Is Microsoft Toast?
Source Title:
Financial Times - FT.com
Financial Times - FT.com
Story Text:
Thomas Hazlett has an editorial in the Financial Times this evening writing that because of Apple's growing Mac platform, together with the emergence of the Mozilla Firefox browser, and Google's market leading position in search engines are all indicative of Microsoft losing their relevance.
Thomas Hazlett has an editorial in the Financial Times this evening writing that because of Apple's growing Mac platform, together with the emergence of the Mozilla Firefox browser, and Google's market leading position in search engines are all indicative of Microsoft losing their relevance.
"Of course, Microsoft will do fine if its Windows customers use Firefox and like it; it will be easier to be a Microsoft customer if the malicious-ware of the Internet is kept at bay. But the threat, just as with Netscape (and its embedded Java script) a decade ago, is that valuable functions will gradually shift away from Microsoft’s domain – including, in the end, the operating system itself. This application creep happens so easily – take the Google gambit. A company provides a new and improved search engine, splices in a few well-targeted ads, and is now capitalized at $50bn. Microsoft, despite ‘owning’ the software on which the applications run, did not get here first. Ouch."
- Y! MyWeb
Yep, toast.
With a market cap 5 times that of Google. It's over for Microsoft. Roll over and die Gates, G is taking over. I've been hearing about the demise of MS for so long now that I've assumed MS must be dead, but people hate them so much they just keep digging up the bones to bury them again...
That is the stupidest thing I've read in along time.
The anti-MS, Mac loving granola chomping zealots have been writing that same article every 6 months for the 20 years.
Was MSN Search really that popular prior to Google? When the history of search engines as portal pages gets written, I would imagine that MSN was in no better of a position against Google now than they were against Yahoo back then.
I'm an alternative operating system using junky with little love for Microsoft's business practices, but I don't really see them as being quite so easy to defeat as some might suggest.
The Apple example in particular uses the phrase "growing Mac platform" which may not be entirely relevant itself. For one thing, while the Mac mini is definitely increasing Apple's current market share, it's still in the process of recovering the losses it suffered after interest in iMac resurgence started to slide again.
That's not to say that Apple doesn't have influence on the market. Any time they refocus on a new technology or even simple design aesthetic, other manufacturers are quick to look to see what they can incorporate into their own designs. Remember how many translucent teal plastic products you could find after the iMac was first introduced?
Now Firefox, that's where the interesting battle is going on.
OT
Only on topic in the vaguest of ways, but it's ineresting: Scoble on MS/linux
dunno...
...i don't really think MSFT will disappear even if a few other companies earn a few millions more, or give softare away as it might be
A mac mini? Another browser? A search engine? A free OS? A free office suite? Well, it's true that these are products that compete with some that MSFT also have, but MSFT has a lot of products, not just one... A lot of paying customers too...
UK-Based Financial Times Located in Strong Mac Market
The mac market in the UK, where the Financial Times is based, is very strong.
UK
The UK are even more fervently anti-M$ as a nation than most other places i think...
Welcome to TW katie, do introduce yourself!
*laugh*
Why don't you tell us what you really think, WG? ;-)
But seriously, I read an article the other day intimating that a certain unimaginably huge US corporation is -- as it were -- little but an empty shell around a dead center. On the verge of a collapse that would be to the stock market what the recent tsunami was to nearby landmasses.
Is M$ succumbing to the same "big tree, rotten center" syndrome? F*k if I know, but I'm not buying into the "too big to fail" fallacy... that sort of thinking is the exact reason the Titanic didn't carry enough lifeboats.
Seven years later
Will Microsoft eventually fall? Probably.
Will Apple be a significant part of this collapse? Probably not.
It'd be kind of nostalgic to look back to 1998 and see many of the same "Apple's latest computer will sweep up enough computer users to significantly hurt Microsoft" articles written around the introduction of the iMac.
I think if anyone's going to kill Microsoft, it's Microsoft itself. The delays with their new operating system combined with the fact that XP is mature enough and stable enough for most people that their interest in the upgrading to the next generation of OS is decreasing daily.
Just to clear up any confusion
re: Apple, they are a consumer electronics company not a computer company. That distinction will grow not shrink. Imho.
I was one of those...
I was one of those who went out and bought the eOne machine. $799 at a time when the iMac was $1,199. It came with everthing you needed including 2 PCMCIA slots. It is still working and being used by a student who does some grunt work for me. I can't remember for sure, but I think I upgraded the memory.
Heh. It didn't just stop with computers, though. You could get everything from cordless telephones to George Foreman Grills with that distinctively iMac-like teal or red or purple plastic.
LOL...
Ah yes. Bondi blue. I was SOOOO relieved when the Bondi blue fad died. That was a truly horrid color.
But someone did a fantastic spoof ad for a line of brightly colored translucent vibrators, so the candy-colored computer craze wasn't a total loss. ;-)
something else
...when a country like Brazil actively promotes Open Source alternatives to Microsoft core products. Imho.
You can't make this up
heh.