Get Off Microsoft

Good news! Competition has returned to the industry. I can go on to better topics now. Thanks for all the fish!

As Apple eats away at Microsoft’s market share on the consumer side of PCs and mobile devices, and Google chips at Microsoft Office’s share in business, Microsoft is caught in the middle and facing a two-front war.

What will change the landscape and make it possible for larger numbers of users, especially corporate users, to overcome Microsoft inertia? I’m tracking the development of software as a service, smartphones that don’t do Windows and don’t need to, Apple’s OS X that may some day run Windows XP apps, and Linux on the desktop, which is growing fast in overseas markets.

The Microsoft brand is getting pummeled overseas, in the music industry, and in the server market. Can you even estimate how much good will has been lost? Gates and Ballmer must get indigestion every morning as they scan the headlines on their pocket PCs.

This is how Microsoft gets away with “interoperability” — co-opting proven standards (like XML) and turning them into Microsoft pseudo-standards, which are then set as defaults for the program while offering the real standards as options.

Microsoft is resorting to a Cold War on Open Source and Linux, using fear and uncertainty as it primary weapons. Microsoft is using this threat to bring Open Source developers and Linux suppliers — and their large clients — to the bargaining table to pay licenses. The patents should be challenged, because many of them are probably suspect. But these patents probably won’t be challenged in court, because Microsoft does not want a public legal fight. Microsoft would rather keep the Open Source community muttering underneath its breath, and reveal nothing.

Google introduced Google Apps Premier Edition for $50 per account per year. The best thing about these types of Web applications (or Web services) is that the software is NYP — Not Your Problem.

It should come as no surprise to learn that the inventors of the spreadsheet and the first companies to market spreadsheet software were refugees from the Sixties counterculture. How often have you looked at a spreadsheet and thought, what were they smoking?

As 2006 closes, the titans of our computer industry have, one way or another, made their visions known to mankind. Three in particular have made interesting, if not influential, comments on the future of the Internet and the world as we know it: Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and of course, Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

Microsoft plans to significantly boost spending in the upcoming year to battle with Google and other rivals. The company is starting from scratch, and it scares Wall Street.