Microsoft's Biggest Threat - Google or Open Source? 240
Glyn Moody writes "Google always plays down suggestions that there's any looming clash of the titans between itself and Microsoft. Meanwhile, the search giant is pushing open source in every way it can. They're contributing directly by contributing code to projects and employing top hackers like Andrew Morton, Jeremy Allison and Guido van Rossum, and indirectly through the $60 million fees it pays Mozilla, its Summer of Code scheme and various open source summits held at its offices. Google+OSS: could this be the killer combination that finally breaks Microsoft?"
Google is OSS (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux/OSS are the tools which allow Google to exist.
I'm just waiting for the next big Google.
Re:Google is OSS (Score:4, Insightful)
FOSS would pose just as big a danger to them as it does to microsoft if they did otherwise.
A tad cynical perhaps, but you can bet if they thought there was more money in closed source than open, they'd go that way.
One more thing, where is the source for gmail? Or google maps (not the API), or many other google projects. If they're so into the foss, why are so many of their 'free' offerings all but proprietary in nature?
Re:Google is OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
All but proprietary? How is Google implementing an appliaction they don't provide source for, but do publish an API for, different from, say, Microsoft implementing something they don't provide source for, but do publish an API for? Wait! I'll tell you how it's different. With Microsoft, you run the software and you store your data. With Google, they run the software and they store your data.
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Re:Google is OSS (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole idea of a service over software model is that the source code can be given away, it's the service that makes the cash.
And no-one would bother setting up another gmail using the gmail source. They'd have to differentiate themselves significantly to appeal to the massed gmail users, or current non gmail users. That wouldn't be trivial.
The point of opening the source is that while others can take it for use in their own things, they can also add to it and google could have those additions back.
Re:Google is OSS (Score:4, Insightful)
They give back source code for many different projects but it would be completely stupid to give away the source code to Gmail because they would loose more then they gain.
You need to stop looking at the advantages to yourself and look at what they get out of releasing code. It's their code they can do what they want with it.This boggles me. Yes it's the service that makes cash so why would they risk creating more companies offering the same service they are?
I don't understand what opening the source code has to do with providing software as a service as you just wrote.
"Software as a service" would be more akin with paying so much a year and getting free support, upgrades and bug fixes. You don't need to open source the code or distribute it for free to sell it as a service. I would describe what your are saying as an open source business model which differs slightly.
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I assume you mean Free Software not open source.
...and I am sure that is exactly what Microsoft think, but that's not my point now is it.
What you're saying is that it doesn't matter what Google has done [google.com] for open source and free software, because they're making money off some of their products they haven't done enough. Instead of praising them for wh
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A tad cynical perhaps, but you can bet if they thought there was more money in closed source than open, they'd go that way.
More than that, now that they're a publicly traded corporation the board can be sued by investors if Google knew that closed source was more profitable but chose not to pursue that route. Public corporations (unfortunately) have the sole purpose of maximizing shareholder value, and they are legally obligated to do so. Theoretically, a more socially oriented government could require corporations to have goals other than this, but this won't happen for a loong time, if ever.
The next big play will be using OSS (Score:2)
Re:Google is OSS (Score:4, Funny)
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As it stands it's embrace, extend, hoard. It's within the letter of the license but certainly not within the spirit of it.
Google has profited MASSIVELY from the open source movement and has paid back (for them) token bits and nothing where it might hurt their c
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Maybe Traf-O-Data, but even that's a stretch...
Microsoft's biggest threat is Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
In my humble and unsubstantiated opinion, Microsoft is Microsoft's biggest threat. They have too many products and too many people, and it has made them uncompetitive. If they refocus on their core business, they can come back. Google and other OSS competitors are superfluous.
Microsoft's Products include:
Accounting software (5 distinct huge business packages plus Microsoft Money and a dozen bolt-on applications); Hardware (Mice, Keyboards, Joysticks, cameras, headsets, and game gear); Operating Systems (Servers, workstations, mobile devices, and embedded devices); online services (MSN, Live services, Search, Groups... this is a huge list); database services (Sql Server), Groupware (Exchange), Office Suites (Office, Works), 3 distinct sets of Mapping software, drawing software, desktop publishing software, Reference software, a graphing calculator application, Hardware and software media players, online media services with varying levels of compatibility, tv set top boxes, a dozen different development languages which may or may not be integrated into visual studio.. The list goes on and on,
OSS is one of several competitors offering an alternative for people to switch away from MS products. If oss ceased to exist, some other competitor would arise. That is how a free market works.
-Ellie
p.s. Google, pay attention, you are spreading out too. Diversification is good, but stay good at what makes you great.Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft's biggest threat is itself. As with any business model, If it the best that there is, their is no real threat from a business model elsewhere. If, However, is not the best then the business is left open to real competition.
If Microsoft's hotmail was the best we would not have Gmail, and the others. If Microsoft's Windows was the best then there would be no need for Linux occupying hard drives in a great deal of servers or Apple's OS X, high premium, consumer computers. The fact that all these op
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Any successful computer-related product anywhere threatens MS.
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I actually like some of the Microsoft hardware. Their mice are great, their routers are great (the ones I have personally purchased, ie not many). In fact I wish they would just quit everything else and focus on their only good products, mice and routers.
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Just as an exercise, try to figure out what their operational costs would be if they had to license Windows 2003 server for each server they have. Plus, as they are big enough, they can have the luxury of supporting their own proprietary linux distribution, specifically built for their purposes and without the added cruft of a general purpose
Since when are these even direct competitors? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Since when are these even direct competitors? (Score:5, Insightful)
Live Search versus Google Search.
Google Earth versus Virtual Earth.
Windows Mobile versus Google Android.
Google Docs and Google Pack (contains StarOffice) versus Microsoft Office.
Google pumping money into Free Software (Summer of Code, employment of key developers) versus pretty much any proprietary software (Windows, Office, IE) that Microsoft tries to sell.
The main way in which they're not competing is where their primary profit lies. Google doesn't make much money off software distribution yet, and Microsoft's primary source of revenue isn't advertising yet. There are certain areas (eg. document applications, mobile phone operating systems) where they plan to make money in different ways. Google wants to display ads alongside your documents, whereas Microsoft wants you to buy their office suite. Google is developing Android to get as many phones as they can internet-enabled so that people use the internet more and are exposed to more of their ads, whereas Microsoft wants mobile phone manufacturers to pay them a license fee for each mobile phone running Windows Mobile.
I think we're all familiar with Microsoft's business strategy. It's fairly simple: they sell software. It works well. (or at least it has until now)
Google's strategy makes it look like they're diversifying because of all the products they're launching, but I think they're actually just trying to put their ad network in as many different places as possible. They've done it for search, documents, emails, and videos. They're looking at putting internet onto phones across a wider audience, and they're surely hoping that some new types of services will emerge that are compatible with their advertising model.
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I'm not a Microsoft fan-boy. In fact, our company is totally run on FOSS and we've never looked back at MS for anything other than pointing out to people how much freer we were without the Beast of Redmond on our backs. But I'm always left a little confused by the monopoly charge and, since you seem to ha
Re:Since when are these even direct competitors? (Score:5, Insightful)
MS is an OS and applications company that has recently taken an interest in search tools, and advertising, and game consoles, and live services, and mapping, and portable music hardware, and low-end laptops, and enterprise servers, and smartphones, and content delivery, and standards, and anything else involving binary code that they can get their hands into.
The problem with MS is that they've lost focus on the business that built and sustains them -- Windows and Office. As it stands, Office is still the must-have application, which drives every business in which MS is successful. Replace Office, and you no longer need Windows, Exchange, MS Server, MS SQL, etc. None of their other activities are successful -- they're either gaping sinkholes of cash or so marginally profitable that they're unsustainable for anyone not sitting on $50 billion in cash.
What Google gets right is that their entire business is focused on the core of search, advertising, and the organization of information. Everything they do points straight back to and reinforces the core business.
Google's business is possible thanks to OSS tools, and Google deserves respect for going well beyond what is required under OSS licenses and actively contributing code and developer time to projects that are only marginally related, or completely unrelated to their core business. This doesn't cause them to lose focus, but it does keep their developers sharp and happy, and able to approach problems in completely new ways.
Take the office suite, for example. MS' big innovation for the new Office: a redesigned interface that many users, at least initially, find confusing and frustrating. It's interesting but not really necessary, and it's inexcusable that there's no mechanism to display menus in a way that users are already used to. With the Google office tools (which admittedly are nowhere near ready to replace MS Office) you get something that really is groundbreaking: the ability for multiple people to edit the same document at the same time.
There's also the difference in how these companies view business and threats. In MS' case, they see a threat in every business sector they don't control outright, and in many they do but where there are still upstarts who can't be bought, bullied, or sued. For companies like Google and others who rely on and develop OSS, competition means better software and improved opportunities for all.
MS isn't going away any time soon and there will always be a place for proprietary software. But increasingly proprietary solutions will be limited to niche professional markets (AutoCAD, ProTools, Premier etc), common applications will move from desktop to server and become platform-agnostic (office suites, email/calendaring, collaboration and versioning), and OSS apps will become increasingly robust and capable for armchair enthusiasts and pros alike (Ardour, GIMP, Cinelerra, My/PostgreSQL, etc).
MS can look for threats wherever it wants and they will find a lot. But the real threat doesn't come from any particular company, sector, or application. It's environmental -- the platform will simply become less and less relevant as time moves on. The real threat is that MS won't see this and won't react in time. It will be the beginning of the end as soon as there is a platform-neutral, drop-in replacement for Office + Outlook + Exchange + Sharepoint. We're not there yet, but the day is fast approaching.
The money machine which is Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft had a stand-out first quarter.
Each of the company's five business divisions showed double-digit revenue growth.
That was particularly important in the Client Div., the group where Microsoft counts Windows sales. There, revenue jumped 25%, to $4.1 billion, an astonishing gain for a mature market Microsoft Results Turn Heads [businessweek.com]
Retail sales of Office 2007 have been breathtaking, numbers so big that they are difficult to grasp:
Through end of November, U.S. retail PC software sales are up 10.3 percent year over year as measured in dollar volume...By comparison, Office sales are up 50.7 percent, by the same measure and in the same time frame.
"Here's the really interesting statistic," said...NPD's director of Software Industry Analysis. "Over two-thirds of the dollar volume growth in the U.S. retail PC software market in 2007 can be attributed to Microsoft Office. In other words, the ratio of Office dollar growth to total PC software growth is 67 percent."
The "magnitude of Office sales relative to the rest of the PC software market" is phenomenal, "It's the massively huge tail wagging the dog. If the senior execs at Best Buy, Office Depot, etc. don't buy Jeff Raikes [president of Microsoft's Business division] a beer the next time he's in town, something is seriously wrong." The Year of Office 2007 [microsoft-watch.com]
Microsoft hasn't forgotten the Mac. From the same story:
For Black Friday, Microsoft offered a surprising deal: for about 56 bucks, after rebates, Office 2004 Student and Teacher Edition and the forthcoming Office 2008 Special Media Edition. The new, top-of-the-line Mac Office version would otherwise sell for about $500.
As measured in dollars, U.S. retail Black Friday sales of Mac Office were up 215.8 percent.
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MS has invested in the neighborhood of 10 figures into the XBox line. Revenues from the XBox to date are only 7 or 8 figures. This is a deficit of tens of millions of dollars -- which turns into hundreds of millions when you consider that the XBox hardware is sold
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> The XBox 360 has become the best gaming platform for hardcore gamers,
Which is a niche-market to start with.
> beating out the over-hyped (and -priced) Playstation 3.
But it got beaten by the Wii, which has a broader appeal and is more "family-friendly".
Which you conveniently left-out
> I'd say MS's game console division is quite successful.
If you call sinking at least 6 billion in hard cash over the years before finally making a
Missing option.. (Score:5, Insightful)
After Vista they proved they've gotten far to large a head count to innovate. Unless they slim down their development team, they're going to go the way IBM did in the early 90s.
Simon.
exactly right (Score:2)
Let's hope that when they do implode (if that hasn't happened already and we just haven't noticed) they don't take the open source world with them. Maybe "we" need to start distancing ourselves?
Re:Missing option.. (Score:4, Insightful)
It goes beyond the fact that Microsoft has lost its ability to innovate, though that is a significant portion.
Microsoft still has the zero sum mindset, i.e., either it wins it all, or it walks away. Microsoft will do whatever needs to be done in order to preserve what it has, including watching the market move past them. Microsoft will always be the dominant player on the desktop, Microsoft's monopoly will assure that. However, what Microsoft's monoploy cannot prevent is another entity making the desktop significantly less important. Once the desktop loses its importance, Microsoft's very foundation is weakened.
Unless they slim down their development team, they're going to go the way IBM did in the early 90s.
The computing paradigm shifted away from IBM's mainframes in the early 90s. Will the paradigm shift away from Microsoft's desktops?
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It goes beyond the fact that Microsoft has lost its ability to innovate, though that is a significant portion.
Microsoft is a marketing company, they do NOT innovate much if at all. The last innovation was NETBUI and CIFS, only CIFS is used any more and has it's basis in fact to ftp/NFS.
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Take for instance spreadsheets. VisiCalc was the first then Lotus 1-2-3 came on the scene and from there MSFT came up with Excel. Excel in its early versions was not nearly as good but with time MSFT blew past Lotus both with marketing (Office bundle) and features. Now it is the standard bearer.
The more appliances I have the more
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Microsoft (it turns out) is just a software company. It has good ideas and bad ones, and (for good or ill) Windows is more and more a platform stabilized/planned by committee. This sounds terrible to people who like widgets and fiddley-bits (i count myself in their number) but it's better for the public, I think.
How many cars have you climbed into lately without wailing about the lack of innovation in steering wheels and pedals? Would it be
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This example is probably even worst (for Microsoft) than the "serve a new market through an old mature c
Re:Missing option.. (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW, every device I have wants to be hooked up to my PC including my Tivo, my phone, my camera, etc. If anything the proliferation of devices is making the desktop more important - not less. We are starting to see a network effect. It easy to have the PC as the hub because its a standard platform in which everything can interact.
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I saw this process at work Christmas morning at my sister's place. The youngest with her iPod Nano. The older with her digital camera. But the family's new Vista PC was where everything came together.
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Actually innovation rarely tends to come out of "industry leaders" in the first place. Microsoft has also always been a somewhat extreme example of "Embrace Extend Extinguish", (hence the Bill Borg icon).
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After Vista they proved they've gotten far to large a head count to innovate.
They are also their own worst enemy in the sense of XP competing with Vista.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month [wikipedia.org]
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The subject (Score:2)
I wouldn't say that Google is competing with Micro (Score:2)
Re:I wouldn't say that Google is competing with Mi (Score:2)
What did you say? (Score:5, Insightful)
That statement refers to Google. While I recognize Google's contribution to Open Source by the mentioned means, I would not give it that much credit.
Why is it that Picasa still does not run natively on Linux?
Why is it that one cannot specify ODF as among the file formats available for search, http://www.google.ca/advanced_search?hl=en [google.ca] despite the fact that ODF has been in existence for several years and some estimates put the number of ODF documents on the web in greater numbers as compared to Microsoft's OOXML?
Why is it that new products appear for the closed Windows platform before thet appear for the open Linux platform? They should appear simultaneously. [Emphasis mine].
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Surely that's obvious.
It comes down to one thing: Google's products are intended to be profitable, not primarily to serve an ideology. Sure, Google does have an ideology, but they are also a business.
And when it comes down to actually making a crust, what's more important... supporting an ideologically-rewarding OS, or actually getting your p
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So you want us to believe that releasing products at the same time would make Google less profitable? You make me laugh. What about being the first in a particular market?
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So you want us to believe that releasing products at the same time would make Google less profitable?
I can't speak for the GP, but the answer to your question is "yes".
It's expensive to build a product for any OS. It's particularly expensive to build a native product for Linux, due to the different metaphors which different GUI's expose. (To pick a simple one: does activation track mouse, as in classic X, or does activation follow selection, as in modern Linux GUIs?) The company would need to dedicate software engineers to building that version. Engineers able to make it at Google are a scarce resource
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It's particularly expensive to build a native product for Linux, due to the different metaphors which different GUI's expose.
There is surely more variables to consider when building for Linux. But this can be remedied. Have you heard of platform independent software? I know you have.
What about delving into open source and letting the installer figure out what environment the software is being installed on. This is not that expensive as the code is open, and available.
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Why is it that Picasa still does not run natively on Linux? Picasa [google.com] does run on Linux. I am not sure what you mean by natively, unless you mean it needs wine. But why have 2 separate source streams if you don't need them? One could say this about Java apps too, they need the JVM to run. So the point?
Why is it that new products appear for the closed Windows platform before thet appear for the open Linux platform? They should appear simultaneously.
Like what? I am at a loss to say I have seen anything
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It also puts off other people who hate open source for one reason or another. ODF is a file format specification and has nothing to do with open source software.
Kill office to kill MS (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kill office to kill MS (Score:5, Insightful)
I am glad you said this AND that you got modded up. Office is the app to kill. Make one that is better, works seamlessly with Office docs and you've got a chance. I use Office because I don't have the time or the desire to dick around with formatting issues and alot of companies are on the same playing field.
But let me also add, making an Office killer is not as simple as making a word processor, spread sheet, and presentation app. Office is a *development environment* and many, many companies use the programatic capabilities of Office to build apps that cal pull on different parts of the office suite. Those programmatic features are used by companies, not necessarily consumers and I will posit that company sales drive Office profits more than consumer sales. so I think to reall make a dent, any competing office suite has to either run Office apps/macros/scripts or interpret/convert existing office apps/macros/scripts as well.
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The speed and occasional stability problems do bother me though. I'm also lucky enough that I don't have to use it very often, it's a few times a week and not a few times a day.
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Office is one of the things that keeps businesses coming back, willing to pay for more abuse. After 11 versions of subtle incompatibilities, you'd think some of them would realize that they're being played.
After Office, kill Exchange. Most businesses consider email so critical that they freak when email is down for a couple of minutes, and don't care that the protocols tolerate this. When they can have a Free, more stable, feature for feature Exchange replacement that doesn't need constant maintenance,
Microsoft's greatest enemy is? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they dont stop using monopoly for advance and supporting open standards, they get big enemies like EU.
Microsoft would stay biggest software company if they would work together with industry, open standards and support competitors (Opera, Firefox, Openoffice.org etc) by ripping browser and mediaplayer off from OS (why OS should have red eye remover and music library?) so users can use what they want. Microsoft could install IE and WMP and other tools if they want to non-OEM windows version, but should allow OEM manufactures and end-users to remove them and install something else if wanted. Of course this would mean that Microsoft should start innovating and building better products and not just one big package what some people calls "OS", even it is more than just OS.
GNU/Linux and different distributions from it what includes different desktops and applications, isn't biggest enemy, yet! But it is big wheel what can turn MS weapons against MS itself.
ibm, ms and google (Score:5, Interesting)
Then MS will suddenly become a much loved company around here, 'cause 'round these parts, supporting OSS =
Then, in a need to fill the void left by Microsoft, Google will suddenly become the big bad guy. All of us on Slashdot will be praising Microsoft and hoping they can take down the big evil google.
or we could agree that both of these companies fulfil a certain niche that the other company cannot, and we need them both. one company provides employment for countless nerds due to its buggy software, while the other company helps those nerds find things, (like porn)
They are not in direct competition with each other.
Will MS no longer be needed? (Score:3, Insightful)
The main reason people use Windows is because other operating systems don't meet their needs. It's mainly a software thing, such as is the case for PC gaming (which is still ahead of consoles, but not by as much as in the past). Wine is a helpful product in that it eases the transition for many people, but it's not a complete replacement for Windows yet.
Since things like a suitable alternative for Photoshop (e.g., super GIMP) and a fully-featured Wine aren't going to appear over night, it'll be a long time before MS becomes irrelevant... unless computing moves online. Most business software is either written for Linux already (e.g., development IDEs) or can be COMPLETELY replaced by a combination of FOSS (e.g. Outlook -> Evolution). I replaced my Windows workstation with a Linux workstation at my last job when I became fed up with the task scheduling and constant SSHing in Windows (I had to work on Unix systems anyways).
People are leaving Windows. It's a very slow but consistent process. Every piece of commercial software developed for Linux is a blow to MS. Every computer running Mac OS X is a blow to MS. A lot of little things will bring down MS; it's inevitable. Google, though not a direct competitor, is a huge point of leverage.
Don't think Google's going to come out with Google OS. That's not in their plans. Their idea is to make the OS an irrelevant piece of software when it comes to doing your everyday computing tasks. MS is going to have to come up with a new strategy if they want to cease the antitrust legislation against them.
Here is what Microsoft needs to do... (Score:3, Interesting)
This would generate revenue while letting them hop off of the new version cycles that are intended to force upgrades without adding much in new features that out weigh the penalties of more and more problems.
I used to like Windows more than I do now. I shipped a commercial product on Windows 1.03 and for some business needs I still keep a Windows 2000 image on my MacBook.
Anyway I like to feel that I get good value for my IT investments (I am a one person consulting shop) and right now, I feel that I get best value from a nicely loaded MacBook and several leased managed Linux servers for my own stuff and Linux or Solaris servers for customer projects.
As a Linux user since about 1992 (I downloaded Slackware on a 2400baud modem - ouch!!) I continue to be a little disappointed with the 'Linux on the laptop' experience but I might eventually replace my MacBook with a Dell Linux laptop: it would be nice to just deal with just Linux. I have all but stopped using Common Lisp and Java for consulting, sticking with just Ruby - after many years of investing *lots* of time staying up to speed on many technologies, it is a refreshing change to concentrate more on problem solving than a wide mix of technologies.
Except for rare use on my Windows 2000 image, I would not even consider using any form of Windows for development work.
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I for one would not support a subscription model....I don't need a new version of Office just becuase the Ui changes...
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Even those net connected are going to get a little antsy with the messages that they have to keep paying to keep using something they consider they've already bought as part of their PC purchase
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Their core customer base is businesses licensing office for 10's/100's/1000's of PCs - and there's been a subscription model around for that for years. The annual fee is a lot easier to swallow than the one-off fee, particularly if your business is growing (if you're on the annual subscription, you don't need to buy a license with every new PC and every new starter you have - you ju
Still a secretive monopoly. (Score:4, Insightful)
While remaining even more secretive and becoming even more of a monopoly [google-watch.org] than Microsoft on things that actually matter, like their search and advertising business, to say nothing of their total disregard for privacy.
Can you say 'divide and conquer'? Thought you could.
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And it's this, at the very bottom, that causes me to wonder. The story asks, "Microsoft's Biggest Threat - Google or Open Source?" leaving me to ask myself, "Why give them the answer?" Of course, the post does not address this at all, but it's a real question: Why help Microsoft at all? They're
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Yeah, after all Google is sacrosanct and therefore nothing on google-watch could possibly have any validity (even if the research on that page does not come from google-watch at all, but from Graz University in Austria).
Microsoft is its own worst competition (Score:4, Insightful)
History dooms Microsft.
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I don't think that's true. If you look at Microsoft Research, they are doing a lot of interesting projects, including some actually innovative things. The new generation of software (Windows Vista, Office 2007, etc.) is quite different from the old software from an end user point of view. User interfaces have been changed, and backward compatibility isn
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In the second place, calling anything in Vista innovative is a real stretch, let alone disruptive. Its biggest feature is all the DRM that makes it so crappy.
Neither (Score:4, Interesting)
OSS is a bigger threat, mainly because of free office suites, and to a lesser degree Apache. Most of Microsoft's money comes from OSes, then from Office, and then services associated around server technology like
For the server side technology, Microsoft doesn't directly make money off of these (they give away
So what *ARE* Microsoft's biggest threats? Well, one of them is a little bit obvious when you look at their history, and what has caused them to lose the greatest amounts of money: Government and law. Microsoft is in a difficult position there, because their desktop business centers around pushing new and improved versions of their old product. Consumers, before they buy the next version of Windows, want to know what are the new and improved features, and if there aren't enough new and improved features, they won't spend the money to upgrade. However, if Microsoft adds too many new and improved features (e.g. by bundling a media player with their OS), they may get in trouble with certain governments (namely the British and US ones).
Software design jokes aside, Microsoft isn't dumb. They're already predicting, in the long term (10-20 years) that all of software will eventually become commoditized, and they have plans in place to move entirely in t
pick a side (Score:3)
on another hand a company whos main aim is to hoard data and serve ads with it, a company thanks to whom the web is littered with splogs
take a pick
evil or not evil, eitherway their main objective is profit (no matter what marketing fud they spread) and for google open source is a way to reach their objectives while cutting the costs, if they were so open why dont they share their algorithms or release their tools on linux?
The Difference (Score:2)
Microsoft sells software. Their continued existence is based on people continuing to buy their software. Google isn't, but that doesn't stop them from competing.
Google can provide web-based apps that will run on any OS, and these are likely to become more important than desktop apps in much the same way that personal computers became more important than central data centers. I see arguments against using web-based apps, but they are pretty much the arguments against allowing enterprise data onto perso
Microsoft and Google aren't competitors, but... (Score:2)
Google alone won't "kill" Microsoft, but perhaps a combination of Google + Linux/OSS + other Unixes + alternative user platforms such as Apple will be enough to ma
Calm It (Score:2)
Demarcation between importance of desktop/server (Score:2)
The True Measure (Score:3)
MSFT: $4.2 Billion last quarter
GOOG: $1.1 Billion last quarter
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That said, Google is the threat because they actually make money, meaning they can effectively penetrate other markets. To grow, you need to either exist in a growing market, or take a larger and larger chunk of your existing stable market, or expand into new markets. All of which take capital to acco
Re:The True Measure (Score:4, Informative)
MSFT: $12,599,000,000
IBM: $9,492,000,000
GOOG: $3,077,446,000
What is amazing is Google's growth:
2006 - $3,077,446,000
2006 - $1,465,397,000
2006 - $399,119,000
How about both? (Score:2)
The Biggest Threat: Educated Customers (Score:4, Interesting)
Both FOSS and Google help that education process, to different extents, and in different ways. So both are threats. Which is the biggest immediate threat? Whichever one manages to get its message into the dense brains of middle managers first. It's a hard call to make from here.
FOSS's advanced messages (freedom, collaboration, transparency, technical education, etc.) will take a long time to be understood. The FOSS "Free & Cheap Stuff" message is already catching on, but it's not enough of an education in its own right to undo Microsoft's abuses. FOSS supporters who work to thoroughly school their organizations and contacts in the issues do make a big impact.
But I think Google is in a somewhat better position to be the immediate threat. Why? It has a greater power to punch simple "soundbyte" messages, one at a time, into the psyche of of the huddled masses yearning to breath free. I don't know if they're going to do that or not, but they could, and that's the threat.
It's close to the topic of politics -- I don't like soundbytes but recognize their power over the naive. Political discourse would be different if the electorate were uniformly wise and educated on the issues. Not the way it should be, but more the way I think things are, and just my opinion.
Different paradigm (Score:2)
people (Score:3, Insightful)
Google isn't open source (Score:2)
The parts of Google that matter aren't open source. The search engine not only isn't open source, the rating algorithms are secret. None of the web apps are open source on the server side. Try to scrape Google's data and see what happens. Read their robots.txt file [google.com].
Sure, they have some open source stuff, but it's more in the nature of client code that slaves some open source app to Google's proprietary servers. You're not going to see an open source enterprise search engine [google.com] from Google, not one you c
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Hubris Is Always the Problem (Score:2)
Vista? Office 2007?
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Both are .. (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition [wikipedia.org]
Toss in a failed Vista Launch and stable alternatives including Apple, IBM OS/2, etc. They all eat at the pie that once was Microsoft's domain.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2 [wikipedia.org]
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Fixed!
Microsoft's Biggest Threat - Google and Open Source.
Didn't want a redundant mod though.
And that product is? (Score:2)
Windows 2000?
Because you're definitely not talking about Windows Me or Vista, or Works. Right? I think maybe "breaking" Microsoft may be a simplistic way of saying it, but please, yes, let's.
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The Judge who ruled Microsoft guilty of monopoly abuse and other illegal practices, that's who.
His recommendations were to break up Microsoft into two separate divisions, one for Windows and one for Office.
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- Because of the FUD they spread about Linux and open source software
- Because they pay a lot of money so people would use their "standards" instead of technically better standards
- Because if Microsoft should vanish, the next operating system everyone is using would probably be based on open source (Linux) and other open source applications would follow. In general open source applications are the best thing that can happen to a consumer, beca
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MORE MY MINICITY SPAM (Score:2)
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That has to change, and thankfully has been albeit slowly. The key is to avoid hardware made by manufactuerers that support MS' monopo
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I'm getting very tired of seeing this same myth trotted out again and again. The fact is that drivers in Linux are not hard to find or install because you don't have to find or install them. They're already there. And this goes for standard and and quite a wide range of exotic hardware.
Need some examples? I've used all the following hardw
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True, but I think the OP meant to say Windows wins when it comes to being able to make use of weird-assed crap hardware that litters the shelves of most electronics retailers. That, and maybe Broadcom NICs.
Your network print
The DRIVERS myth (Score:2)
Linux supports more hardware than any other operating system and is virtually virus free. [tomshardware.co.uk]
That some manufacturers make closed hardware that cannot be supported without extreme reverse engineering, if at all, is not Linux's fault. It's yours for buying that stuff. If you can't be bothered to check the HCL [linuxquestions.org] then at least quit whining.
It's no secret that Microsoft expends considerable capital to get manufacturers to keep their devices closed. The net benefit to those manufacturers should be that their prod
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