My OperaMicrosoft and Google: who is on which side?
Saturday, August 15, 2009 8:41:47 PM
I have been given an interesting but problematical assignment at work. Essentially it is a Microsoft versus Google piece, focusing on which companies benefit if one or the other prevails.
In some respects this is a straight forward Windows versus Linux post, inspired by Google's long anticipated move into the operating system arena which it finally announced last month.
Now, there are a lot of companies that have software products that work on Windows but not Linux; I am guessing Sage (the accounting company), Adobe, McAfee and doubtless many others, but these are just guesses.
However, if Google does usurp Microsoft from the desktop it is not going to happen overnight and so surely all of these companies wedded to Windows will have time to bring out Google Chrome versions of their software?
What about if, by some miracle, Microsoft's Bing search engine manages to mount a serious challenge to Google. Who, apart from MS and Google will be affected?
No idea, guv. So, if any passing geeks have any thoughts on this, let me know. I am also interested in the contest in the hand held devices market as well. I know Nokia recently got in to bed with MS despite being part of the consortium behind the Symbian operating sytem; are there any other likely winners and losers?
I've also got to do an article on covered warrants, about which I know nothing. So, no change there, then.
In some respects this is a straight forward Windows versus Linux post, inspired by Google's long anticipated move into the operating system arena which it finally announced last month.
Now, there are a lot of companies that have software products that work on Windows but not Linux; I am guessing Sage (the accounting company), Adobe, McAfee and doubtless many others, but these are just guesses.
However, if Google does usurp Microsoft from the desktop it is not going to happen overnight and so surely all of these companies wedded to Windows will have time to bring out Google Chrome versions of their software?
What about if, by some miracle, Microsoft's Bing search engine manages to mount a serious challenge to Google. Who, apart from MS and Google will be affected?
No idea, guv. So, if any passing geeks have any thoughts on this, let me know. I am also interested in the contest in the hand held devices market as well. I know Nokia recently got in to bed with MS despite being part of the consortium behind the Symbian operating sytem; are there any other likely winners and losers?
I've also got to do an article on covered warrants, about which I know nothing. So, no change there, then.
Benben2talk # Sunday, September 27, 2009 7:45:01 AM
This week, Microsoft snuck in an add-on for Firefox via Windows Update and made it very tough to remove (option is greyed out - it requires extensive digging, and registry editing, to remove this add-on) which undermines security also (it paves the way for 'one click installation').
Memories of IE6 should give anyone nightmares about BHO and browser helpers in general...
For me, Google may be evil, but Microsoft is beyond that.
John fiendishgames # Monday, January 4, 2010 1:17:36 PM
Luckily for me, we've had a management change at work and I no longer have to do this assignment, though I suspect something similar will resurface down the road.
For what it is worth, I have predicted the long slow death of Microsoft as people switch to software as a service. I think they will have to migrate the majority of Office users to that model at some point, but getting the timing right could be tricky and they may well send the penalty kick ballooning over the bar.