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Topic: Ballmer to get more chair throwing practice
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Sxeptomaniac
Member # 3698
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posted November 01, 2005 09:54
Good. I'm hoping Google can improve on OpenOffice a bit. I certainly am not paying for Microsoft's ridiculously overpriced software anytime in the near future.
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Let's pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere. - C. S. Lewis
Posts: 1590 | From: Fresno, CA | Registered: Mar 2005
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Erbo
BlabberMouth, the Next Generation
Member # 199
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posted November 01, 2005 14:14
Google has a policy where all employees have to spend part of their time working on outside projects. This move toward helping OpenOffice is a step beyond that though.
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See more From The Erbo Files: www.erbosoft.com/blog/
Posts: 1480 | From: Denver, CO, US | Registered: Jan 2000
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Rhonwyyn
Solid Gold SuperFan!
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posted November 01, 2005 14:42
quote:
DiBona told News.com 'We use a fair amount of open-source software at Google. We want to make sure that's a healthy community. And we want to make sure open source preserves competitiveness within the industry.' The last phrase is likely to be interpreted by many analysts as evidence that Google intends to open another front in its battle with Microsoft.
What products does Google make that compete with Microsoft? Sure, there's gmail to counteract Hotmail, but other than that I can't think of anything.
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Change the way you SEE, not the way you LOOK!
Posts: 3821 | From: Lancaster, PA | Registered: Jul 2004
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CommanderShroom
BlabberMouth, a Blabber Odyssey
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posted November 01, 2005 14:53
Google
Has begun to compete with their email, as you have stated. They are the top search engine(I believe), versus MSN's own engine. They are working on the portal item the personalized web page. which I bet is a thorn to all isp's. And recently I heard an article on NPR where a subsidy of Google is bidding to install wireless in an entire town.
Honestly this only what *I* know of. I can guess there is a lot more. Google has a lot of irons in the fire.
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Does he know our big secret?
Has one of us confessed?
'Bout the wires circuits and motors
Buried in our chest
Posts: 2418 | From: Somewhere between the gutter... and probably another gutter | Registered: Mar 2003
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Rhonwyyn
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posted November 01, 2005 14:59
MSN has a search engine? What's it called? Guess I could Google it. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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Change the way you SEE, not the way you LOOK!
Posts: 3821 | From: Lancaster, PA | Registered: Jul 2004
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DoctorWho
Gold Hearted SuperFan!
Member # 392
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posted November 01, 2005 15:18
Google also has Blogger (personal web log), Picasa (photo editor), and Hello (instant messenger) which are all integrated. Desktop Search is also not too bad a product. They also have a different strategy from M$ in that they are giving these products away and relying on targeted advertisement for revenue. This prevents M$ from beating them by lowering their prices, and the only way they can compete is by making better, easier to use software ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) lol. Microsoft is spending billions trying to just catch up with the search engine alone. Google also has become more itegrated with searching on mobile devices. They also have rack mounted google servers that a company can buy to be dedicated search servers for their company in order to boost productivity.
Microsoft has also lost some of its best programmers to Google. Many of them OS programmers. Makes one think about the possibility of a Google OS.
Microsoft at one time considered trying to buy Google, but it was quickly dismissed. Even if Google could be bought, how could Microsoft explain buying a company that built their search engine in Linux.
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Laughter is like changing a baby's diapers. It doesn't solve anything but it sure improves the situation. Leo F. Buscaglia
Posts: 1677 | From: The TARDIS | Registered: Apr 2000
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Callipygous
BlabberMouth, a Blabber Odyssey
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posted November 01, 2005 15:55
quote:
Originally posted by Rhonwyyn:
What products does Google make that compete with Microsoft? Sure, there's gmail to counteract Hotmail, but other than that I can't think of anything.
Strategically speaking the future of computing is the internet. So Microsoft of course wants to "own" it. Ideally they would like a lot of web sites and services to be either Windows only or crippled for other OS users, as it will help lock users in. They have made several efforts over the years to introduce proprietary standards such as Activex and the "security" measures in Vista, all of which thus far have largely failed, and though IE is still by far the most common browser, web designers are much more aware of the need to create standards compliant sites which work in other browsers, so it is less important than it used to be. It is therefore hugely galling for them to see Google making so much headway so fast. This is the story my thread title refers to, which shows how much Google is getting under their skin.
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"Knowledge is Power. France is Bacon" - Milton
Posts: 2922 | From: Brighton - UK | Registered: Mar 2003
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csk
Member # 1941
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posted November 01, 2005 16:29
quote:
Originally posted by CrawGator:
Microsoft at one time considered trying to buy Google, but it was quickly dismissed. Even if Google could be bought, how could Microsoft explain buying a company that built their search engine in Linux.
Well, they bought hotmail, which used to run on a stack of BSD servers, from memory.
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6 weeks to go!
Posts: 4455 | From: Sydney, Australia | Registered: Jan 2003
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HalfVast
Member # 3187
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posted November 01, 2005 16:30
This all seems to be symtomatic of a move in computing. It is outlined
well by this comentary I heard last week. I jist of it is that the 70's
were the era of 'big iron' and IBM ruled the range and they were
invincible. They are still around and making hardware but no more PCs. Since
the early 90's we've been in the 'Microsoft era' and like it or not they
have been the OS most home and business users know. Now we're
in a time of web-based applications and computing and that looks
as if it will be on the upswing for the next 10 to 15 years making
MS as significant as IBM is now and Google or somthing like it will
be the 300 pound gorilla in the room.
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Silly railfan pics...
Posts: 789 | From: In the mitten around the abductor pollicis brevis. | Registered: Jan 2005
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DoctorWho
Gold Hearted SuperFan!
Member # 392
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posted November 01, 2005 16:48
quote:
Originally posted by csk:
quote:
Originally posted by CrawGator:
Microsoft at one time considered trying to buy Google, but it was quickly dismissed. Even if Google could be bought, how could Microsoft explain buying a company that built their search engine in Linux.
Well, they bought hotmail, which used to run on a stack of BSD servers, from memory.
And look at how hotmail has gone into the toilet. If for some reason M$ ever were to offer enough money to buy Google, you would see the same thing happen to it. Google has built its success from making a product and gave independent developers the hooks to make writing applications for it easy. It's a total flip flop of what Microsoft does.
I believe Microsoft knows that if they bought Google it would go down the tubes.
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Laughter is like changing a baby's diapers. It doesn't solve anything but it sure improves the situation. Leo F. Buscaglia
Posts: 1677 | From: The TARDIS | Registered: Apr 2000
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csk
Member # 1941
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posted November 01, 2005 17:01
quote:
Originally posted by CrawGator:
And look at how hotmail has gone into the toilet. If for some reason M$ ever were to offer enough money to buy Google, you would see the same thing happen to it. Google has built its success from making a product and gave independent developers the hooks to make writing applications for it easy. It's a total flip flop of what Microsoft does.
I believe Microsoft knows that if they bought Google it would go down the tubes.
I disagree, at least in part. Yes, hotmail sucks, it's probably the worst of the popular web based mail systems out there. But I'm still seeing a lot of non geeks using hotmail. Maybe they don't know better, or are too lazy to investigate alternatives. Or it's "good enough" for them. If Microsoft took over google, much the same would happen. The geeks would flee to something better, but there would still be a large contingent that would stay with them.
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6 weeks to go!
Posts: 4455 | From: Sydney, Australia | Registered: Jan 2003
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dragonman97
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posted November 01, 2005 17:44
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=1270713
Now that is a very poorly written article - I can't believe they mean to say just that. I have a feeling they're talking about a subscription service (free/ad-based) to files and applications. Very disturbing.
I'm quite pleased to see the news about Google & OO.o - the latter really does need to be fine-tunes, and needs more than a bit of UI overhaul. OO.o 2.0 is certainly better, but personally, I just don't like it much. I prefer to use Abiword & Gnumeric - but OO.o certainly beats Abiword on compatibility, and Gnumeric is not that stable on Windows yet. Excel annoys the sh*t out of me a lot, though it is a damn powerful piece of software, and Word just generally bugs me, though I mostly like the UI. Thankfully, I don't really have to produce documents that often, so I do most of my 'writing' in vi. ![[Smile]](smile.gif) Today, my boss wanted some information from an Excel file - I just took a column out of it, SSHed into another box, opened vi, pasted it, opened another file, and wrote up a ~20 line Perl app, ran it, and the answer was there. Upon a request for another metric, I just piped it to sort & uniq. Someday, if I'm adequately bored, or appropriately compensated, I might just write my own virtual spreadsheet app in Perl to manage multiple data sources with Perl. It'd make my life so much easier...
Oh yeah...go Google!
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There are three things you can be sure of in life: Death, taxes, and reading about fake illnesses online...
Posts: 9037 | From: Westchester County, New York | Registered: May 2001
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DoctorWho
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Member # 392
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posted November 01, 2005 17:53
Aww shucks Dragon, you beat me to it.
Looks like Microsoft is saying if you can't beat them, join them.
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Laughter is like changing a baby's diapers. It doesn't solve anything but it sure improves the situation. Leo F. Buscaglia
Posts: 1677 | From: The TARDIS | Registered: Apr 2000
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Ugh, MightyClub
BlabberMouth, the Next Generation
Member # 3112
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posted November 02, 2005 11:39
quote:
What products does Google make that compete with Microsoft? Sure, there's gmail to counteract Hotmail, but other than that I can't think of anything.
Google also has Google Earth and Google Maps which both compete with Microsoft services. Actually, the Google satellite imagery was available in beta form before the M$ offering.
Also, I'm pretty sure Google actually has the contract now to provide wireless to some area in southern California.
Oh, and they recently leaked something about another new product/service, but I can't remember what it was right now. So forget I even said anything. Right.
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Ugh!
Posts: 1612 | From: Ithaca, NY | Registered: Dec 2004
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