Apple, Google, Linux Are in Microsoft’s Sights | eWeek 07/19/2010
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Interesting take on Microsoft’s recent surge, titled “The Empire Strikes Back” at eWeek. Here’s an excerpt:
“In a post titled “Microsoft by the Numbers,” Shaw, Microsoft’s top public relations official, delivers a strong example of what the term “PR” is really all about. Shaw’s post will be alternately scrutinized, analyzed, criticized and praised. And it will likely be used as slide show fodder by more than one news outlet (I must admit that I damn near did one myself!). But the bottom line is Shaw stood up and did his job. He did the hell out of his job.
He took some swipes that Microsoft has been reluctant to overtly take in the past. Sure, the company has made many of these points before, but it has done so a bit more passively. Or it has done it through proxies or with partners—as if to give the impression that the so-called heavy hand of the software giant was not behind the jab.
However, with his post, Shaw makes no pretense that anyone other than Microsoft is behind the message. And the message is: “We’re here. We’re Microsoft. We have the numbers to prove it. Get used to it.”
Citing what he referred to as “a few of my favorite numbers,” one of the first things Shaw did in his post was talk about the success of Windows 7. And he should. He listed 150,000,000 as the “Number of Windows 7 licenses sold, making Windows 7 by far the fastest growing operating system in history.”
That was potent, but perhaps his best stroke was ending with some revenue figures. Shaw simply said:
- $5.7 Billion: Apple net income for fiscal year ending Sep 2009
- $6.5 Billion: Google net income for fiscal year ending Dec 2009
- $14.5 Billion: Microsoft net income for fiscal year ending June 2009
Shaw calmly asserts a position that stands up to all the hype and furor over Apple’s cool and market cap, Google’s ascendance to supremacy, and trash talk that Ballmer’s no longer the guy, and he says: Look at the numbers.
This stance is long overdue from Microsoft. The company needs to fight back and be proactive amid the onslaught of smacktalk.”
Shaw also puts the iPad craze into perspective. He said: “1 million Projected iPad sales for 2010. 58 million Projected netbook sales in 2010. 355 million Projected PC sales in 2010.” And he noted that although less than 10 percent of the netbooks sold in the United States in 2008 were Windows based, by the end of 2009 96 percent of the netbooks sold in the United States were running Windows.”
via eWeek.
Andy Kaiser reviews HTC Incredible | Digital Bits 06/09/2010
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i3 Business Solutions’ own Andy Kaiser has a great review up on this new Android smartphone.
In his words:
“Let’s move on to the fun parts about the HTC Incredible: just about everything.”
Read it all at Andy’s Digital Bits blog: HTC Incredible review.
HTC Incredible
Google Pushes for Wider Google Apps Adoption with New Reseller Program | ReadWriteWeb 01/14/2009
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Getting down to business? A threat to Microsoft Office? You tell me.
“Google tonight announced a reseller and accreditation program for Google Apps. Resellers, after being trained by Google, can now market, support, and customize Google Apps Premier Edition for their customers. Resellers will get training and support from Google, as well as tools for sales, marketing, and integrating Google Apps into their customers’ existing architectures. Google has already rolled out a pilot of this program to more than 50 partners worldwide.”
via Google Pushes for Wider Google Apps Adoption with New Reseller Program – ReadWriteWeb.
Google Analytics: AdSense Reporting, Visualization Tools, & More 10/22/2008
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Google Analytics Upgrade: AdSense Reporting, Visualization Tools, & More
“A day after announcing a slight touch up, Google Analytics is rolling out what it calls a “significant upgrade” to its feature set. The new tools include AdSense integration, “Motion Charts,” advanced segmentation, an API, custom reports and an updated user interface to highlight these new tools better. Google is calling this an “enterprise class” upgrade, but the new reporting tools will be free and available to all Google Analytics users.”
Place your television ads with Google TV Ads (!) | Inside AdWords : Google 05/01/2008
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Inside AdWords: Place ads on television with Google TV Ads
Cool! But I think we’ll start to see more YouTube-grade commercials on commercial TV from here on out.
On second thought: could they possibly be worse than our local auto dealer ads? ;^)
“We’d like to introduce Google TV Ads, a flexible, all-digital system for easily and efficiently buying more accountable and measurable TV advertising. The program, which has been an invitation-only beta test since June 2007, is now available to all US-based advertisers…
…How does it work?
First, you’ll need a TV commercial. If you don’t have one yet, check out Google’s Ad Creation Marketplace, where you can connect with industry professionals who provide script writing, editing, production, and voice-over talent at an affordable package cost. It’s free to search for specialists and send them requests for project bids, and you aren’t under any obligation to work with them until you accept a bid. To celebrate our launch, for a limited time Google will cover the cost of creating your TV ad through our Ad Creation Marketplace, up to $2,000. Learn more about this special offer.”
McKinsey surveys software landscape | Rough Type: Nicholas Carrs Blog 05/01/2008
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Rough Type: Nicholas Carrs Blog: McKinsey surveys the new software landscape
Softwares new battle lines are now becoming visible, report the consultants: “These trends – the growing acceptance of SaaS and SaaS platforms – are likely to create a tremendous battle between the largest software vendors and the newer SaaS providers. While each of these players has an advantage at one end of the spectrum large vendors such as IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft do best in large enterprises, while SaaS “incumbents” such as Salesforce, NetSuite and RightNow are more in favor with small businesses, the real battle is in the mid-market space.
Google’s 650,000-core computer | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com 04/28/2008
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Google’s 650,000-core warehouse-size computer | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com
“What does it take to power the world’s most popular search engine? Lots of CPU cycles. Which is just what Google’s new data centers provide. No one is talking, thanks to Google’s tight NDA policy, but with satellite imagery and some deft estimation we can figure it out.”
Here’s the shot of the cooling towers:
Google mapping spec now an industry standard | CNET News.com 04/14/2008
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Google mapping spec now an industry standard | Tech news blog – CNET News.com
“”What OGC brings to the table is…everyone has confidence we won’t take advantage of the format or change it in a way that will harm anyone,” said Michael Weiss-Malik, Google’s KML product manager. “The goal is to prevent market fragmentation,” in which different technology uses different standards. “
More Details On The Google-Salesforce Alliance | TechCrunch 04/14/2008
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More Details On The Google-Salesforce “Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend” Alliance
“Google is in effect becoming Salesforce’s productivity suite. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentation can be created from within Salesforce’s CRM application. GTalk works as the de facto instant messenger within Salesforce. With one click, sales people who use Gmail can send any email correspondence with potential or existing customers to Salesforce, where it becomes recorded as part of the sales cycle. Sales events and marketing campaigns can be overlayed onto a Google Calendar (see screen shot below), as well as colleague’s schedules for figuring out convenient meeting times”
Will the Google revolution engulf IT departments? | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com 04/14/2008
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“Gartner has embarked on a wide-reaching new study of Google and its potential impact on IT, enterprise businesses, and society in general in the coming years. On April 10 at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 in Las Vegas, Gartner Vice President Richard Hunter revealed some of the first data points from this study.
The two most interesting points were:
1.) The best way to think of Google is as a disruptive technology.
2.) Disruptive technologies create big losers and big winners, and one of the biggest losers in the Google disruption could be traditional IT departments.This new study is being conducted by a team of 15 Gartner researchers, led by Hunter, and the full report will be published in mid-2008. The title of Hunter’s presentation at ITxpo was “What Does Google Know?” The answer to that question was even more sobering than I expected, as the slide below demonstrates.
A revolution is taking shape | FT.com 04/03/2008
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FT.com – A revolution is taking shape | Financial Times
Nicholas Carr’s latest book ‘The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google,’ has some great insights into the shift toward a utility IT model, aka cloud computing. For those not inclined to plough through the whole book, this short adaptation on the Finanical Times site gives anyone involved in the IT industry plenty of material to discuss and debate. Here’s a sample:
“By supplying business computing as a set of simple services, Google, and other utility providers such as Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Services, threaten to render large parts of the IT industry obsolete.
No corporate computing system, not even those operated by big companies, can match the efficiency, speed, and flexibility of plants such as Google’s. One analyst estimates that Google can carry out a computing task for one-tenth of what it costs a typical company.”
Head in the Clouds | CIO Insight 03/26/2008
Posted by thaadsma in Amazon, google, ibm, Linux, microsoft, SaaS, security, web, web services.add a comment
The Forecast for Cloud Computing
A couple of good takeaways from a solid article:
“Like all technological advances, cloud computing isn’t without risk. For instance, there are security risks related to commingling your data with that of other companies. And reliability concerns arise whenever you depend on a third party’s systems to be up and running 24/7, as companies that rely on Amazon.com’s fledgling Simple Storage Service, or S3, learned when the service went down for two hours last month.
“Still, IT folks seem willing to put up with the glitches in exchange for the potential benefits, as indicated by one online poster who chimed in on the Wall Street Journal Web site after reading of the Amazon outage. “Cloud computing may be new and may not be at telephone reliability,” wrote the S3 user, “but Internet hosting as a utility is a trend that’s well on its way.” “
… and of course:
“Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com who built his company on the slogan “No software,” says the distress over the perceived lack of security of the “multitenant” model—in which multiple companies’ application instances are stored on the same servers—is overblown. Granted, Benioff has reason to promote such a mindset, but the analogy he uses, comparing cloud computing service providers to the banking industry, has merit.
“If you met a CFO who insisted on keeping the company treasury in a safe in the basement, you’d think that he or she were nuts.”
Online Ads Hit $50 Billion By 2011; Local Reaches $9 Billion By 2012; Pre-Roll, Embeds Gain In ‘08 | paidContent.org 01/19/2008
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“With all the doom and gloom hovering over the economy right now, analyst reports heralding brighter days for the future of internet ad spend continue to be released. Below are three separate reports offering prognostications for online ad spending from a general perspective, another with a strictly local viewpoint and, lastly, an examination of streaming media.”
Click the link above to read all the good revenue news.
Meet Google: Search Giant, Monopolist Extraordinaire 01/09/2008
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Google Watch | Google vs. Microsoft | Meet Google: Search Giant, Monopolist Extraordinaire
“Microsoft also articulated (Word doc) how the combination of Google’s vast ad networks with DoubleClick’s publishing tools will give the company overwhelming chunks of the market.
In fact, I owe Microsoft thanks because I learned more about what Google’s position in the market will look like once it tucks in DoubleClick from Microsoft than from what Google offered.
But the best part of these documents is not the detail, it’s the prognostications that could shed light on just how ingenious (and perhaps, insidious) Google’s ad plans are with DoubleClick…”
Google Has Even Bigger Plans for Mobile Phones – WSJ.com 12/02/2007
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Google Has Even Bigger Plans for Mobile Phones – WSJ.com
“The company is gearing up to make a serious run at buying wireless spectrum, a chunk of the airwaves that can be used to provide mobile phone and Internet services, in a Federal Communications Commission auction in January. Google is prepared to bid on its own without any partners, say people familiar with the matter. It is working out a plan to finance its bid, which could run $4.6 billion or higher, that would rely on its own cash and possibly some borrowed money.”
Could Google’s Android Be the Cell Phone Savior? 11/08/2007
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Could Google’s Android Be the Cell Phone Savior?
And now for a completely different opinion:
“The U.S. mobile market today gives companies two less-than-ideal alternatives when trying to create mobile functionality. It can either go the app approach or the browser approach.
The app approach forces the consumer to download—or to have pre-installed—a small applet onto the phone. The chief pro: The final result should look exactly as the designers intended. The chief con: It limits the audience size to those whose OS and platform are compatible with the applet.
The browser approach is almost the opposite….”
Google Customers = “Programmed Drones?” 11/07/2007
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Google Customers = “Programmed Drones?”
This may turn into a nice flame war between Google and Ziff Davis, publishers of CIO Insight:
“Android is more evidence of the Google attitude and mimicking of Microsoft of 15 years ago. For Android is an empty promise—the worst kind of vaporware. The company has a code name, a promised product, a late 2008 delivery date, a list of partners and almost no details. Either in its arrogance Google refuses to share details or else it has none to share. I say both are right.
Android is the worst kind of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) announcement. The timing is the giveaway: days after OpenSocial and right before Facebook announces its advertising platform. More broadly, Google has given enough lead time before next year’s FCC auction to create doubt about the company’s intentions. The lack of real Android information further feeds uncertainty about the extent of Google’s mobile intentions. “
