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Microsoft has always defined itself in terms of its competitors. It can't seem to define a roll for itself without having a competitor. Related to:
Gates Sees Google Honeymoon Ending
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Google has a browser?...
Microsoft has identified Google as a major competitor (wrongly).
Notice how there has been more anti-Google FUD in the press lately.
Pure coincidence, I'm sure.
:)
Of course, MS paying so much attention to Google gives Linux more wiggle room. Microsoft has always defined itself in terms of its competitors. It can't seem to define a roll for itself without having a competitor.
Its current competitors don't really compete.
Google is not a competitor to Microsoft. Google does not sell office suites, or operating systems, or game boxes. Google sells advertising space on a search engine page. To get people to go to that page, they have to have a good search engine. Microsoft offers a search page on their absolutely non-core business web interface msn. msn is probably a loss leader for Microsoft, and definitely not something they should abandon their cash cows for. They just need a competitor so desperately; they are willing to twist all sense to define Google as such.
IBM is not a competitor to Microsoft. IBM sells enterprise level computers to large corporations, and they sell support and services to those corporations as well. If you have a few million dollars lying around and need a computer that will run 364.999999 days out of the year, and you need to process hundreds of millions of transactions a day, you call IBM. Microsoft does not have an operating system or a product that can deliver what IBM does. A small portion of the very bottom end of IBM's products may coincide with a small portion of the very top end of Microsoft's products, but I personally don't think they come close. Microsoft wishes it was one of IBM's competitors.
Linux is not really a competitor to Microsoft. To the un-aware, Linux seems to occupy the same niches as Windows, but it is really an alternate operating system more than it is a competing OS. Windows does not have a product that meets my needs, and Linux does meet my needs. I don't really think that Microsoft has the resources to compete with what Linux offers users. For instance, Microsoft promised it would have a version of Windows ready for the release of Intel's "Itanium" chip. Microsoft never released a finished version for that architecture. The Linux community had ported Linux to Itanium before the first chips left Intel's assembly lines. Intel, HP, and sgi had released an itanium emulator and all the specs needed for anyone to write an OS for Itanium. For whatever reason, Microsoft could not do what the volunteers of the Linux community could. In the same way Microsoft does not make a product that meets my needs. For me using Windows to get things done on a computer is like using a golf club to drive nails in wood. It can be done, but its difficult to do, it doesn't work very well, and it isn't a cost effective way to do things. For me Microsoft's products don't compete with Linux, because they don't offer the things Linux does.
Microsoft needs to re think its own corporate strategies, and concentrate on their own core business. They can, like Apple with the iPod, try to develop some new business markets. The xBox may work out for them. Microsoft is all grown up now. They need to act grown up. They need to define themselves in terms of themselves, not in terms of their perceived competitors. |
