Microsoft, Google and users=0 & Newsmakers=1
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Dear Joe, No one said competition is bad. I totally agree that any, any industry with one leader alone, result in more expensive and less quality products, BUT What I am trying to put on the table here is the fact that Microsoft's competitor should not be Google. It should be Mac, Linux, UNIX, etc. and for Google, it is Yahoo, etc. We all have heard about the Google trying to create an OS. I think this leads to a large group of useless software's or web sites. How many times do you use "Google word"? How many times you do "MSN Search"? I believe Google can not create a Word better than MS does, neither Microsoft can do a better search engine. And what happens if they do? We'll have two very good version of the same thing. But if MS continues his software, they might invent something new and so does Google. I mean if a runner team compete a basketball team, yes they might improve, both of them, but isn't it silly? Doing this type of competition leads to losing our goals. We focus on beating the competitor, instead of doing a great job, Instead of innovating. The results here are not better products. Anyway, this is what I believe and might be wrong.
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I still disagree. From a purely business perspective, I've long argued that Google should drop many of their secondary products, reduce their employees and concentrate on what they do best. But that has little to do with Microsoft. Having said that, Google is an extremely arrogant company. Without Microsoft's even minor threat, they would have stagnated just like AltaVista before them. Incidentally, while Google may not create a better word processor than Word, that's not the point. There are many people who don't need Word or Excel (I'd use Google Spreadsheet if I didn't have a legit free copy of Excel--I just use Excel for basic stuff.) Google's entry has already spurred Microsoft to innovate and the stronger Google's product is, the better Microsoft's will be. This can be demonstrated; like most companies, when Microsoft has no competitor in a niche, the quality of that product goes down. This has been demonstrated over and over again. Again, from a purely business perspective "MSN Search" may not be the best use of Microsoft's development dollars. (On the other hand, using that same argument they should have dropped Mac Office in the 90s. By not doing so, they arguably kept the Mac alive.) On the other hand, whatever work Microsoft does on MSN Search very likely has a ripple effect with other products. It might even be something as simple as an engineer who worked on Search moves over to Vista or Office and applies what they've learned to those products, improving them. (This has happened to me so I've no doubt it's happened to others.) I suspect that MSN Search is doing poorly because Microsoft has a tendency to create complex solutions for simple problems. But, they have also showed tremendous tenacity at working a problem until they get it right. Sure, Yahoo! may be Google's biggest competitor right now, but for Google to count out Microsoft right now would be a fatal mistake on their part. And we're all better off for it.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Bradml wrote:
I endure PHP jokes to no end but make a few ASP.net ones and get voted down by a few small minded people. It isn't a question of location, it is a question of respect.
This has become very common. There is plenty of knee-jerk voting going on and I think we just need to ignore whenever we get downvoted for no reason. But I totally agree with you that it irritates a lot. But I keep wondering why they do it.. What is the pleasure they get by downvoting for no reason..
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - Cicero ப்ரம்மா
Who gives a crap. Seriously? Voting is the same as picking a Homecoming Queen. None of us will ever win, and none of us should ever care.
"Quality Software since 1983!"
http://www.smoothjazzy.com/ - see the "Programming" section for freeware tools and articles. -
No, at least, not most of them do. The following is a list of some jokes I can imagine in a world without software: 1- A pilot in an Apache Helicopter is trying to shoot an enemy while encounters: Web server is currently down. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we are up 99% of the time. It is we are off 1% of a year which means more than 3 days a year, and today is one of them ;) Please stand by… 2- A man under a real time web site (!) and a surgery machine that got mad because a hacker is trying to display his name on the main page, instead of patient's living signals. 3- A bank in countryside is unable to run a telephony system, since they have to run a web server first, and that will increase the price. 4- I can not imagine a game server that renders that huge graphics for all 1000 guys connected to play online with very weak machines. 5- Intel will no longer produces P4 for desktop, because we don't need any such power, servers do the job. Neither we need any more GDI, so forget nVidia, Does we actually need a so large H.D.D, Guys be realistic, please. 6- I take my Video/Audio CD to listen with a friend, he has a computer. In order to watch the movie or listen to our music, we shall first open IE, then go to a website which supports playing music's, pay for internet and phone, engage a server, transfer a large amount of data to listen our favorite music. I really hope servers don't be busy, otherwise we will have to wait or listen to a fragmented music. 7- Your house is in fire, you take your cell phone and quickly call firehouse, but remember, your cell phone does not use an app, and instead it loads a website: Err. We are currently updating servers and uploading new content. This will take only some minutes… Thanks for your connection, please try again later. Regards, your mobile phone service provider. All in all, I don't understand what's wrong with our local applications that have auto update, to move them to a server instead? Think a bout the difference between a website and an application. They are acting similar, but the difference is that a website needs to load all required data from a remote server as a page is requested, but the local app loads data from server as it needs. If you ask me, applications are far more advanced in technology, but websites are for other needs. I believe we shall not mix them. -- modified at 7:20 Thursday 8th March, 2007
//This is not a signature while (I'm_alive) { cout<<"I Love Programmin
I am talking about software for the general mass market. Only heavy apps such as games (which who knows what will happen in the future there) or hardware specific things such as drivers, will remain. Most other apps, personal finance, tax ware, office (already there), photo libraries, etc. will all end up as internet based applications and the desktop versions of these will for the most part be dead. There are many reasons for this, but one driving force is security. If you write software that runs view the web, the user never has direct access to it and thus cannot pirate it. More and more developers are waking up to the fact that if they build software to the masses and release it, there is only a matter of a few days to a few weeks before a good app will be cracked and pirated. You live on the initial sales or those that come along from people who are clueless on how to access pirated software. In a web based (not restricted to just web technologies such as ajax, html, xml etc, but also rich client such as WPF), the majority of the code is server side and no one else has access to it. You no longer have to worry about piracy, and you can even look into alternate methods of revenue such as advertising based. Adobe is even working on a web based Photoshop that is expected to be ad supported (although I am sure it will not have all the features of a their desktop version yet, as that is one of their cash cows), but if they get competition in that space, eventually they will. This is the point I am getting at though, Google had the focus to try moving where Microsoft was not since they knew they could not build applications to directly compete with Microsoft on the desktop. They decided to try moving the functionality that a large number of people require from Micosoft's products and add some abilities that the products did not offer. That was the shot across the SS Microsoft's bow. Just like the Internet hit Microsoft in the 90s, this new world of online apps caught them sleeping and now they are rushing to catch up but still protect their revenue streams. Microsoft is a desktop form of software company, they want to sell you their OS and all the apps you ever want, but the world is waking up to a new type of service level applications that can be provided in a rich client type environment. As an example, how many people would by a map program for your computer now (unless it was some GPS navigational thing)? Most people use Google maps or Microsoft's Virtual Earth maps. There is not muc
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I am talking about software for the general mass market. Only heavy apps such as games (which who knows what will happen in the future there) or hardware specific things such as drivers, will remain. Most other apps, personal finance, tax ware, office (already there), photo libraries, etc. will all end up as internet based applications and the desktop versions of these will for the most part be dead. There are many reasons for this, but one driving force is security. If you write software that runs view the web, the user never has direct access to it and thus cannot pirate it. More and more developers are waking up to the fact that if they build software to the masses and release it, there is only a matter of a few days to a few weeks before a good app will be cracked and pirated. You live on the initial sales or those that come along from people who are clueless on how to access pirated software. In a web based (not restricted to just web technologies such as ajax, html, xml etc, but also rich client such as WPF), the majority of the code is server side and no one else has access to it. You no longer have to worry about piracy, and you can even look into alternate methods of revenue such as advertising based. Adobe is even working on a web based Photoshop that is expected to be ad supported (although I am sure it will not have all the features of a their desktop version yet, as that is one of their cash cows), but if they get competition in that space, eventually they will. This is the point I am getting at though, Google had the focus to try moving where Microsoft was not since they knew they could not build applications to directly compete with Microsoft on the desktop. They decided to try moving the functionality that a large number of people require from Micosoft's products and add some abilities that the products did not offer. That was the shot across the SS Microsoft's bow. Just like the Internet hit Microsoft in the 90s, this new world of online apps caught them sleeping and now they are rushing to catch up but still protect their revenue streams. Microsoft is a desktop form of software company, they want to sell you their OS and all the apps you ever want, but the world is waking up to a new type of service level applications that can be provided in a rich client type environment. As an example, how many people would by a map program for your computer now (unless it was some GPS navigational thing)? Most people use Google maps or Microsoft's Virtual Earth maps. There is not muc
Rocky Moore wrote:
As an example, how many people would by a map program for your computer now (unless it was some GPS navigational thing)? Most people use Google maps or Microsoft's Virtual Earth maps. There is not much more I would expect to come from a desktop map software product that I do not alrady get from the online maps.
MS Streets and Trips gives much better travel time estimates than googlemaps does when I've compared them head to head on raodtrips. All of the competitions webUIs sucked the last time I tried them, and not just in that they wouldn't allow multi destination trips. The last time I checked there was still no easy way to try alternate routes via google. S&T just requires a rightclick along the alternate highway to add an intermediate stop.
-- Rules of thumb should not be taken for the whole hand.
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I still disagree. From a purely business perspective, I've long argued that Google should drop many of their secondary products, reduce their employees and concentrate on what they do best. But that has little to do with Microsoft. Having said that, Google is an extremely arrogant company. Without Microsoft's even minor threat, they would have stagnated just like AltaVista before them. Incidentally, while Google may not create a better word processor than Word, that's not the point. There are many people who don't need Word or Excel (I'd use Google Spreadsheet if I didn't have a legit free copy of Excel--I just use Excel for basic stuff.) Google's entry has already spurred Microsoft to innovate and the stronger Google's product is, the better Microsoft's will be. This can be demonstrated; like most companies, when Microsoft has no competitor in a niche, the quality of that product goes down. This has been demonstrated over and over again. Again, from a purely business perspective "MSN Search" may not be the best use of Microsoft's development dollars. (On the other hand, using that same argument they should have dropped Mac Office in the 90s. By not doing so, they arguably kept the Mac alive.) On the other hand, whatever work Microsoft does on MSN Search very likely has a ripple effect with other products. It might even be something as simple as an engineer who worked on Search moves over to Vista or Office and applies what they've learned to those products, improving them. (This has happened to me so I've no doubt it's happened to others.) I suspect that MSN Search is doing poorly because Microsoft has a tendency to create complex solutions for simple problems. But, they have also showed tremendous tenacity at working a problem until they get it right. Sure, Yahoo! may be Google's biggest competitor right now, but for Google to count out Microsoft right now would be a fatal mistake on their part. And we're all better off for it.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
While I agree with most of what you say, I think here's where we can't agree: While I consider innovation the most important factor, you seem to consider quality. Yes quality of their products might improve, but as much as I know none of the big innovations in the world, had happened under the pressure of a competition, and that the competition between two different kinds of an industry. (E.g. Electricity, telephone, radio, etc)
//This is not a signature while (I'm_alive) { cout<<"I Love Programming"; }
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While I agree with most of what you say, I think here's where we can't agree: While I consider innovation the most important factor, you seem to consider quality. Yes quality of their products might improve, but as much as I know none of the big innovations in the world, had happened under the pressure of a competition, and that the competition between two different kinds of an industry. (E.g. Electricity, telephone, radio, etc)
//This is not a signature while (I'm_alive) { cout<<"I Love Programming"; }
Hamed Mosavi wrote:
but as much as I know none of the big innovations in the world, had happened under the pressure of a competition, and that the competition between two different kinds of an industry. (E.g. Electricity, telephone, radio, etc)
Well, you're wrong. Competition has spurred some of the greatest innovations the world has seen. Electricity, telephone and radio are all prime examples of this. The competition to develop these was fierce and sometimes quite vicious. (Read up on Tesla and Edison.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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Hamed Mosavi wrote:
but as much as I know none of the big innovations in the world, had happened under the pressure of a competition, and that the competition between two different kinds of an industry. (E.g. Electricity, telephone, radio, etc)
Well, you're wrong. Competition has spurred some of the greatest innovations the world has seen. Electricity, telephone and radio are all prime examples of this. The competition to develop these was fierce and sometimes quite vicious. (Read up on Tesla and Edison.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Joe Woodbury wrote:
The competition to develop these was fierce and sometimes quite vicious
Really :-o I didn't know that. If that's the case, then Google & Microsoft Please do compete, but be kind enough not to invent the same version of electricity ;) -- modified at 2:02 Friday 9th March, 2007
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I am talking about software for the general mass market. Only heavy apps such as games (which who knows what will happen in the future there) or hardware specific things such as drivers, will remain. Most other apps, personal finance, tax ware, office (already there), photo libraries, etc. will all end up as internet based applications and the desktop versions of these will for the most part be dead. There are many reasons for this, but one driving force is security. If you write software that runs view the web, the user never has direct access to it and thus cannot pirate it. More and more developers are waking up to the fact that if they build software to the masses and release it, there is only a matter of a few days to a few weeks before a good app will be cracked and pirated. You live on the initial sales or those that come along from people who are clueless on how to access pirated software. In a web based (not restricted to just web technologies such as ajax, html, xml etc, but also rich client such as WPF), the majority of the code is server side and no one else has access to it. You no longer have to worry about piracy, and you can even look into alternate methods of revenue such as advertising based. Adobe is even working on a web based Photoshop that is expected to be ad supported (although I am sure it will not have all the features of a their desktop version yet, as that is one of their cash cows), but if they get competition in that space, eventually they will. This is the point I am getting at though, Google had the focus to try moving where Microsoft was not since they knew they could not build applications to directly compete with Microsoft on the desktop. They decided to try moving the functionality that a large number of people require from Micosoft's products and add some abilities that the products did not offer. That was the shot across the SS Microsoft's bow. Just like the Internet hit Microsoft in the 90s, this new world of online apps caught them sleeping and now they are rushing to catch up but still protect their revenue streams. Microsoft is a desktop form of software company, they want to sell you their OS and all the apps you ever want, but the world is waking up to a new type of service level applications that can be provided in a rich client type environment. As an example, how many people would by a map program for your computer now (unless it was some GPS navigational thing)? Most people use Google maps or Microsoft's Virtual Earth maps. There is not muc
Firstly WPF isn't a web technology. You can write a WPF that downloads from the web and runs in partial trust, and you can make it use web services for back-end functionality, but that makes it no different from Windows Forms and nobody says that's a web technology. Secondly, piracy would be the worst reason ever to develop web apps. Software vendors tub-thump all the time about piracy losing them millions because they want to convince as many people as possible to buy, but lets me clear: they are not actually losing anything really. Assume piracy was impossible - I can think of lots of alternatives to the most-pirated apps (MS Office, Photoshop, etc) that I would explore before forking over the cash that Microsoft and Adobe charge. The reasons to develop for the web instead of the desktop is that you get instant feedback; you can update the app without everyone having to download a new version (or even a patch); you can fund the app with advertising (not because people hate it any less than they would if it was in desktop apps, but they are used to it by now); and the #1 reason: you might get bought by Google/Yahoo/Microsoft.
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I am talking about software for the general mass market. Only heavy apps such as games (which who knows what will happen in the future there) or hardware specific things such as drivers, will remain. Most other apps, personal finance, tax ware, office (already there), photo libraries, etc. will all end up as internet based applications and the desktop versions of these will for the most part be dead. There are many reasons for this, but one driving force is security. If you write software that runs view the web, the user never has direct access to it and thus cannot pirate it. More and more developers are waking up to the fact that if they build software to the masses and release it, there is only a matter of a few days to a few weeks before a good app will be cracked and pirated. You live on the initial sales or those that come along from people who are clueless on how to access pirated software. In a web based (not restricted to just web technologies such as ajax, html, xml etc, but also rich client such as WPF), the majority of the code is server side and no one else has access to it. You no longer have to worry about piracy, and you can even look into alternate methods of revenue such as advertising based. Adobe is even working on a web based Photoshop that is expected to be ad supported (although I am sure it will not have all the features of a their desktop version yet, as that is one of their cash cows), but if they get competition in that space, eventually they will. This is the point I am getting at though, Google had the focus to try moving where Microsoft was not since they knew they could not build applications to directly compete with Microsoft on the desktop. They decided to try moving the functionality that a large number of people require from Micosoft's products and add some abilities that the products did not offer. That was the shot across the SS Microsoft's bow. Just like the Internet hit Microsoft in the 90s, this new world of online apps caught them sleeping and now they are rushing to catch up but still protect their revenue streams. Microsoft is a desktop form of software company, they want to sell you their OS and all the apps you ever want, but the world is waking up to a new type of service level applications that can be provided in a rich client type environment. As an example, how many people would by a map program for your computer now (unless it was some GPS navigational thing)? Most people use Google maps or Microsoft's Virtual Earth maps. There is not muc
general mass market? Are you trying to say softwares used everywhere around us don't have general mass market? Do you use a washing machine, dish washer, fridge, TV, Satellite receiver (My poor English, I don't know the exact name), hi-fi, a player in your car? In a digital form, they all have softwares. Haven't you ever traveled by airplane, isn't NASA working on a large set of applications? Are these not mass enough, or important enough? I can bet that cell phone market in the world is larger than finance-app market. Me as a member of home-users community, which is one of the greatest general-mass-markets in the world use the following apps that can't, by no means, have a proper replacements on the web: A Media player, A dictionary (That's usage is as simple as Ctrl+RightClick anywhere on the screen), An IDE for development (I really don't want my code travel to US to an online debugger and back!), A download manager, Software to burn my CD or DVD's, Software to run my virtual machines, Software to connect to cell phone using Bluetooth, An Antivirus, MSN Desktop search. I could agree if you would say it's good to increase functionality of these APPLICATIONS by connecting them to web servers to use EXTENDED functionalities dedicated because of having groups of users or service providers, using any kind of network specially Internet, but " desktop world is slowly vanishing" or " almost all applications will reside on the web!" is too much, IMHO (In my humble opinion). About the security, it's exactly one of the main reasons why many applications will not move to web. I had been writing for some middle size companies here in my country. In one of them I even saw that (Despite the fact they were using a legal and updated version of Kaspersky) they have two separated networks. One for Internet, the other that they do use for applications! You would quickly use this line to say we can use a website here, but using websites are restricted by the following and many more I can't think about all of them: 1- Do you have a connection, always? Is it worth to rely on a connection always? I don't think NASA agree with you here, or even you do, if you were in an airplane reading this ;) 2- Do you really want to centralize your processes? If there is an application which relies on client machines, would it be beneficial to use a server side instead? If you always say yes, then go to many companies talking about distributed programming, or parallel programming to divide a so heavy process into more than
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Firstly WPF isn't a web technology. You can write a WPF that downloads from the web and runs in partial trust, and you can make it use web services for back-end functionality, but that makes it no different from Windows Forms and nobody says that's a web technology. Secondly, piracy would be the worst reason ever to develop web apps. Software vendors tub-thump all the time about piracy losing them millions because they want to convince as many people as possible to buy, but lets me clear: they are not actually losing anything really. Assume piracy was impossible - I can think of lots of alternatives to the most-pirated apps (MS Office, Photoshop, etc) that I would explore before forking over the cash that Microsoft and Adobe charge. The reasons to develop for the web instead of the desktop is that you get instant feedback; you can update the app without everyone having to download a new version (or even a patch); you can fund the app with advertising (not because people hate it any less than they would if it was in desktop apps, but they are used to it by now); and the #1 reason: you might get bought by Google/Yahoo/Microsoft.
oozer wrote:
Firstly WPF isn't a web technology. You can write a WPF that downloads from the web and runs in partial trust, and you can make it use web services for back-end functionality, but that makes it no different from Windows Forms and nobody says that's a web technology.
I am referring to a rich client as you described. I classify this a web technology since it is typically loaded via a browser. WPF does not stop there as WPF/E will move this even further.
oozer wrote:
Secondly, piracy would be the worst reason ever to develop web apps. Software vendors tub-thump all the time about piracy losing them millions because they want to convince as many people as possible to buy, but lets me clear: they are not actually losing anything really. Assume piracy was impossible - I can think of lots of alternatives to the most-pirated apps (MS Office, Photoshop, etc) that I would explore before forking over the cash that Microsoft and Adobe charge.
I do not believe that at all. After being the software industry for over two decades it is more than clear that piracy has taken a huge toll. If it were not for piracy, we would have a much larger software market for the masses. Piracy in the 90's drove many of the smaller businesses out of the business. Shortly after a hot product was made available, there were pirated copies online so no one would pay for them. This is a fact of history that I have witnessed with my own eyes.
oozer wrote:
and the #1 reason: you might get bought by Google/Yahoo/Microsoft.
I think a lot of sites fell into that view :laugh:
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