Microsoft and Google Duke It Out For the Future

Hugh Pickens writes "There is a long article in the NYTimes, well worth reading, about the future of applications and where they will reside — on the Web or on the desktop. Google President Eric Schmidt thinks that 90 percent of computing will eventually reside in the Web-based 'cloud.' Microsoft faces a business quandary as it tries to link the Web to its existing desktop business — 'software plus Internet services,' in its formulation. 'Microsoft will embrace the Web while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine, a smart strategy for now that may not be sustainable,' according to the article. Google faces competition from Microsoft and from other Web-based productivity software being offered by startups, and it is 'unclear at this point whether Google will be able to capitalize on the trends that it's accelerating.' David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, says the Google model is to try to change all the rules. If Google succeeds, 'a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.' Microsoft used to call this 'cutting off their air supply."

Why choose?

I don't trust Microsoft running software on my computer and to be honest, after what happened with China, I don't trust Google to store my information online. This isn't tin-foil hat paranoia, I am simply very aware that data is vital to modern free speech (given the advances made in propaganda by those that would deny us the ability to voice our opinions), and its only going to get moreso as time goes on.

Re:Why choose?

I agree.

Besides, with a perfectly good, free, open source alternative (i.e. OpenOffice) why should anyone put their data at risk by using some web based application? I'd rather have the software local so I can do the work online or not.

I think the web-based model falls flat as soon as people actually look at what is available for free.

Re:Why choose?

Exactly. I didn't want to be seen doing an overt plug, but OpenOffice is what I use to avoid placing my trust in either closed-source or an evil document overlord. The good news on this front, is that frankly Google Docs sucks balls as an office package, and the new MS Office interface has alienated a lot of long time users. Its a good time for the free alternative to shine.

Re:Why choose?

The people who don't like Office 2007 are mostly people who are not computer savvy enough to even know about the existence of OpenOffice.

I take that to mean you like Office 2007 and don't see why other people wouldn't like it.

Office 2007 has a drastically different UI than just about every other GUI software ever made. The UI goes against every prior set of UI guidelines. You've got major functionality placed in a menu that normally only has window management features. You've got core functionality (save, undo) placed in the title bar. The ribbons are a mish-mash of controls with no obvious logic on how it was designed. You go across the ribbon and you'll see each set of buttons has a different style. Button sizes aren't remotely uniform. Some buttons are labelled with text while others aren't. Even within a set of related buttons (say cut/copy/paste), you get completely different styles for the buttons.

You've also got things like options organized into categories such as "Popular". It's hard to make things harder to find than that, as there isn't any way to know what category an option would fit into with categories like that.

The people most likely to not like the Office 2007 interface are the people who are familiar enough with computers to have expectations of how a UI is supposed to be designed.

People who are totally computer unsavy are just going to think it's different, neither good or bad.

Re:Why choose?

Despite what Linux mags would have you think OpenOffice vs MS Office isn't going in the same direction as Firefox vs IE. Out of everyone I've spoken to the only people I know who didn't much prefer Office 2007 to 2003 was an Access trainer, who was very familiar with Access 2003.

Any time is a good time for a free alternative to shine, but OpenOffice more than ever has something very difficult to compete with. I think the best you can hope for is that OpenOffice was in part a cause of MS putting everything into Office 2007.
Things aren't going to get easier for OpenOffice either, as MS replaces VBA with .NET in Office 2007.

Re:Why choose?

Outlook is more of a reason to run away screaming than a reason to stay with Office, unless your company uses it for calendaring meetings, then you might be locked in. Besides, Thunderbird is the competition that is failing that battle for now.

Sharepoint? What a waste of money that was. There's the same docs that we had before, only now it's more clicks away and cross-linked with lots of place holder pages that make it so much more beautiful and so much less effective. We were better off when we were using a wiki. Funny how those sharepoint training classes didn't change a damn thing. I'm so surprised. God help us if engineers share information in the way that works best for them. We can't have that.

I'm glad you're finally able to outline now that the latest Microsoft product has come out, but I'm sure I'll get along just fine without it. Don't be shocked if OO does turn out to be an adequate - and free - replacement for all of most people's word processing needs. Hell, I've even seen Apple users in my office who aren't using Office. How are these people able to get any work done?!

Re:Why choose?

Besides, with a perfectly good, free, open source alternative (i.e. OpenOffice) why should anyone put their data at risk by using some web based application?

With a perfectly good, free online alternative (i.e., Google Docs), why should anyone put their data at risk by having it stored in only one place (i.e., at home) and likely not backed up?

OK, I'm not saying Google Docs is right for everyone, but you seem to be completely dismissing the advantages of having your documents online and ignoring the disadvantages of having your documents offline.

Both approaches (online and offline) will continue to exist and thrive because different people have different needs.

Re:Why choose?

Uh... I've worked in IT for many years, and backup policies are freaking NEVER "extremely basic". You're assuming a ubiquitous, homogeneous, strictly controlled environment, where you can always know what software people have installed on their systems, and where every machine is. In reality, you've got machines all over the place, and with the increasing use of laptops in business today, you don't know where they are, or when they are on the network. Worse yet, you don't know if the disks are secure, or if some joker just left his 160Gig hard drive loaded with sensitive corporate information unlocked in the back seat of his car.

As has been noted elsewhere, online documents are not for everyone, but anyone who really sits down for a while and starts thinking about what kinds of possibilities an online service opens up, especially in flexibility of "place", as well as on-line collaboration, will start to see some very interesting options suddenly opening up.

Re:Why choose?

With a perfectly good, free online alternative (i.e., Google Docs), why should anyone put their data at risk by having it stored in only one place (i.e., at home) and likely not backed up?

Because, and of course this is my opinion, Google Docs is not 'perfectly good' unless you want very, very little.

Take their presentation software. Say I want to create a simple square on the screen, something that a lot of presentations need. On Google Docs, I have to go to a graphics package, make a picture of a square, and then import that as a picture in to the presentation. You'd better hope that it's the right size too because it's a picture, and if you resize it your line thicknesses will be changed as well. Next simple thing is fading. Snapping from one slide to another is hard on the eyes for a long period - fading from one slide to another makes it easier. Google's presentations have no transitions whatsoever.

That's just the first two obvious things that sprang up when I tested. The spreadsheet app supports enough in the way of Excel formulae to be usable but it's incredibly slow to update with changes I make, sometimes up to 2-3 seconds to do something that a desktop app would do instantly. Conditional formatting is incredibly limited and macroing is right out the window. Similarly the Word app does enough to be usable but doesn't do anything that I would consider normal on a day to day basis.

The keyboard shortcuts don't work on Firefox 2.0.0.11. A choice of somewhere between 4 and 10 fonts without the option to import any more. I mentioned the interface lag which is annoying enough to mention twice. No support for Opera, which generally means it's not web standards compliant. No spellchecker that I could find.

I could go on and on, but I won't. It might be fine for somebody to pull together a few quick sums, or write a very basic list of things to do, but for anything more than that it's crap. I've used more functionality than Google Docs provides compiling City of Heroes data on a spreadsheet and writing my resumé, and that's saying something.

So yes, use Google Apps to store your documents, but sure as hell don't try and edit them. If Google Docs is the future of web-based applications, Microsoft aren't in for any problems at all.

Don't be stupid.

Actually, if you'd taken 5 minutes even to check the stories on the front page, these posts appear on all [slashdot.org] kinds [slashdot.org] of articles [slashdot.org], not just 'anti-MS' ones.

They probably appear more often on anti-MS articles because you're guaranteed more 'eyeballs' on those comments, so it's a more widespread audience for these trolls to hit.

Mod me off-topic if you like, I just wanted to correct yet another silly Slashdot assumption - this time that Microsoft somehow has a team of people posting stories about black guys with huge cocks. There's never been an iota of proof that they have anyone on here at all, other than in a casual capacity like the rest of us.

Re:Why choose?

Google makes an incredible search engine.

They also make a LOT of crappy software.

I've got a Google Search Appliance (the hardware/software combo to have a personal Google search). The interface is so bad, I can't believe it was made by a software company.

I run Adsense/Adwords- the interface for that is also atrocious.

Just from those quick examples, I can say that I do *not* welcome our new Google application developer overlords.

So if google is really cutting off MSes air supply

When is the party going to be?

Failure is likely

Microsoft faces a business quandary as it tries to link the Web to its existing desktop business

So long as Microsoft is unable to move past the desktop monopoly, Microsoft will fail. Every attempt of Microsoft to find a new and profitable business has relied upon leveraging Microsoft's desktop monopoly. Unfortunately for Microsoft, competitors like Google are making the desktop moot, thereby crumbling Microsoft's very foundation.

Re:Failure is likely

I remember reading that the big reason Microsoft went after Netscape by making Internet Explorer free, then cross-seeding parts into the OS, then their monopolistic trade practices was for exactly this reason - Microsoft saw Netscape as a way to undercut their desktop monopoly.

It's kind of fun to watch them get hit with it again and this time by a much more mature and cash-rich adversary.

Great point

The Netscape point shows a great knowledge of computer history. A surprisingly large number of people here probably don't remember when Netscape was not only the dominate browser, but an important development platform. Microsoft will try to hinder innovation whenever the desktop is threatened. Gaming consoles... introduce a product and link it to the PC. WebTV ... buy the company. The next question is, when Google has it's cloud computing monopoly threatened, what will it do to protect itself. Kill net neutrality? Buy it's own wireless spectrum?

Re:Failure is likely

But some of us still like the desktop. My ideal world has me keeping all my data on my computer yet synchronized between my desktop and laptop. So far I haven't found that world but some things have gotten close. Microsoft does a pretty good job of keeping things organized locally, but some of what I need it doesn't handle too well (RSS reader in Outlook is quirky at best, etc). Google has some great online products - I love gmail and google reader - but I want to keep things with me, something more than google gears. iMap for gmail solved that one, but a good, synchronizable RSS reader is still somewhere in dreamworld. As for docs, various sync programs work. Google Docs and other online word processors simply are not an option. Despite what the critics say Word 2007 is a great product and no online product comes close, plus none of them travel with me (I'm aware of upcoming solutions using Google Gears but I still prefer the power of Word 2007).

Just recently I've started playing with a Mac and so far I'm pleased with what it can do. .Mac almost gets my synchronization taken care of. There are several quirks in Mac that I'm trying to figure out, but it might end up being my solution. I'll lose Word 2007, but there are decent enough options on the Mac. We'll see.

All that to say, Google is decidedly not making the desktop moot. I'm sure there are quite a few people out there like me who prefer managing and storing information locally.

MS have tried moving off-desktop

... and failed dismally. MS knows that the desktop is limited and dying but they don't know how to get way from it.

They have tried Windows CE which still has a shrinking market share in phones, but attempts to leverage the desktop experience, so is doomed.

They've tried tablets... at least 4 times now... and these still get mindshare at MS because they are Billy-boy's pet PC format. Again, doomed because they try to make the tablet into a desktop-like device.

It is often said that excessive success brings about a downfall. For MS this is true. The desktop has been so successful for them that they are not able to see past it.

Re:Failure is likely

That's very true, but if everything's online, you still need a desktop or sorts to be able to get to it. If you've got a desktop of somekind, you'll want to be able to do other stuff with its capabilities too, not just access the web.

Without a desktop - be it Windows, OSX, iPhone, Symbian etc. - Google wouldn't be accessible, or exist.

I think that long-term you'll see a compromised middle ground appear. Information needs to be centralized and always available, and the computing power used to act on it needs to be localized. Information in a single place can end up being virtually useless if you can't get to it, and the frustrations of not having local computing power to hand are exactly what killed mainframe and thin-client computing.

So, I think you'll see a dominant online Google (aren't they already?) and a still-powerful client/server-bound Microsoft. They're both companies that have their fingers in a lot of pots - some successful, some not, but it's in the public interests that they both exist, if either one extinguished the other, it would be bad for everyone.

The answer is obvious

Microsoft will just try to buy-out this "Internet" thingy so it's no longer a threat.

In the future, Duke is out.

Does vaporware run on a cloud?

both

here's what I want. As if anyone cares. Web based CAD programs so people can cooperate in design. Of course they need incentive to do so. The design would be able to be saved either locally or on the web. Simulations and prebuilt components can be located on a web server . That way everyone has the same parts to look at. And people should get paid by how a product sells. Not everything would be OK to build of course so someone would decide which design to mass produce. I am available to write programs ,and of course I have many more great ideas.

Define "cloud."

Whether applications and data predominantly reside on servers controlled by corporate entities may be asking the wrong question. Considering the exponential increase in Internet connected devices, coupled with increased processor power and bandwidth attached to single devices, the very definition of "server" may be about to change. Let IPV6 get rolled out on a massive scale, and the line between what's a server and what's a client device may become extremely blurry. This creates an environment ripe for the development of new client layers and application models, operating on a much more distributed scale than we're seeing now.

In other words, take the Google model of massively distributed computing and apply it to the whole ecosystem of net-enabled devices. The future will probably be a lot weirder than we think.

Re:Define "cloud."

Well, let me give you an alternative definition I sometimes use for "database": A database is a collection of information that is governed by a single, identifiable set of enforceable polices.

The reason I sometimes trot this odd, non-technical definition out is that planners sometimes get tripped up over questions like "should we have one database or many databases?" However, it's often question that doesn't mean what they think it means. Placing all your eggs in one database basket doesn't unify them into a working system. It doesn't tell one part of your organization what the other is up to. It doesn't mean that giving one group control over a certain set of data gives them any other rights they shouldn't have. On the other hand, an "isolated database" may consume or produce data from other databases in a way that implies controlling that physical resource isn't the whole story about controlling data quality or limiting data distribution.

The point is that the number of "databases", if you count them the way a database platform vendor would, is really just an implementation detail.

The question you raise about the definition of "server" has already been raised by projects like Seti@Home or distributed.net. As a contributor to such projects, your control over your "slice" of the massive project is limited pretty much to opting in or out. Arguably with the distributed systems that are common for high traffic Internet sites, for electronic data interchange systems of nearly any kind, even for a simple server cluster, an individual server is not really all that important.

The important questions for a project include: Where is the bulk of policy created? How are policies enforced? What are the options and rewards, if any, offered to participants?

While "servers" as we think of them are a key part of the infrastructure, we're well beyond the point where they are a single point of control for a major project.

the best quote

TO Mr. Raikes, the company's third-longest-serving executive, after Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer, the Google challenge is an attack on Microsoft that is both misguided and arrogant. "The focus is on competitive self-interest; it's on trying to undermine Microsoft, rather than what customers want to do," he says.

If we need proof that MS is the new IBM, i.e. delusional in the belief that it is the one and only solution for the customer, this is it.

It is certain that MS now has one of the best solution for corporate on the PC. It is equally certain due to the overhead incurred to defend and maintain the PC, MS does not have the best solution for the home PC. By maintaining the applications on a central server, for free or nearly free, Google has the benefits of the central server in IBM days with the cost benefit that MS supplied. Add to that the idea that many people would now would be happy with an appliance, recall that many people do not work in an office, and one has an opportunity for competition. MS is not doing well in the living room, only in the game room.

I wonder if MS can live in a world where it does not get a cut out of every PC sold. Where more machines, like the OLPC, are not designed to run MS Windows, and therefore cannot be catagorized as a pirate's dream machine if sold naked, or with a non-MS OS. I wonder how many web designers are going to continue to design IE only websites if only 10% of the population browse using a non-MS compatible hardware.

MS creates adequate products, but like IBM they have it wrong. Google is not the arrogant company. MS is. By creating a new os that costs more than the computer. By not suppling IE to all major OS. By waiting 5 years to admit that multiplatform means more than just running on different versions of MS Windows, and interoperability is not bad for the end user.

Let me also say that I would not use Google Apps, not for anything important, but I am not the target audience. I can maintain my own machine and download and install OSS. The world where everyone uses google is not much less scary than the world we are in now. OTOH, at least my office might not tell me that everyone uses MS, and that is all they will support on the website.

local v server application: pro/con

a locally installed app generally runs better

and is more trouble to maintain

how does this play in the market?

generally people do not want to fuss with their 'puters: they want an appliance they can take out of the box and just run

that is why most 'puters are sold with software already installed

running all apps off the net would have one considerable advantage: the computer "appliance" could be made non-modifyable

that doesn't mean you would never run an infected program but if you re-boot the computer you get a fresh start

and so you would re-boot before accessing anything sensitive

Desktop For Me

As an IT Director my primary concern it the productivity and uptime of my clients. Network based software is IMHO not reliable enough to rely on. Any number of connectivity issues could cause a complete loss of use. With certain applications this is not an option. While developers could mitigate these problems (a small footprint executable that allows me to print something even when the host application is down, for example) I would have a hard time recommending migrating to a primarily web-based office/productivity suite. Too many things out of my control for my comfort. Google isn't who the CEO is going to come to when his secretary can't produce something he needs RIGHT NOW.

Re:Desktop For Me

Our company decided to switch a portion of IT over to these wireless thin clients. They reasoned that maintenance costs would be lower since all the machines would be virtual instances inside a rack of blade servers. Plus, it would make them more mobile inside the building. Good idea, in theory, I suppose.

Then things quickly would grind to a halt because of network bandwidth issues, someone accidentally unplugged an access point, etc. It's a mess. For the first few months we would get periodic emails saying how great it was, when *we* would be moving to 'the workspace of the future', et all. I've stopped getting those emails all of a sudden...

Last I heard they're rethinking the whole ordeal, have now issued everyone *real laptops*, and are remoting into a real PC.

Now, for the real post.

Did we learn anything in the world of main frames? It seems that we've come full circle from the time where we all had to take turns for CPU cycles...We've gone from 'dumb terminals' to the PC revolution, to the 'network' and now back to centralized, smart-dumb terminals again. Please, lets go back to the desktop PC before its too late...

Re:Desktop For Me

I don't know what size organization you have, but mine is small. I can tell you that the economics of developing anything in-house are quickly shifting to prohibitive. For the applications that we have deployed recently, it was cheaper to just have the vendor host the data rather than build out our own infrastructure and host it ourselves. It's true that when our connection has a problem, we're dead in the water, but compared to the cost of staff to maintain the infrastructure and applications, it is negligible.

business apps

Perhaps I'm wrong but it does seem to me that for specific business needs coding up a desktop app is hugely quicker than doing it as a web app. And there doesn't seem to be a significant advantage to web apps.

Perhaps one day something even better than Django (or Rails) will come along and equal the power of desktop development, but I don't think it has happened yet.

Re:business apps

No advantage to web apps?!? Then why didn't you just write this post as a word document, and email it to us?

What about the users?

The whole drive to do this seems to be only to facilitate comapnies in making more profit.
What about the users interests?
Honestly it seems very clear to me that suddenly having to be connected to the internet (with all its associated performance and security issues) just to do do something like write or store a document would be a giant step backwards.

I don't get it, something is backassward here...

Why run application off the internet or even store data online unless its directly an online internet all accessible use thing like in web pages, blogs, message boards, etc.?
Its not like any company today can't have their own inhouse server for inhouse control and security and online limited access.

With todays desktop system power and terabyte drives isn't it more likely that what's online now can become offline accessible. In other words, its more likely that we move data from online to offline than vise versa. I've recently put together a localhost LAMP/desktop system just because I found wordpress on firefox to be versatile and simple enough for my aging mother to write her autobiography on while dealing with some eye sight problems (ctrl-+/- zooms) with easy pictures addin. And just because its on a system not connected to the internet the export/import function of wordpress allows the data to be put online should she so chose (she could send me a cd for me to import to a family site I set up - but by her choice, not due some leaky internet).
So even internet applications can be moved to the internet disconnected desktop, where there is security and performance in not being connected,.

Certainly any businesss applications no more needs the additional possible failures and security breaches of internet connection, ISP problems and weakest link connection than does home applications with slower or no internet connections.

Sorry Google, but really, your search engine suffers more and more from ad based listings rather than what I'm looking for (i.e. looking for specification information on an old Dell Latitude xp 450c laptop results in endless finding for batteries, power adaptors, etc sellers.... and virtually no links I could find of any use to me.... I can only wonder who all these sellers are selling to.)

Sustainability wins

Google, and Microsoft may seem like the bigger players here. But I don't think Google's business model has a chance of winning. Quite simply it's too cheap and with thier primary income coming from advertising and search. How are they going to make money by practically giving you the applications. You'd have to have a link to search of some sort. This becomes counterintuitive to users who don't want to be advertised to while they are typing up thier business plans etc. Microsoft today would need to change thier strategy to creating a simple easy to use web-interface for use with business critical applications. Google has beaten them to the punch with this as anything Microsoft requires browsing through no less than 5-10 links to get what you are looking for. Google does it in under 5 links. I think companies that provide top down solutions for businesses are going to have the largest success in the market. Imagine if you had a web app EIS tool that you could purchase in under 5 clicks that basically lets you within less than 5 clicks find any information you were looking for in your business field because it kept all your data on a secure server. Allowing all your execs to access with thier biometric/password fields.

Waiting for AoC to be released

I'm waiting for the game Age of Conan to be released so I can check it out on my bad ass desktop. Someone from Google can let me know when things like this game and such run in the browser I guess.

Any one who says the desktop and it's software are going away is blowing smoke up your ass.

Tired old crap

Remember the JavaStation? No? Remember how all the applications would reside on the network? No? Well, it's been said like seven billion times before and the problem is that the real trend is exactly the opposite one. Applications are becoming increasingly personal. And that, my dumplings, will just continue. Fine, it's just those personalized menus now (which generally are just annoying because it really pisses you off not to be able to find that one thing that you need for that one particular document when you actually do need it) but it will become oh so much more. And this is something which you will want to carry with you. Yes. On you keychain. Together with your desktop. And applications. And documents. You don't want to end up somewhere in Guangzho without your desktop. That would be horrendous.
Storage is cheap and becoming cheaper. CPU cycles are cheap and becoming cheaper. Software is expensive. So what. Most companies don't really mind. And it's not Joe Blow that is earning Microsoft their Office dollars. It's JB Inc. And JB Inc doesn't care if it pays Microsoft 200 dollars. They care if it makes their employees efficient or not. Get dependent on the network in order to do business. I think any company would kill that one in the first SWOT they did.

on demand applications

Don't know if this redundant or not, anyway - my take on the future of user computing lies in the ability of open source software to be downloaded on demand. Windows Update and apt-get in combination with the trend in virtualization are strong pointers in the future of computing. Users will access data that has an associated list of application handlers, these handlers will be cached locally for rapid loading, after they haven't been used for a while they will expire out of the cache until the next time they are needed and be downloaded again. All this will happen with only minimal input by the user to specify the preferred handler. For fee subscriptions to cutting edge development software will allow companies to make a profit until the open source community decides they like the application and re-implement the features and functionality, this of course does not preclude the ability of open source to lead the way as well.

Of course, I could be wrong ;-)

if the web app model works out...

MS will finally realize what they've done to themselves as a platform company by not supporting web standards. "My apps don't work when I use IE, but they work fine when I use ... ANYTHING ELSE."

I suspect something more along the lines of Adobe AIR or whatnot will be more in line with what people are willing to put up with as far as web-based technology apps go. I don't want to have to have a working net connection just to reread an email I already received, or work on a document, etc.

Just as hardware became commodity ...

... so will the OS. This is because virtualization will render which OS is "underneath" moot. Applications will be delivered with a fully customized OS tightly coupled to it. Big, binary blobs of code+hostOS will be delivered and stored locally in multi-terabyte drives. Data will remain locally stored because nobody will trust having their data flying around the internet for anyone to see or steal. And applications (in the form of pre-installed VMs) will be stored locally so they can be used even when no internet connectivity is available. This, IMHO, is the next wave, and will take 5 to 10 years to play out. Once wireless connectivity is ubiquitous and can provide sufficient bandwidth (gigabit or more), *MAYBE* web-based applications will become more viable, though there still remains the security issue.

If this prediction is true, then Microsoft is still in the driver's seat relative to Google. They are a player in the virtualization market, and they have applications that people will want, albeit in a slightly different form, so they can be run on their Macs, Linux boxes or Windows boxes.