operating systems, and Windows in particular, irrelevant. Microsoft had shown little interest in the Internet up until that point (Gates said it was a fad in the original version of "the Road Ahead", although that bit was removed from subsequent reprints), but this put Netscape firmly in their sights as a potential threat that had to be neutralised, so they starting looking for ways to do so.

Note that at the time (1994 to 1995 if memory serves me, although it could have been slightly earlier or later), Netscape's statement didn't look anything like as bone-headed as they do in retrospect. The Internet was undergoing a rapidly mounting hype frenzy, and Netscape was the default gateway to it on nearly every platform, while Microsoft was a late entrant with an initially weak offering that wasn't a part of retail and upgrade Windows packages prior to Windows-98 (although it was included in the OEM-only Windows-95 OSR1 and OSR2). It wasn't until some time in 1999 that IE displaced Netscape as the dominant browser, so many people both inside and outside the IE industry thought that Netscape rather than MS would be the likely winners of this particular battle. Subsequent talks between MS and Netscape about dividing up the Internet between them (with MS having Windows, and NS everything else) indicate that Microsoft themselves doubted their ability to win for several years, so this wasn't just another case of the usual culprits (analysts) reading their tea leaves wrong.

Re:Why choose?

[Blakey Rat]

Outlook is a very basic email and calendar program

Basic compared to what? Outlook is probably the most advanced email and calendar program I've ever used, considering its features.

with lousy search

True for older versions, much much improved in version 2007. Of course, Google Desktop and MSN Desktop Search are really fast at searching Outlook databases, so this isn't some unsolvable weakness.

absolutely primitive web access (I can only access my Inbox on the web, not any of my filed emails... how pathetic).

What version are you guys using? I'm going to use the old Linux excuse here and say if you can't look at your filed emails through the web, your installation is screwy or you have an idiot administrator. Or you're running an ancient version.

But again I ask, what are you comparing it to? Lotus Notes requires you to download Java to use their "web access," for example, and I hardly consider that better.

Sharepoint is a complete waste of time. Just about any free CMS is better than Sharepoint.

I hate these vagueries. Fine; show me a Wiki CMS that can handle documents as well as Sharepoint, including the version control features that Sharepoint has. It should be easy since "just about any free CMS is better."

Infopath is a just Microsoft vendor lock-in on Xforms.

Considering I never heard of "Xforms" then maybe Microsoft just popularized something pre-exising. All I know is that our company saves a crapload of time using Infopath instead of the old faxed forms.

If Outlook, Sharepoint, and Infopath are 'state of the art' corporate standards, it only reinforces my view of the utter cluelessness of corporate IT.

What's better? Seriously? Show me a setup that's so much better that I'm going to say "wow I've been such a fool!" A setup that's in use by a *company*, not just some individual in a closet. I've seen Novell's option, I've seen IBM's option, and I've seen the open source options, and nothing is anywhere close to Microsoft's software at this point in time.