Microsoft and Google Duke It Out For the Future 297
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."
Why choose? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't trust Microsoft running software on my computer and to be honest, after what happened with China, I don't trust Google to store my information online. This isn't tin-foil hat paranoia, I am simply very aware that data is vital to modern free speech (given the advances made in propaganda by those that would deny us the ability to voice our opinions), and its only going to get moreso as time goes on.
Re:Why choose? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? I'd rather have the software local so I can do the work online or not.
I think the web-based model falls flat as soon as people actually look at what is available for free.
Define "cloud." (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, take the Google model of massively distributed computing and apply it to the whole ecosystem of net-enabled devices. The future will probably be a lot weirder than we think.
Re:Why choose? (Score:5, Interesting)
They also make a LOT of crappy software.
I've got a Google Search Appliance (the hardware/software combo to have a personal Google search). The interface is so bad, I can't believe it was made by a software company.
I run Adsense/Adwords- the interface for that is also atrocious.
Just from those quick examples, I can say that I do *not* welcome our new Google application developer overlords.
Re:Failure is likely (Score:5, Interesting)
Just recently I've started playing with a Mac and so far I'm pleased with what it can do.
All that to say, Google is decidedly not making the desktop moot. I'm sure there are quite a few people out there like me who prefer managing and storing information locally.
Re:Why choose? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. I didn't want to be seen doing an overt plug, but OpenOffice is what I use to avoid placing my trust in either closed-source or an evil document overlord. The good news on this front, is that frankly Google Docs sucks balls as an office package, and the new MS Office interface has alienated a lot of long time users. Its a good time for the free alternative to shine.
Re:So if google is really cutting off MSes air sup (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Failure is likely (Score:3, Interesting)
You probably could have come up with that if you'd given it a half second's thought.
Just as hardware became commodity ... (Score:3, Interesting)
If this prediction is true, then Microsoft is still in the driver's seat relative to Google. They are a player in the virtualization market, and they have applications that people will want, albeit in a slightly different form, so they can be run on their Macs, Linux boxes or Windows boxes.
Re:Desktop For Me (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why choose? (Score:3, Interesting)
I realize, though, that probably almost nobody in the general public backs up their data, but what of real value does such a user have? Some lost letter to the editor won't ruffle anyone's feathers if they lost it. Probably the more valuable data would be the working files for tax applications.
But few home users will be putting much effort into a presentation, a database, or probably even spreadsheets except those that track bills, investments, etc.
But I would argue that the last place I want to store financial information is on some generic application server.
Don't be stupid. (Score:5, Interesting)
They probably appear more often on anti-MS articles because you're guaranteed more 'eyeballs' on those comments, so it's a more widespread audience for these trolls to hit.
Mod me off-topic if you like, I just wanted to correct yet another silly Slashdot assumption - this time that Microsoft somehow has a team of people posting stories about black guys with huge cocks. There's never been an iota of proof that they have anyone on here at all, other than in a casual capacity like the rest of us.
Not realize, exactly what they were planning for.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, the vast majority of the general internet application landscape didn't play out that way (most ignore those things as they don't bring much that other technologies that are more universal do not). But they have been bitten by their own strategy. There is a Pocket Internet Explorer discussion out there where they explain that despite having flash support, they don't implement the VBScript a few select sites did implement to detect IE/flash. So they were bitten by the very sites that drank the Microsoft Kool-Aid.
But all that aside, it's clear that IE isn't being specifically bitten by any spec deviance (I've not seen things in actual mass deployment not work with IE on the desktop), but it is true that most have avoided the MS-only featureset, and that leaves Microsoft rightfully worried that they will not be able to differentiate in a world where the OS for 90% of the users is merely what the web browser happens to be sitting on.
For my part, I'm not crazy about a vision of a near-100% webapp-only world. It sounds like the dreamworld of tyrannical content providers (your meda player is a webapp, and thus we never give indefinite licenses). The seperation of data and presentation evaporates (today, mutt, evolution, thunderbird, or Google's web interface are all different ways of interacting with your mail, with useful differences). Webapps need to override drag and drop and right-click contextual menus to compete with the desktop paradigm, and today that doesn't work too well, and when it does I'm personally aggravated that I can't user my browser specified context menu. Privacy becomes even more complicated to protect. Yes, data backup and such becomes someone else's problem, but they won't necessarily protect for free your data from yourself (you delete something, it's gone without a recovery fee), whereas if you can own your data and back it up yourself, you have the option of protecting against that as well.
All in all, long haul if it were only one of Microsoft or Google, then no matter who won, the users would ultimately lose.
Re:Why choose? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Failure is likely (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh yeah, that explains the success of Microsoft Games and Microsoft Hardware in a nutshell. Oh wait no it doesn't... I seem to have no problems at all playing my Xbox 360 or using my Microsoft-branded keyboard on my Apple G5 computer.
(Christ, do you people engage your brains for even a fraction of a second before modding BS like this up?)
Re:Why choose? (Score:2, Interesting)
Then wouldn't the sensible solution be for someone to offer a simple online data backup facility, rather than moving the whole friggin' app online?
Online sucks balls for any serious work. Right now internet is just not ubiquitous enough or reliable enough to guarantee a connection wherever I want to do work. Once internet is as available and reliable as electricity, and once online apps are a simple and intuitive to use as desktop apps, and once internet speeds are similar to desktop speeds, then maybe I'd consider using an online office alternative.
Re:A war on two fronts (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why choose? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can create and edit documents at home and *put* them online if I choose to, through many different outlets. Private or shared. And applications like Google Docs can help in a pinch when you just want to keep a silly spreadsheet of something, or a portable document to print. You can access it at work, at home, and now on your mobile device. I can keep a running spreadsheet from anywhere - that's the point of this connected office. Microsoft just better catch up, if they even want to compete in this space (anymore, I thought this is why they crushed Netscape).
There is no reason to give up one for the other. Maybe OpenOffice can directly upload to Google Documents when it's wanted? And the opposite? There are times when someone wants to keep a local document local, and Microsoft and OO.org can battle it out. However, Google could release a web appliance for corporate clients once their platform becomes viable in that market. I suspect that behind the scenes there is a much nicer version, but this is speculation. Their Blogger interface hasn't seen any *major* improvements in a while. Time will tell.
Re:Why choose? (Score:1, Interesting)
I develop Google Docs-like software for a living, and I'm sure that I'd never want to run something as complex as say Excel over the web because
a) It is slow
b) I don't have the current set of my data with me
A few days ago I was thinking that X is really a client/server architecture, just like the web. The difference is that the one uses ajax to partially do what the other one has been doing faster and better for years. Why not just run the mother of all X servers somewhere and run the apps on Linux clients? What are the technical difficulties in that?
Re:Why choose? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sharepoint? What a waste of money that was. There's the same docs that we had before, only now it's more clicks away and cross-linked with lots of place holder pages that make it so much more beautiful and so much less effective. We were better off when we were using a wiki. Funny how those sharepoint training classes didn't change a damn thing. I'm so surprised. God help us if engineers share information in the way that works best for them. We can't have that.
I'm glad you're finally able to outline now that the latest Microsoft product has come out, but I'm sure I'll get along just fine without it. Don't be shocked if OO does turn out to be an adequate - and free - replacement for all of most people's word processing needs. Hell, I've even seen Apple users in my office who aren't using Office. How are these people able to get any work done?!
Re:Why choose? (Score:5, Interesting)
I take that to mean you like Office 2007 and don't see why other people wouldn't like it.
Office 2007 has a drastically different UI than just about every other GUI software ever made. The UI goes against every prior set of UI guidelines. You've got major functionality placed in a menu that normally only has window management features. You've got core functionality (save, undo) placed in the title bar. The ribbons are a mish-mash of controls with no obvious logic on how it was designed. You go across the ribbon and you'll see each set of buttons has a different style. Button sizes aren't remotely uniform. Some buttons are labelled with text while others aren't. Even within a set of related buttons (say cut/copy/paste), you get completely different styles for the buttons.
You've also got things like options organized into categories such as "Popular". It's hard to make things harder to find than that, as there isn't any way to know what category an option would fit into with categories like that.
The people most likely to not like the Office 2007 interface are the people who are familiar enough with computers to have expectations of how a UI is supposed to be designed.
People who are totally computer unsavy are just going to think it's different, neither good or bad.
Re:Why choose? (Score:3, Interesting)
From my experience, the only people who did prefer Office 2007 were the kind of people that barely knew enough about Office to get their job done. Those people only cared because the ribbon had icons for things that weren't in the default toolbar of the version they were using before.
Anyone with even a slight skill level found it harder to use, as the UI doesn't operate like any other app's UI. Button designs aren't even consistent within the ribbon. You have to throw out everything you've ever learned about how UIs are supposed to be designed to understand Office 2007.
Re:Why choose? (Score:3, Interesting)