Microsoft chairman Bill Gates says Google’s tools are no threat to SharePoint, and that Google Talk is hardly changing the world. Google really does not understand the special needs of businesses, as its model is based around consumer search, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told attendees at the 2008 SharePoint conference here March 3. On a related note, Ballmer will retire in nine years.
They don’t, do they now… </sarcasm>
… but with a grain of truth.
Google has been spending a lot of money on side ventures, and not always doing as well as their targeted ads, “demographics,” and search business. Google has lots of wonderful ways to burn money, but only a few ways to gain it…
I heard Microsoft Bob paid off real well.
Like microsoft started with bussiness and not with consumers…
And how is that relevant NOW with Gates’ note?
I think you’re all missing the most important bit…
I think the one group that’ll be most happy are the developers, developers, developers, developers, developers..
ahhh.. it’s been made fun of way too many times now, and still doesn’t get old.
Microsoft may or may nor understand the needs of their business customers. But their actions make it pretty clear that it is their *own* business needs that actually matter. The needs of their customers remain very much a secondary concern.
I mean if all the engineers at your company secretly have resumes sent in to Google, You would say they have no idea what there doing either. Business isn’t everything, especially these days where people want some reward other than putting in 8+ hrs and going home. heck if I had the masters degree that they want to deliver mail I would be there myself.
I think Google understands business need far more than Microsoft or any of the old legacy giants. With redundant fiber links to the internet and SLAs under 1 hour, who needs the headache of running their own servers, backing them up, and worrying about disaster recovery. Today’s infrastructure is simply just too complex and too expensive for business. From the smallest mom and pop store to the largest enterprise, there is just too much effort and money being spent on infrastructure rather than on their core business. Cloud computing is the future and this is where Google is going at full speed. Today, cloud computing supported by ads is good for consumers. Tomorrow, cloud computing, SLAs, and monthly recurring charges will be good for enterprises while slashing down costs. Microsoft is and has never been scared of Google’s search dominance. They are scared of the paradigm shift Google has started and isn’t afraid of exploring.
Edited 2008-03-04 00:13 UTC
Yeah, but only when Adblock is involved
And just think about how integrated all of there programs are – e.g. Google Talk is with Gmail, Google Apps, etc. They are more integrated throughout than Microsoft is; yet, they don’t get in your way and you can easily use something else too (unlike Microsoft). So Google likely understands their customers better than Microsoft does.
Did he mean Bullshitness?
He may be right, but what Microsoft doesn’t understand is CONSUMERS! SIX editions of Vista? The Vista Capable debacle? Office every 2 years? An upgrade to their flagship so misguided that neither businesses NOR consumers will touch it?
Look within before you criticize, sir.
Well said, but you forgot to mention what is probably THE most anti-consumer Vista “innovation” of all: system-wide, kernel-level DRM. Nothing screams “pro-businesses, anti-consumer” more than the insane level of DRM crammed into that OS, all the way down to the hardware level (ie. protected video path).
Feels good though to be hearing all this disgusting news from the sidelines, having wiped Windows from my machine completely.
Edit: It’s sad, too… XP was far from perfect, but I could imagine it being so much less of a PITA if for its successor Microsoft disabled some (no, a lot of) useless and insecure resource-wasting services, fixed certain interface quirks (quit hiding filename extensions by default; don’t highlight the extension when trying to rename a file; etc.), turned the annoyances level DOWN instead of up (UAC…), and in general just make more sane defaults. Instead… we get… something that takes everything in the wrong direction, and ends up as more of a downgrade in almost every way.
Edited 2008-03-04 02:48 UTC
Gates is right. Businesses need to upgrade to Vista right now. How dare they unnecessarily coast on XP for years when their existing software already works reliably?
Since Google doesn’t sell an OS named Vista, they can’t possibly know what businesses want. Q.E.D.
Just wait for Google’s retaliatory “Microsoft Does Not Understand Internet Search Needs” article.
Come on now, It’s not like Google talk has been around for long ,what 2 years? and MSN has been bundled with Windows for the last 8 years. Any company needs time to get a foot hold and Google is getting that slowly.
Google seem to understand what people want from web apps, cross platform apps and more open protocols, whats to say they won’t for business in the future?
See http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/history.html Googles Corporate History.
Seems that Google itself has been around since 1998, and the tech behind it has been around since roughly 1996.
[Note: Edits are me trying to get the link right.]
Edited 2008-03-04 15:05 UTC
And with 6 billion potential customers on this planet, which matters more: The needs of businesses? Or consumers? 😉
I’m confused. I remember when Larry Ellison and Scott McNealy announced release the Network Computer and SunRay respectively, Microsoft boohoo’ed idea and said that “centralised computing is old, its all about server client”.
Well, here we are in 2008, and we’re talking about centralised computing, be it rather than the computer 50km down the road as with the good old days of dumb terminals, modems and timeshare. We now have the same sort of paradigm but now over the internet, with the ‘big names’ being Sun, HP, IBM and Google selling centralised processing for business needs.
I find it funny how people were suckered into the desktop computer paradigm – it never delivered, only ever increased costs; and it was only done to keep the employee’s happy that they had a ‘piece of machinery’ on the desktop – whilst ignoring the real purpose of them being at work.
Its sad to say, we’ll see IS and IT staff fight this tooth and nail, just as they hate the idea of Mac’s because they’re lower cost to run and maintain, we’ll have the same idiots who will claim that the centralised processing model is flawed. I just hope this time that we have enough people in charge willing to see through these boogyman arguments rather than being suckered into the fact that the IT person has half a dozen TLA’s after his name (why a him? because I’ve never met a single female IT staff who is ego driven to the point of doing everything to destroy progress like a man would).
“we’ll see IT staff fighting this tooth and nail”
Really? I think the popularity of VMWare and Citrix speaks to quite the opposite. IT staff/managers are tired of dealing with the public. Helpdesk sucks, and life would be easier to moderate one PC (or farm) that hosts all the apps (or a fair amount) for a broad number of clients.
Remember, the client/server paradigm began when prices on desktops started to drop and bandwidth went up. Now the machines are so powerful, the average desktop is poorly underutilized for the average user. A modern desktop is a huge waste of resources just so joe-user can write a few emails, read a pdf, schedule meetings, and waste time and company bandwidth on YouTube. Consolidation is now; a few servers, massive hardware specs. One support license, a few server licenses, a couple of VM licenses (by proc) Connection via web page, at it’s simplest to a linux base (embedded, perhaps) fostering a virtual OS…..that’s the next step. That’s where corporate IT is headed.
Microsoft needs to evolve or become extinct. The very reason why it became a corporate success story will be the very thing that sends it filing for bankruptcy protection in the near future. And Ballmer at the reigns for the next 9 years is certainly NOT the direction the corporation needs to be heading.
Sure, but you can’t ignore the needs of your users. My own company moved to a citrix model for satellite offices, and after more than two years of constantly mounting trouble tickets, the executive committee intervened and said fix this.
So our IT department is sucking in their gut, and scrambling to replace thin-client users all across NA back to the old model of rich client and de-centralized servers. At a cost that likely exceeds any of the cost-savings they realized from a centralized model that made things wonderful for IT, but sucked for users.
What looks good on paper doesn’t always equate to real life benefit. Sure, thin-client and virtualization have their place and can offer true cost savings, but implementing them for cost-savings often results in a cut-rate implementation that winds up costing more in the long run, due to inefficiencies created in the cause of the bottom line. My experience, even aside from my own organization, is that few companies implement them properly with the appropriate investment for long-term savings, versus immediate short-term savings. They’re tools, and like any tool, can be used effectively or destructively. So I wouldn’t equate their popularity to success, at least for the companies where poor users are forced to suffer in the name of IT efficiency…
Haha, slow down, man? 🙂 I worked for company utilising 3K of PCs, now chief of IT of company with some 400PCs, nine abroad offices. While we plan to contralise on central IS, we don’t plan to centralise on desktops.
Well, I know Citrix and its advantages, but man, it pretty much costs some money. Even with Citrix, WHAT client do you run it on? Web browser? Fine, but you still need some OS. With today’s bargain cost of desktop with OS, where’s there place for something like such farm of servers? what is the benefit? Slower desktop on clients because of undersized server farm? I can understand advantages, but this model is not where we are heading.
For us, the solution is some automatic SW delivery, kind of Tivoli provisioning. Automatic updates and installs, SW/HW auditing, and that’s it.
You forgot Amazon – which in this space appears to be doing a better job than most of the companies you mentioned…
Microsoft is changing the paradigm of dynamic leverage for the enterprise business unit moving SOA into the 360 degree of the customer space.</sarcasm>
some big companies are bad mouthing eachother.
that this is the same guy who in 1995 said the Internet will never amount to anything and that portal services like MSN and AOL would rule supreme.
Share… what?
Sharepoint… the EDMS (Electronic Document Management System) and collaboration platform that Microsoft is trying to push.
In short, it’s just another set of MS tools designed for lock-in. But for businesses.
MS promoting Sharepoint to most businesses is a bit like convincing someone she needs a Porsche in order to drive to the bakery 5 miles from her home. Or wait… would that be a Pinto?
Edited 2008-03-04 06:55 UTC
More like a kit car; Porsche on the outside, Beetle on the inside.
You are so spot on. The company I work for deals with document storage systems as one of our core services. The amount of people asking for MS sharepoint is just ridiculous. Since when does a 100 employee environment, all working in different departments, need an integrated document sharing server application?
Biggest problem I can see is that the lock-in is going to have real repercussions in the very near future. Unfortunately, probably the core business of the company I work for is IDR and OCR software meaning that management is happy to implement whatever solution that seems to fit now, no matter the lock-in, then turn around and sell an escape clause back to the same customers.
What has me really stumped is why on earth people find the need to shoot themselves in the foot in that way! Vendor lock-in is like the proverbial path to hell, paved with good intentions.
Biggest problem I can see is that the lock-in is going to have real repercussions in the very near future.
You should be fine, Sharepoint dosen’t introduce any document formats. You can use your existing data such as PDF without any problem.
Sharepoint simply manages collections of documents.
Edited 2008-03-04 14:48 UTC
Don’t put a damper the MS hate fest!
In reallity the new Sharepoint is pretty cool, the previous two iterations? Not so much.
Nice one, I wasn’t aware of that. But it doesn’t answer any of the very real questions I have.
1: How easy is it to migrate your data back into a normal directory structure?
2: Can it be done via a batch process, or does it all have to be done one after the other?
3: What about migrating from one document storage system to the other?
And the most important question of all, 4: Are you able to use the product with anything other than MS Office?
See what I mean?
Its a bit like comparing apples to pears to say that by creating a consumer tool like Google Talk, Google does not understand businesses.
And to that i’d like to add: “Share …what?”
Never heard of it.
There’s no need to drag Apple into this.
Its a bit like comparing apples to pears to say that by creating a consumer tool like Google Talk, Google does not understand businesses.
That’s what struck me as quite an odd statement from Bill!
Google Talk is not a business app nor was it ever even meant to be, it’s just a fun app for consumers. You know, those people any decent company would try to keep happy 
So, it’s just like Bill is trying to badmouth Google for pretty much anything possible, and ends up sounding somewhat bitter.
About Google Talk though…I tried it once and it was a neat toy, but I just didn’t find any use for it. MSN Messenger just happens to have been around for so long that I don’t even know anyone who doesn’t use it, even my mom uses it even though she’s pretty much totally computer-illiterate.
This one goes two ways, I have no (as in zero, none) contacts that use MSN exclusively, some of them are legacy users (legacy being ICQ, obviously), but most of them uses GMail with that nifty Jabber XMPP connectivity ability. I use SIP for my VoIP.
Business probably don’t realize that depending on an internet service is probably even more of a lock-in than a traditional software licensing model.
With this tendency of [ab]use of browser-based applications, users and businesses are selling out their biggest asset: their data.
There is no magic conversion tool that will help them recover their files, or print as they always did, or do whatever they did if for some reason today’s connection is down, Google switched the pricing model, or they would simply like to change “vendor”.
That’s the ultimate lock-in method. I don’t see how both Microsoft, and more importantly, Google are going to help “us”.
I can understand that viewpoint, but the probability of internet outages is still lower than relying on *any* in-company solution, especially for smaller companies and if you are based in USA. One example is in hard disc failures. Loss of company data that way, and the cost of backups systems, dwarfs the few hours/weeks of damages an outage will cause.
And moreover, nobody said you cannot have a two-pronged approach — simply implement a proxy server and you can have the data in-house too, though that will not save you from power outages still (which is so much more possible to hinder commerce).
In fact, unless you face possible international cable outages like in India or Taiwan (2 catastrophic outages in so short time space?), it is not worthy to implement the proxy server, I guess.
And on the “magic conversion tools”, what are you even talking about? IIRC, google uses open formats. You should be able to recover documents with standard tools, or even just read the file by eye, since I don’t remember binary formats used.
Google API?
A pointless product that does nothing at a pointless conference about it, and Gates feels the need to talk about nothing but Google.
People don’t realize that Microsoft really doesn’t sell software to home consumers, mostly just to businesses and OEM’s. When is the last time you ran down to Best Buy to get some of that cool new Microsoft Software? Sure they have copies of Vista and Office, but few people buy them – they’re too expensive. Either it comes with your computer or it comes from work (they have good programs for people to get their software cheap through work). They have the Ronald Reagan software system – Trickle-down distribution. Sure, there are some Microsoft games – but those are really just other companies they purchased.
One can tell so much about others’ deepest internal fears by listening to them talk about what they are not afraid of, don’t you think?
Microsoft only understands their own business and how to twist words to part fools and their money. It would seem that they are concerned with anyone else who has a handle on the future, especially a future that might diminish them.
I’m not sure Google is all that interested in displacing Microsoft, but they have an interesting group of applications and a wide, scattered focus beyond the search engine.
If Microsoft is right, why do I still need to use google to find anything relevant on msdn?
That’s a disappointingly-myopic statement for Gates to make. As someone who does a lot of tech support work for SOHO customers, I find Microsoft has many potentially-useful offerings that are unfortunately only really suited to large companies with dedicated IT staff (Active Directory, Exchange).
For people working in situations where the Microsoft solutions are too expensive/overkill, Microsoft doesn’t provide much in the way of lower-end equivalents. And what they do provide is pretty half-assed – I find it’s actually become progressively more difficult to setup simple/secure filesharing over a small network, and there’s “Offline Folders”: a great idea, executed horribly.
I find that Google, on the other hand, has plenty of offerings that are useful to small businesses. For example, for a small organization that needs simple server-side mail storage and online calendar sharing, I think that Google Apps for Domains would be much more practical than Exchange. And despite the concerns that have been expressed about the lock-in dangers of an online-only service, I’ve found the GApps for Domains service surprisingly open in terms of data import/export (E.g., all the EMail accounts for a domain can be exported to/imported from a CSV text file – less “locked-in” than most web-based hosting control panels I’ve used).
Edited 2008-03-06 04:28 UTC