“What will the Internet look like 10 years from now? Will it look more like one big pay-per-view channel, or more like an open street fair, or will it be somewhere in between? The answer will be heavily influenced, of course, by the competition between the King of Search and the current desktop market leader. On November 2, 2005, Microsoft announced its most major new initiative in 10 years, and although the announcement was vague, it is clear that Microsoft intends to directly take on Google on Google’s own terms: search, services and advertising.”
No they won’t.
Judging by history….. They ain’t lost many. If this was a heavyweight fight, MS is about 45-1-1 and I would be at a loss to think of who they truly lost to.
Really? Look at Microsoft’s financials. Windows and Office are the two cash cows — everything else has been losing money by the boatload.
Microsoft can afford to stay in a losing fight for a long long time, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be winning it.
“Microsoft can afford to stay in a losing fight for a long long time, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be winning it.”
A VERY long time…… and that’s where everyone else hit’s the ditch.
What’s an OS, anyway? Is it the kernel? the GUI? the Applications that surround it (MSN IM, IE)? the enterprise support? I don’t think that you can objectify MS’s businesses as having only two profitable arms.
I’m quite certain that Microsoft Games is not a small group either, nor will XBox 3… you know it’s coming, and it’s going to kill Playstation 3 and 4.
…if MS will win this battle,wouldn’t they be so weak that some other will bite some big chuncks outta them?
Is not enough to win a battle and there are many cases where the one loosing a battle, actualy won the war.
In the entire history of Microsoft they have shown very little ability to deliver short and simple interfaces to services.
First, if thier ads are not simple text like Google’s are then they will likely be a lot slower to render a page. I don’t mean that the graphics data size will slow them down but rather the access to graphics. I have noticed in the past that often when a web page is not static in nature and the site comes under heavy load there is a vast diffirence in getting pages with and without graphics. Microsoft loves a flashy display, and I doubt they can resist.
Second, amount of ads – Google rarely displays more then ten ads in my searchs. But the more ads the more money will likely be Microsoft’s thinking, I can’t see them resisting and cutting down on the number of Ads displayed.
Third, but not last, improvement. Right now I can think of three things I would like to see changed in Google searchs to improve it. And so can Google. Wether Microsoft aims to match or surpass the present day Google – few know the full features that Google is working on at this moment. This means even if Microsoft can deliver a search engine that is better than Google’s, Google in turn is a moving target that will probably leapfrog Microsoft in turn.
Microsoft greatest weapon in the past has been the configuration of it’s OS when delivered and it’s advertising money. But if the OS was all that was needed to win we all would be using MSN for our present day search engine and we are not. If newspaper and TV advertising was all that was needed we all would be using Yahoo, but we are not.
People are very self-centered, the moment they find another search engine does a better job for them, they will drop what they are using like a hot potatoe.
That is why a number of search engines still exist today, the people using them find they are better at certain searchs than others. For example; I find that I get more and better Anime Music Videos using AltaVista than Google, so that is what I use for that type of search. Yahoo infact finds me the most videos, but most finds are junk or dead links. Google is slow when doing this type of search.
This just makes thinks harder for MicroSoft since no matter what they come up with, they will be a large number of people it does not do the job for.
Think about it like the X-Box. Microsoft has pushed hard, takes a loss on each box, and commission a lot of cool software for it, but the it still has not taken over the market. No games-player or games-programmer can turn a blind eye to it, but neither must they buy it to play most of the leading games.
Still, we will see what happens.
people should not be too smug, google is after all an ad distributor. once yahoo and microsoft get in to the distributed ad market (adsense), rates are going to fall in this market, period. google won’t go out of business or stop developing col products, but when speculators realize that earnings are going to slow, they will bail out of the stock.
The author starts off well, but by the end of the article, he more or less degrades to “Google will r0x0r MS because they use OSS.” He even insinuates that Micrsoft named it’s Office Live and Windows Live after Linux distro “Live” CDs. Wow.
Microsoft can’t quite turn around on a dime to fight google, and not cannibalize its own high margin business. I think it can only win a pyrrhic victory, by becoming like google. MS can’t make enough money from web stuff. And they probably won’t be able to keep up with Google in it anyway, innovation-wise. MS also has anti-trust limits in what it can do. MS will be ok for a while, and will decline only slowly, but it will decline.
Google will probably get all its fingers into the computing pie. Everything. And the OS won’t matter after that.
Pay per view channel?
No, the Internet will be a pay-per-show channel.
Ok, let’s be clear is there market for such things:
* Home users wanna-freebies – will take a crack from Z3r0 team who will release Office Free version cracked. No money from them – and bad taste in those user mouths because Microsoft would be built some kinda protection for that;
* Coorporation users – forget it, they will stick with good, working old copies of Office XP/Vista, or even will be brought to OO.o dark side. No Ads revenue from them;
Emmmmmm, what is left?
X-BOX gamers? It counts only gamers.
Mobile versions? Forget it.
Services from Microsoft? WHAT services? Convert Word to TXT/RTF/OO.o in bunches?
FORGET IT.
Microsoft tried this solution. They failed.
You just overestemate Microsoft smartness – they are smart programmers working for them, but management is all what is f–kin everything up.
In free market, Microsoft, no matter how much money it got, is gonner, _if_ they won’t change their ways of thinking.
p.s. and _if_ they will change so drasticaly, I can only guess how new Microsoft will look like
Ya know, in 10 years, I’d hope that I won’t have to click on my addressbar window and type in ‘http://www.google.com‘. I know that I don’t quite have to do that now either, but I’m just saying, search that’s integrated into the interface would probably be much more useful than a segregated search site.
10 Years! have a look at Opera, Firefox, Safari, Google Deskbar etc. to name a few, all have Google Search integrated into the interface
Ok microsoft now have encarta online which i like.
Google maps etc and news service that isnt just adverts.
MSN’s current content is full of flash. Sure flash has its place but static adds or dynamic could be done just as well with a small .gif.
Dont forget about other sites.
SEEK media and also EBAY
Microsoft may be big but so was germany in the war. Spread out your forces too thin and bang.