Google vs. Microsoft On the Desktop 222
Michael_Curator writes "Gary Edwards, president of the now-defunct Open Document Foundation, helps sort out the challenges Google faces displacing Microsoft on the desktop, pitting the strengths of Microsoft's proprietary stack against the developer candy that HTML 5 represents."
Take away the cloud (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what Google needs (Score:5, Interesting)
To give Microsoft something to seriously think about, Google needs an OS on the desktop. Android is a good start in my opinion. There are some efforts [arstechnica.com] in this direction already. The good thing is that Android eschews X, which is a pain to work with in its current form.
Next, they will need [meaningful] applications that work no matter what platform one happens to be using.
Third, targeting Microsoft must not be the aim, it must be the unplanned outcome. The aim must be tp "please" we the users.
That way, Google will succeed on the desktop.
Re:Take away the cloud (Score:3, Interesting)
most people don't know what a server or cloud is. they don't even care. all they want is that they can find their documents.
i guess it will go like this: "if i store it on the cloud/server/whatever, it's not always there, but if i put it in 'My Documents', it's always available. so i'll store it on 'My Documents""
Re:Here's what Google needs (Score:2, Interesting)
This:
Android eschews X
and this:
Third, targeting Microsoft must not be the aim, it must be the unplanned outcome. The aim must be tp "please" we the users.
Are the two most critical things that needs to happen for Linux to begin to take on significant market share. These are two of the biggest influences on the increasing success of Mac OS X.
Re:More Automated Spam? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Take away the cloud (Score:4, Interesting)
You are of course right in theory; But this is a typical case that "in theory theory is the same as practice; in practice things are different". HTML has somehow managed to get the right balance to be much better than other applications. Primarily, there are no viruses written in HTML and HTML+Java(ECMA)script has almost no practical viruses.
The key advantages of HTML / ECMAscript / HTTP include
Every other option has serious drawbacks
Disclosure: I'm currently interning at MS.
your honesty is appreciated. When you are just starting in the job market, any good job seems like a good idea. Please remember you have years and years of work, ahead. Taking ethical choices is a seriously good idea. When your CEO is threatening your president with firing you [dailytech.com] then you seriously should consider if that's a company you want to work for.
OS-less netbook (Score:2, Interesting)
- OutputLogic [outputlogic.com]
Cloud vs Desktop? Aren't they the same? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Take away the cloud (Score:1, Interesting)
You don't really think local internal storage is more reliable than the cloud?
Most users really don't have raids nor proper backup. I feel my documents are much more secure (and accessible) in my gmail than on my disk partition (come to count it, currently I have 9! not counting numerous USB disks or flash cards). And each can die moment, and I don't even think to start taking care of backuping them all up. Even if they don't die, get rewritten or formatted I will add or replace another computing device and migrating is always a pain, even for me.
Number of PCs per user is only going up, and the cloud is the only solution to the data mess that comes with.
And with smartphones and blackberries things get even better if you opt for the cloud.
I agree speed does not seem to be an issue (I still waste more time locating / browsing for my documents than it takes me to move them across the net).
Internet connection is reliable as electricity or mobile networks (if not more so :-) and we are so depended on it anyway (probably more than we are aware) that it does not make sense to constrain and lock down your documents with no clear benefit.
All my data on disks, diskettes, cdroms, printouts from 10 years are lost or destroyed except for my online home space at my ex college and my geocities page (oh wait, that's gone too :).
Amazingly we should side with... Microsoft! (Score:5, Interesting)
The standard desktop is better than Google desktop. Yes, everybody says, to put Google in a good light: "standard compliant" browsers, but that means nonstandard compliant mail, nonstandard everything else. We won't own software, we'll be always customers, dumb terminals, served from huge company's "clouds". Free software will be over, irrelevant. We won't be able to improve and modify our environment, we can't improve Gmail ourselves, there's no alternative/better/innnovative client for Gmail.
Economic forces are taking technology down a terrible path. The past is better: a world of protocols, servers and clients. A common neutral space...
The "portable" desktop, having your data everywhere should be solved by other means... I don't know, perhaps we should have personal servers, or at least we should contract personal servers from some kind of "personal server providers", which should be a standard and non-monopolistic thing. The "presence providers" envisioned by the XMPP protocol comes to mind...
Re:I'll give this much to Google (Score:3, Interesting)
You realize that preprocessor "orgy" happens anyways, just behind the scenes? And that if you used a proper IDE, you get the same "blinders" that MS-VS gives you?
And if that is your only complaint - the tools, then I challenge how you can call yourself a developer. Have you SEEN the Windows API? Now... thinking of that, have you seen glibc?
Please forgive me if I'm wrong, but from what you've given us, I'm hesitant to take anything you've said seriously.
Re:Take away the cloud (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Correction... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm all for java or webapplications, but that is where it crossed the line for me. Not to mention the prompt in firefox.
Re:Take away the cloud (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course I should probably use Google docs more, but my night job is teaching Office 2007, which means having to get used to all the changes they made since XP.
Integration plugins would be nice, however. I am currently using ftp to sync the different systems, and would like something simpler.