Discussion on:

Hey, Microsoft: Google is the real competitor to beat

Do you agree with Debra that Google is where Microsoft's real competition lies?

But asking Microsoft to take on some of Google's attributes would require a huge culture shift within Microsoft. I just don't think they can pull that off.

I find it hard to take seriously the suggestion that if MS does what Apple does best, along with what Google does best, and keeps doing what it does best, it will be best of all. Duh. Yes, a deus ex machina can always solve the problem, but divine intervention isn't an actionable strategy. While it's at it, maybe it could do what China does best and what the Yankees do best.
These companies' respective strengths are embedded deep in their history, culture, and management. Microsoft doesn't do big bold strategies, never really has (at least since the early '80s,when it realized that software could be a business all by itself, a fairly radical idea at the time), and probably never will under current management. Freedom and choice are anathema to a company that relies on two long-established monopolies to generate 95% of its profits. Basically, you're suggesting that if Microsoft were really different, it would be really different. Thanks for the insight.

Of course now they do about $30 Billion a year in revenue for products that are all free.

Microsoft does about $70 Billion a year revenue from products...none of which are free.

In terms of competition, how do you compete with Free? Start paying customers to take your product?

I agree that Google is the real competition. Apple has never wanted to take over the market otherwise they would release a broader range of products (lower end and enterprise friendly). Google targets a range of markets including the enterprise market. If Google is willing and able to provide premium support services to enterprises then I think they could seriously eat into Microsoft's profits.

Note about enterprise friendly. Taking your Apple product to a local Mac store is not enterprise support. I have read forums where this appears to be the standard support structure for Mac equipment in the business, but is really unacceptable to larger organizations.

Bill

Just today a was saying that Android is the iPhone as Windows is to the Mac in the PC arena. Android is the more flexible phone OS to iPhone's tighter it simply works phone. Your article is so true. Iin the phone arena MS is just an also ran. MS needs to produce a phone OS which is as good as their PC OS and then they can get back to pretending to compete with Apple.

Do you realise how boring these articles are getting? so and so is better than so and so but such and such can never really be competition for so and so!
You give the impression that the whole industry will be dumping all equipment and contrivance???s and work from a phone OS! Is there anything else happening in the industry that will interest a real techie? I must say TechRepublic you are not on your own all the other so called tech sites seem to only have journalists who are pontificating phones and their various OS???s.
I for one am getting tired of reading about these overpriced simple devices, are there any techie journalists left or do we only have Sales pitches on sites like this.
Ok have got it of my chest now!

Freedom is something Microsoft should consider (i guess they have) but
Shareholders / stock buyers are irrationally supportive when it comes to companies with about strong web presence

Having an alternative indirect income stream (through the app store) would give Microsoft a Google like image (many uninformed users would not know that Ms is getting cut on all app purchases)

So I believe their hands are virtually tied right now, all they need is to:

Make that Windows 8 Os work without much (vista like) errors.
Work better to making developers jump on board for useful and exciting metro apps - if they don't, they'll lose their main market for nothing.
Final and most important, make arrangements for cheap windows 8 touch devices to come out - if this does not happen, they won't get 20 percent in 15 years but if they do, 60 percent in 3 years is piece of cake (apple is already taking precautions on this which is evident in low cost of its previous generation touch devices - the indications are already there as it is the right way to go)

I'm an average middle-aged joe user - I didn't get Android because it offered more choice or had more features. I got it because it was the OS on the best free handset I could get when I renewed by contract with Orange. And I think I'm not alone.

Reading this I get the impression that doing things badly is a good thing as long as you do a lot of things badly.Google is the greatest empowerer of corporatism on the planet, and they don't pay their taxes .

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/10/21/1627220/How-Google-Avoided-Paying-60-Billion-In-Taxes

Why is everyone so obsessed with bashing Microsoft? Why does everyone think they have to give them a lecture all the time? Apple is getting bigger with crappy iPhones that don't have stable internet connections,drop calls,low battery life...why don't people see this? How is a phone with 2 hours of battery life instead of what is advertized great?

Gosh , perhaps each of the market shares is different and their are enough dollars (pesos) to go around. So Androids re for tinkers, iphone for people who "just works", and Microsoft for the others.

Steve is gone. Apple is lost. Not that MSoft is doing much better, but I feel...yes, feel, that MicroSoft is still a leader. I would agree that they spend too much on lousy marketing....yet if they can pull their collective head out of their asses they would be able to offer a sound platform and move forword. Thanks for the shout...g

1- System's architecture is as always has been a way or at most an attempt to emulate in machine the Human Thinking process.
2 . Microsoft is the worse architecture available. It is based on old Von Newman of the sixties. It means that a memory address can contain either an instruction or data. The hardware does not distinguish between both. It falls onto the software to do so. Software can be cheated . Now we have hundreds of viruses.
3- As far as I know, there is only one architecture that has tagged memory, where hardware refuse to execute data as instruction and vice versa.It was invented by Paul Stanley Barton of Berkeley University in California. Burroughs Corp. made a few implementations. The jew Blumenthal, Secretary of the Treasury on the James Carter Government took over Burroughs and sold it to Sperry (many say it was the other way around), ,The result was that he destroyed twmo Some of Barton's ideas have percolated into Apple, probably via Motorola which supplied to Hardware (Field Programmed Gate Arrays) used in Burroughs A-Series, currently known as Clear Path MCP.
Because of costs, Apple is using Intel Processors. I do not believe that it is impossible to write viruses for Apple. It's just more difficult, but if Apple takes over Microsoft more and more will show up. Steve Jobs would certainly meet the challenge, but "God kills its children early, just remember Mozart..
It is baout time that hardware manufacture implement decent architectures and do not leave the job to software people. They cannot, just by themselves, solve the problem.

Deb, I think you are underestimating the antipathy some (very many?) have toward Microsoft. Competitors to MS have their devotees, some out of affection, but others because they simply despise all things MS. You won't easily get them to change,