Comments: 416 +- Technology: Microsoft vs. Google — Mutually Assured Destruction on Monday July 13, @11:06AM
jmcbain writes "Robert X. Cringely asserts that nothing good will come out of the ongoing war between Microsoft and Google: 'The battle between Microsoft and Google entered a new phase last week with the announcement of Google's Chrome Operating System — a direct attack on Microsoft Windows. This is all heady stuff and good for lots of press, but in the end none of this is likely to make a real difference for either company or, indeed, for consumers. It's just noise — a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check.'"
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And tomorrow will be like today, only more so.
-- Isaiah 56:12, New Standard Version
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First Nuclear Weapon Equipped Post (Score:5, Funny)
Kaboom!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Hence nuclear software wasteland.
Re:First Nuclear Weapon Equipped Post (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the issue is less "will free crap ruin us" and is more "will pointless free crap, just released in an attempt to shore up eroding market share ruin us". And the answer is, yes. But as only one of the companies involved is attempting to make up their costs for giving stuff away for free by doing it in 'volume' and the other is using free stuff to expand their actual revenue stream, the posited scenario is a straw man.
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Re:First Nuclear Weapon Equipped Post (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:First Nuclear Weapon Equipped Post (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as you have a point to it, nothing. But if you are doing it just 'because all the cool kids are' then eventually you are going to have to face the realization that you still need to be able to make money to pay for it.
Google, despite their rep for dipping a finger in everything, tends to have a fairly reasonable track record for having a plan to monetize their services.
Microsoft, on the other hand, seems to just shit things out and hope enough people will like it and use it.
Bing is what, their fifth go at being a search engine? Not once actually having any sense of what they wanted to be other than a "Google-killer", even before Google 'needed' killing.
Thats the problem. Microsoft is the proverbial monkey throwing feces at the wall to see what sticks. And the problem with that is if Microsoft decides something you like isn't sticking well enough, well it's off to the chopping block again and lets hope the next iteration is something you can at least stand.
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Dear Mr Cringley (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course if you read the article, I know it is a lot to ask, you will find that he is not talking about competition. For the very short summary.
MS Makes money from Windows and Office.
Google makes money from search based advertising.
Nothing else really matters to either company.
MS attempts at the search ad market and Google's attempts are the OS market are not intended to succeed. They are just the corporate equivalent or "be nice to me or I will fuck your girlfriend". Both side know the other has no chance, but the media loves to talk about it.
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Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:5, Insightful)
why?
why cant google create a successful operating system? would it be so out of the realm of possibility to see "google os" displayed alongside microsoft windows, in shrink-wrap packaging, at your local best buy? and perhaps significantly cheaper, and catering to a certain market who do not require Office but simply internet access with a few applications?
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Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's anything I've learned from the current browser war, it's that the best way to take down Microsoft is not another monopoly, but healthy competition.
i.e. FireFox has done a bang-up job in being a strong competitor to Internet Explorer. Yet it remained fairly niche until Safari, Opera, and Chrome all worked there way into people's lives.
They're all still niches in of themselves, but they add up to a whole that presents a serious competition to Microsoft. Worse yet, they've captured enough marketshare to where the idea of IE being the "only option" has mostly gone the way of the dodo.
Competition for Windows will need to be the same. No one Operating System will dethrone it. Not Linux, not OS X, not Google Chrome OS. But together, in competition, they can become more than the sum of their parts.
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Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:4, Interesting)
If you think companies don't diversify, you are horribly mistaken.
Do you think that Kraft foods only makes cheese for example? Companies diversify into similar fields.
From a consumer point of view you are dead correct in that you are oblivious to the other dealings of many companies. MS makes money from things other than windows and office. Lots of other things. If that was all they did, they'd go broke. They make money off programming deals, etc. The closest thing to say about MS and google is: they both profit from software, internet, and hardware. Thus isn't not even expanding their capability, just more work in a field they already work in.
MS attempts at search have been horrible as they haven't improved anything [searchenginejournal.com] and have been using them to hide data [blackdog.ie](look up situations involving bing on that - search anything that is negative about MS). I'm not saying google's attempts at an OS are going to be 100 % successful (as nobody can predict the future with an uneducated guess), but android is optimized for ARM, so it actually makes sense to create a separate OS. Plus, they have a ton of programmers?
Wow, when MS said they had something to announce monday, I didn't think it'd be an article full of spin.
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Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course if you read the article, I know it is a lot to ask, you will find that he is not talking about competition.
Of course not. This is Robert X. Cringely. He's talking about "war ... destruction ... horrible nasty ... look at the bones!"
He's a loud, but relatively uninsightful prognosticator of tech markets. Nothing to see here.
More to the point, he's wrong. Microsoft and Google aren't involved in a "war", they're involved in a re-alignment of the market. Google is attempting to assert that the market for operating systems is so moot that there's no longer a value in productizing the OS itself so much as the service of maintaining it. Microsoft is asserting that "uhh... we can do search just as well as Google did 5 years ago. So there."
Feel free to select your "winner" in this non-war.
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Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I did read the article, and I have to say it didn't exactly meet high standards of analytical brilliance.
There's a very simple reason for Microsoft to try search business away from Google. If Google makes money at it, then so can Microsoft.
On the other hand, the idea that Google's Chrome OS is going to be a threat to MS Windows on the desktop anytime soon is fantasy. Think about Android. Android is a fascinating OS, but it hasn't taken the phone world by storm -- yet.
I think that Google may be more interested in defining the capabilities of classes of devices. The thing about laptops and desktops is that the platform vendor is not in the capability limiting business. On a mobile phone, it is, because people don't pay for most of their phones. The carriers do, and the carriers are interested in things like lock-in and preventing competition with network services by software using generic network services. Android, I think, is an attempt to liberalize controls on what mobile devices can do.
Likewise in the great spectrum auction, Google tried to leverage their participation into a change of the auction's rules.
So, putting on my wildass speculation hat for a moment, I am lead to wonder whether the Chrome operating system is an attempt to alter the course of the netbook space away from devices that are artificially constrained, and possibly which tie users to specific networks and service providers. One can imagine a version of Windows for netbooks carefully constrained so it doesn't undermine the main Windows product, and which tries to funnel users toward Bing. Given Microsoft's clout with manufacturers, they could well launch such a device. It could be sold at very low margins from Microsoft's perspective because it would generate a regular revenue stream.
That kind of closed world is bad for Google. It doesn't have to take the world by storm with these offerings, it just has to tip developments in the right places to keep the world open. A straight-jacketed version of Windows XP that funnels users to MS services but is cheap to put on a netbook might seem like a good deal to a manufacturer, but not if they have to put their systems up against a more open one.
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Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the whole point of a Doomsday Machine is lost, if you *keep* it a *secret*! Why didn't you tell the world, EH?
It was to be announced at the Party Congress on Monday. As you know, the Premier loves surprises.
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Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:5, Insightful)
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M.A.D. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:M.A.D. (Score:5, Funny)
The only way to win is... to not install either OS?
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It's dirty software I tells you dagnabbit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Competition (Score:4, Insightful)
war (Score:3, Insightful)
Mutually Assured Destruction? I think not... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the author of the summary understands the meaning of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
If the MAD policy were in effect and "shots" were being fired, both companies would fall...
If by MAD the author presumes that Google will somehow be able to use its operating system as an assault on Windows, that would also assume that Microsoft could/would use Windows as an assault on Google AND since Google cannot reciprocate in kind, Microsoft would somehow have the ability to kill off Google currently. The day Microsoft hardcodes into Windows the inability to access Google, that'll be the day Microsoft Windows officially begins its death spiral...
I just don't see this analogy making sense...
Re:Mutually Assured Destruction? I think not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Me neither.
What Google s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has to fear more than anything else is that heâ(TM)ll awake one day to learn that the Google search engine suddenly doesn t work on any Windows computers: something happened overnight and what worked yesterday doesnâ(TM)t work today. It would have to be an act of deliberate sabotage on Microsoft s part and blatantly illegal, but that doesnâ(TM)t mean it couldn t happen. Microsoft would claim ignorance and innocence and take days, weeks or months to reverse the effect, during which time Google would have lost billions.
Does he _really_ think Microsoft would do that? How? Some intentionally broken windows update? If they really could do that (and I don't think it's possible in any way), and if they really did that, then:
1 - Google and people all around the world would figure out ways of making google work again in any Windows computer.
2 - Microsoft would drown itself in legal issues in no time.
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Re:Mutually Assured Destruction? I think not... (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea is not really get a huge market share on corporate sector. It is just to play havoc with Microsoft's standard strategy of forcing upgrades, changing file formats to continue the vendor lock etc. Once Firefox got just 10% market share the web sites started coding for the standards and stopped special hacks for IE and IE's market share came tumbling down.
Once ChromeOS establishes a net presence and demands interoperability with ExchangeServer, ExchangeServer will have to become standard compliant. iPhone could do that, but Apple is more likely to make a deal with Microsoft and get a special closed API support from MSFT leaving others to lurch.
Once google docs, and other office replacements reach a market share of about 10%, and they interact with some 10% of the established MsOffice users and demand compatibility and interoperability, maintaining vendor lock by the traditional methods of API changes, file format changes, mysterious bugs that affect others but not Microsoft etc would not fly.
When Microsoft products follow open standards and are interoperable, the profit margins will shrink. That is the only way for Google to survive. As long as Microsoft has cash cows, it will be able undercut competition drive them out of business and resume business as usual. That is the threat Google is fighting off.
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Re:Mutually Assured Destruction? I think not... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the conclusion of the article the author talks about how Google and Microsoft will not defeat each other, but some third player will storm in with innovative new ideas and steal the show. It's more like Mutually Assured Distraction in that they will be blindsided by some up-and-comer who is more in tune with what end users really need.
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Right.... (Score:3, Insightful)
or, indeed, for consumers. It's just noise -- a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check
How is it MAD? MS, try as it might, simply can't make a search engine that is going to be used more than Google's. Google will still lose out to Windows on a few things even with Chrome OS, for one being the large amount of specialty applications out there for Windows.
Chrome OS being open source... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, consumers won't care at first, but the fact that Chrome OS is open source will have, in my opinion, a long term impact on the industry and thus eventually the consumers. Sorry, I would bet Cringely is wrong on that one.
Is cringley a microsoft shill ? (Score:4, Interesting)
honestly, i dont know whether if he is. he surely sounds like one.
And Bing...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are not Ballmer intentions to destroy Google notorious ("I will fucking kill them")?
Why should launching a Web OS for netbooks be considered a declaration of war, while launching a search engine (Bing) be considered business as usual?
As another poster wrote, this is called competition and let the better OS win.
Spy vs Spy (Score:3, Insightful)
How riduculous (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Googleâ(TM)s real interest to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success.
So Google doesn't make money from people running other OS's? Google ads don't appear in my browser when I'm running Ubuntu? Would the Google Chrome OS or browser presumably block its own ads? Now I understand why this has the tag diecringleydie.
Chrome OS and Bing (Score:3, Funny)
Mutually assured distraction?
Security an issue with Chrome? (Score:4, Interesting)
Cringe-worthy analysis (Score:5, Interesting)
Jesus.
This is like bad science fiction, written before the internet was invented - by Dan Brown. Cringely is such a tool.
Chrome OS Direct Attack on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's what would be a "direct attack" on Windows:
Attempting to hack into Microsoft's corporate intranet and delete the source code and documentation for Windows.
Releasing into the wild malware that targets windows installed base and destroys systems that run Windows.
Taking on a project to come up with your own operating system isn't an attack on Windows. It's competition. Windows doesn't have any inherent right to its marketshare.
That's just crazy talk. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it wasn't for Google Chrome and Firefox, we would still be using IE6.
If it wasn't for Linux, there would probably not nearly the investment in Vista and Win7 that there has been.
And, I guarantee you, that if there were no Linux free IDEs, there would be no Visual Studio Express. I doubly guarantee you, that, if there was no gcc, there would be no standards compliant C++ in Visual Studio.
Google may not conquer the world with Chrome OS, and I think will ultimately lose to Microsoft, but, competition benefits everyone.
What will Google do to bolster search to respond to Bing? How will Adobe respond to Silverlight... you can laugh at Silverlight 1.0, dismiss 2.0, but MS has away of just chugging away like the borg when they want to attack a market.
It's all bound to keep people on their toes. What would be the alternative? A treaty between Google and Microsoft keeping each other in the browser and desktop, respectively? That would suck.
Makes more sense than Cringely lets on (Score:4, Interesting)
Chrome OS fills a number of needs. Whether these turn out to be the needs of end-users remains to be seen, but Chrome OS is not just some industry giants engaging in a slanging match:
1. Chrome OS will help segment Atom from Pentium and Core. That's a pretty big need right there, for Intel, anyway.
2. It could fill a not-yet-filled void: There is a very good chance Chrome will end up dominating netbook Linux the way Android is on the way to dominating handset Linux. Android is a really nice system, and deserves to win versus most other mobile Linux alternatives. Android is accelerating the use of Linux in handsets. Chrome might be that much better than other netbook Linuxes that it, too, ends up dominating and expanding it's market segment.
3. OEMs have been porting Android to devices that may not be the best match for Android. Chrome OS is a better answer than diluting or de-focusing Android to make it a more universal OS.
4. It completes the strategic picture for GWT, Gears, and Chrome: Google has a multi-layered strategy to make their applications run on any OS and any browser. If GWT and Gears on IE on Windows 7 are one end of the spectrum, Chrome OS is the other end. Microsoft has an OS platform where they can integrate search and the cloud and local applications. Now Google does, too.
I would not be surprised to see an Android application runtime on Chrome OS, alongside the browser/JavaScript runtime.
CRINGELY is an Idiot (Score:5, Interesting)
Ahh, there I said it. It feels good to say it.
He's the broken clock of pundits, he's right twice a day, but only by accident.
The problem with Google vs Microsoft is that Google should have made this move 6 years ago and it would have been in place to capitalize on the fiasco that is/was Vista.
The advantage Google has over, say, Canonical with Ubuntu, ls that everyone knows who Google is, sheesh, its used as a verb. Google docs is getting some uptake in smaller companies. OpenOffice is getting some uptake in others. The economy is helping the lower cost alternatives. People with skills are losing jobs and turning to lower cost or free alternatives in order to make money contracting.
Google can deal with Intuit, Adobe, and others to get their apps ported to Linux.
Google has the resources to make it happen. To beat Microsoft on the desktop market. The question is will they?
Remember Windows on 90% Desktop (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope Microsoft gets stuffed by Google (Score:5, Insightful)
A monopoly is not just the lack of substitute (or competing) goods - it's about the lack of viable competing goods. So in this case, MS still fits the bill (e.g. Being the most popular platform, and with the win32 API being very heavily embedded in many products, targeting Windows is the only viable option for a lot of companies. It doesn't necessarily mean it's the only one)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple? Everything is a major pain in the ass for developers when compared to the simplicity of developing for Windows.
Google? Let's face it, even Java developers admit now that
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A shame that a lot of the products people are looking for tend to be primarily Windows-only, which make those viable options, unviable.
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Until Adobe and Steinberg and Native Instruments and EA and Valve and id Software and M-Audio and Boss and Tascam and Alesis and Mackie and Blizzard all start to support Linux development, Linux will never be a viable alternative.
Linux is a great OS for basic stuff. That's why it makes a lot of gains in netbooks, because that's a computer for simple stuff. Beyond that, where are the games? the multimedia production? driver support?
Let me be clear, this is not the fault of Linux, this is the fault of third p
Re:I hope Microsoft gets stuffed by Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes there are competing products but most do not gain much (commercial) traction. Most companies don't gain much outside of their core businesses. And it is hard to come with a product that really can compete and dethrone a firmly entrenched player.
However there are exceptions.
A new browser came out, finally settled on the name "FireFox", and in a few years time got like 30% of the market.
A new mobile phone came out of a company that had never ventured in the mobile phone market before, got a lot of hype, and now is the reference to which all other phones are compared. This is Apple's iPhone of course.
Asus' EEEPC came out and virtually overnight created a new market, and now every manufacturer wants to have a cheap netbook on the market, in the 10" size range.
So there are more examples. Google itself is one: without any advertising it became the de-facto standard for searching, the name even became even a verb.
Who knows what this GoogleOS will do. Maybe it is really that much better than Windows. Google has the media attention already, that helps a lot to at least attract publicity. We are all expecting ARM processor based netbooks soon (prototypes have been demoed already), and Windows simply does not run on that processor. Whether ARM based netbooks/notebooks with GoogleOS or some Linux distro (e.g. NetBuntu) will make it remains to be seen. It would surprise me if it really makes a big impact on the market, though it would make things very interesting if it does.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:not good? (Score:5, Insightful)
Today...
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Re:not good? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the huge number of users who know nothing but how to use a web browser, I think you're quite mistaken. I think it's very likely that Chrome OS will replace Windows for most non-geek consumers -- and because it's going to be open source, a lot of geeks will probably adopt it too.
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Re:not good? (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the huge number of users who know nothing but how to use a web browser, I think you're quite mistaken. I think it's very likely that Chrome OS will replace Windows for most non-geek consumers -- and because it's going to be open source, a lot of geeks will probably adopt it too.
And the same huge number of users when asked "what OS do you want on your new PC, Windows or Google Chrome?", will say "Windows" because they don't have a clue what an OS is and "Windows" sounds vaguely familiar. The only way the clueless masses will use it is if it's the only choice on a cool-looking netbook or laptop and they're hooked on the color of it.
As far as I can tell, Google Chrome is a glorified web dumb terminal that some people will happen to run Linux apps on. Businesses won't flock to it because it will lack Windows application compatibility. Clueful home users won't use it for the same reason ("Hey, why can't I use iTunes on this laptop or pull pictures from my Kodak camera using their Windows application???")
I like open source just as much as the next guy here and I'd love to see a competitor to Windows, but my need to get work done supersedes my desire to make a statement about open software. With what we currently know, the Google Chrome OS is as much a competitor to Windows as Google Docs and Gmail is to Microsoft Office and Outlook/Exchange.
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Re:not good? (Score:4, Informative)
From what we know today, Google Chrome OS is aimed for a netbook. A netbook isn't something you install heavy apps on. If it's running a heavy app, it's almost always already being hosted on a server and you are just 'remoting' in, i.e. a terminal.
Therefore, this is, very easily, a good compeditor for the netbook market.
Just doing a rough count here at my computer at work, assuming my company was down with it, a good 60 to 80% of my job could be done from a netbook (of sufficent screen size) running a generic properly setup and compatible browser appliance.
There are things that I doubt I could run from it, such as legacy programs built in Windows for accessing out of date systems. But the majority of the none job specific apps (i.e. time clocks, HR management, training, etc.) are all web based. Google Docs is sufficent for the majority of purposes MS Office is put to.
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Re:not good? (Score:4, Insightful)
And the same huge number of users when asked "what OS do you want on your new PC, Windows or Google Chrome?", will say "Windows" because they don't have a clue what an OS is and "Windows" sounds vaguely familiar.
Amen. Pre-installed by a vendor and sold as a finished device is the only way OS's gain any real market.
As far as I can tell, Google Chrome is a glorified web dumb terminal that some people will happen to run Linux apps on.
On this I disagree. Google is selling a glorified dumb terminal, but they're selling more than that too. They're partnering to sell it tailored to portable hardware and with Web services taking the place of applications and enabled to run as local applications using offline Web technologies.
Businesses won't flock to it because it will lack Windows application compatibility.
For the most part I agree, but I don't rule out some businesses deciding to go with an all in one solution including GMail and Google Apps, for those businesses looking to cut costs or who are not already entrenched in Windows.
Clueful home users won't use it for the same reason ("Hey, why can't I use iTunes on this laptop or pull pictures from my Kodak camera using their Windows application???")
Now this is a really interesting point because, why can't you run iTunes on it? Apple doesn't support Linux today, but there is basically no market for Linux for home users today and it is only attractive if they want to target niche power user geeks. If Google gets Chrome OS in front of a few million home users, Apple and other vendors likely will respond by making iTunes and similar applications available for the platform, especially considering that doing so is easiest creating a Web application that is cross platform going forward and adds value for mobile devices and other desktops going forward.
I like open source just as much as the next guy here and I'd love to see a competitor to Windows, but my need to get work done supersedes my desire to make a statement about open software.
That goes for most Slashdot users, but we're not representative of the mainstream market. My mother bought a cheap Toshiba netbook a few weeks ago. All the apps she uses are Web apps already with the exception of a really old and discontinued word processor. The same is true for many people and for some organizations. These kinds of devices might work well for gradeschool students and a subset of businesses as well.
With what we currently know, the Google Chrome OS is as much a competitor to Windows as Google Docs and Gmail is to Microsoft Office and Outlook/Exchange.
This is pretty much true. The thing is, Google Docs and GMail are slowly gaining a little traction against MS. Further, every additional monopoly of MS, which Google can target removes one more stumbling stone to Google's attempts to market other products. Right now to sell a user on Google Docs, Google has to either work around the limitations of IE or convince a user to download an alternative browser and start using it and to download Google Gears and navigate to the Google Docs page. That's three or four levels of actions from the end user after they buy a computer, to market and convince the user to do, just to get their Word processing on front of an end user. The only reason they are getting any use is because they provide it for free and it works in a pseudo crippled way on IE.
Now imagine a user buying a netbook that ships with Google Docs on the desktop. They don't have to fight IE being there by default and they don't have to fight to get the user to Google Docs. Further, because they control the browser, it can have Google Gears and run in offline made just fine and can be much more functional than IE allows. I think the Google OS is part of the solution to Google's lack of traction in other markets. MS does really well because t
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Re:not good? (Score:4, Informative)
You seem to be a bit behind the times [hubpages.com] on this issue.
I use both Outlook/Exchange and Gmail on a daily basis and I admin an Exchange server (and used to admin Sendmail and Qmail). It's not news to me that you can migrate from Outlook/Exchange to Gmail; I've investigated it. Gmail provides a fresh interface and much faster searching, however the calendar functionality doesn't come close to Outlook. I won't rehash all the cloud computing issues and how a web app is often clumsy when compared to a native application, but the issues are still there.
Your link doesn't address Google Docs versus M$ Office. I use both as well. Google Docs is sufficient for only the most basic word processing and spreadsheets. If one tries to do multipage spreadsheets with formulas, graphs, lookups, macros (Business 101 stuff), Google Docs spreadsheets are painful to use and just doesn't have much of the functionality needed.
You might be able to replace my coffee with Folger's crystals, but not the gas in my car. The same goes with open source/web apps/cloud computing apps and my business applications.
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Re:isn't that a good thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
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