Microsoft vs. Google — Mutually Assured Destruction 416
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.'"
not good? (Score:1, Insightful)
That's true..in the sense that now Microsoft and Google now actually have competitors (God forbid). I say let 'em duke it out and may the best OS win.
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...
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.
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)
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)
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.
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.
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.
RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Cringely is stating that if one company decided to REALLY attack the other, they would start throwing serious resources into the projects (rather than 20 or 30 engineers they'd throw hundreds), and basically eat each others lunch.
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.
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.
Re:not good? (Score:5, Insightful)
Today...
Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:1, Insightful)
And how can those attempts be used to keep the other company in check if they have no chance to succeed? If can only be called MAD if the weapons actually work.
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?
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.
Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:2, Insightful)
They are just the corporate equivalent or "be nice to me or I will fuck your girlfriend"
Indeed. If you look closer, everything in the world is about having sex, in an way or another.
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.
Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not that Google can't or couldn't create a successful operating system... it's that for the vast majority of Windows users, they're not going to switch OS's. Let's face it... a large chunk of the common users of the world are not suddenly going to go "Aha! I'll switch to Linux!" They're relatively happy and comfortable with an OS that they are familiar with. It's much the same with corporate customers. They go with Microsoft products, not necessarily because they're the best, but because when they upgrade it tends to require the least amount of retraining time as compared to learning an entirely new line of software products.
Likewise, Microsoft can create a search engine, but that doesn't mean that people are going to abandon Google in droves, simply because it's developed by Microsoft. Google has the market share... something like two-thirds of all web searches (at least in the U.S.) are done through Google. Hell, it's been a verb for years now. "Let me google that and get back to you." Is 'Bing' going to get that same level of brand awareness? No. But Microsoft is not that concerned if it does. Sure, they'd like it to, but they're not going to lose any sleep if it doesn't steal a good-sized chuck of Google's market share.
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.
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.
Remember Windows on 90% Desktop (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Modes of Destruction (Score:3, Insightful)
MS would perish were their OS and Office sales to plummet. If the stars lined up for them, Google (or more likely someone else) do this with a competing product over many years.
Google would perish were a large proportion of internet users to get savvy and block all their ads. I wonder whether MS could get away with adding adblocking to Windows that would eliminate all Google Ad revenue from MS-based products. That would probably get them in hot water, but easy access to addons for IE (assuming good adblockers exist for IE) with a suggestion to install the adblocker would maybe be a bit more feasible. To get away with it they'd have to sacrifice their own ad revenue as well, but unlike Google, they don't need it. Imagine MS killing the ad-funded web. How would web content change?
Re:not good? (Score:2, Insightful)
That would result in something more than an "OS for a browser appliance".
It would be an alternative channel for developers to sell (some kinds of) applications to end users, not involving any passage through a copy of Windows.
MAD? Direct Attack? (Score:3, Insightful)
Mutually assured destruction? I believe the term you're looking for is "competition." It's that thing where multiple companies produce similar products and try to out-do each-other in an attempt to make people buy their products.
How, exactly, is a glorified thin-client an attack on Microsoft Windows?
Sure, a lot of stuff runs on the web these days... And I've argued that the trend will only continue... But this is like claiming that Wyse terminals are a direct attack on Dell's desktops.
I would disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing else really matters to either company.
In my opinion Google is much better positioned to gain future market share than MS. If you haven't had a chance to play around with GoogleVoice, you owe it to yourself to try it. The integration of the web, telephony and email. Amazing as it is now, they're just scratching the surface of the true potential.
With Chrome, Google will be in a position to integrate email, telephony, productivity, social media interaction, photo and video management, all in a device that costs less than $200. With cloud services delivered in a browser window, the underlying OS is meaningless. Whether you use Chrome or Windows, you'll have access to the services, but Google will be able to offer them for less. Google doesn't depend on OS sales for a big chunk of revenue.
MSFT's big strategy seems to be trying to carve enough fat off Windows to get it crammed into a small device, all that effort to offer users a slightly poorer version of what they have on their desktop. It's the same, slightly smaller candy bar in a different wrapper. Where's the innovation in that? MS has to work like mad just to stay relevant in the market.
Take a look at Google Labs sometime and look at all the neat services they're working on. And what has MSFT come up with lately? A table that costs $10,000.
In the fight between Google and MSFT, I'm putting my money on Google.
Re:I hope Microsoft gets stuffed by Google (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is a chicken and egg one. Until there is a critical mass of people using something other than Windows, most 'consumer' software (incl games) will only run on Windows. And until there is a critical mass of software (incl games) for other-than-Windows platforms, most people will only use Windows. Its a self-serving cycle.
And this situation is one that MS does *everything* it possibly can to maintain (legal or otherwise) They will lie about security, about reliability, about compatibility. They will threaten to lock PC vendors out that offer a competing platform on their hardware. They will change their protocols and file formats with every product revision, to ensure competing software cannot hope interoperate, and that current users have no way to migrate They will use software patents where they can, to make anything that does manage to do so, illegal. They will collude with the RIAA, MPAA, and chipset and BIOS makers to make palladium-like systems where "non-approved" software will first not have access to some online services, and then eventually won't be allowed to run at all. The hardware vendors go along because they are, individually, powerless against the combined forces of the MS monopoly and the RIAA/MPAA lawsuit machines.
They will even use marketing to make it look like people 'choose' Windows - the fallacy here is that the vast majority of people aren't' really aware there is a choice, something else that MS does everything in its power to maintain.
The situation is so far gone that there is little hope that normal market forces will correct it. The only solution is an extreme - I for one refuse to use *anything* from Microsoft for any reason. I support legislation that requires government software to use free and open formats, or even better to use Free Software - that doesn't lock out MS, they are welcome to provide software that complies.
Art of War? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't it possible that Google is simply refocusing the battlefield to the OS market as a tactic to keep MS scrambling on multiple fronts?
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.
Re:First Nuclear Weapon Equipped Post (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:not good? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
I'm not sure. If there's a netbook that, on identical hardware, is $250 if you use Chrome and $400 if you use Windows, due to the differences in OS licensing cost, I could see some consumers opting for the cheaper one. The cheaper the machine gets, the greater the percentage of total cost is due to software cost.
Re:First Nuclear Weapon Equipped Post (Score:3, Insightful)
He's a tard for pointing out that the guy who was trained in nuclear technology should have known better than the guy who got the 'C' average from Yale and whose main accomplishment prior to elective office was running a few businesses into the ground? Sounds like we should be waiting for your troll moderation :)
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.
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
Re:How riduculous (Score:2, Insightful)
Explain to me again how competing for OS and browser share is against Google's interests...because the fact that people use them to look at the internet seems like a pretty poor reason.
Re:Mutually Assured Destruction? I think not... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think if Google ever does decide to go after Windows directly, they'll find that a real full-featured modern operating system (not just a glorified web browser) is a lot more difficult to create than they think.
They are going to use the Linux kernel with their own Xserver and windowing system (afaik). Using the linux kernel is going to save them untold amounts of development time. So they are basically making a Distro and not an OS. This gives google a huge application pool to draw from. They can pick the applications they like and rework the UIs or whatever they want to suit their own needs (provided they follow the lisense and publish modified code or whatever). It also means google will ensure that their apps will run inside a linux environment (Chrome Browser and whatever else comes along). This is a very exciting time for linux fans.
Re:First Nuclear Weapon Equipped Post (Score:3, Insightful)
Google Apps (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone please tell me how free online versions of MS Office in Office 2010 are not a response to Google Apps. It's likely that MS will have to make a similar response to Chrome OS.
Google makes money off of advertising, and MS makes money from software. If Google can get MS to lower prices or give software away for free (like Google does), it's a win for Google.
Re:First Nuclear Weapon Equipped Post (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you think they won't use it? I'd venture a guess that a good number of Googlers have or want to get netbooks, but feel the user-experience and OS could be improved upon, and that's the whole reason they're bothering. Remember, Google doesn't intend to sell an operating system. They just want more people to get online more conveniently, because THAT'S where their money comes from.
Re:And Bing...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should either be a declaration of war? And what's with this comment about microsoft hard-coding Windows to not allow people to use Google (what, are they so desperate to get rid of Google that they will block Google's IP addresses, or has Cringely never heard of Firefox?)
.
This whole thing sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory, written by a fifteen year-old schoolgirl who just saw a Veronica Mars marathon.
Re:And Bing...? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No, Google will just Lose (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dear Mr Cringley (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm still not sure why anyone thinks that anyone else who makes an OS is out to "take down Microsoft".
I assure you that people that build their own OS are out to build a better OS, not take down another company. Let's face it, there's a lot to be desired with any of the OS's currently on the market, and most serve a niche. Their developers aren't trying to take down anyone. Apple is closer than anyone else to a perfect OS, but it has it's own set of issues, like closed ecosystem and only officially runs on Apple hardware.
Maybe Google thinks it can do a better job. Hopefully, for all of us, they succeed. It would cause Microsoft etc. to step up their game resulting in better OSs for everyone from all of the software companies that build them.
Competition is good for all of us, including Microsoft.
-Viz