Google / MS Article on Fortune

[simplistik]

It's a couple days late... but it's still a good read.
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1050065,00.html?

It's an extensive read but a good one. Very interesting stuff in it, about how Google, is slowly toppeling over Microsoft. Interesting... but I guess you can draw your own conclusions from the article. Enjoy the read.

[krnmikel]

wow that is pretty interesting. now microsoft has even more rivals =D.

[G]

great post simplistik, very interesting facts brought up there. I think though that people associate seraching with google now thus getting microsoft to be users search engine will be much harder than offering more features which in itself is very hard.

Also Operating systems, now as a PC user it seem like over the past 2 years definatley Mac's have grown in popularity but Linux has grown immensley, the same story with firefox also look at how fast that thing has spread - I admit at first I had mixed thoughts about adopting that browser but it is genuinely far better than IE.

I think the Microsoft have focused too much on profitability rather than functionality over the last few years - I mean media centre, office all these products are very light improvements on previous versions, media centre is just a slight expansion on XP and to be honest you can do all that anyway with XP provided you have the hardware - you just won't get Media Centres fancy menu.

Also Longhorn has lingered for so long I think people don't care anymore, when we first heard of it we were like "cool", now its been prostponed so many times its starting to sound like an N64 game.

If only Mac would lower their prices and Linux would offer just a little more people would flock to them (I know the mac mini is cheap but I mean the desktop systems).

just my view on things.

[prstudio]

That is a very nice read simp! Thanks :)

And how true it is...

Go Googleteers Go!

by the way, interestingly enough on the new Partner Pack that contains that USB application also listed here in technews...Microsoft makes the "Google Deskbar" available as apart of that...

Someone is trying to piggyback...

[simplistik]

I'm all for anyone that make's Billy boy pee his pants. If he paid more attention to his products I would like him more.... but that's not the case. Hopefully this is somethin that will do the job for him and his sucessor

[ya3]

Also Longhorn has lingered for so long I think people don't care anymore, when we first heard of it we were like "cool", now its been prostponed so many times its starting to sound like an N64 game.
GAH! That only matters to the computer-geek minority group. The rest of the computer-savvy general public will just see "Winblows 2006: a billion new cool features that have already been in OS X for almost a decade" and buy it. *ch-ching!*

[simplistik]

I knew after I said somethin on that other post this post title would be changed :P it's all good though... we all really know what's up :D

[intrudah]

thanks for the read, i didnt know google was doing well enough to have gates come foward like that

the 2 google owners=insipration

[RabBell]

good read (bit late I know but I found the article first and came here to post it but like a good Kirupian I searched first and found simp had posted it :thumb: )

Intresting article saying Gates is worried about Google. Also says there are people at Microsoft who think Google Office is on the way, first I've heard that rumour....

[G]

its interesting because if longhorn is crap then we are going to see the likes of linux os and other people like google take advantage of m$ mistakes.

For me longhorn will have to be very good to stop me from making my next os linux based or mac based.

[andr.in]

interesting... looks like they're attacking ms from all kinds of directions
This time it doesn't seem to be just throwing some money at the problem :smirk:
I'ma become a suicide bomber and hit ms's HQ if they manage to sink Google somehow :fight: (which won't happen of course ;))

[ElectricGrandpa]

GAH! That only matters to the computer-geek minority group. The rest of the computer-savvy general public will just see "Winblows 2006: a billion new cool features that have already been in OS X for almost a decade" and buy it. *ch-ching!*

You know you only make yourself seem dumb when you say stuff like "Winblows"...

-Matt

[kirupa]

Search is just one of numerous fronts MS has its hand in. In the larger scheme of things, while Google is an annoyance, it is not nearly the major threat that the article makes it to seem like. For every sector they lag in, they also have several sectors where they clearly dominate. The most recent example being the dominance of Windows Mobile-based devices in a market where they had to start from scratch.

What MS may be losing due to google is mindshare. MS will seriously get the big guns out if Google starts to deteriorate MS's bottom line. That can't be done as of now with free e-mail, free desktop search, etc. Even free browsers don't affect MS at all. Getting back to search, MS is attempting to gain share in a market that it never had a share in. It isn't bad to only gain $1 billion in a $4 billion market. It would be bad if MS had all of the $4 billion market and ended up with only $1 billion due to competition from Google.

$100 million over 18 months that MS invested in their search is about .009 cents of variation in MS's share price on any given second (they have 10.8 billion shares outstanding). The entire search market is expected to grow to "only" $6 billion in the next few years. While MS would like to get a part of that $6 billion, they can afford to lose out on that for a while as they focus on the consumer division(XBOX and IPTV.) which is potentially worth a lot more than $6 billion.

Regarding Longhorn, at the worst it will be a much improved XP, which isn't a bad thing. XP has been, in my view, one of the best OS'es MS has put out, and the average consumer will have it preinstalled on their next computer purchase. Those who want to switch to an alternate OS probably have switched already. 200 million new computers are shipped each year, and about 90% them run some variant of Windows. Until that number changes, pockets of people switching to alternative OSes won't affect MS in the least bit. Even in developing countries that have alternative OSes installed, majority of the users install pirated versions of Windows on them.

So, in this article, replace Google with the words Netscape, Novell, IBM, Sun, or Apple and you will get a similar picture from an article that was probably written during the times when MS was in competition with those companies over the past 20 years.

Cheers!
Kirupa :cowboy:

[Seb Hughes]

Microsoft will be using n4c quote soon


Never to early, Never to Late

[nectom]

Hmm this article seems to go slightly ott.. i mean yes google is annoying tol MS but in no way can be be toppling microsoft.. it has no were near the vast range of products that MS has, maybe if Google does produce its own browser and OS that have both been rumoured then we can think one day google could topple microsft.. untill then no way.

[ya3]

You know you only make yourself seem dumb when you say stuff like "Winblows"...

-Matt
Thankyou for your truly enlightening contribution :|

[imported_mattyway]

very interesting article. Id like to see google take over some of microsofts products, it would be very interesting to see what gates does.

[blindlizard]

That was a great article. I just think that search as we know it will be so cool in the near future with 2 companies with deep pockets like these competing. Who do you think will put out the first thought search?

[dylan]

Those of you who haven't seen this will probably find it highly interesting:

http://www.broom.org/epic/