To draw a parallel between Netscape & Google in their fight against Microsoft, it is necessary to examine the various similarities between the two situations and see if the tactics that worked then will work now.Editorial Notice: All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily those of osnews.com
Netscape’s business model consisted of selling webservers to organizations. Its legendary web browser hardly brought in any money through direct sales. What it did do, however, was give the fledgling company instant high visibility in the online world. When organizations were shopping for a webserver, the Netscape brand was instantly recognizable. Additionally, their browser’s position as de facto standard web browser allowed Netscape to effectively control the development of HTML, giving it an edge over competitors in the nascent market for webservers.
When Microsoft needed to crush Netscape, it went for the jugular. Via a combination of sketchy but effective tactics it was able to unseat Netscape from its comfortable spot atop the web browser heap and place its own IE there instead. This meant that it was now Microsoft who wielded the power to influence the direction of web development. It also tarnished Netscape’s image as a leading Internet brand. Between that and Apache’s sudden rise to dominance, Netscape saw sales of their webserver decline. Since they had never found a sustainable line of business that was independent of the browser’s popularity, they could no longer survive.
There is no doubt that Google will continue to be a top-notch search engine so it is unlikely to be eclipsed by any new search technology that Microsoft can unleash upon the world, no matter how much money they throw at the project. However, Microsoft does not need to compete with Google using the traditional rules when they have an unstoppable weapon at their disposal in the form of the Windows monopoly. They will will change the nature of the game entirely by building search features based upon MSN into Longhorn and gently cajoling users into giving up on the use of a web browser to search the web. By redefining search to encompass local documents as well as the web, it will be able to leverage its desktop muscle in a manner against which Google, having no stranglehold on the desktop market, will find itself unable to compete. After all, nobody has ever taken Microsoft on in the desktop arena and escaped unscathed.
Actions of this nature would violate the antitrust restrictions under which Microsoft is required to operate but those have proven to be ineffective deterrents in the past. For instance, Microsoft intends to stonewall the EU on the matter for long enough that it will no longer matter whether WMP is bundled or not because RealNetworks will have lost its customer base. After that, if they have to pay a half-billion dollar fine, it’s just pocket change to them anyway. Unless the government can force Microsoft to stop its antitrust violations before its too late, there’s no point. Unfortunately, the appeals process and the red tape it involves make this rather unfeasible.
The critical question for Google is whether or not they could survive if Microsoft managed to coerce the majority of websurfers to switch to using MSN as their default search engine. If Google is sufficiently well insulated against this then they can weather whatever Microsoft throws at them. It seems, however, that they currently make most of their profits from the text ads that appear beside search results. Unless they can branch out from that dependence upon the search engine before MSN is able to usurp Google as the world’s most popular search engine, Google will be hard pressed to avoid the same fate as Netscape.
Fortunately, Google does appear to have learned from Netscape’s mistakes and has already begun to reduce its dependence upon the search engine via two different strategies. Firstly, it is looking into other ways of drawing traffic to its site: News, Froogle, Groups, Blogs, Webmail. Secondly, it is finding novel applications for AdWords, the profit engine: the AdSense program & ad-supported consumer software (like Opera). Since Microsoft will require at least a couple of years to oust Google as the kingpin of search engines, things don’t look too bad for Page & Brin.
Sure, MS can include the search “feature” in windows, but 2004 is the year of linux on the desktop…hahaha, sorry, had to be done
Seriously though, I think google will stay because some people have msn as their homepage and go to google for searches.
Time will tell, and there are interesting times ahead.
I think Mozilla’s market share will rise much higher by the time MS releases Longhorn, and IE wouldn’t be monopoly any more. And remember Google search is integrated into Mozilla…
When it comes to Microsoft or Google, it’s easy -Google. Microsoft are simply outclassed when it comes to google. Everything Google has done as been innovative, whereas the closest Microsoft comes to innovation is Gate’s constant spouting it as if they invented the term.
Where I think Microsoft will have difficulty is competing with Google at the technological level. Google has recently announced that gmail will offer upto 1GByte of storage to everyone who wants it; using a highly distributed, and low cost, linux cluster. Could you imagine trying to do the same with Windows? It simply couldn’t cope. Of course, Microsoft are also promoting the new XAML technology as the successor to HTML, what’s the bets that this technology will be either: known to only Microsoft, or licenced (crippled with “accidental” omisions).
The only way I see Microsoft beating Google, and what I have no doubt Microsoft will attempt, will be to bolt their search engine into windows in a way in which users have no choice but to make use of it. Of course, this would be highly illegal, but when has this stopped Microsoft in the past.
Additionally, their browser’s position as de facto standard web browser allowed Netscape to effectively control the development of HTML, giving it an edge over competitors in the nascent market for webservers.
Since when do web servers care about what bits are they pushing down the pipe? Why would a web server care about whether you have a <foo> or <bar> tag? This statement appears to be untrue or not expressed clearly enough to me.
Via a combination of sketchy but effective tactics it was able to unseat Netscape from its comfortable spot atop the web browser heap and place its own IE there instead.
You probably should have mentioned the problem of NS 4 sucking as much as it could
Other then that, the article appears to be quite good.
Google is the leading search engine, and probably also the best in terms of user friendly interface, tech and such but as with netscape, this doesnt guarentee survival. If MS integrates their own search engine in Windows, google is gone. People will slowly forget google and after a few years, people will believe searching was invented by MS, just like many people think IE brought the internet to the masses.
But hey..thats how (defacto)monopoly works.
The author identifies the key weakness of netscpae as their inability to generate revenue from their key profit. This is clearly not the case with google, since all of their revenue generating schemes are built into their search engine technology. Any further “portal” features added to google, eg email, froogle are merely building upon this. Furthermore, netscape began to die after their browser was overtaken by Microsoft in the quality stakes. This has clearly not happened to google, their search technology is clearly ahead of all its competitors, and looks to be that way for many years to come. Furthermore, there is no sign from Redmond that they feel that google is a threat to their future profits, this is clearly linux. And if you evaluate Microsoft’s past their FUD is usually directed only at one organisation at a time: first caldera, then netscape, currently linux. The author’s statement “After all, nobody has ever taken Microsoft on in the desktop arena and escaped unscathed.” is clearly not true, hackers are taking them on and winning all the time, security exploitation after all is the FUD of the hacker community, note how many people are afraid of using windows these dayhs due to their actions. That’ll be enough for the moment …
I didn’t know Google was going to start making a crapy browser that they didn’t touch for years and then mooch off of the OSS community, and throw the whole versioning thing out the window, so it could catch up with IE.
>Additionally, their browser’s position as de facto
>standard web browser allowed Netscape to effectively
>control the development of HTML, giving it an edge over
>competitors in the nascent market for webservers.
Since when do web servers care about what bits are they pushing down the pipe? Why would a web server care about whether you have a <foo> or <bar> tag? This statement appears to be untrue or not expressed clearly enough to me.
Actually, the statement is true, but you’re basically right. This also leads to the reason why Netscape lost their grip on the server market. You can change the HTML tags all day long and a web server won’t care unless it’s using a proprietary method of generating tags from formatted data, which most people would consider the domain of WYSIWYG HTML editors rather than servers (and Netscape bundled one of these with the browser as well). In the end, despite their market share in the client space and their attempts to control (or ignore in many cases) the HTML standards, they were beaten out by free (as in beer or as in speech) servers simply because any server could serve up Netscape-compliant web pages.
>Via a combination of sketchy but effective tactics it was
>able to unseat Netscape from its comfortable spot atop the
>web browser heap and place its own IE there instead.
You probably should have mentioned the problem of NS 4 sucking as much as it could
Well, everyone else seems to overlook that one, as well, so I can’t really put all the blame on the author there.
Other then that, the article appears to be quite good.
It’s a bit sketchy in places, especially in that it assumes not only what MS will do (though it could be well-grounded with discussion of what Apple has already done in a similar manner), but also what the US DoJ (and court system) and the EC might consider anti-trust violations. A lot of people are confused enough over what their past violations were, never mind possible future violations.
Ultimately, it won’t matter. If MS integrates an adequate searchfeature into longhorn it will ultimately dominate. Just look at instant messaging for instance. If not for Windows, MSN would never have been as popular as it is. Because it’s right there, integrated in the OS so why bother fooling around with something else? Most of my friends use Windows, and just a few months ago the last of them gave up on ICQ and now they’re all running MSN. Point is, if it’s there, and it’s not too bad, ppl will use it regardless of something better out there… We’re simply lazy by nature in that regard. Or how about media players? Some years ago, Real was on top of it..
I hope google will figure out a way to survive. I believe they have to be creative and innovative to get there.
MS has money and patience, they will bash the google nut again and again, they will use the heavy artillery against them.
Google has many strengths, industry recognition, polularity, they are innovative, they are IT minded people, they know MS, they are good marketers, and people loves them.
I hope they stand the bashing…
I for my own believe that sooner or later MS is going to start loosing a batle or two just because they’re overgrown and used to play dirty, they think of themselves as a victim and are defending themselves all the time. One of this days the market will realize that MS is not really necesary, and that most of the stuff they do can be done for much less money (and some times even for free).
There is a difference between Google and Netscape.
There is a nice story i remeber about how Microsoft noticed Netscape. Once Microsoft took part in an trade show. All the computers there were running Windows and they were proud. But on top off all that Windowsmachines was running Netscape. And that filled them with fear, that at somepoint all people would need to run applications would be webbrowser. And that posed a thread to windows.
And lets face it, they were not so wrong in their assumption. In most coporations, all people use are office and some webapplications.
Google is just a search engine. Just because you can use Google on a different operating system, enables you not to switch operating systems. It’s is a nice business, because you are in control, what people will find in the internet. Google poses some sort of thread to MSN, but not to the core of Microsoft: Windows.
Microsoft will compete with Google, but it will not throw anything it has at Google.
And the bundeling-with-Windows trick does not work with everything. The MSN Messanger is bundled with XP, but still poses no thread to ICQ.
Actually, the statement is true, but you’re basically right…[snip]
First, you say that author is right in this case, and then explain why he is wrong and why Netscape’s share in browser market did not help them to win the server side. So what do you actually mean? Did the browser allow Netscape to control server market (as article author said), or didn’t allow (as you said). Or both?
It’s a bit sketchy in places, especially in that it assumes not only what MS will do (though it could be well-grounded with discussion of what Apple has already done in a similar manner), but also what the US DoJ (and court system) and the EC might consider anti-trust violations. A lot of people are confused enough over what their past violations were, never mind possible future violations.
I believe the author’s point in this area (which I happen to agree with) is that various courts have a history of not affecting Microsoft’s tough hide much, and the decisions in cases usually arrive several years after the demise of previously competing company. I am currently not aware of any trends towards “crackdown on corporations”.
And the bundeling-with-Windows trick does not work with everything. The MSN Messanger is bundled with XP, but still poses no thread to ICQ.
Actually, it does. From my completely unscientific observations it looks like most young technically savvy Canadians are using MSN. And those people are pretty much defining what others will be using in several years. There goes another competing product…
Ultimately, it won’t matter. If MS integrates an adequate searchfeature into longhorn it will ultimately dominate.
MSN Search has been integrated into IE since Windows XP was released, yet Google still dominates. Google’s held a dominant place as the top search engine for quite a bit longer than most of the previous contendors, because when it comes to search, quality does matter.
Just look at instant messaging for instance. If not for Windows, MSN would never have been as popular as it is. Because it’s right there, integrated in the OS so why bother fooling around with something else? Most of my friends use Windows, and just a few months ago the last of them gave up on ICQ and now they’re all running MSN.
Most of the people I know that use an IM client use either AIM or MSN. ICQ held the top spot because it was one of the first, but when it comes down to it, there isn’t much difference between AIM and MSN. ICQ was always a little harder to use and find people on (primarily because they used numbers instead of email addresses as the primary means of identification). In the end, the last time I used an IM client extensively, I had to have all 3 running to keep in contact with everyone (at the time alternatives like Trillian that handled all 3 were a bit flaky). I reverted to email when instant availability was no longer necessary. I’m sure it’s now simply a matter of AOL users on AIM (and those that used AOL in the past or want to keep in contact with AOL users), and other Windows users using MSN. ICQ was bought out by AOL so long ago that it’s questionable whether or not it would have continued in the direction it did if it weren’t for the fact that it competes with AIM.
Point is, if it’s there, and it’s not too bad, ppl will use it regardless of something better out there… We’re simply lazy by nature in that regard.
This hasn’t been shown to be true, though. There’s nothing intrinsically better about AIM or ICQ vs MSN. IE is losing ground to alternative browsers simply because it’s stagnant, but the market is fragmented because the features people want (pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing, primarily) are not only available on almost every other browser, but also as add-ons for IE itself. Even Google has a pop-up blocker for IE.
Or how about media players? Some years ago, Real was on top of it..
Real was competing on content, a media format and server to be more specific. They’ve never had a superior player (though for a time they had support for MP3 when WMP did not), and they no longer have a superior format. They even licensed Windows Media formats so that their customers would continue using their servers.
I hope google will figure out a way to survive. I believe they have to be creative and innovative to get there.
Which is exactly what google has been to date, and they show no sign of slowing down.
Often when a Microsoft application gets bundled and wins market share, it’s not simply because it’s bundled, but also because they show improvement and, at the very least, become competetive products. People may not remember this so well now that IE’s become stagnant and Windows itself has had little visible change in almost 10 years (short of the XP interface, which still offers little change), but the point at which people moved to Windows, Word, IE, or almost any other MS software was a point at which Microsoft was really working on that product to make it better.
Unfortunately, it takes a lot more work to get people to move away once they find it meets their needs and is easily accessable. IE 3 didn’t meet people’s needs, and eventually neither did Netscape 4. MSN Messenger is, at its core, no worse than any other IM client. If your friends are on MSN Messenger, that’s probably what you’ll use, and the same can be said of ICQ and AIM. WMP is still no help if you need to play Real Media files or files encoded for QuickTime with certain codecs (but since most people have WMP, and the Windows Media codecs are now competetive with both, why use the others? WMP has been part of Windows for a long time, but WMA and WMV brought it forward in the market). MSN Search may be good enough for some people, but everyone I know is still using Google. People that are nearly incompetant with computers know how to “google” something.
First, you say that author is right in this case, and then explain why he is wrong and why Netscape’s share in browser market did not help them to win the server side. So what do you actually mean? Did the browser allow Netscape to control server market (as article author said), or didn’t allow (as you said). Or both?
Both
Netscape initially took a strong hold on the server market because they were THE name that came to mind when you were dealing with the internet. Over time, everyone figured out that a web server’s a web server, and they can all put out the same HTML. IIS was free with your Windows servers and Apache was free to download (and worked on all those other servers), and much as you can’t make money competing against a free browser, it can be hard to make money competing with a free server. Ask IBM or HP how to sell Unix servers in the face of growing Linux market share. IBM seems to have found that they’d rather make it possible to run multiple Linux servers on their hardware than lose the support contracts when their customers move to x86 boxes. Netscape lost the server market to Apache in much the same way that Unix is losing the server market to Linux. Netscape originally had the server market because the browser made their name the IBM of the internet (no one ever got fired for buying IBM, right?).
I believe the author’s point in this area (which I happen to agree with) is that various courts have a history of not affecting Microsoft’s tough hide much, and the decisions in cases usually arrive several years after the demise of previously competing company. I am currently not aware of any trends towards “crackdown on corporations”.
and so far antitrust law has shown a significant problem when faced with the fast pace of the computer business. The problem is not just that competitors die before the case is even near completion (though I’d have to point out that few (if any) actually have), but also that the entire competetive landscape could be completely different by that point. By the time Intel was brought into court for antitrust, AMD was a stronger company than they had ever been (and are even stronger today). By the time the browser issue was sent to appeals, Netscape was worth a lot of money to AOL, even with no significant market share (but, on the other hand, look at what Netscape did to compete with Microsoft in the years between IE 3 and IE5.5; is there even a market to monopolize when your competitor stops releasing product due to reasons completely outside of your control?).
I generally have serious disagreements with the way antitrust law is handled in many countries, but when it comes down to it, it’s quite easy to see that the courts don’t act fast enough for this particular market, and also don’t take into account the changes in the market when their process takes too long (but then that could drag the whole thing out further).
I think ICQ have only themselves to blame for their market loss: a few years ago _everybody_ used ICQ, but they couldn’t manage to hire a designer to make a decent interface for their product. I think everybody who taught GUI in the last few years used ICQ as an example of bad interface.
In the last couple of years they apparently tried to improve it a bit but it was a bit late, and anyway it’s still bad. There might be a boss with seriously bad taste there pushing his own interface ideas down the hall.
Then it came MSN with a very minimalistic and friendly design and everybody jumped to it. Most of my friends who changed to MSN said they did it due to the simple interface, despite a lesser functionality
Too bad for ICQ. Hope it’s at least a good lesson.
My 2c rant only
OTOH, Microsoft integrated cd burning into xp, but this did not seem to kill the Nero burning software…
Maybe because it’s a bit of a hidden feature, many people I work with didn’t know you could burn CDs straight from Explorer, on XP.
If MS find a way to make people notice this feature, for example make it look like a stand-alone app with an icon on the start menu, I believe Nero would be in trouble. CD burning is bound to become a “commodity feature” on every OS anyway, as it happened with browser, so Nero is in trouble nevertheless.
I wonder how long it will take for Google to compete with Expedia (which still has links with Microsoft, e.g. expedia.msn.com)?
Ideal opportunity to offer the hotels a full room-booking service with billing services etc – just another web-based service. And supply Google and Gmail users with targetted ads.
I’m still unconvinced that Longhorn will be the revolution that people are touting it to be. I know that (some) people love .Net and XAML seems like what they really need. However the killer is the upgrade cycle.
The conversion from Win3.11/MSDOS to Win95/98 was probably at 90-100% within a 3 year timeframe. Within 5 it was effectively total.
I don’t see Longhorn technology as being a killer to anything unless it achieves something along these lines. Despite being superior in nearly every way, there are still organizations debating about the upgrade from System 9 (Classic) to OS X with Mac hardware. WinXP hasn’t achieved that level of market penetration, especially among govt and large corporate users who have a lot invested in Win2k and even NT4.
Even if Longhorn arrives in 2006 (fairly likely), it won’t be until 2009/10 that it will achieve the market penetration required to make these technologies ubiquitous.
The other issue is also piracy. Most people I know don’t buy a new operating system unless they buy a new computer. They either pirate it or use the old operating system until they replace their computer. The more effective MS anti-piracy is in Longhorn, the less users will be jumping on the boat straight away.
My prediction is actually an attempted fragmentation of the internet, Ala UNIX in the 90s. There will be these networks that are sort of like the internet, maybe even tunneled over the internet. They will be devoted to gaming, content delivery, entertainment and communities that exist soley for users of particular devices. (Ala Live on the XBox and interactive pay TV services)
Any internet search revenue would then be largely captive to that corporation’s search engine (which would provide a portal to the internet at large). This is probably a bigger threat to companies like Google which are tied to the current internet structure.
I wouldn’t bet on that kind of service killing the internet. The internet is so successful because the barriers to participation are so low. Anything that restricts participation or content is likely to be considered a poor cousin.
If Windows may build a top-notch search-engine on its own platform, merging local and online searches, why wouldn’t Google do/promote the same, on Windows and other platforms ?
I mean, it is actually MacOSX, KDE, Gnome developers job to do that, to _integrate_ their own search engine for local and online searches with online services.
But if Google gains value with alternative platforms too, and provides to all those users (whatever their platform is) an integrated search tool, that would just slow down MS tactics in this regard.
http://www.dqsd.net/
That’s the key to being successful at fending off Microsoft. In the case of Netscape, it was initially due to not being able to compete with free. Then they themselves became free, but they tried to add features to make themselves look more attractive than the nearest MS version. This caused bloating, instability, and little attention was paid to what really matter and that was the base product, even after they were bought and discarded by AOL. This also goes to say about ICQ, and this same trend almost caused Mozilla to be marginalized as well.
I’d rather have several small, fast, slick programs running to do the same tasks than to have two or three huge slow, instable, and outdated programs doing the same thing.
That’s the key to fending off MS. And if you really what to include new features, make a new product that is part of a modular suite of programs that tie nicely together if you, as the end user, want more intergration.
Google, on the other hand, does not have to worry about feature creep or bloating becuase it’s just a search engine. Now if they want to offer other products or services to customers, they can. Because the base product is web based, the end user should not be effected. The thing Google needs to protect is the number of useful and relative hits that a person gets during a search. If they can do that, then they will continue to enjoy success in their field.
can’t be ignored even by the diehard fans of MS
It puts it in a nice perspective for Netscape.
The whole article is dumb.
Netscape was a company that sold 2 PRODUCTS.
Google is a company that (for the most part) gives away SERVICES.
So to take over Google MS would have to what?
1) Dupe all the servcies of google, gmail, spell checking, search?
2) Put these sevices into LongHorn?
What would that do? Whether I used a longHorn search or a Google search you would still have to click “something” to get the interface up to start the search, and they would both be free – so… advantage MS? how? What could MS do that would “intergrate” a search into LongHorn that would be better? search local docs at the same time? If I wrote that document, why would I need to research it?
Somebody does not get it.
The auther should try again this time compair apples to apples – like oh I dono, AOL to MSN – the 8 year battle that MS has yet to win.
The whole article is dumb.
There are too many people like me for Google and Linux not to prosper. The only time we use a Microsoft product is when somebody pays us to use it and even then if possible we try to encourage our bosses to look to other softwares.
Sadly, the 800lbs Gorilla/Monopoly will also be around for a long time.
In the last couple of years they apparently tried to improve it a bit but it was a bit late
Quite the opposite. It started to go downwards after the release of ICQ98a. Back then it was minimalistic and easy to use, then they tried to cram too many functions and ads into it.
using MS products if the don’t have to?
Yesterday Sony kicked them out.
Who will be the next?
Personally I’d find it quite annoying having it search the web everytime I do a local search.
Maybe this will pull away all the common google users, and then us *nux geeks can have our pure search engine back.
heh, well how about that. Good timing OSNEWS.com
——————————————————-
Google Prepares Desktop Search
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20040519GoogleP…
KDE already has a thing like that.. see..
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=12051
Also there is one built in to KDE, the Application Launcher applet, but you have to type gg: first to search google.
Combine the Google desktop search article linked to above with the article OSnews had on Group-Office the other day:
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7074
Google may be slowly moving toward making the desktop obsolete. Remember the talk about Google developing a distributed OS? Now they are allotting users relatively large amounts of email space and moving directly onto the desktop. Perhaps the next computer metaphor will be service-based. After all, what is using the internet and WWW? What is working on a computer? It is finding and interacting with data.
People have harped about the death of the desktop and the rise of service-based computing for a long time, and it hasn’t happened yet. But, it still seems possible that computing could be headed toward a kind of model like telephone/television service—i.e. paying for terminal access. What if instead of a desktop you had a thin client in your home connected to a portal like an extended version of Google—one that had greater application services (like Group-Office) and disk space allotted for personal files and so forth.
Whether we like it or not, this sort of model could be very attractive to business (which runs the USA—not sure about the rest of the world). For one, providers could get a monthly charge. Upgrades and updates would be automatic to the distributed OS (no more problems with unpatched systems that spread viruses and worms). Also, hardware would almost certainly be cheaper. Instead of buying a computer for a few hundred dollars and then paying for an ISP, people could just pay a monthly charge and get the terminal for free (like with the cable company—the box comes with the service).
Thin clients should also be really attractive to enterprise. Again, there would be the benefits of update and upgrade control, combined with the ability to regulate what the client can and can’t do with greater control (no more screwing around on the internet at work).
Of course, there is the danger of the network going down, but heck, that happens anyway. I’m sure some people on these forums (like me) work in offices where sasser and other contaminants make serious cuts into productivity.
What I’m saying is nothing new, and of course it triggers the autonomic “but I want CONTROL of my stuff! It will never happen as long as I cling to Linux/BeOS/Commodore 64!” There is nothing wrong with that response. The issue is that the majority of people tend to take what they are given (huge generalization, but this seems defensible, particularly with tech).
Do you not buy any of this? That’s cool, I’m not sure I do either. However, it’s hard to look at how pervasive the internet and related web services are becoming and not consider the possibilities. Feel free to fire back, but try to keep it as reasonable as possible. These forums all too often become shouting matches.
Whether we like it or not, this sort of model could be very attractive to business (which runs the USA—not sure about the rest of the world). For one, providers could get a monthly charge.
It would be good for business but it wouldn’t exactly give the costumors any big advantages, instead it will give them big disadvantages.
This would attract even more people to open source software since they only have to buy a cheap computer get a whole bunch of free software with free upgrades. People don’t like getting monthly bills. At least I don’t know anyone who does. And if there’s a way to escape that they will take the chance even if they have to pay up $400.
Even though it would mean more security for single boxes, what would an attack on the main servers lead to?
There’s a lot of people who won’t have broadband or even access to the internet for a very very long time, but they might still have the need for a computer. There need to be a solution for them as well.
Thin clients are great for inhouse networks, but nationwide, no way.
That’s true, those are good points. About the thin client bit—is it possible that they could start in enterprise and shift to homes? This sort of movement is really common in computing. The word processor, spreadsheets, databases, and loads of other software was developed for enterprise and moved into the home. It seems that today’s cutting-edge tech is tomorrow’s toy for kids and grandparents. It’s also certain that Windows benefited in the home OS market from its business presence, in that it gave users the ability to use what they know.
I agree that service charges would probably drive some people to OSS, but I would be surprised if it was a large-scale movement (of course, this is all off in the future). That is, until there is an OSS solution that is easy and familiar for the average user, I would contend that Americans would pay for convenience. Gosh, we do it already in some many ways. That being said, it’s not as if there is currently a real option for home service computing, so who knows what OSS will cook up for the desktop in the future.
The reason why this is interesting to me is that there is some evidence that computing may shift away from the “desktop” metaphor and the old beige tower. MS keeps plonking versions of its OS on tablets, PDAs, media centers, game consoles, etc. Apple also (I would contend) seems to have written off trying to take the desktop from MS, and is trying to drive a movement away from the desktop computer as we know it (this is a while off). Computing has a pretty short history, but there do seem to be these epochs: first the computer was a business tool, then Apple made it a home device, then MS made it pervasive, it became easily portable, then the internet changed things, then the web search engine, etc. I don’t know. What do you think?
Thanks for the reply and many thanks for forming it as a discussion instead of an attack.
This is too much for me. Today I learn about Google’s new Desktop Search tool and now I read that google may?? raise Gmail’s storage from 1GB to 1TB(terabyte)!!
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39155158,00.htm
maybe you have to pay for that type of storage, but then again one would have thought the same for 1GB of e-mail storage. Maybe this is part of Google’s “big vision” of what it can be and like “bendertheoffender” just stated…(and I paraphrase) maybe google will be our OS and their storage farm will be our computer from whom we access our information from. “bendertheoffender” you may just be right…I mean….1 terabyte!!! I couldn’t imagine what I could do with all that space!
-Jerry
All indications are that the article you linked is false, probably the result of a typo. My gmail inbox still says that I have 1000 Mb of total capacity.
Google > Netscape, i don’t see any similarity… at all. google pwns, they should release an OS =) , i’d buy it.
He who as the most gold makes the rules. Google will be crush by Microsoft’s billions, its a fact. Plus the past dictates that if a company uses Linux the stock will be worthless with in 2 years.
I thought that the golden rule was that any OSNews post about a company that is in any way related to Linux would eventually draw out the MS trolls. As for your claim, how is IBM stock these days?
It’s a bit illogical to argue that Netscape gave the browser away (i.e, derived no revenue from) and then argue that Netscape got in trouble when MS bundled IE with Windows. Loss of browser sales won’t hurt you when, in fact, you aren’t selling a browser.
Netscape wasn’t competitive in the server market. Their server sales were always also-rans in that market, usually a distant third. They had plenty of competition from MS, Sun, and others; and don’t forget that Linux and the free BSD’s also gave customers options.
Netscape got hurt by losing the server wars, not the browser wars.
(Frankly, I’m not sure Netscape knew what its core business was. In the mid-’90s, along with some coworkers, I visited both Sun and Netscape at their facilities south of San Francisco. Dangling the prospect of a multi-million dollar contract, we spent a half-day with each company. Sun knew what they were selling: hardware. Netscape, however, was into so many things — searching, mail, portals (remember those?), the IPO buzz, and living and breathing Internet hype, that it’s a wonder that any of them knew what was going on.)
Everything Google has done as been innovative
What exactly is innovative about Google? I’m not trolling, but you need to give some examples.
– There were other search engines just as good, and with a clean interface.
– They bought Deja(news), took away most of the cool features (tracking threads etc.) and rebranded it “Google groups”.
– Other search engines had a news search (online magazines, not usenet), like alltheweb.com. They made their own version.
– Froogle is just another shopping comparison site.
– Mail… Whats new about that?
– They also bought a blogging service. Real innovative
– They still don’t have an MP3 search or FTP search like alltheweb.com, but if they read this they might copy that as well.
Google was lucky enough to win the battle of the users. There were other alternatives just as good (or better even).
When they got popular, they started to buy or copy other sites, and put them together on one site. Google has done a good job with all the services, and I use them daily.
But if buying and duplicating competitors and combining them into one package is innovation, I guess Microsoft is the most innovative software company in the world 🙂
I stand corrected. Many articles popped up on the internet about Google raising the Gmail storage to a terabyte. But a new article just came out stating from Google themselves that the 1 TB change that users have been reporting is a software bug.
So that ends that. Unless their just yanking our chain and actually do plan on putting out 1 TB storage just to mess with our minds and Microsoft for that matter.
I don’t know…just rambling.
-Jerry
We will be using google to search our harddrives and the internet, not windows….
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/19/186257&mode=thread&tid=…
I don’t see hardly between Google and Netscape any similarity at all. Nobody needs to download anything to use Google unlike Netscape. Therefore bundling MSN search isn’t going to be anywhere near as effective. Any web browser can quickly goto Google. MSN has been the default hompage for IE since like IE4 and MSN has never has more than 20% market share. Even the search toolbar also searches MSN by default! Trying to push MSN onto people has failed for the last 5 years, why is it suddenly going to start working? Leverage hasn’t made it a player like Yahoo or Google. Unless some future version of IE screws up Google somehow I don’t really know how MS can leverage the OS much further than they already have.
Another difference is that Google has dominated its industry for a lot longer than Netscape. Google has pretty much been the top player in the search biz since 2000(Yahoo switched to google results that year). Even though Google has had more problems with their results lately, almost nobody is calling Google’s product inferior to any competitor. Netscape on the other hand received some bad reviews for some of their versions of NS 4.x while IE4 tended to get better reviews. Netscape 6.0 had simply terrible reviews which harmed the brand name. Google one the other hand has almost nothing but glowing reviews.
Another difference is that Google has far more dominance than just search engines. They also are beggining to dominate advertising. I read somewhere that about a third of all advertising dollars are through Google now and rising. Google dominates the contextual market through Google Adsense even more than that. Microsoft doesn’t even have their own ad network or search database! They are starting a search database, but it will take months to get the same size database as Google. Even if they get a comparable size database they will still need to design a better algorithm. Unless there is something better people will stick with Google. Another advantage is that Google’s page is much cleaner and user friendly than MSN which would make people prefer Google even if the results were equal quality. Also Gmail is primed to make Hotmail irrelevant. If you get Hotmail users onto Gmail you eliminate ~70 of MSN’s traffic. If people can check their email and search in the same site than Google keeps its users from even looking at MSN or Yahoo. I think Google’s future is bright. Until I see results from the MSN crawler that are better than Google I see no reason to believe that Google won’t continue to overshadow MSN. Yahoo may be another matter.
All indications are that the article you linked is false, probably the result of a typo. My gmail inbox still says that I have 1000 Mb of total capacity.
Short reply- the terabyte space was actually a bug that google quickly corrected, not a service offer. Now on to the important stuff.
First of all, netscape was doomed from the beginning. Internet explorer doesn’t need to be better to get on top, it just needs to be good. Why? Because it’s convenient. You don’t have to install a program, or even start the program. You can type it practically anywhere in windows that there’s an edit box and it’ll pop up.
And I do mean pop. I’m using it right now, and with a decently fast computer and broadband of any sort, IE clips right along at a space that leaves nothing to be desired. That’s the kind of tool I want- something simple, fast, and convenient. Is it any wonder that netscape got beaten out of the market?
Google, on the other hand, is entirely different. It integrates seamlessly into the IE browser- I have the google bar and it’s practically the best thing that ever happened to me. The searches are lightning fast (I’ve had a 4.6kbp connection before and it still loads almost instantly- now that’s incredible) and the most relevant you can find. It even searches things that some engines ommit- things like http://www.astalavista.com results, and other “security” sites.
Google news. I used it to find this article. It finds news written within mere hours of your search. GMail- hopefully I’ll be able to test the beta, but even without having seen it, a gigabyte of space sounds pretty nice, doesn’t it? That’s a lot better than my webhost can manage for free.
Ever gone to the Google labs? They’re working on all sorts of things… telephone searches, collective processing, everything. Along with their innovative and unintrusive ad-words technology, Google is one of my favorite companies.
Now here’s a dangerous admission: my other favorite company is Microsoft. Why? Because they’ve unified the software market. To be honest, I’m hoping Dell will do the same with the hardware market. I root for the big companies (with the exception of AOL, which I hate fervently, as does anybody who knows anything), because they allow the geniuses out there to concentrate on things that really need to be specialized, like games, and sound processing.
My hope is that Microsoft will move more decisively into other markets as well. It wouldn’t take to much to improve CD burning and DVD burning, and supporting RAR and ISO formats would be a big hit. Its ZIP handling is also somewhat pitiful… it can’t even alter compression ratios. It’d take a while to catch up to WinZip, but at least it could start.
Those are a few thoughts from a programmer who spends a lot of time with third party software trying to do things that I feel the OS and a few well-known, easily accessible other companies should be able to handle. If I could do everything with WXP-Pro, VB.Net, Google, and Dell, I’d be happy.
Dan
For real though… you have to look where it matters.
who has the coolest holiday / special occasion Logos?
exactly
create a lot of hysteria.
one, in my opinion they do have the best search engine: its clean, fast, and gives good results.
two, despite that, they do not have a crushing market share right now…the last stats i saw had them at about 40% of users using them, yahoo had about 35%, and msn had about 30% of users using them.
three, users use more than one search engine.
four, technology is fierce, and despite the writers claims, odds are they will be unseated by something that comes along that does an even better job. not much remains static in technology…well, maybe a few things like apple’s high prices, ibm’s long arms, and ms’ ability to keep defeating competitors (pssst, look at Palm’s market share).
five, how much money do they really make from “search” and all of the things they can sell based on it? info now revealed in ipo data release show they had sales of $1 billion in 2003 and a profit of about $100 million. Let’s value them at $30 billion since they can make $100 million per year! Doh, lets not get bubbles on the brain yet again folks.
Yahoo made $100 million in profit in its last quarter alone.
The author of this editorial would do better to think outside the lines, stop being a parrot, and give up the strong political leanings in favor of some real hard data.
As the article says, MS need to leverage the desktop monopoly it has to topple Google.
But the idea of a search engine that searches locally as well as internetly seems unlikely to be the route to success. Ok, they are both searches, but they are totally different beasts. Other than the act of searching, there is little to compare the two. A single search idea cannot be optimised to cater for both, and you would tend to be in a different mindset when looking for your CV as you would for tips on writing one.
And the “amalgamation” of the two would simply be a front end to two seperate search functions. The two we already have today.
Comparing MS and Google to MS and Netscape does not take into account the world is a different place now. “Google” is the phrase used to search for something, their brand equity is enormous.
Apples and Oranges.
Microsoft will Kill Google by integration. If Microsoft inexplicably fail to beat Google by integrating web searching into the IE browser experience – which, let’s face it, 95% of the lemmings who use computers out there will use, then Microsoft will just buy a strategic share of Google and slowly change it from within until it becomes just another in a long line of Microsoft products.
The DOJ being full of Microsoft stooges will roll over yet again, and the Billy Gates Monopoly will continue to set the standard for all standards web-related or not.
If it goes like this google will be the loser at the end. It is not really that hard for guys in any company to come up with a good search engine and be an industry leader. i believe microsoft will come with a solution somehow and beat them. We dont even know how next generation search engines will work, even how data will be stored, everything might change, somebody can come up with a perfect solution and bum, it is gone.
If it goes like this google will be the loser at the end. It is not really that hard for guys in any company to come up with a good search engine and be an industry leader. i believe microsoft will come with a solution somehow and beat them. We dont even know how next generation search engines will work, even how data will be stored, everything might change, somebody can come up with a perfect solution and bum, it is gone.
Emre
Instead of think MicroSoft and MSN as the threat to Google, it might be wise to keep an eye on Yahoo. They’re making quiet but deep inroads into Google territory, and are even stealing big sponsors at a surprising rate.
I’ve never seen any argument where google tried to work with the linux community to create a fully integrated desktop that would do the same as may be predicted with Longhorn.
Can someone suggest for Google to start working with Mandrake and Novell and Debian and Apple (the four real desktop OSes with linux(ish)) – would these four companies be able to come up with a FLOSS solution pre-empting MS’s integration of their own search engine?
Google are already quite familiar with Linux. They API are already well publicised but probably would need to be extended to cope with File Systems. The step may not be so big and they probably are well in advance of MS for every technology here.
Such an unreasonnable thought?
It is an interesting concept about MeSs ripping the guts out of another established business. However, MeSs itself has gone to courts in the EU and established a prescident,,,, The Linux OS known as Lindows.com has had to change it’s name just this last month, because MeSs won a court case in the Netherland courts based on it’s name causing confusion with the Windows brand name. That they have upheld, and the court established that Lindows, or any use of that name couldn’t appear on the WWW as a site, and that Lindows.com’s WEB sight couldn’t be read by any citizen of the Netherlands, else Lindows.com would be fined, per instance, some rediculous amount, $245,000.00,,,, Well, that prescident of similar sounding name would apply to MeSs itself, if it tries to garner switch-overs using ‘Froogle’ or any variation of the ‘oogle’ sound as a search engine,,,,, This just may be MeSs’ tripping on it’s own laces time,,,,, Only time will tell,,,, And they wouldn’t be able to remove the Lindows.com injunction without suffering a CounterSuite for loss of business, and the cost of having to alter the Lindows.con WEB site to LinSpire,com,,,, 0atmea1 +
Whether you like it or not, Netscape died because it couldn’t compete with Apache. Remember, Windows was never ready for the enterprise back in 2000. IBM pushed Apache for its high-end servers, so did Sun, HP, Compaq and others. Netscape was banking on sales to enterprise customers who were predominantly all UNIX shops.
This is what freesoftware does to companies!. Not that apache isn’t a bad webserver but at that time, free webserver as opposed to forking out $12K for a netscape webserver didn’t make sense since Netscape’s webserver was essentially NCSA’s httpd server which morphed into Apache.
>This is what freesoftware does to companies!. Not that apache isn’t a bad webserver but at that time, free webserver as opposed to forking out $12K for a netscape webserver didn’t make sense since Netscape’s webserver was essentially NCSA’s httpd server which morphed into Apache
Agreed
I think google will always be the favoured search engine. When I’m talking to my friends and they tell me to lok up something they say “google this”, not “MSN This”. IE with the google toolbar is the perfect combination. Blocks pop ups like Netscape, and can search google from anywhere. I would use Mozilla but I personally think it looks ugly. Opera is another fairly good browser. But, I’ve stuck with IE my whole life so I’m going to stick with it again.
–ABC123