“The words coming out of Microsoft are quite bullish, but the numbers aren’t, at least according to Wall Street. The problem is those words won’t match reality mainly because MS does not grasp the situation it is in. The problem, credibility, the solution, Google.”
Fixed it: “Google Will Lose to Microsoft”
Even if Microsoft hasn’t been on the ball with Google’s style of internet technology, they will get it, and they will end up making superior products and then, leveraging their monopoly with Windows and IE, they will crush Google like they crushed Netscape and everyone else who tried to compete with Microsoft. Don’t think it won’t happen. Unless Google gets serious about making new and innovative technologies (and so far, I haven’t seen much in the way of that), their days are numbered. They’re probably numbered no matter what.
I don’t think its going to be easy for MS to compete with Google for the search and advertising markets because Google now has a very big head start and retains more credibility amongst users than MS.
Google is not just going to chill and relax because they are the current search and advertising giants, they will continue to innovate and look for ways to retain or expand their market share, so the battle is going to be long and gruesome. Personally I don’t see MS overtaking Google for a long time because many people searching for stuff on the net use Google and there are many people using adsense.
Edited 2006-05-04 15:48
Google is not innovative. Other than search, all of their products have been bought.
Google is not innovative. Other than search,…
Other than search?? That makes their search engine sound pedestrian, like it’s some small asterisk instead of one of the innovative wonders of the world that it is.
Google was not the first search engine.
Google was not the first search engine.
No one said that. Google was very innovative when creating their search engine though. Search engines are not all the same and that’s pretty obvious when you see how many people use Google over other engines.
It was the first to use PageRank though
Windows was not the first OS, nor the first GUI-based OS.
Crap… my sources are bad! I was promised it was
and this compares to what exactly ?
how many of Microsoft products did they NOT buy ?
Did I say anything about Microsoft? No.
This matches Microsoft’s historic behavior almost precisely. That makes them a good match for Microsoft in many respects.
Bullshit. See my previous comment.
Since when did Microsoft crush competitors by means of superior products?
Office, IE, and really Windows95.
Office, IE, and really Windows95.
Eh, I wasn’t aware Windows 95 was superior to OS/2. I assume that’s what you were comparing it to. Microsoft won that battle through two things: 1) Superior marketing. IBM couldn’t market it’s way out of a wet paper bag and 2) Bundling deals with the major PC players that left everyone else out. I don’t remember the exact details (and I’m too lazy to Google them right now) but it went something like this: “We’ll give you a great deal on the Windows 95 cost, but hey, if you sell anything else, like OS/2, you will still have to pay for the Windows 95 license, AND when we find out, we will revoke the great deal on Windows 95”.
Office hmmm no, Smartsuite was better than Office 95 and Office 97. Even the last incarnation Smartsuite 2000 is still oa better office suite than Offie.
IE ? No, that is just plain wrong. IE was never better than a competing product… well, IE 5 and 6 were better than Netscape 4.. but earlier versions, IE was whipped by Netscape and now both Firefox and Seamonkey leasve IE for dust.
Windows 95.. well, it was better than Windows 3.1 or even Windows 3.0… but it was not better than Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. This was just comparing Microsofts own operating systems, it had no chance against OS/2 v3 and was left standing compared to OS/2 Warp.
IE3 and Netscape 3 were nearly identical. And IE4 blew Netscape out of the water. I can’t see how you can say that Netscape whipped IE. Yeah, IE2 sucked. IE3 was just mediocre (but the same as Netscape). IE4 was awesome. And IE5 was a very nice refinement.
Win95 is the best desktop OS. OS/2 was marketed towards businesses (Which, BTW, Microsoft co-developed).
Win95 had everything that Win 3.11 had, except with a MUCH better shell, better hardware support and detection, had a 32bit API, etc… You can not say that Win95 wasn’t better than 3.11
As for Smartsuite, I’ve never used it, so I will not comment.
“Better than our previous product” does not equal “best”
OS/2 may have been /marketed/ towards businesses, but does not reflect on the /quality of the OS/.
“Better than our previous product” does not equal “best”
OS/2 may have been /marketed/ towards businesses, but does not reflect on the /quality of the OS/.
did you actually bother reading what I said ?
I quote ;
[/i]IE was never better than a competing product… well, IE 5 and 6 were better than Netscape 4.. but earlier versions, IE was whipped by Netscape[/i]
By earlier versions, I meant ie2/3/4
You said….
Win95 is the best desktop OS. OS/2 was marketed towards businesses (Which, BTW, Microsoft co-developed).
Hmmm, OS/2 was never marketed towards businesses over home users, in fact IBM made a play on the multimedia capabilities os OS/2. You are correct in that Microsoft was developing OS/2 with IBM as a replacement for DOS, but once HPFS selected over NTFS, Microsoft left the party and spect more time developing NT
I quote you once more with this…
Win95 had everything that Win 3.11 had, except with a MUCH better shell…
nope. Program manager and Filemanager were actually more intuitive than Explorer.
had a 32bit API, so did 3.11 with win32s extensions
You can not say that Win95 wasn’t better than 3.11. Actually, there are things in Win95 that are far better than 3.11, like more USER/SYSTEM space, memory management, but there are things that are far far worse, like the registry.
Try and dig up a copy of Smartsuite, it really is impressive.
I did indeed read what you wrote, and you’re right. I also used Smartsuite, and you’re right there, too. I was actually trying to respond to the previous poster, sorry.
The IBM Family Fun Pack was written for businesses? 🙂
Windows 95 eventually had a software advantage, and that became a huge factor over time.
Until then, though, Windows 95 had a large mindshare advantage (mainly due to press saturation), but it was arguably not the best desktop on several fronts.
Windows 95 was better than Windows 3.1. It was hard not to be. 🙂
Smartsuite was the combination of AMI Pro (formerly known as Samna Word, the first word processor for Windows, and renamed WordPro by Lotus), Lotus 1-2-3, and some other programs. Not a bad application suite.
*LOOOOOOOOOL*
Office has never been superior.
IE is stolen, and inferior, even to Mosaic.
Windows95 is inferior to any thing. Compare with OS/2 2.x, and you will immediately understand that all versions of Windows will forever be inferior.
So are you giving examples pro “superior MS products” or contra? Looking at your products I would suppose the latter.
Office? Hmm, maybe. IE and Win95? No, sorry. In those cases they crushed people by using a combination of superior marketing, the impetus of the x86 hardware industry, and bullying.
If you don’t think IE was super to Netscape by the time Netscape started to die, you are delusional. You may have preferred Netscape, but IE was easily the superior product at the time.
It’s just too bad it pretty much stagnated not too long after that.
If you don’t think IE was super to Netscape by the time Netscape started to die, you are delusional. You may have preferred Netscape, but IE was easily the superior product at the time.
Netscape dropped the ball, but it really didn’t matter what they did. Microsoft smashed OEMs over the head to install IE by default, prominently on every desktop. It was the browser that was going to be used on a desktop that Microsoft own, the browser that everything in Windows was going to plug into and the browser that development tools were going to use. Netscape were not going to be able to climb over that hill. At best, they might have maintained the share Firefox has now.
Distribution is everything in the end, and I can’t believe that even Microsoft vets like Joel Spolsky and everyone else still don’t get this. Someone deep in the bowels of Microsoft certainly does. It is why Microsoft has always fought tooth, nail and everything else to keep OEMs over a barrel.
IE was still the superior product, and while not the sole reason it won, it was certainly a factor.
Um… all this talk about IE being “the superior product” is totally f’n bogus! since the begining of the web, browser tech and there suppliers went back and forth trying to our do eachother! IE only became “better” when the 8000lb gorilla finally distroyed netscapes business model! and it IE was never more than one generation ahead at any one time!
BUT!!!! time proved that MS did NOT win the browser war, and netscape (i mean, mozilla, i mean firefox) is back on top! (lets not talk about market share… cus we all know why IE is the marketshare leader… and that is another discussion all together!)
as far and I am concerned, the fact that there are so many great open standrds compliant browsers for so many platforms, AND that the vast majority of the web works with those NON-MS browsers, PROVES that that MS and IE indead LOST…. i repeat LOST the browser war!!!!
and i say this…. PAY ATtENTION TO WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE….the internet is NOT microsofts… it is ours! and IF you have to use windows…stop using IE and use somthing else! REGARDLESS of wether or not it is the “default” browser… or weather you think “IE in the superiour product.
TAKE BACK THE WEB!!!!
IT was the superior product at the time when it was battling with Netscape. Not from the beginning, but in the end, it was the superior product.
Do – you – understand – now?
Also, I don’t use IE and I think it’s far from the superior product now. It’s a piece of crap now.
Um… all this talk about IE being “the superior product” is totally f’n bogus! since the begining of the web, browser tech and there suppliers went back and forth trying to our do eachother! IE only became “better” when the 8000lb gorilla finally distroyed netscapes business model! and it IE was never more than one generation ahead at any one time!
Netscape lost it with Communicator 4.0, it blew monkey chunks. IE 4.0 was sleeker and faster, people went out of their way to download it, I know I did and I know everybody in my company did. This was prior to browser bundling and until then we had all been Netscape all the way.
Of course, history shows that Microsoft stepped back and pretty much stopped developing the browser in the 10 years or so that have passed.
People are victimizing Netscape as being beaten down unfairly by Microsoft, but let’s not forget that the reason MS fought so hard was because Netscape was boasting about their image of the browser being the OS and all applications running from their own proprietary server offerings. Netscape was a for-profit company. Let’s not forget either that if Netscape had won that battle and their vision flourished, we’d all be using Netscape browsers to run our applications through proprietary and closed Netscape application servers. I’m not convinced we would have been better off.
It wasn’t until Netscape “lost” and threw in the towel with the creation of the Mozilla foundation that Netscape became the darling of the OSS/anti-Microsoft cause.
as far and I am concerned, the fact that there are so many great open standrds compliant browsers for so many platforms, AND that the vast majority of the web works with those NON-MS browsers, PROVES that that MS and IE indead LOST…. i repeat LOST the browser war!!!!
and i say this…. PAY ATtENTION TO WHAT IS GOING ON OUT THERE….the internet is NOT microsofts… it is ours! and IF you have to use windows…stop using IE and use somthing else! REGARDLESS of wether or not it is the “default” browser… or weather you think “IE in the superiour product.
Microsoft isn’t all that concerned. At the end of the day their customers need IE for Windows Update, so IE will not disappear from consumer’s desktops and alternate browsers will have to fight for mindshare.
But if you peek inside corporate America, you’ll find that the majority of them are running proprietary MS services like SharePoint for intranet/web-based services, their office documents are integrated via ActiveX controls, web apps are using proprietary scripting technologies.
THAT is the battle Microsoft was concerned with, and for the time being they’ve sadly still won it, until you start seeing enterprise desktops strip out IE and replace it and alternatives and use open/standards based technologies for their networks.
TAKE BACK THE WEB!!!!
The beautiful thing is there’s nothing to take back, since it can’t be owned and it can’t be controlled (at least until the US Congress and the telcos have their way…) If you want to “Take Back the Web”, simply stop supporting sites that don’t support non-standard browsers.
IE was still the superior product, and while not the sole reason it won, it was certainly a factor.
It was no factor at all in the inevitable outcome. Distribution is everything.
Then why aren’t all the other bundled apps the market dominator?
Right, not a factor at all. You keep believing that.
Then why aren’t all the other bundled apps the market dominator?
What bundled apps?
In the case of Windows Media others got there first, and Microsoft have been somewhat less gung-ho in badgering OEMs to stop installing Real Player for various reasons. However, you can’t pretend that Windows Media has not had a significant helping hand in gaining a very large slice of the online audio and video world because of the installed base.
Competitors are always going to be on to a loser in the long-run, regardless of their current position, and regardless of how good or not good Microsoft’s software is. Microsoft can have an unlimited number of bites at the cherry while others simply can’t. That’s the point.
Keep believing that Microsoft need to produce superior software and compete with others if you want, but the truth is out there and has been for some time.
Windows Messenger for one.
Honestly, while Microsoft is not on the verge of dieing or anything, they are on the verge of losing a lot of marketshare. I think we will be coming into a time of software equivelant to the late ’80s where everyone had a bit of marketshare and there was no clear dominant market share leader.
This is mostly because of Microsoft’s increasingly bad rep. And their reputation is not going to get better no matter what they do, at least not in the short term. No matter what, whatever Microsoft does is wrong.
This is a bad reputation to have and it really is hurting them.
Now, is Google going to be the one to foster in this time? Like you said, the only thing innovative that Google has done is their search engine. Everything else has been bought from other companies. The only bit of software that Google has written themselves is search (and the software required to do the backend of that), and gmail. Every other Google product is bought.
Google is really a house for other companies innovations.
Winning marketshare is not about innovative products, though. It’s about how the general public views that product. It’s weather or not using that product is cool (eg. the iPod).
Products Google has made and not purchased: Book Search, Google Desktop, Google Finance, Google Image Search, Froogle, Maps (Maps was released before Keyhole was purchased), News, Scholar, Video, Calendar, Groups (Groups v1 was based on aquired tech, v2 was a rewrite), Web Search, Gmail, Talk, Translate, Mars, Page Creator, Reader, Web Accelerator (admittedly an awful contraption), Ride Finder, Suggest, Orkut.
Products Google Has Aquired: Google Earth (Keyhole), Google Pack (the updater is original, but most of the bundled software is third party), Blogger, Picasa, Sketchup.
I didn’t include unreleased products like Writely.
Most of the aquired technologies have been updated significantly since being aquired, and also have been released for free download. In-fact, other than the third party products in Google Pack, or just recently aquired technologies (such as Sketchup and Writely), every single aquired Google technology that Google has officially released has seen major updates since being aquired.
Perhaps you should do some research before commenting? I only had to view two pages, http://labs.google.com/ and http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
(There may have been products that I missed, Google doesn’t provide a web page with a list of their services like Yahoo does).
There’s a differene in what happens with programs that are deliverd by microsoft now like IE (vs Netscape), and net-based applications like search: in the first case there’s a program that’s delivered anyway with the OS so that OEM’s wont raise the price by adding another (obsolete) browser. Google on the other hand is easily accessed: everybody knows the site, it’s responsiv, it’s clean, and it’s clear what the site is for, and above all, you don’t need to install a program (same goes for msn search, but where ms has an advandtage when it comes to bundling a program with windows, they don’t have this when it comes to search sites, the only thing they can do is make it the default page, but that doesn’t help much apparently, since it’s been the default page for ages). The msn-search looks like rubbish and is just a part of the whole site, people don’t go to msn just to search, but people do go to google to search and for nothing else. So where google has a search meaning in people’s mind, msn has a meeting/chat/… function in people’s mind. It’s a hell of a difference, but well, I suppose they can’t make multiple pages the default one hé :-), so they have to crap all functions in one page.
Even if Microsoft hasn’t been on the ball with Google’s style of internet technology, they will get it, and they will end up making superior products and then, leveraging their monopoly with Windows and IE, they will crush Google like they crushed Netscape and everyone else who tried to compete with Microsoft.
No they won’t get it and they won’t produce anything superior, but the desktop monopoly is the only thing in their favour. It has already started with the search bar in IE 7 going to MSN by default, and you’ll see add ons for Vista coming on stream that Microsoft will steamroller OEMs into installing – just like they did with IE. I mean seriously, what did Google expect?
The solution? Google and others under threat (Java and other programming frameworks like Qt and Trolltech) don’t seem to realise that they need to totally reduce their dependency on Windows as a client. Hell, even Google Earth and other apps are designed for Windows first and even require XP. A solid, cost effective alternative needs to be sought and these companies have to be absolutely dead serious about getting it done. It’s a matter of life and death.
“Hell, even Google Earth and other apps are designed for Windows first and even require XP. A solid, cost effective alternative needs to be sought and these companies have to be absolutely dead serious about getting it done. It’s a matter of life and death.”
Actually Google Earth is a Macintosh app as well. And to add to this, Google Earth was originally a program from Keyhole Corp until Google bought it, so that’s where it’s Windows grassroots were from.
Rest assured all the dependencies on win32/64 will be uprooted from most, if not all, companies and planted on other platforms.
Even if Microsoft hasn’t been on the ball with Google’s style of internet technology, they will get it, and they will end up making superior products
———
I think Microsoft (and just about everyone else) makes a superior product than Google. Googles search is great, but everything else Google offers is half baked at best.
What I don’t understand is why does Microsoft have to see every successful tech company as a competitor. Some paranoid delusions about losing their OS monopoly?
Microsoft should stick to their core business of writing software. They’re throwing billions at search, ads, game consoles and whatnot, while not having shipped a major Windows version for 5 years. Just keep putting out Windows and the cash will keep rolling in.
What I don’t understand is why does Microsoft have to see every successful tech company as a competitor. Some paranoid delusions about losing their OS monopoly?
Remove the question mark from that last sentence, and you have your answer.
I think you are right.Other emerging operating systems show that they should just concentrate on getting Vista out the door and out correct.
Their X-Box 360 is basically sucking and the Playstation 3 not even out yet.That will be running linux too.Another avenue of mass exposure for Tux.
Edited 2006-05-04 16:54
“Microsoft should stick to their core business of writing software”
Gee, I thought they made game consoles. At least, that is their product with the lowest (sucks)/(dollars) ratio.
while not having shipped a major Windows version for 5 years.
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 R2
Windows XP MCE 2005
Granted, only Windows Server 2003 is truly major, but R2 can be considered major as well, and XP MCE as well, but not as easy to argue that one.
Actually Windows 2003 Server isn’t really a major windows versions. It’s nothing but a revision of Win5.1 (XP).
Depends on your definition of major. You would consider XP major, right? But it was only NT 5.1 (where 2000 was NT 5.0). Server 2003 is 5.2.
Just because that version number didn’t change to 6.0, doesn’t make it’s not major.
We could argue about what constitutes major till we’re both blue in the face, but I think the easiest way to go by is whether or not it was considered a major version in the market, and it was.
I don’t really consider XP as a major version. It’s another minor version in regard to the parameters I consider important.
But it’s true that some parts of the system got an overhaul, especially visual changes, and as such XP was – as you correctly state – viewed as a major release. Technically it’s still nothing but a minor revision.
What constitutes major to you then?
Actually, Windows 2003 was a major SERVER release, over the last version of Windows server, Win2k. Server and Workstation releases are staggered, WinXp is not for the server, it’s for the desktop
If you see it as a server release, yes.
But the code difference between a MS Server release and the Workstation release is pretty small.
Windows 2003 Server is basically the Server edition of XP. And the differences between Win2K3 and Win2K is much smaller than the difference between Win2K and NT4.
Windows 2003 Server is – as such – nothing but a minor revision.
The Server part of the name is basically marketing hype.
If you ignore the ability to host an AD domain, which was amazingly revised from the Win2k Version, and winxp will not run, then the revisions to the Streaming media server, also not offered/supported on XP, and the total rewrite of ISS. Server is not just Windows, it’s AD/ISS/Windows, There is lots of added functionality that is present in server that is not in XP.
Regardless of the content, this is excellent, colorful prose. “Long term allies are placed feet first into the blender so others can watch their expressions and ‘learn’.”, “‘now’ as a concept”, “created a really cool raft of limpet-like services”, “Microsoft is now eating its own dog food.” I enjoyed reading it.
But as for the actual content, the author didn’t even state the point that I think is most key. Microsoft does searches badly. Everytime I search MSDN I get thoroughly frustrated. I know the information is there–sometimes I’ve seen it before–but I can’t coax Microsoft’s search engine into finding it. I have better luck backing out of MSDN altogether and using Google.
i agree with the problems identified for the most part. but not with the end result, in the end, I dont think Microsoft is going anywhere.
sure some things may change, but thats it.
-Nex6
How much faith can you have in an article that misses the main reason why Microsoft won’t beat Google?
The GOOG is not a software company. It’s an ad agency.
umm … I may be wrong but $40 billion can go a long way, even if you don’t deliver a new OS every 5 years.
Unless, of course, they burn through billions of dollars a year … which they’ve never done.
Does everybody here realize just how DAMN MUCH MONEY Microsoft really has? It’s quite staggering.
Not that they couldn’t someday become obsolete … but really, don’t hold your breath waiting for MS to die.
In the late 1970s, Control Data Corporation was in a situation in many ways similar to the one Microsoft is in now: they were huge, they dominated their part of the industry, they had a lot of cash on hand, and it was “impossible” to imagine life without CDC.
Took CDC roughly 15 years to get from that point to bankrupt.
Microsoft has a lot of cash, so it will take longer, but every sign is that they’ve opened a wound and are bleeding to death through it:
They’ve twice missed key transformations of the computer industry in the last ten years, first the commercial internet, now the advertising boom on the internet.
They’ve failed to convert their customer base to a subscription model, while at the same time failing to provide compelling reasons to upgrade.
They’ve fallen into a habit of being not late, but very late in delivering products.
Is 40 billion a lot? Microsoft’s 1099 for 2003 (the latest one they seem to have on line) says they spent nearly 19 billion that year. If their revenue continues to dry up and they increase spending to try and recover, that can easily turn into 4-5 billion loss per year. That’s about 10 years until the money runs out.
If Microsoft is still around as anything but a shell of its former self in 2025, I’ll be very surprised.
If Microsoft is still around as anything but a shell of its former self in 2025, I’ll be very surprised.
Well, after nuclear war in 2015, I’d be suprised, too. Or I would be, were I a believer in John Titor. Or even in far off, relatively baseless predictions like the ones made above.
Well, after nuclear war in 2015, I’d be suprised, too. Or I would be, were I a believer in John Titor. Or even in far off, relatively baseless predictions like the ones made above.
It’s not really all that baseless. Companies don’t last forever. Just look at the decline of GM and IBM from where they were years ago. They used to be the only choice now they are one of many. It will happen to Microsoft too. It’s just the nature of the beast.
t’s not really all that baseless. Companies don’t last forever. Just look at the decline of GM and IBM from where they were years ago. They used to be the only choice now they are one of many. It will happen to Microsoft too. It’s just the nature of the beast.
I think that’s a perfect choice of contrasting companies to look at because Microsoft displays elements of both. GM’s auto division is certainly a dinosaur, rather than ever trying to adapt to changing markets or customer demand in anything but a superficial way, they’ve stuck to doing things the old school way.
IBM, on the other hand, has taken a couple of serious market beatdowns in their past, not the least of which was the anti-trust suit, and has painfully re-invented themselves over the last decade or more. They may no longer seem relevant from a desktop computing perspective, but they pretty much pulled out of that market. They are the largest IT services company in the world, if they spun off their software divisions into a single entity it would be second only to Microsoft in size and they’re focusing their efforts on pushing computing back to the server room where they’re comfortable with it. They may not be a sexy company, if they ever were, but they’ve got staying power from their ability to adapt. They may still have the market image of a bunch of staid suits trying to sell mainframes and unix, but their outlook is clearly forward looking (not to say it will automatically lead to success for them, just that they seem to trying to embrace and maybe instigate market change). Generally speaking, you still won’t get fired for choosing IBM.
Question is, which way will Microsoft go? The GM way of stubbornly refusing to adapt to a changing market and relying instead upon legacy sales models and strong arming the government for preferential treatment? Or accept that change is inevitable and look ahead to where they need to be, not where they want to be, as IBM has done (albeit somewhat reluctantly and forcibly)?
MS is coming up to a pivotal moment in their existence and they’re going to need to start making some tough choices; in that way I think Google’s success is symptomatic of Microsoft’s problems, not the cause of. Totally agree that it’s just the nature of the beast.
If Microsoft is still around as anything but a shell of its former self in 2025, I’ll be very surprised.
Well, after nuclear war in 2015, I’d be suprised, too. Or I would be, were I a believer in John Titor. Or even in far off, relatively baseless predictions like the ones made above.
When I started in the computer industry, the major players were IBM, and the so-called ‘seven dwarfs’ and Microsoft was years in the future. For fifteen years people thought that would never change. None of the dwarfs are still in the computer business.
Not only are they all gone, but the generation of companies that replaced them are almost all gone. DEC, Data General, Pyramid, and so forth are nothing but memories.
And the generation after that, the original workstation makers, is dying off now. SGI is moribund, Sun is in dire straits, and most of the rest are gone.
It is rare in the computer industry for a major US company to last twenty years in the business.
The prediction may be wrong in detail, and Microsoft may die sooner, but it’s not baseless. Rather, it’s based on the history of the industry, the state of the PC market, and the thirty year history of Microsoft.
Looking at the yearly change of their revenue, Microsoft is just shy of doubling it from 5 years ago. In 2000, they had $23 billion in revenue, last year they had $39.8 billion.
Their profit was higher last year than any of the 4 years proceeding it (9.4bill in 2000, 7.3 in ’01, 5.3 in ’02, 7.5 in ’03, 8.1 in ’04 and 12.2 in ’05).
Their cash on hand does jump up and down, being as low as 23 billion in 2000, to 60 billion in 2005, to 37 billion last year. However, this is due to R&D, and seeing as they are making billions of dollars in profit a year, I doubt they are too worried about only having 35 billion or so in the bank.
In short, I would hardly say their revenue will continue to dry up, or that it was ever drying up. It is in-fact continuing to grow fairly quickly.
Source : http://finance.google.com/finance?fstype=ii&cid=358464
You might want to take a look at the cash flow page of that report…
I don’t think that it matters much which way you put the “who loses to whom” statement. It seems that reading through the article hits upon this, which I believe to be the true killer:
The problem is that computing does not matter on the desktop or server level any more. Microsoft won that game, and by the time Linux encroaches in a meaningful way, it will be on the next game. That game is called the internet, and it is not about a system, it is about a mass of interlocking systems, and of paramount importance, the people that use it. It also changes quickly, remember the slow march of AJAX, or Google Earth’s long gestation period? You can go from zero to hero in an afternoon, and be forgotten just as quickly. Long dev times don’t play well here, if it takes you a year, a couple of kids in a garage will beat you to it, and steal the mindshare of everyone who cares.
And you see here, that both Microsoft and Google stand in a position of a lot to lose. The larger, slower moving organizations may beocme dinosaurs in the face of small independent developers who would play the part of the large asteroid.
The dinosaurs went away, leaving the lesser lizards behind – giving room for mammals to evolve.
One might also effectively argue the point that Google seems more able to identify and buy up these individual tiny groups. But also remember that each acquisition will make Google a larger dinosaur.
Linux (which I support whole-heartedly) may have come into fuition a bit too late. The OS seems to matter very little (if at all) in the likely future computing paradigm…
One might also effectively argue the point that Google seems more able to identify and buy up these individual tiny groups. But also remember that each acquisition will make Google a larger dinosaur
But there are lots of differences. Google does not always just buy tiny groups, but play nice to them.
Two examples : Summer Of Code, and hiring the main GAIM developer.
These do not make Google any larger, and helps FOSS.
Linux (which I support whole-heartedly) may have come into fuition a bit too late. The OS seems to matter very little (if at all) in the likely future computing paradigm…
I disagree with this. That’s forgetting pretty fast that Google is powered by Linux, and that’s also wrongly thinking that Linux is just a desktop OS. Which is not the case.
“Linux” understood the Internet since the beginning, Linux is realising what MS has a hard time to do : get in every device out there.
Linux (which I support whole-heartedly) may have come into fuition a bit too late. The OS seems to matter very little (if at all) in the likely future computing paradigm…
Linux may not be on many desktops but this comment is way off. There is a lot more to computing than desktops. In fact Google itself runs Linux, nevermind a huge percentage of web servers and other gadgets like tivo. It seems Linux will be a huge factor in the future of computing and in fact it already is.
Oops! Both you and Ookaze are correct in that I was absent-mindedly thinking of just “desktops”.
Either way, the sure thing is that computing (desktop and server) will be getting more and more interesting as time goes on!
Cheers!
Mark
yup, MS has tons of cash, and its growing everyday. just think. apple is going build a new campus to the tune of about 700mil.
and thats chump change to microsft, they have the resouces to do just about anything they want.
-Nex6
Their lump of cash is not growing everyday. since april 28th, microsoft shares have been dropping.
at the moment they are at a 8 year low at 23:53 according to nasdaq.
I am gonna buy more shares in them, as the price will in fact go back up… but at the moment, they have dropped below the share price just after they released Win98..
call your broker and buy buy buy
How was win95 a superior product to OS/2?
Why do you compare win95 to OS/2? Win95 was not a similar product to OS/2 – Windows NT was.
OS/2 was almost literally “Windows NT made by IBM”. If you compare OS/2 to NT back in 1995 they were about even I’d say, and they both lost out to win95 for many reasons – backward compatibility, application availability, driver support etc, since they were both basically completely new OS’s written from scratch.
For that reason, NT and OS/2 were both inferior products to win95, even though they were technically superior. While MS had win95 and WinNT to sell to PC users, IBM had only DOS and OS/2.
“Modernising” all the apps and drivers and everything else took years. When the time finally came to end the win9x-line, MS released XP and IBM still only had an old abandoned OS/2.
You absolutely no nothing about OS/2.
OS/2 1.x>1.1, 2.x, 3.x and 4.x<4.5 were and are desktop OS’es.
WindowsNT was meant to compete with OS/2 on the desktop, but Microsoft couldn’t get it ready (it didn’t get ready until 2001, known as XP), so Microsoft molested Win4.0 API and made it work somewhat on top of DOS. Windows9x became Microsofts desktop answer to OS/2.
OS/2 1.x>1.1, 2.x, 3.x and 4.x<4.5 were and are desktop OS’es.
I never said otherwise.
WindowsNT was meant to compete with OS/2 on the desktop, but Microsoft couldn’t get it ready (it didn’t get ready until 2001, known as XP)
NT had OS/2 beat at version 4, no matter how you look at it. It had more developers (IBM charged for their SDK, MS gave it away), more users, and more drivers and native apps. No clever trick or feature in OS/2 could outweigh that. IBM fumbled, and MS took the lead.
I saw this happen while doing tech support for both systems. But there’s no need to believe me, it’s all documented history by now.
You did say otherwise. You claimed OS/2 could not be compared with Windows95, despite the fact that Win95 was Microsofts Desktop OS at that time.
OS/2 was superior in every way to Win95. And for that matter also superior to NT4.
Microsoft only prevailed due to illegal practices.
OS/2 2.0 and 3.0 was an OS that excelled at running DOS and Windows 3.1 apps, and it was specifically targetted at Windows 3.1 and then Windows 95 users — mainly at consumers (and not business users) during its heyday, especially in the OS/2 Warp 3 days in 1994.
Backwards compatibility was never an issue. If anything, it was a strength that ended up backfiring a bit and costing OS/2 some native development.
(1) OS/2’s VDM was (and is) as good as Windows 95 when it comes to running DOS software. Not only was an individual OS/2 VDM more customizable, but it could also be configured to use a real DOS boot diskette image to run actual DOS versions, and one could run actual copies of MS-DOS, DR-DOS, or PC-DOS concurrent for DOS program testing. Windows 95 couldn’t do that.
Both OSes also had the option to boot to a real DOS (Windows 95 disquised this as “DOS mode” while OS/2 allowed both itself and DOS+Windows to be installed on the same FAT16 partition uising something called Dual Boot mode) for problematic applications.
(2) OS/2’s WinOS2 subsystem was a literal recompilation of the actual Microsoft Windows 3.0 and 3.1 source code that IBM obtained the rights to after the IBM/MS split, and it was almost 100% compatible with MS’s version (except for a few bugs like the infamous calculator bug that IBM fixed).
The only reason that it later had compatibility issues was because Microsoft started releasing a new version of their WIN32S.DLL extensions every three months or so, and IBM did their best to keep up until WIN32S v1.25a. Versions after that substantially changed the virtual memory map.
OS/2 was basically NT with a lighter footprint and a decent level of legacy compatibility. Microsoft needed three products instead of two because they didn’t make NT able to run DOS applications effectively, and because most new Windows 95 users had no appreciation at all for the house-of-cards architecture on which that platform was built. They just cared that it came from Microsoft and was called “Windows”.
OS/2 2.0 and 3.0 was an OS that excelled at running DOS and Windows 3.1 apps.
Excelled compared to what? Is it not more correct to say that it could sometimes run some windows apps, slowly, if you had more memory in your machine than most people could afford at the time? My memory of (trying) to run windows 3.11 apps in OS/2 is admittedly hazy by now but I recall it as being almost like running a windows emulator. A buggy windows emulator, that could crash the entire machine.
Windows 95, while inferior in many many ways, would run windows 3.11 apps as if they were native win95 apps, multiple apps, side by side, and it needed far less memory and cpu power to do so than OS/2 did.
Excelled compared to what?
Since your memory apparently needs refreshing, I will cheerfully oblige. 🙂
OS/2 was (and is) unparalleled at running DOS programs, both in terms of VDM configurability, and in some cases even in terms of raw performance (some DOS games like Descent were noticably faster in an OS/2 VDM then under a real DOS on the same hardware!).
Not only that, but OS/2 provided a virtual interface to its mouse and sound drivers to VDMs, meaning that one didn’t have to load a mouse driver or a sound driver at all in order for DOS programs to have access to those things. That saved room in the virtual lower 640k of RAM in that particular VDM, which was sometimes nice for programs that were picky about such things.
*That’s* what I mean by “excelled”. The word applies in spades, at least in a OS/2 “VDM” context.
Is it not more correct to say that it could sometimes run some windows apps, slowly, if you had more memory in your machine than most people could afford at the time?
No, that wouldn’t be a correct statement at all. You seem to be confusing OS/2 with Windows NT, and that was a very different beast.
I used OS/2 2.0, 2.1, and OS/2 Warp 3 on a 486DX/33 with 8MB of RAM, and even large Windows applications were acceptably fast on that box.
That wasn’t a rare system at all in 1992 (when the 486/50 was being released, Windows 3.1 and OS/2 2.0 had been out for a few months, and top-end systems of the time had 16MB or even more).
Nope. OS/2 ran just fine on the commonly produced home PC hardware of the period. Folks with older machines may have had issues, but they weren’t its target audience, and even 386 machines with 8MB or more ran it just fine.
Windows 95, while inferior in many many ways, would run windows 3.11 apps as if they were native win95 apps, multiple apps, side by side, and it needed far less memory and cpu power to do so than OS/2 did.
No, Windows 95 didn’t need less memory and CPU power than OS/2. In fact, the two were roughly equivalent — both would boot and sorta work in 4MB, were usable in 8MB, and tended to hit a sweet spot around the 16MB mark.
OS/2 was roughly on par with Windows 95 when it came to running Windows 3.1 programs in terms of RAM and CPU requirements and in terms of speed, and unlike Windows 95 it could ran Windows apps in one of two ways:
(1) In a fullscreen WinOS2 session on a real Windows 3.x desktop running in a VDM, or
(2) In a “seamless” window on the native OS/2 PM desktop, running side by side with native OS/2 programs.
Both OS/2 and Windows 95 were much faster (and smaller) than any of the Windows NT flavors (3.1, 3.5 or 4.0), and IBM’s David Barnes embarrassed Microsoft on more than one occasion when the NT vs. OS/2 shootout demos were held in the early 1990’s. Why? Because NT was a clunker compared to OS/2 even when each was running its own native 32-bit software!
OS/2 *was* admittedly somewhat slower than Windows 3.11 at running 16-bit Windows programs, at least in terms of program load time for larger programs, but the stability advantages and ability to do things like actually use a modem without taking the system out (remember how much of a pain in the ass Trumpet Winsock was?) more than made up for the few seconds of delay, and once the program was loaded it was just like running Windows.
Also, once could do something with OS/2 that Windows 95 didn’t support at all: one could run each Windows 3.1 application in its own isolated VDM with its own copy of Windows, and then multitask those 16-bit Windows programs preemptively.
*That* type of configuration took a lot of resources, and it might be that sort of thing that you’ve been thinking about, but that isn’t the way that Windows programs were usually run under OS/2. It was just an option (albeit an expensive one) to help isolate 16-bit Windows applications from each other.
As I’m sure you recall, Windows 95 ran all 16-bit apps in one common environment, and when one died they all died. OS/2 at least provided an option which could prevent that from happening.
Again, that type of flexibilty is why I tend to use terms like “excelled” when it comes to OS/2. It was very good at what it did.
Keep in mind, too, that OS/2 was doing this for over three years before Windows 95 was released, and it did so without making the kind of silly architectural or filesystem-related compromises that Windows 95 saddled its users with for the next 10 years.
No, that wouldn’t be a correct statement at all. You seem to be confusing OS/2 with Windows NT, and that was a very different beast.
OS/2 and NT were not very different beasts. Comparing OS/2 to NT is meaningful, they were very similar, certainly more similar to each other than any of them were to windows 95.
OS/2 was initially better at running DOS and Windows apps than NT, because it would allow DOS and windows apps to bring down the machine. NT didn’t allow that. OS/2 was “better” than NT in this respect beause it allowed you to choose the risk.
However, OS/2 was not better at running DOS and windows apps than windows 95, which always allowed apps to bring down the machine…
.
OS/2 also required more RAM than windows 95 to run several windows apps, because for each windows app, it also ran a separate instance of windows.
For many users, OS/2 had several issues and gotchas that made windows 95 a better choice, even though OS/2 was technically superior. It had a chance, it was in a great position to challenge windows, but IBM failed.
I am not saying OS/2 was a bad OS, I am just saying it failed for understandable reasons.
I fear that your memory of OS/2 is at least as hazy as mine (although your haze seems to be the romantic pink shimmer of a true OS/2 fan
).
So, instead of wasting time with a sequence of I-say, you-says when we clearly don’t believe each other, I suggest you and anyone interested in the facts look them up for themselves. The strengths and weaknesses of OS/2 are well known and documented, a quick Google is all it takes.
“How was win95 a superior product to OS/2?”
Longevity
False.
Banks around the world still run OS/2, who do you know that still runs Win95 ?
Microsoft is still selling a member of the Windows 95 family? Where?
OS/2 is still being sold as eComStation. Same basic architecture as OS/2 2.0.
Windows XP, on the other hand, is the continuation of Windows NT, not Windows 95. And OS/2 is older than it is, so it would lose too at this point in time. 🙂
Maybe you mean “longevity in the eyes of the market”, since most folks think OS/2 became unavailable in the 1990’s. That might be true.
“Without both speed and friends, you (Microsoft) can’t get a foothold in this new market.”
The author of the article doesn’t truly understand Microsoft. The problem Microsoft is having isn’t with it’s partners and/or the late to party bit. Microsoft is figuring the pieces of the puzzle out. Testing the waters.
…against the 800lb Gorilla you must.
1: Not have anything he wants. (netscape)
2: Don’t look him in the eye. (google)
3: Pretend to be of some use to him. (apple)
When the 800lb Gorilla finally dies of old age, the 600lb Gorilla will replace him and the same rules will apply.
Why? Because people naturally want to align themselves with the biggest Gorilla and choose the path of least resistance.
I’ve heard this so many times, it hurts my ears. MS will lose to OS/2, MS will lose to netscape, MS will lose to Java, MS will lose to linux, come on, enough is enough, wake me up when somebody comes along that can actually do it.
Mmmm. OSS actually has a shot. Because it’s better or worse? Well, I’m not here to debate that.
It’s got a chance to win because it’s different.
It’s like a virus for a particularly nasty metaphor – good luck taking it out. You kill Novell? It’s still there. Kill red hat? Still there?
Corporate support is not a necessity. While Microsoft may not be wiped out by Linux/FOSS, Linux/FOSS won’t be wiped out my MS. It’s viral. It spreads extremely easily…It adapts easily. It can have almost infinite mutations in short periods of time.
Netscape was able to die because cash flow dried and the company was bought out. OS/2 needed to make a lot of money for IBM. It didn’t.
With F/OSS it’s about the people – and that’s what’s different. Are there disadvantages? Certainly!
Microsoft just won’t ‘defeat’ what it simply cannot kill. Perhaps, for once, it can only hope to compete.
Yep. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Microsoft will lose to their own success.
It is well documented in the electronics industry that the major players in technology generation X rarely survive to technology generation X + 1, and Microsoft is showing all the signs of a company unable to make the transition.
Nobody made a better supercomputer than Cray, ever. Cray is gone (although the name lives on as a joke.)
DEC dominated the minicomputer market. Ooops, no minicomupter market. DEC is gone.
Sun owned the workstation market. Hmm, workstation market? Sun’s dying.
Microsoft owned the desktop operating system market. The desktop has saturated and the next big thing is going to be somewhere else.
It is not impossible to make the transition. (IBM, after all, has been around in one form or another for more than 100 years), but it is extremely rare, and Microsoft is showing all the signs of a company that won’t.
That is why they need to get footholds in other markets. Xbox, WebTV, Pay-per-use apps etc
You’re right. It’s hard to compete on an unlevel playing field against a larger established opponent that doesn’t respect the rules, especially when that opponent appears to have already at least partially bribed the referees into allowing it to continue to cheat.
If Microsoft’s products were forced to compete on an even footing, they might still do well, but we will never know because that isn’t even remotely similar to the actual situation we live in.
“While Microsoft may not be wiped out by Linux/FOSS, Linux/FOSS won’t be wiped out my MS.”
That was one of the best sentences I’ve ever read on the subject. The rest of your post was spot-on, as well.
MS isn’t going anywhere, but they are going to start loosing market share on multiple fronts. However, it has nothing to do with their inabbility to move fast or the number of friends/Enemies they have. Their public perception is hurting them, but the real reason they will loose market share is because PC user are becomming more and more PC literate evry day. The truth is that outside of being a professional that requres a PC to make a living (Graphic Artist, Movie Makers, Musicians, …etc) most people use a PC as an internet terminal or word processor. You can bundle a whole lot of stuff in a PC, but I gurantee that it will be used 80% of the time for one of those two purposes. Well, as people have gotten accustomed to using a PC, they started to dscover that as long as they have acces to an internet browser and a word processor, they’re good to go. Last time I checked, you can get access to those via Linux, OSX, Unix, …etc. As a result, all the other products that they typically throw at you (MSN, Office, IE, WMP, VS,…etc) suddenly are having to compete for usage. If you aren’t locked into windows, you suddenly have a lot of choices to get the job done. If you have options, then you typically will take a little time to try out some of the alternatives. Imagine if you log into windows, and you had three Browsers on the desktop (IE, Firefox, Opera) with the same icon and a label that said Internet/Email. I’ve done this with my girfriend and she could care less which app she uses, so long as it allows her to accomplish her task. Hell, I removed windows all together and she hasn’t complained yet, because like the other 4 billion people in the world, she operates via task based computing.
I trully beleve that if they US government would allow it, MS would buy Google tommorrow, however, they’ll not allow it.
The problem is credibility and the solution is Google?
Since when does Google have credibility?
Lets see… Google has:
* Engaged in massive copyright infringement with their book scanning program, which they are currently involved in a lawsuit over.
* Used their deep pockets to unfairly leverage advertising with Google ads, forcing many independant Web sites who use advertising to either “assimilate into the collective borg that is Google ads, or face destruction”.
* Bowed down to the Chinese Government to sensor search results that flow into China so that search results say only positive things about the Communist government in China, and nothing negative–even to the point of censoring out attrocities commited by the Communist government against its own people.
* Forbidden all Google employees from having any contact with CNet after CNet News published an article about Google that Google did not like–A story that no Google employee was even involved in producing, effectively attempting to punish CNet for telling the truth about Google.
So tell me? Where is Google’s credibility? Google is just the Microsoft of the World Wide Web–a company that has become way to big, and has way too much power, and has been using that power in an unfair way.
*
Edited 2006-05-04 18:00
But hasn’t Google already pretty much hired up all the experts on search algorithms and data analysis in the world? Well, probably not _all_ of them, but the smartest, and MS is getting second pickings at best (though Yahoo probably knows this space better than MS). I haven’t heard of any developer defections from Google to Microsoft — rather, it’s been the other way around.
So what if Microsoft has tons of cash? Money doesn’t magically transform into innovation — it takes brilliant people to do that. Microsoft has some brilliant developers in the OS and middleware spaces (as well as marketing and lawyers) but not search. That talent all works at Google and Yahoo now.
Not to mention a lot of the old UNIX, Internet, and Web gurus work there too: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2005/tc20050728_5…
Search is all about results, and it’s not easy to fake and fluff over with marketing. And just being able to afford the infrastructure means squat if your algorithms are second-rate.
Edited 2006-05-04 19:06
…nothing to see, move along.
Heh. You’re no fun anymore… 🙂
Right for a start this is a comment post it is not pretending to be news (it says it in big red letters at the top of the page boys and girls
)
That being said, not sure I agree with Charlie over how the search marketing world works, yes there is a lot of inter market recruitment but at the end of the day profitability is not connected to how cool your technology is or if you are considered cool it is all to do with traffic levels and ad revenues.
Now at this point I expect various people to complain about ads on search engines but I will point out the basic facts :-
– Search engines are funded by adverts. This is how they can afford to pay for the obscene amounts of hardware and infrastructure required to deal with the volume of traffic they handle.
– Search engine adverts (sponsored links) have to be vetted to make sure they are relevant and don’t have popups etc.
– Getting back to the article MSN Search will generate a metric arseton of money as there are people who will want to advertise to a market. MSN has a market.
That’s your opinion. I much prefer Google Mail to Hotmail, and even to the new Windows Live mail. Google Maps is better than anything MS has to offer, and Google Earth is a very nifty application.
All in all, Google offers great products, and that’s why people use them – much to the chagrin of MS supporters.