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."

Failure is likely

[QuietLagoon]

Microsoft faces a business quandary as it tries to link the Web to its existing desktop business

So long as Microsoft is unable to move past the desktop monopoly, Microsoft will fail. Every attempt of Microsoft to find a new and profitable business has relied upon leveraging Microsoft's desktop monopoly. Unfortunately for Microsoft, competitors like Google are making the desktop moot, thereby crumbling Microsoft's very foundation.

Re:Failure is likely

[NeverVotedBush]

I remember reading that the big reason Microsoft went after Netscape by making Internet Explorer free, then cross-seeding parts into the OS, then their monopolistic trade practices was for exactly this reason - Microsoft saw Netscape as a way to undercut their desktop monopoly.

It's kind of fun to watch them get hit with it again and this time by a much more mature and cash-rich adversary.

the best quote

[fermion]

TO Mr. Raikes, the company's third-longest-serving executive, after Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer, the Google challenge is an attack on Microsoft that is both misguided and arrogant. "The focus is on competitive self-interest; it's on trying to undermine Microsoft, rather than what customers want to do," he says.

If we need proof that MS is the new IBM, i.e. delusional in the belief that it is the one and only solution for the customer, this is it.

It is certain that MS now has one of the best solution for corporate on the PC. It is equally certain due to the overhead incurred to defend and maintain the PC, MS does not have the best solution for the home PC. By maintaining the applications on a central server, for free or nearly free, Google has the benefits of the central server in IBM days with the cost benefit that MS supplied. Add to that the idea that many people would now would be happy with an appliance, recall that many people do not work in an office, and one has an opportunity for competition. MS is not doing well in the living room, only in the game room.

I wonder if MS can live in a world where it does not get a cut out of every PC sold. Where more machines, like the OLPC, are not designed to run MS Windows, and therefore cannot be catagorized as a pirate's dream machine if sold naked, or with a non-MS OS. I wonder how many web designers are going to continue to design IE only websites if only 10% of the population browse using a non-MS compatible hardware.

MS creates adequate products, but like IBM they have it wrong. Google is not the arrogant company. MS is. By creating a new os that costs more than the computer. By not suppling IE to all major OS. By waiting 5 years to admit that multiplatform means more than just running on different versions of MS Windows, and interoperability is not bad for the end user.

Let me also say that I would not use Google Apps, not for anything important, but I am not the target audience. I can maintain my own machine and download and install OSS. The world where everyone uses google is not much less scary than the world we are in now. OTOH, at least my office might not tell me that everyone uses MS, and that is all they will support on the website.

Desktop For Me

[denalione]

As an IT Director my primary concern it the productivity and uptime of my clients. Network based software is IMHO not reliable enough to rely on. Any number of connectivity issues could cause a complete loss of use. With certain applications this is not an option. While developers could mitigate these problems (a small footprint executable that allows me to print something even when the host application is down, for example) I would have a hard time recommending migrating to a primarily web-based office/productivity suite. Too many things out of my control for my comfort. Google isn't who the CEO is going to come to when his secretary can't produce something he needs RIGHT NOW.

Great point

[xzvf]

The Netscape point shows a great knowledge of computer history. A surprisingly large number of people here probably don't remember when Netscape was not only the dominate browser, but an important development platform. Microsoft will try to hinder innovation whenever the desktop is threatened. Gaming consoles... introduce a product and link it to the PC. WebTV ... buy the company. The next question is, when Google has it's cloud computing monopoly threatened, what will it do to protect itself. Kill net neutrality? Buy it's own wireless spectrum?

What about the users?

[JustNiz]

The whole drive to do this seems to be only to facilitate comapnies in making more profit.
What about the users interests?
Honestly it seems very clear to me that suddenly having to be connected to the internet (with all its associated performance and security issues) just to do do something like write or store a document would be a giant step backwards.

MS have tried moving off-desktop

[EmbeddedJanitor]

... and failed dismally. MS knows that the desktop is limited and dying but they don't know how to get way from it.

They have tried Windows CE which still has a shrinking market share in phones, but attempts to leverage the desktop experience, so is doomed.

They've tried tablets... at least 4 times now... and these still get mindshare at MS because they are Billy-boy's pet PC format. Again, doomed because they try to make the tablet into a desktop-like device.

It is often said that excessive success brings about a downfall. For MS this is true. The desktop has been so successful for them that they are not able to see past it.

I don't get it, something is backassward here...

[3seas]

Why run application off the internet or even store data online unless its directly an online internet all accessible use thing like in web pages, blogs, message boards, etc.?
Its not like any company today can't have their own inhouse server for inhouse control and security and online limited access.

With todays desktop system power and terabyte drives isn't it more likely that what's online now can become offline accessible. In other words, its more likely that we move data from online to offline than vise versa. I've recently put together a localhost LAMP/desktop system just because I found wordpress on firefox to be versatile and simple enough for my aging mother to write her autobiography on while dealing with some eye sight problems (ctrl-+/- zooms) with easy pictures addin. And just because its on a system not connected to the internet the export/import function of wordpress allows the data to be put online should she so chose (she could send me a cd for me to import to a family site I set up - but by her choice, not due some leaky internet).
So even internet applications can be moved to the internet disconnected desktop, where there is security and performance in not being connected,.

Certainly any businesss applications no more needs the additional possible failures and security breaches of internet connection, ISP problems and weakest link connection than does home applications with slower or no internet connections.

Sorry Google, but really, your search engine suffers more and more from ad based listings rather than what I'm looking for (i.e. looking for specification information on an old Dell Latitude xp 450c laptop results in endless finding for batteries, power adaptors, etc sellers.... and virtually no links I could find of any use to me.... I can only wonder who all these sellers are selling to.)

Waiting for AoC to be released

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm waiting for the game Age of Conan to be released so I can check it out on my bad ass desktop. Someone from Google can let me know when things like this game and such run in the browser I guess.

Any one who says the desktop and it's software are going away is blowing smoke up your ass.

Tired old crap

[dread]

Remember the JavaStation? No? Remember how all the applications would reside on the network? No? Well, it's been said like seven billion times before and the problem is that the real trend is exactly the opposite one. Applications are becoming increasingly personal. And that, my dumplings, will just continue. Fine, it's just those personalized menus now (which generally are just annoying because it really pisses you off not to be able to find that one thing that you need for that one particular document when you actually do need it) but it will become oh so much more. And this is something which you will want to carry with you. Yes. On you keychain. Together with your desktop. And applications. And documents. You don't want to end up somewhere in Guangzho without your desktop. That would be horrendous.
Storage is cheap and becoming cheaper. CPU cycles are cheap and becoming cheaper. Software is expensive. So what. Most companies don't really mind. And it's not Joe Blow that is earning Microsoft their Office dollars. It's JB Inc. And JB Inc doesn't care if it pays Microsoft 200 dollars. They care if it makes their employees efficient or not. Get dependent on the network in order to do business. I think any company would kill that one in the first SWOT they did.

Re:business apps

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

No advantage to web apps?!? Then why didn't you just write this post as a word document, and email it to us?

Re:Failure is likely

[Aphrika]

That's very true, but if everything's online, you still need a desktop or sorts to be able to get to it. If you've got a desktop of somekind, you'll want to be able to do other stuff with its capabilities too, not just access the web.

Without a desktop - be it Windows, OSX, iPhone, Symbian etc. - Google wouldn't be accessible, or exist.

I think that long-term you'll see a compromised middle ground appear. Information needs to be centralized and always available, and the computing power used to act on it needs to be localized. Information in a single place can end up being virtually useless if you can't get to it, and the frustrations of not having local computing power to hand are exactly what killed mainframe and thin-client computing.

So, I think you'll see a dominant online Google (aren't they already?) and a still-powerful client/server-bound Microsoft. They're both companies that have their fingers in a lot of pots - some successful, some not, but it's in the public interests that they both exist, if either one extinguished the other, it would be bad for everyone.

Re:Define "cloud."

[hey!]

Well, let me give you an alternative definition I sometimes use for "database": A database is a collection of information that is governed by a single, identifiable set of enforceable polices.

The reason I sometimes trot this odd, non-technical definition out is that planners sometimes get tripped up over questions like "should we have one database or many databases?" However, it's often question that doesn't mean what they think it means. Placing all your eggs in one database basket doesn't unify them into a working system. It doesn't tell one part of your organization what the other is up to. It doesn't mean that giving one group control over a certain set of data gives them any other rights they shouldn't have. On the other hand, an "isolated database" may consume or produce data from other databases in a way that implies controlling that physical resource isn't the whole story about controlling data quality or limiting data distribution.

The point is that the number of "databases", if you count them the way a database platform vendor would, is really just an implementation detail.

The question you raise about the definition of "server" has already been raised by projects like Seti@Home or distributed.net. As a contributor to such projects, your control over your "slice" of the massive project is limited pretty much to opting in or out. Arguably with the distributed systems that are common for high traffic Internet sites, for electronic data interchange systems of nearly any kind, even for a simple server cluster, an individual server is not really all that important.

The important questions for a project include: Where is the bulk of policy created? How are policies enforced? What are the options and rewards, if any, offered to participants?

While "servers" as we think of them are a key part of the infrastructure, we're well beyond the point where they are a single point of control for a major project.

Re:Why choose?

[Teckla]

Besides, with a perfectly good, free, open source alternative (i.e. OpenOffice) why should anyone put their data at risk by using some web based application?

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?

OK, I'm not saying Google Docs is right for everyone, but you seem to be completely dismissing the advantages of having your documents online and ignoring the disadvantages of having your documents offline.

Both approaches (online and offline) will continue to exist and thrive because different people have different needs.

The weak link.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based 'cloud.'

Does he really think businesses will trust their data for storage and transmission in the "cloud"?

Remember, the weak link is not the technology (encryption, authentication, etc.). The weak link is having to trust people.

Nobody gets their credit-card number stolen by a hacker who decrypts their SSL stream. In every case, the breach is caused by a trusted employee who sneaks out with the data.

Businesses know this, and they have an instinctive fear of outsourcing their precious data. Of course, their own employees can sabotage just as easily as an outsourcer's employees can. It's purely a psychological issue: The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.

Interesting read

[MLCT]

NYT covers the issue well. What struck me from reading it was the impression that Google do have a quick turn around on an idea and an ultrafast motivated and reactive set of employees. While reading the section on Grand Prix I couldn't help but imagine what the development path would have been for such an idea at MS - weekly meetings with 4th tier of management, monthly reports for the 3rd tier of management, quarterly presentations for the second tier of management - then a year into the cycle 1st tier find out about the project and bin it as balmer has been hurling some chairs about and he wants to copy something google or yahoo did 6 months ago.

What also struck me was the tired old soundbites from MS representatives - "The focus is on competitive self-interest; it's on trying to undermine Microsoft, rather than what customers want to do," says Mr. Raikes of Google. Yeah Raikes - your development cycle (or rather complete lack of it for 3+ years after you had destroyed Netscape) on IE fits that quote very nicely. The words from MS all sound a bit wooden - they are trying to come out with all the "we are cool" "googleplex" mentality of roller blading employees who are living the dream - but it doesn't stick - we know how things go on in MS land - the coder who spent a couple of years jumping through bureaucratic hoops of reviews, reports and presentations to simply code the log off button on the start menu for vista tells us that. Gabe Newell got it spot on - MS has become what IBM was when MS were starting up - one vast bureaucracy - MS chided IBM in those days just as Google can rightfully do of MS today. I don't think Gabe extended the analogy, but it fits perfectly that IBM were attempting to cling on to the last of the "mainframe days" back then, just as MS are attempting to cling on to the "standalone desktop days" now. We are entering another paradigm shift - and the more MS say that we aren't the more it confirms that we are.

A war on two fronts

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft faces challenges from Google and Linux. That's two fronts. It is also in a battle with itself. The nonsense about trying to protect DRM using the OS is a real handicap.

Thusfar Microsoft has obtained and held its position using the classic strategies of a monopolist. Those won't work against Linux because Linux can't be bought. Microsoft can't even cut off its air supply.

Even if Microsoft wins its battle against Google, it can't kill Google because Google is a giant even if its online applications don't fly.

Microsoft is in real trouble. Google and Linux are both disruptive technologies. As is typical with disruptive technologies, they will eventually become 'good enough' for the majority of Microsoft's customers.

At this point, given the choice between giving my mother (who lives a thousand miles away) a computer loaded with Ubuntu or one loaded with Vista, I would easily choose Ubuntu. I suspect that many of us would make the same choice. Next year, things will change and more of us would choose Ubuntu. That's the way it works with disruptive technologies.

I have a suggestion for Microsoft. Give the customers something that delights them and doesn't get in their way every five minutes. As it is, Microsoft is driving its customers into the enemy's waiting arms.

Microsoft internet: supporting only IE, IIS

[JoeCommodore]

A big problem is Microsoft is not just looking for internet search/data market they want the internet search/data market to run on and only be browsable by Windows (or something other that is totally MS or provides a revenue channel to MS).

While the web apps department may be all OK with just service revenue and advertising the big wigs in other departments will make sure that the 'embrace and extend' goes into their on-line offerings in order to 'encourage' use of Microsoft enabled PCs and servers to fully utilize those services.

I for one am very resistant into inserting intentional quirks and other bits of muck in my web apps to satisfy a non-standard approach to displaying HTML/CSS and help enable it to be more popular. Firefox, Safari, Konquerer, Opera, Galeon, etc. all render my pages fine with the standards, and I don't have to use MS servers, browsers or OSs (though they work fine as well, only not IE, but there are free alternatives).

Also as far as services, from my point of view (Firefox on Linux) many of the MS technology based sites show up as like broken crap to me (does not support my browser, features not working, pages render poorly, etc.)

Google gets it's high marks because they are not locking the customer (business or user) into a specific application or platform; got Linux, Xserve, MS IIS, that's OK, just add this and you are good. Browser? - is it up to date? Then you are good there too. Like many say of OS X, Google internet tools and results usually "Just Work" and if you start there you probably aren't concerned into looking for other places after that.

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

[Erikderzweite]

So if google is really cutting off MSes chair supply...

Here, fixed that for you.

Re:business apps

[imsabbel]

And what has this to do with web apps?
And why the fuck is this crap modded to +5 (informative of all things?)

Hint: My browser is about as much a desktop application as it gets (hint: that textbox isnt some fancy ajax wordprocessor). And yes, just to annoy you, i didnt even write this in the browser, but in notepad.

Fundamental issues with hosted apps

[Craig Ringer]

Beyond the obvious issue of the need for continuous connectivity, there are some serious issues with hosted apps that make them much less attractive than they could be.

The biggest one, blessing and curse in one, is that there's a 1:1 relationship between client app and service. The hosted app provider controls the client used to access the app as well, something that tends to result in smoother integration, but also a lack of choice.

Consider mail. Few of us would like to have a specific mail client forced on us by an ISP - yet that's exactly what web mail providers do. For mail, people are happy enough to just move to the provider with a client they're happy with, but that won't be possible for all types of app. I'm very dubious about the unification of storage, communication protocol and client into a single entity.

Web apps also make it harder to apply policy. How can you, with web apps, have a shared working directory with snapshots taken every five minutes (aged out progressively) that gets automatically archived into another part of your system & indexed at the end of the week? It's not easy, that's for sure. Businesses with access control requirements, data retention issues, etc also face issues.

Even if the provider tries to take care of those problems, they'll have a hard time making it easy to integrate things like archival with the rest of your network.

The admin also tends to lose insight into the system with web apps. If I hosted my business's mail with Google, I wouldn't get access to the mail logs, control over spam filter sensitivity, or other important facilities. That's not inherently the case, in that Google could offer these facilities, but in general web apps tend to take more of a black box approach.

In short ... they're OK for consumer use and for specialized tasks, but for general work I doubt I'll be interested in web apps for quite a while.

--
Craig Ringer

Re:Why choose?

[Anonymous Coward]

The kind of people that are alienated by MS Office 2007's new interface are the same kind of people that are NOT going to bother installing and learning OpenOffice.

Re:Why choose?

[kestasjk]

Despite what Linux mags would have you think OpenOffice vs MS Office isn't going in the same direction as Firefox vs IE. Out of everyone I've spoken to the only people I know who didn't much prefer Office 2007 to 2003 was an Access trainer, who was very familiar with Access 2003.

Any time is a good time for a free alternative to shine, but OpenOffice more than ever has something very difficult to compete with. I think the best you can hope for is that OpenOffice was in part a cause of MS putting everything into Office 2007.
Things aren't going to get easier for OpenOffice either, as MS replaces VBA with .NET in Office 2007.

Re:Why choose?

[edwdig]

The kind of people that are alienated by MS Office 2007's new interface are the same kind of people that are NOT going to bother installing and learning OpenOffice.

Wouldn't it be the people that AREN'T alienated by it be the people that wouldn't bother with OpenOffice?

The people who don't like it are going to be the ones trying something else. Why would the people who like it or don't care either way bother switching?

Re:Why choose?

[Bilbo]

Uh... I've worked in IT for many years, and backup policies are freaking NEVER "extremely basic". You're assuming a ubiquitous, homogeneous, strictly controlled environment, where you can always know what software people have installed on their systems, and where every machine is. In reality, you've got machines all over the place, and with the increasing use of laptops in business today, you don't know where they are, or when they are on the network. Worse yet, you don't know if the disks are secure, or if some joker just left his 160Gig hard drive loaded with sensitive corporate information unlocked in the back seat of his car.

As has been noted elsewhere, online documents are not for everyone, but anyone who really sits down for a while and starts thinking about what kinds of possibilities an online service opens up, especially in flexibility of "place", as well as on-line collaboration, will start to see some very interesting options suddenly opening up.

Re:Why choose?

[Varun Soundararajan]

People who feel alienated and thus cant adapt to the evolutionary changes in MS Office will have little inclination to adapt to a new Office software such as OpenOffice..