

 Microsoft Silverlight vs Google Wave: Why Karma Matters  - boundlessdreamz
http://blogs.zoho.com/general/microsoft-silverlight-vs-google-wave-a-study-in-contrasts

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skorgu
Here's where I see the fundamental difference between Microsoft and Google:

Google has a conference, well known to all and sundry. Google plans a big
reveal. Microsoft plans a big reveal to steal some thunder. Normal PR all
around.

But look at the scope of the two reveals. Google essentially plans to reboot
the entire mechanism of interpersonal interaction on the internet. Whether it
will ever work, catch on, or even be useful it's without question
astonishingly ambitious. Arrogant even. "We're so smart we'll tell you how you
should be talking to each other." Love, hate, angry blog posts are generated
in abundance.

Microsoft launches a new search engine. Which, to be fair, seems like a quite
nice new search engine. But where's the ambition? Where's the absolutely
insane, balls-out wtf? Even if the Zune was better than the iPod it would be a
clone. Even if Bing is better than Google it'll be a clone. Even if the Xbox
is better than the Playstation it still won't be __qualitatively __different.
Sure some of them may succeed and none will likely fail completely but it's
hard to see the ambition in any of them.

~~~
ashot
I'm surprised you didn't make the larger point: this is true for every product
Microsoft has ever made. Copy, improve, persist. Basic, DOS, Windows, Office,
IE, etc.

They are not a creative company (or as Jobs would have it they have no taste -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzKj-1HaKw> ).

Their business does not revolve around creating new things but about copying
and improving things that already exist in the market. And to be fair, this
strategy has worked out quite well for them so far, so why would they change
course?

~~~
rjurney
It worked for shrinkwrap software, where release cycles are large. It has not
worked for web software, where releases can happen daily. They can never catch
up.

~~~
raganwald
It worked for shrinkwrap software _when they had an OS monopoly they could
abuse to drive their competition out of business_ , and likewise _it worked
for their OS business when they could negotiate illegal anti-competitive terms
and conditions with their licensees_.

I'm sure they have done some great work, but it is hard to look at their track
record and figure out how much of their success was earned on the merits of
their products and how much was earned on the "merits" of their business
practices.

~~~
netsp
It also worked before they had an OS monopoly. After all, that's how they got
their monopoly.

~~~
raganwald
Ah, no. They rode IBM's success to their monopoly and even in their first
business dealings they had anti-competitive goings on. For example, it was
possible to purchase an IBM-PC with DR-DOS instead of PC-DOS, but you ended up
paying for PC-DOS _and_ DR-DOS, so it was always cheaper to stick with PC-DOS.

Again, I'm saying that it is hard to look at their success and disentangle
their products's merits from their business practices.

------
sadiq
A fairly well written post, i'm in full agreement.

While Microsoft may have some great technology in their portfolio, I simply
don't want to use much of it because of how little I can trust them.

In Google's case, they're not really asking me to trust them so much, by
documenting and open sourcing many of the technologies they're trying to push,
I can at least feel like I have some degree of protection.

If there was a 'Google Silverlight' (as hypothesised in the article) it would
probably be under consideration as a platform for the next version of my
product but Microsoft's Silverlight falls very much short.

------
prakash
The only reason google looks good in this article is because it is compared
with microsoft. google is the new microsoft, I would be cautious when it comes
to partnering with them.

What do folks here think?

~~~
abossy
Justifying a lack of trust in Microsoft because of 'karma' isn't a correct
analysis, I feel. The author completely fails to discuss .NET -- a very
powerful and complete software platform that many companies rely on and use
effectively.

The crucial point is the one that he glosses over in the last sentence in the
second-to-last paragraph; that Microsoft's incentives aren't aligned with
Zoho, while Google's are. Google has every incentive in the world to get more
people on the Web and make the Web a more powerful platform. In the end,
Google has an incredibly powerful, benevolent brand, but they act in the way
any rational corporation will.

~~~
sadiq
The article doesn't discuss the technical merits of each company's offerings,
rather their approaches.

.NET might be a very powerful and complete software platform that lots of
people rely on.. but it's still a proprietry piece of technology that requires
(and maybe even demands) putting a great deal of trust in Microsoft's hands.

He makes this point clear in his discussion of Silverlight. He's not
dismissing it on technical merit (where it may have plenty) but on the
different approaches Microsoft and (in a hypothetical world) Google would take
to it.

Microsoft was to other OS and software vendors in the past, what Google is to
Microsoft now. They're just using more open policies for some of their
products to gain an advantage for their core business.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not calling either company good or evil.

I'm also undecided whether a company can be good or evil. There's illegal and
unethical, sure but good and evil just depend on how you view a company's
motivation.

Microsoft's goal is to keep you in their ecosystem, Google's goal is to sell
your eyeballs to the highest bidder.

~~~
netsp
_Microsoft's goal is to keep you in their ecosystem, Google's goal is to sell
your eyeballs to the highest bidder._

Here's a thought.

Msft know their goal: Keep you in their ecosystem. This has been their goal
forever. The market for OS/Office & the rest of their old products, was pretty
much destined to grow over 20 years. Keep your 90% share of a growing market
and you grow.

Google don't know their goal. They make money on search. Search works and they
still have power. They're still not making much from platforms or webapps or
online publishing or any of the other noteworthy things they do good work on.

The search business is pretty much at perfection right know. But the odds that
search will be (a) as important in ten years and (b) exclusive Google property
in ten years is not a 1/100 bet. The strategy for increasing the odds in
Google's favour is not clear. While they might imporve the monetisation
slightly, I don't think the search market will grow that much. Keep your 90%
share of a flat market and you don't grow much grow. You can still lose market
share though.

Maybe this accounts for part of the difference between the two.

------
vaksel
Google is no Microsoft, but they aren't all that innocent either

~~~
boundlessdreamz
maybe, but name one instance where they have screwed over one of their
partners.

~~~
noaharc
How about their users?

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/23/magazine/23google.html>

~~~
boundlessdreamz
the "maybe" was for the "china" thing. But it is a big maybe. Here is why

AFAIK Google didn't hand over any user info to chinese authorities. They just
merely censored the results. Between getting no access to google and having
censored results, even if i was chinese I would have preferred getting the
censored version.Why? because google is not used to find the censored topics.
It is used more widely to get information on non censored topics. The loss of
the world's biggest search engine would have been quite bad.

Also, google stood up to the US authorities when they demanded handing over
user info while yahoo and MS happily handed it over.

So in my eyes, google has not screwed over its users or its partners. The
biggest crime they may have committed is pulling the plug on some services ot
letting some rot (feedburner). But those are free services and if it doesn't
generate profit for them, they are right to pull the plug. In most of the
cases they allowed the user enough time to get their data off the pulled
service.

You can bash google for all you want but I think it is on very flimsy grounds.

~~~
trezor
I'd say the biggest difference between Google and Microsoft would be in the
arena in which they play.

Google has everything on the web. They _can_ change whatever they want
whenever they want and since it is web-based, you will have no option but
adopt to whatever changes they have decided they want to go trough with. If
they decide to obsolete a product, you no longer have access to it. You're
pretty much on your own when it comes to replacing whatever you just lost.

With Microsoft it's all on _your_ server. If they decide to change, alter or
obsolete anything, it's up to _you_ to keep up with them. If you don't approve
of changes, you can remain on the platform you are currently running, if that
makes you happy. While not free of risk, it at least lets you remain in
control of what you are running.

In short, depending on either of them involves risks, and what you consider to
be least acceptable is entirely up to you, your business and your priorities.

------
zaidf
May be because collaborations often turn into an acquisition.

