November 14, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Google Way
November 15, 2007 at 6:24 am
Steve,
Your comment "Microsoft seems content to deliver a platform and hope it gains large market share." is right on the mark, and points out what is wrong with today's Microsoft. They seem unsure of what their specialty is, so they release all these scatterbrained projects hoping that something will click with the public.
They also seem to be more willing to just walk away from a product - look at Windows Me as a bad example - and both Office XP and Visual Studio .NET 2002 were quickly replaced the following year with new versions.
Does the world really need XPS instead of PDF, Silverlight instead of Flash, etc etc. They are spreading themselves too thin, and lack of concentration on their core compentencies of Windows, Office, Servers, and SQL; this is showing up with all the Vista boo-boos like the WGA fiasco and the stealth Windows Updates. For example, I subscribe to the MS Action Pack, so all my copies of Vista are 100%, but yesterday's update told me that my Windows license had changed and Vista might stop working.
In one sense, MS treats the public (even IT pros) like their personal R&D lab - just look at all the Beta and CTP stuff they put out, and we happily download & install it, spend our time working with it, give them our feedback; all this builds up interest in a product that's not really real, not yet at least. If it is not available at retail, it is still vaporware IMHO becasue it can steer you away from products from other vendors that ARE released.
November 15, 2007 at 7:46 am
William,
Those are good points and I tend to agree. It's why I haven't bothered with Silverlight and Popfly. I suspect they'll die out, but if I'm wrong, then I'll worry about them in a couple years.
However they're not innovating like Google is. They're not thinking outside the box and I think there's a little too much corporate bureaucracy or overhead or something up in the Pacific Northwest. Too much time coding and not enough thinking.
November 15, 2007 at 8:14 am
I am not totally sure they are not innovating, the problem is getting recognized for you innovation in a market to keep share. It is like with iPhone, people are totally flipping to get one because it combines so much but honestly Windows Mobel devices have been around so long that people tend to forget they have all the same features as an iPhone plus allow you to add third party programs and customize any way you want but it is MS and they are evil is a big consensus these days and I think that hurts their innovation because they are perceived as a threat of monopoly. Remmeber IBM used to be huge but honestly they were on the bleeding edge with OS/2 and the fact it was 32-bit before MS had 95 but IBM was the bad guy and thus evil and you should look elsewhere was the retoric thrown around. That pretty much stalled IBM's growth for a long time until someone took their place. It will eventually happen to Google and to Apple. Just a matter of time before they become the next New World Order conspiracy and they start to founder under the weight of it.
November 15, 2007 at 8:14 am
Blackbird was so memorable that it took me 10 minutes of googling, not live searching, to find out what it was once proposed to be. Okay, it took 10 minutes because I just entered Blackbird.
I think my choice of search engines says it all on software.
Now for 'pushing things to market', hey, for personal use I just wanna phone Now work is another story, BB (BlackBerry) is the way to go. Music, video and all the ups and extras are just ways for corporate (fill in the blank here) to siphon more money out of my pocket. Time to simplify on a personal level !
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
November 15, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Please don't get me started on LiveSearch. My kid was doing the club and they called me downstairs. Despite the fact that we had the Safe Search mode that was supposed to screen out objectionable pictures and other material, they were trying to answer a question about a movie a certain actress was in and looked up a hint. Sure 'nuff - there the actress was in her, um, birthday suit. We complained a few times, but it kept creeping in every once in a while. It got to the point where I had to sit next to them and do my own little "safe screening" technique.:w00t:
November 16, 2007 at 7:49 am
PGarberick (11/15/2007)
Please don't get me started on LiveSearch. My kid was doing the club and they called me downstairs. Despite the fact that we had the Safe Search mode that was supposed to screen out objectionable pictures and other material, they were trying to answer a question about a movie a certain actress was in and looked up a hint. Sure 'nuff - there the actress was in her, um, birthday suit. We complained a few times, but it kept creeping in every once in a while. It got to the point where I had to sit next to them and do my own little "safe screening" technique.:w00t:
Sorry, don't feel sorry for you and have to say this has happened to me on google a number of times. Filters can only work with the data they are presented and have yet to see a pattern recognition software for nudity (although I could make a fortune if I could figure it out). 😛
Got to thinking about this and realized it has already started to happen to Google but one of the major set backs for MS is all the anti-competion litigation every time MS integrates something free into Windows (like IE), this of course hurts innovation and if anyone will recall Google has already started get hit with that, I am still surprised no one has done this to Apple over the iPhone with regards to service provider and thrid party apps, clear chance on that one.
November 16, 2007 at 9:40 am
I'm still not sure MS innovates. They enhance, they make things cheaper, more widely available, but they tend to make incremental improvements.
That's worked well to date, but now there's a company that has significant resources they devote to innovating. In the past it's been startups that could be absorbed or allowed to die off.
Their work with Windows Mobile doesn't seem to be changing the model to me. It's improvements on PALM and other "smart phones" instead of doing something like starting your own wireless network to provide an end-to-end service. Silverlight/Popfly are improvements on technologies out there.
They ought to have started building their own cameras (or OEM'ing them), building a service like the Mac did to produce photos, etc. early on. They could have built a "google like " service in early 2000 to tie people tightly to the MS way. That might not be the best example, but they did a great job with the "XBOX Live" service in innovating how consoles would work together. I just haven't seen that in other areas.
SQL Server might be a good example in that they've built a platform that Oracle and IBM are trying to catch up with. They cover RDBMS, OLAP, ETL, Qing, and more as one integrated platform.
November 16, 2007 at 9:48 am
Steve do you ever get involved with the betas?
November 16, 2007 at 9:57 am
Steve Jones - Editor (11/16/2007)
...but they did a great job with the "XBOX Live" service in innovating how consoles would work together. I just haven't seen that in other areas.
But they actually didn't even innovate that. Sega offered that with Dreamcast but it just didn't catch on and they gave up. Personally I liked Sega better than any of the others before they gave up to focus on software instead.
Much of todays innovation is nothing more than building on other concepts. Google built on the concepts of what Yahoo, AltaVista and Lycos offered, they just survived better than the rest. Apple built on cencepts already in play with other vendors hoping to franchise on the Apple name more than design, then one day they got lucky with the design and have the lead right now. In todyas market you either are playing catch up or you get too far ahead so the other legally trip you. I just think it is all in perception (mostly set by the media) more than reality with all innovation.
Consider this the foot brake in a car was considered an innovation, but all it did was apply the hand brake with a gas pedal, not really innovative but sometimes the simplest things change all the rules.
November 16, 2007 at 9:59 am
Rarely. And honestly here's the reason:
I can't afford for stuff to break.
Now with VMs, I'm probably out of excuses. In the past, I beta'd Windows 95 with it's 24 or so 3 1/2" floppies, VB 6, Visual Studio 2000, VS 2003, Biztalk, SQL 7, SQL 2000, probably a couple more.
But I had issues on those machines and just like the early SS2K5 CTPs, the uninstall/reinstall process was a problem. I couldn't afford my primary machine to go down and I often didn't have a good test system. Later I had a test system, but I couldn't afford for that to go down because it was testing stuff I needed to work.
Now I'm a bit jaded on some of the technologies. I think that many of them are just thrown out there, as good ideas, but often a "build it and see if they come" and I don't want to get invested in something that disappears.
I almost jumped into SSNS, and I'd be very upset right now if I had.
November 16, 2007 at 10:32 am
Know the feeling, like exFat, they still haven't cancelled the beta and it has been on my beta space for over a year. 😀
November 20, 2007 at 10:19 am
I think this editorial should be entitled 'The Non-Microsoft Way'.
First I agree with another poster, is there a need for another .pdf, another search engine, another mp3 player, another 'fill in the blank when Microsoft feels threathened'?
I think Microsoft is the new IBM of the old, bloated and lost and I do agree that it is not concentrating on its core products. Those using heavily DTS packages have no real way of a simple upgrade to SSIS. The expectation for us DBAs to be forced Visual Studio down our throats.
I also agree with the comment that they use certain communities as beta testers, products that shouldn't be 'live' at all. We have Sharepoint Services 3.0 and what a nightmare from the database side, I mean storing things in blob format???
The world is changing and other players are in, sure Windows Media phone does most of the features of the iPhone and the so-called Google software for phones but what you are missing is that in the past users went to IT to ask what is a good PC, PDA, etc...now as the world gets more tech saavy the users get the product and demand IT dept to support it (especially Senior VPs).
In this fast pace connected world many non-IT techies want something elegant, easy, simple, fast and right now that is not Microsoft.
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