Why Are They Losing Sleep In Redmond?

[rvnguy]

This is an analysis of what I see happening and my personal opinion.

Microsoft squashes Netscape – Microsoft put together a full featured browser and gave it away, albeit with Windows and captured the market.

FAST FORWARD
Will Google unseat the Microsoft dynasty?

Google has refined the search component to a high level; this began as a search engine for the WWW. Google is now moving their high level search model to the desktop, Microsoft’s turf. And Mr. G is really upset that he did not think of this first, after all he created the desktop maze, and now Google is organizing this mess.
Have you ever lost/forgot where you placed a file, pic, email on your local HD??? Well, GOOGLE Desktop Search to the rescue.

With all the problems reported through multiple channels to MS by the MS user community one would think that MS had first shot at seeing the problem and creating a solution. It would appear that MS was not listening, or with the mountains of "Problem Info" in their hands, they were not set up to tabulate it correctly or at all.

Maybe they just have too much on their plate. The OS war, the server OS war, the business suite war, the email war, the security war, the DB/SQL war, the finance app war, the media handler war, the developer language war, and others I have missed.

Up start GOOGLE is attacking MS in their own back yard, figuratively on the desktop and physically by locating their offices in the Redmond area, rubbing salt into the GOOGLE wounds they have created. Maybe not the smartest move they could have made.
GOOGLE has been busy offering free email with over 2GB storage and rolling out innovative applications, mostly based upon their search capabilities. Picassa to find and organize your media, Desktop search to find and organize everything else, their Blogger to create and publish docs and all without requiring any MS applications. On top of all this slick desktop integrating/management capability, they are all free!!

Are they going to beat MS at their own game? Or have they just awoke the "Sleeping Giant"?

GOOD THINGS ON THE HORIZON:
What we as users should see is a killer revolution in the way we utilize all the information at hand. MS is best placed, at this time, to integrate all of this into every way we work, owing to their dominance in the application arena. With their significant knowledge of how each application is written they are in the most commanding position to affect this change. This will demand that MS be innovative, not there strong suit, never has been. They have excelled at coming from behind and buying or developing a contender and then integrating it into their systems, most often beautifully, sometimes not. Still it is there and many times the benefits are free, if not the actual application, bundled to provide what is the most seamless environment currently available.

Will MS answer the call?? Or will we first see this revolution coming from outside the MS walls??

No matter, it will be a huge benefit to all users in the way we seek, find and use the multitudes of information available.

rvnguy

 

[jsteph]

Here's a devil's advocate point of view:
All MS has to do is make a fundamental change in a few kernel .dll's an POOF--Google's desktop search no longer works (or works efficiently) on Windows.

This can be done under the guies of a 'Security Patch', and all existing desktops who do this update are torpedoed.

It's quite possible technically, the only thing stopping MS would be that it's against business ethics and morals. So I guess MS won't be doing this and Google will win.
--Jim

 

[rvnguy]

jsteph,

You might be correct in that GOOGLE will win. Consider that the way we all use the info tools now is we open the browser and type something into a box and search...results.

GOOGLE is using ??? to look at what we are looking for and linking ads at the right that match.

Imagine...you are typing something about, say, "the price of rice in china", and with a right click or "F" key there at your disposal is the spot market price, charts, graphs and everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

This is while using MS Word...Like I said MS has all the cards in their house they must just play them.

Have you ever used/heard of a decomplier, yes MS could do what you suggest but GOOGLE is run by and has hired many MS people and in no time they could write around such a ploy. Plus, as you kinda stated this would provide evidence that could end up in court.

rvnguy

"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[skiflyer]

Forget about the legal side of things, too many corporations and people have so many scripts written which access the filesystems for so many different things, and many of these scripts in VBScript, or other Microsoft languages, using approved Microsoft techniques... you think they'd make a change to something so fundamental and deal with the backlash? No way... something esoteric sure, but you just don't tinker with the filesystem like that and get away with it under the guise of a security patch.

 

[jsteph]

just don't tinker with the filesystem like that and get away with it under the guise of a security patch

There are so many ways in which they could do it that you'd never know but maybe for the performance. And again, from a technical standpoint, I'm sure they could identify that the process was a Google process and mess with that.

I know it all sounds 'conspiritorial', but it's not like it takes a lot of technical know-how for *them*--since they built the OS and anyone writing any script or program of this kind has to go through their API, and they can pretty much do anything and nobody's the wiser.

There's been much talk about their 'hidden' api's, where, say, the 'public' api that does disk i/o has scads of no-op loops, same with memory api's, video, you name it. So in the old days for instance, when Lotus Ami-Pro opens a document it takes a bit longer...maybe the app gets a reputation as being sluggish and unresponsive and maybe even buggy because a random 'crash' is in that api. But when MS Word opens a doc, the undocumented 'private' api's are lighning fast and have no 'glitches' and lo and behold people start saying MS won the App-war because they were just better and faster and more 'innovative'.

Yes, it sounds like some bizarre conspiracy theory, but if you think about how easy it would be from a technical standpoint to do such things, and the only thing stopping you being the richest man in the world is a little 'moral' issue...for gosh sakes people have killed for $20, you don't think someone would do a little cheating for $50 billion?
--Jim

 

[skiflyer]

Right, but google isn't currently using any hidden API's, they're using what's right there... so to block it they would have to exactly sniff the process and block it, which yes, they have done in the past, but which they have stopped doing recently because of the court rulings, so perhaps "forget the legal side of things" is an overstatement, but I think that portion is pretty well solidified at this point.

In regards to the private/public api's... yeah, that's true, but so does every other software... I mean I'm writing software right now with public APIs, but no I don't always use those APIs for my interfaces because they're generic and I can optimize things by using another method, but because of security and/or the specialized nature of those methods I have no reason to want to open those up and support them... obviouslly things can be different for an OS, but still.

And btw the lightning fast office apps were pretty much figured out to be because of the fact that the OS kept large parts of the microsoft apps in memory allowing for much faster loading... is still true today as so many of the apps are so closely integrated with the OS.

Personally, I think the better examples of the way MS screws people are the standards perversions they employ... sure it was common practice back in the early 80s, by which I mean everyone saved all data to some propietary format... but in this day an age it's getting to be ridiculous that MS is still making the .doc file a moving target, that they still don't support CSS properly, that they still tinker with HTML tags and all that jazz...

Eh whatever, plenty of good and plenty of bad surrounding MS business practices, I'm just saying, giving the current climate and legal precedence surrounding their anti-trust case, I don't see any feasible way for them to disable the google desktop search.

 

[BitFuzzy]

[the only thing stopping MS would be that it's against business ethics and morals]

You're joking right?

The only thing that may be stopping M$ from doing so, is that it wouldn't take much to identify the problem for what it was "intentional sabotage" which would cause them to settle out of court. However, they do have allot of practice with that so who knows, the next update you do may provide just that.

 

[rvnguy]

To All,

This post started as my overview of how I see a current situation and what might develop in the future.

i.e. That the way we search currently could/should be revolutionized. MS has all the tools to accomplish this but there are others that are currently beating them to the punch. This not being bad, as it has made MS aware that their hold is not without competition. To maintain, MS will have to step up. Will they do it in time???
Will others beat them at their own game???

rvnguy

 

[jsteph]

BitFuzzy,
Of course I was joking, the sentence afterwards

So I guess MS won't be doing this...

was equally tounge-in-cheek, my point being that there is nothing really stopping them.

Additionally, they've shown that they don't care if you bring it to court---proving 'intentional sabotage' is technically next to impossible, mainly because of the word 'intentional'. Even if the source code was released and, say, a delay loop was found, they can always say "hey, we're not perfect--that NOOP loop is a bug...we'll be sure to reprimand the programmer"

The larger point being, as I'd made before, is that greed is part of human nature, and people have done far, far worse things for far, far less gain. A simple thing like a line of code that'll maintain world dominance and make you (and keep you) the richest man in the world is not something most business executives would lose any sleep over.
--Jim