Google Might Disappear in Five Years 861
An anonymous reader writes "Speaking to a packed auditorium at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., on May 12, Ballmer trumpeted the ripe opportunities around Microsoft's sprawling business and questioned the ability of Google to maintain its edge. Clearly alluding to Microsoft's key Internet search rival, Ballmer said: 'The hottest company right now -- the one nobody thinks can do any wrong -- may just be a one-hit wonder.' According to concept developed by Ballmer, the online search engines represent the key points of the future technology, and the leader in this domain, none other than Google, is destined to perish in less than five years. These predictions belong exclusively to Microsoft's CEO who sounds a little like Bill Gates announcing iPod's death."
Not again.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than post that as news, it and the iPod bit from Gates should be moddable. I am thinking Flamebait or Troll, and by Balmer's same logic, Microsoft may not be here in five years either.
On the Other Hand (Score:2, Interesting)
What's wrong with that? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, so Google only does searching (pretty much) - what is wrong with that? They do a damn good job of it and so far no-one has been able to beat them because they continue to come up with better and better techniques to stay on top. I wouldn't be surprised if Google starts shoring up its other services but as long as they keep their search engine the best people will continue to come back.
Meta-information? Why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:3, Interesting)
GoogleOS (Score:5, Interesting)
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Re:Not again.... (Score:2, Interesting)
MSNBot: 47.18 MB
Inktomi Slurp: 4.39 MB
Googlebot: 1.71 MB
WISENutbot: 787.08 KB
Alexa (IA Archiver): 1.27 MB
AskJeeves: 531.41 KB
Walhello appie: 667.89 KB
LinkWalker: 68.96 KB
So MSNBot consumes more than 27 times the bandwidth than Googlebot. Therefore I consider your statement "Microsoft's business model is to throw something out there that is usually half baked and then refine it until it works just good enough" to be highly accurate. Granted 47MB isn't a huge amount of bandwidth, but it's still more than it should be.
When you wish upon a star... (Score:5, Interesting)
I often wonder what goes on in CEOs minds when that make stupid comments like this. Are there really people out there that believe what he says?
(somewhere in the wasteland of business)
"Ballmer said Google doesn't have a stable business.. must be true."
(pushes buzzer on desk)
"Mabel? Call my broker and tell him to sell all the Google shares pronto!".
Some Well Earned Cheap Stots. (Score:2, Interesting)
You don't say! I can just imagine that. "Gecko, Gecko, Gecko! I love this company! - profuse sweat - " It's all the same, less a few billion dollars worth of damage to the US and world economy.
Ballmer told the audience he sees himself working another 12 years, which would take him to age 61, before retiring. "I don't have to do what I do," he remarked.
No one has to do what he does, I wish that they would not and I would not call it work.
Work a little harder, Steve old boy, and you might reach Barnum infamy. I recommend a partnership with Sports Illustrated for Windoze Swimsuit, followed by Playboy and other entertaining ventures. Get Madonna to take her pants off for the release. It's not like you are going to take back developers or the enterprise and server markets, or make a decision without "help" from Bill. Go for the gusto, Monkey Boy!
Microsoft assumes FUD mantle (Score:5, Interesting)
Bill himself once told me that when Microsoft was taken out by a competitor -- something he always assumed will happen -- it wouldn't be a big company like IBM or Sun, but some little company you haven't ever heard of. Well, I hadn't heard of Google then (they didn't exist), but it seems odd for them to start pointing at market leaders like Apple and Google and talking about implosions. If they're worried about the big players now, Bill's vision has changed, or this is all just a marketing smokescreen.
I'm betting on smokescreen, but it portends a level of fear within Microsoft that's higher than I'd thought.
Re:Altavista (Score:5, Interesting)
Altavista was not the Google of 1999. It was simply the best-known of a number of search engines which used much the same algorithm and differed only in the contents of their databases.
All those search engines died because Google's algorithm was so much better that it was a waste of time to use anything else - not because of some mysterious search engine life cycle.
Until someone else comes up with the new Most Brilliant Search Algorithm Ever, Google is going to stay right where it is. If they're smart, they will continue research into making their search better and better, so that *they* are likely to come up with the Next Big Thing.
Ballmer's absolutely correct... (Score:5, Interesting)
Add to it that they sell appliances that can sift and find info on your network, and you've got a winning business strategy for taming the data beast, which as we all know, is growing faster than anything else.
Microsoft is freaked because they're part of the problem, and not the solution: it's their Excel/Word/Outlook files that are being searched (as well as every other type of file supported), and they "just-don't-think-that's-right(tm)", because they can't do it themselves and also. To add to the list of sins committed against microsoft by google, they treat all data pretty much equally...a pdf, word document, html file is just the repository of the data being searched.
"How dare you, google, equate our big fat word docs with a simple html page or *gasp* pdfs!"
Re:Not again.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Indeed.
One might also argue that one of Google's strongest points of distinction is the inherent guarantee of unbiased search results.
They take in advertising dollars, sure, but they'll never risk their online credibility by allowing ad revenues to corrupt the sanctity of their results.
Microsoft's search technologies on the other hand.. well, I may not be 100% convinced by MSN's anecdotal leaning towards IIS servers, but I'm certainly skeptical of that engine's inclination towards unbiased search results.
No thinking person will ever take MSN Search half as seriously as Google if they can't trust the results. Granted, this will be of little consequence to the remaining 99.8% of the world..
But seriously, folks... (Score:5, Interesting)
I happen to think that given the two very different philosophies of these companies that Google is probably dominating the marketshare of talented developers. Google quite simply appeals more to the geek aesthetic of innovation and using technology to enhance people's lives. MS is all about hampering innovation and using devious business tactics to ensure that inferior technology always prospers. At least that's the general perception.
If you're one of the best software developers out there, who would you rather work for? Even if MS offers more money, it's hard to justify wanting to work for MS.
Gates has admitted in many interviews that the key to the success of Microsoft has always been in attracting the best minds to come work for them. Something tells me that is no longer the case and that is why the writing is on the wall for Microsoft.
M$ Spinning Out of Control (Score:3, Interesting)
XBox360 Smoke and Mirrors!
Ballmer obviously didn't get the memo from the XBox360 boys about the problems they were having getting those Apple G5s to fit into that tiny little XBox360 case. Here a couple of photos that proof what's really powering those XBox360 videos and more importantly game demos... and it ain't in the case M$ has been showing everyone. Hell the damn thing isn't even plugged in!
http://www.talksudbury.com/forums/index.php?showt
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm happy with my mp3/ogg player (iRiver iFP395) and my PDA (Palm Tungsten E). I have no interest what so ever in a cell phone with their over priced billing and crappy service. And with that opinion I'm sure you can easily conclude that I would have no interest in a cell phone that plays music.
burnin
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:5, Interesting)
Add to that the fact that those "all in one" deals usualy are of poorer quality then the dedicated one. I don't see digital cameras disapearing, sure those cheap "for the clueless consumer" will become the celular phone. But there will be always a better dedicated one.
For those reasons I would say no. I would expect that all the devices would integrate more easily. I see a future where you could use your cell phone to send the picture you just taken with your camera to some buddy, witch phone is in your
PDA. All of that would be possible only by those appareils being near each other.
I see you getting close with your pda to your computer and the pda would sudenly being able to use your keyboard and your 15" ou 20" screen to display their contents. All of this if the computer "turned off".
When the computer is on it could request to automagicly backup every thing in all devices with a given priority for each device. All of that would be authorized by a master device that would have your private key, this could be a small item in your keychain or inside your wallet.
Sure there are details to think of, but all of this is possible with the tecnology we have today. Bluetooth make some of those things, and there is a wireless USB on the way.
Sure you will still be able to take pictures with your phone camera, and use your cell to store some (or all) of the phones from your PDA. But those will be for times where you are caught off guard.
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that those other devices would have to drastically change how their services are being offered. I don't want to pay to transfer songs to my phone. I don't want to pay a monthly fee in order to keep my iPhone activated.
I trust Apple a great deal more than I trust any cell phone company.
Re:One hit? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure Google does Blogs now and Dejavu and maps and personalized search and I'm sure cluster searches soon and many other neat toys and to their credit they are trying to diversify and build on their current position.
Here's the irony though... one of the things that people love about Google is the clean interface. They do a good job of rotating links, featuring services on the front page and hyping Maps and other acquisitions/cool new toys.. but how do you let people find all your toys and still stay clean? If Google's homepage start looking like MSN or Yahoo, are they really that much the leader anymore?
Conversely, if it doesn't, how do they create users for those other services? Hype is great and apparently effective, but migrating users from competing services effectively probably means making those services easy to find in the long run. Otherwise you kind of get stuck with your fan base (which is admittedly huge).
Re:Altavista (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's kept their search page simple while continuing to add features. They simply put those features on other pages, and if people happen to find them, great! They don't put up 10 different search boxes on google.com for every single search -- they simply let you change the search on the results page if you want to use froogle instead, or a GIS.
That's one of the big reasons I started using google. And that's one of the big reasons that I keep using them.
TiVo (Score:3, Interesting)
Not easy, but possible, and TiVo will be next. Of course, it's easy for MS to say, having developed so many successful products. I don't think they've had a new profitable division in 15 years since MS Office - yes, last I checked their gaming division wasn't making them money.
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, the point is, even if ipod sales grow and grow, I'm willing to bet mp3 playing phones will grow more (especially outside of the US). The end result will be that the ipod will become just another player, a cool one admittedly, but definitely holding a smaller percentage of the market than it does now.
To bring this back to the original topic, I think Ballmer may be right. When longhorn comes out and MSN search is embedded in every aspect of the OS (I assume they will do this), google may find their market share dropping drastically. It all comes down to the fact that the vast majority of people (ie. not the
In Other News-Khrushchev vows "We Will Bury You" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:2, Interesting)
Trash talk is not a good sign (Score:3, Interesting)
MS Missing the Boat and Myths (Score:3, Interesting)
As an example of how Microsoft missed the boat, consider GMail. Hotmail could have been improved and made better, yet GMail cleaned decked with something as trivial as Web Mail...
As an example look of how the software market of the future will look like consider Java and Linux. Both of these markets are incredibly diverse where some people make money and some not. Yet there is no single company that can claim to be the "single" company. Microsoft has to learn that software in the 21'th century has changed dramatically.
Re: It's not dead yet (Score:3, Interesting)
While I'm not a fan of the X86 architecture in general, or any of the chips in particular, it is important to keep in mind that what modern X86es have with earlier X86 chips is mainly the instruction stream.
AMD has shown how you can add new registers to an X86 chip while preserving execution compatibility for classic IA32 code. They also added 64-bit registers and instructions while preserving the 32-bit environment (much like SPARC, POWER and PowerPC did their 64-bit versions).
So, is it all that much of a stretch to imagine a mode flag that can be set by supervisor code that drops the IA32 instruction translator out of the pipeline, and starts pulling lower-level instructions for a particular process? All the other ideas are already there in AMD64: 32-bit classic, 32-bit updated with new registers and opcodes, and 64-bit, all timesliced onto the same CPU.
So, while I really don't care for the X86 family, I think it is far from dead.
And maybe removing the CISC decoder isn't that important anyway. Keep in mind the Xeons cache the decoded instruction for a given address, not the raw IA32 opcodes. So when you have an I-cache hit, you can skip 2-3 pipeline stages.
But I do think it would be amazing to see what the brainpower involved in keeping X86 alive could do if they started from scratch. As long as they weren't allowed to think of anything like the Itanium.
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason for this has nothing to do with technology. Apple and Motorola would have had such a gadget out already. The problem is the greedy cell phone companies won't allow it. They want their phone customers to pay for downloads of music over their networks, rather than getting it through their computers via CD ripping or iTunes. There is no money advantage in an iPod phone for Verizon or any other phone service provider. Since cell phones are often subsidized by these service providers, they also want a piece of the music download pie. In the end, if a song will sell still for $0.99, someone has to make less money, either the distributors or the entertainment moguls. I doubt that many people will pay Verizon more for the priviledge of downloading a song from them than from existing on-line services. The music providers will certainly not take less per song, since some of them are wanting to or already have increased the cost.
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:2, Interesting)
You paid $500 for something that 'crashes every week' and you think this is a good deal. I bet Gates read this post on the way to the bank and was laughing his ass off the rest of the way (at your expense).
Google is an advertising company (Score:2, Interesting)
Google doesn't currently meet this test. They could disappear today, and my life would not be impacted. Additionally they offer products that I would not prefer to use because of the information they are collecting. That includes gmail, googledesktop, googletoolbar and google web accelerator. Advertising is their business model and revenue stream.
As cool as Google's technology is, their business model seems to have more in common with a telemarketer than a technology company.
Sounds familiar (Score:1, Interesting)
MSN failed to make their mark in the multibillion dollar search business. Now, they want to discredit others in order to bring the spotlight back on them...without a competitive product.
Jawad Shuaib
python_kiss
Babblings from a Microsoft fan... (Score:3, Interesting)
1.) Classic example of FUD.
2.) Ballmer and Alchin are absolutely morons with little clue of what customers actually want and where technology is heading.
3.) Google succeeds in the market because they innovate and provide tools users really want to use.
4.) Microsoft (mainly) succeeds mainly because they're business-savvy and good at FUD. Not for their tools. Not for their "innovations".
5.) BTW, did anyone catch that MS guy discussing tabs in IE7 and subtely trying to intimate that they got the browser tab idea from their previous Office products and that they thought it'd be cool in web browsers, too?
Typical MS corporate bullshit, which hurts their engineering and hurts their engineering customers.
Unfortunately, this masks the significant capabilities and tools put out by some of their remarkable engineering teams.
Re:MS Missing the Boat and Myths (Score:2, Interesting)
The whole distributed decentralizedness of the net is still lost on them.
Oh well, they don't pay me to tell them how to fix themselves, so I won't.
Sun got a little closer.
Google 'got' it. And they're reaping the benefits.
Re:We have heard it before from M$ (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft in five years (Score:5, Interesting)
Longhorn will be great (allegedly) but Apple are already winning that my-OS-has-cooler-features-that-yours battle...href=http://www.trustedreviews.com/artic
I have read that Microsoft have enough money to keep going (paying wages etc) for three years. But there is no sense that they have anything new to offer, just more of the same. Google have grabbed the mind share of the ubergeek squad...weblogging, AJAX etc etc...all the exciting new toys for the nerds.
MS seems to own a greatest amount of mindshare in the upper reaches of business management, mostly non-technical, go with what you know best types. In the server rooms and development departments all the geeks love Linux/Apple/BSD etc etc.
In five years time many of these geeks, who have grown up with MS XP spyware problems, MS in court again on one side and the sleek minimalism of Google on the other, many of these people will be in management. Will they still embrace MS as quickly as their older peers do now?
I doubt it. MS will not disappear, but turn into another IBM...fingers in about 500 pies. I doubt that any non-technical person could tell you what IBM do, just something vague 'with computers'.
Will that day come for MS?
Microsoft, they are a computer company, aren't they? They had that weird software for those big clunky old desktop machines...Nothing like the Google OS running on my digital phone/mp6 player/dvd/game machine/tablet PC.
Re:Revenue, not products (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:case in point (Score:3, Interesting)
Google just partnered with a few cell providers to use GoogleMaps and built-in cell GPS and GPRS to move AdSense from the web to the physical world. Theoretically, AdSense now operates within a cell-users physical world. Walk into a pizza shop and an AdSense message will be sent to your phone giving you a coupon for the shop you just walked into, OR telling you a better pizza deal is right down the street.
Here's where it gets interesting... Retail is all about holding your attention. Think of the advantage AdSense businesses will have if they can literally interupt your shopping in another store. Best Buy can now text you their prices for car stereos the moment you walk into another car audio shop.
Google Search, Maps, etc... they're all apparatuses for content. This is the killer app that will expand the internet into your lives.
-logoCulture
http://logoculture.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Re:A company in distress (Score:3, Interesting)
I would add, and it does not seem to be widely recognized here for some reason, that Microsoft is saying these things in order to make them happen.
It's a bit like self-fulfilling prophecy. If a person or entity of some publicly-accepted authority says that the something will fail or company X will go out of business, it plants a seed in the minds of the people that hear it. When said twice, it re-enforces the prediction, making it acceptable. Repeated often enough it becomes believable. Once believeable, it is close to becoming fact. The whole process takes a long time, but the effects can last even longer.
Politicians are famous for doing this. There are a couple examples in recent history:
People and companies in positions of public authority know that their rhetoric has this slow, creeping power to influence attitudes and perceptions, and it gets used because it works. Most people don't even realize that their thoughts are being shaped. It can be very blunt, like what Mssrs. Ballmer and Gates are doing, or it can be achieved with simple word choice. I recently re-read 1984. The devices of newspeak are now much more starkly evident for me in contemporary efforts to shape public opinion around things like the changing of senate rules for confirmation of judicial nominees and the reformation of the Social Security system, for example.
I'm actually surprised that very few slashdotters make mention of these devices, or appreciate their strength.
Re:Microsoft in five years (Score:3, Interesting)
if i remmebe rright in the fortune 500, IBM is in the top 20 while microsoft is 75th or something/ worth a 50+ billion a year rev diffrence.
Re:case in point (Score:3, Interesting)
Any chance you read the article? At no point did he mention "pre-rendering" flash. He mentions specifically "taking responsibility for rendering Flash, for example". Precisely what he means I don't know. However, he specifically didn't say what you are saying makes him an idiot.
In the article you link to (which I read when it came out), he didn't say XP is DOS based, he said that "there is a disk operating system under there somewhere". In the end, he's right. In fact, until NT 4, the GUI interface wasn't in the kernel. The only reason it was added to the kernel was to avoid userspace-to-kernel transition overhead of fiddling with the video hardware. The fact of the matter is that the XP interface could be written as a service. The fact that services exist and work, without interacting with the GUI is proof enough that "there is a disk operating system under there somewhere".
In the end, the logic is right (just because there is an application that acts like a terminal you can't make the implication he does, but in the end no sane OS doesn't work without the GUI). What he is saying is accurate. That the important parts of XP that make it XP to a user, has zip to do with the guts of the OS, and everything to do with user interface. If they shipped the GUI, and the applications were portable. Given that Microsoft has the code to Win32, I'm fairly confident that they can do a better job then the Wine guys, so think of Wine as the prove of concept to what he is saying would work. They could maintain a program like X-Windows that renders to the screen, and gives you a desktop environment.
Just because you like to jump to conclusions about what someone said, doesn't make them wrong.
Kirby