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Competition


I have no love for Microsoft. Hell, I do what I can to avoid using Microsoft products, both personally and professionally. But this comment by Google about Microsoft's possible purchase of Yahoo leading to competition problems is rather hilarious considering Google dominates 65% of the search market:

There is no question that Microsoft has behaved extremely badly in the past. And I don't doubt that Microsoft, given a chance to act poorly in regards to search, would do it. But for a company that owns 65% of the search business, acts extremely arbitrarily in matters of who can advertise and who can publish, is horseshit. Google is just as likely to act in a similar fashion, all protestations to 'not be evil' aside. Indeed, what about that Doubleclick deal Mssrs. Brin and Page?

I don't know what the answer to Google's damn-near monopoly in several internet spaces is. But methinks they protest too much.


Sean Paul Kelley February 3, 2008 - 10:28pm
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( categories: Technology )

Never fear.

MS's purchase of Yahoo will lead to its demise. It's been a long, long time since an MS purchase lead to dominance. And while the quest for monopoly will continue, Gates' retirement means there is no real intelligence (flukey as it may have been) running the show. MS is entering its Bush Era.

Gordon February 4, 2008 - 12:25am
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About time too.

I think we've been overdue for a new round of innovative competition in software for quite a while. MS needs to stand aside.

Bolo February 4, 2008 - 1:37am
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As bad as BillG was

Ballmer flat out gives me the willies. I can't say exactly why.

MS buying Yahoo for an inflated price will likely be a big mistake. Google has real brains at the helm who are willing to take bold steps. Not so for Yahoo or Microsoft.

Petronius February 4, 2008 - 2:10am
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hasn't been the first time...

I've seen this very discussion of a M$ action and it's potential impact on the Internet.

think on this: just substitute "Netscape" in where "Yahoo" presently appears, and you're magically back in 1997-1998

I remember people thinking M$'s acquisition of SpyGlass was majorly stoopid, and that Netscape would bury them.

Say....where's Netscape now? Sun took their Directory Server and Messaging Server technology, and AOL walked away with the brand name, which they promptly fucked to death.

Oh well.....Hopefully, if the Yahoo acquisition is allowed to happen (and with the Bush admin, I see it as entirely possible), Google's sharper businessmen (than Netscape's) will bury them as harshly as possible. It's about time Microsoft discover that they *really* don't have Midas's hands, rather Ozymandias's feet......

-5.75,-4.05
"We're all fucked. It helps to remember that." --George Carlin

justadood February 4, 2008 - 2:51am
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Haha

Microsoft has no intention of buying Yahoo. Yahoo looks vulnerable and MS is looking to thwack them into the ground.

A multi-billion $ company with a brain will push its cash into owning the next monster thing (??) rather than buying a little more of the current monster thing (ad revenue). There is a massive "network effect" or rather winner-take-all nature to computer industries, and once a winner owns a huge industry it is impossible to break in.

Next monster thing? Ummmm....

being on the Internet for you, so you don't have to do it?

brokering unused collective computing time? The SETI@home and protein folding projects do this for one focused project and one financial model (altruism). Other projects and other financial models are possible.

alternative energy requires a ton of computing power to be useful. Really.

Nanocomputing. From what little I understand of nanocomputing, power could be stored in a nanocomputer to a frightening extent. This could make for appalling explosives. DC or even AC batteries that require passwords.

MS Research has taken over from Bell Labs as possibly the finest research labs in the world. This is all just a sideshow.

Lance

Forget it, Jake - it's AmnesiaTown

Tonsure Wimple February 4, 2008 - 3:24am
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Quite Right

After all, it was Microsoft who gave us the iPod, the iPhone, graphical user interfaces on personal computers, heck, even the personal computer itself, right?

Not to mention open source, high speed routers and multicore CPUs.

I'm not an MS basher, but I've been dealing with Microsoft since BillG's BASIC on paper tape on the MITS 8800 and I can't think of many really stunning breakthroughs that they've gifted us with. Can anyone?

I guess there's the XBox 360...

Petronius February 4, 2008 - 4:24am
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COM was an MS idea that was actually a breakthrough.

They promptly screwed it up, though. The VBasic developers took it one way, while the C++ developers took it a different way and it was soon internally incompatible. Plus, neither group thought that security might be important until legions of zombie windows machines started sending out spam and stealing passwords.

Their original Java VM was enormously faster than the Sun one, but they screwed that up, too. MS is where elegance goes to die (at the hands of undisciplined, over-caffeinated hackers).

Gordon February 4, 2008 - 7:29pm
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Okay

...but Microsoft didn't invent objects.

They are good at inventing names, however. An aspect of COM, ActiveX represents one of the larger disasters in internet security. Except for, perhaps, VBScript or Outlook.

But then, the initial attraction of Java was supposed to be that it was "compartmentalized" and posed no danger to anything outside of the JVM. That didn't last very long...

Petronius February 4, 2008 - 8:26pm
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Yeah,

the first thing they did with Java was allow you to specify (in Java comments) a COM interface to the Java object. Whee! There goes security.

Long story short: I know first hand that both Sun and MS had each written code that erased most of the differences in their implementations. And both refused to release their solutions, because to do so would be to validate the Great Satan. Fuck the lousy developers actually trying to make Java workable!

Then I discovered Python (which I first used as a way to generate low level Java to bridge those damn differences). Who the hell needs Java?

Gordon February 4, 2008 - 9:56pm
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Yeah, Python=Good

Petronius February 4, 2008 - 11:05pm
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dotNet is good

and so is C#.

Joaquin February 4, 2008 - 8:56pm
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But hardly "killer" or even "radical" innovations

Indeed, if C# or .NET had never been introduced, it wouldn't have made a heckuva difference in the net we have today.

Petronius February 4, 2008 - 9:32pm
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It's all about Marketing

The key to yahoo competing with Google is marketing yahoo as a portal, and yahoo has failed as a portal.

MS has failed with MSN, Microsoft Local, and all their other Internet based businesses.

Unless MS have a brilliant marketing plan, can MS buying Yahoo overcome the marketing failures? And if MS have a brilliant marketing plan, why do they need to buy yahoo?

After flushing $34 billion with a the technology driven Visa (technology driven because the market has not jumped to Vista), MS is willing to flush $44 billion on the purchase of a company with a poor marketing plan...and add this to their own already lackluster Internet market plans...

If MS want to conquer the Internet, they should put office, visio, project, etc up as a web subscription packages...

The real question is why MS, why doesn't it build off its strengths, and stop pissing money away on loosers.

Synoia February 4, 2008 - 6:32pm
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