
Why Ray Ozzie can't save Microsoft - iamelgringo
http://blogs.computerworld.com/why_ray_ozzie_cant_save_microsoft
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hernan7
Why do people think that MS needs "saving"? They have been predicting MS's
death for, what 10 years now? And MS is still making money hand over fist,
without any signs of slowing down.

OK, maybe web apps are "where the future is" -- but so were the network
computer and the Linux desktop. And, if anybody can make a ton of $$$ out of
"yesterday's business plan", that's MS.

If anything, the anti-MS camp needs less hyperbole and more follow-through.
"When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk".

(BTW, I'm an old Unix hand, not a Windows fan at all.)

~~~
mattmaroon
As a frequent user of Office, I'm still far from sold on the idea of Google
Docs being the future. Maybe the very distant future, but certainly nobody
will be using it (or competitors) in 5 years, and unlikely any significant
amount will be in 10.

It's simply overextension of the modern mania for moving stuff to the web.

~~~
cstejerean
Google Docs allowed me to complete the switch to Linux and Mac. I can easily
exchange Word and PDF copies of my documents with email contacts, never have
to worry about which partition my files happen to be on today, and better yet:
access my documents from anywhere.

I love the fact that Google can take documents from GMail and with one click
open them in Google Docs. The ability to share and collaborate on documents is
awesome as well. Emailing the same file over and over again to an entire
mailing list and making sure not to loose revisions is a thing of the past.

Turns out people like to communicate and collaborate and they like the
convenience of having their files available everywhere. MS has failed to
deliver in this area.

~~~
tx
Google Docs is simply a web storage. The actual "office" part, specifically
the text editing, is done by a rich text control embedded into your browser,
which is written in C++ or plain C i.e. it is as much "web" as Office itself,
only many times less powerful. Closest Windows desktop equivalent? The mighty
WordPad circa 1994!

You could have completed your Linux switch without Google Docs. AbiWord kicks
GDocs' butt, as well as KWord, I am not even talking about Sun's junk.

We tried to use Google docs and for _anything_ more complex than 2-3
paragraphs of simple text it was inadequate. You can't even control line
spacing for god's sake.

~~~
cstejerean
I'm pretty certain the rich text control in Google Docs is not written in
C/C++ and is not built into the browser. It's implemented in Javascript.

Or are you saying the web browser is written in C/C++?

~~~
tx
The _entire_ browser's set of controls is written in C or C++ and is provided
by underlying OS the browser runs on. On Windows it's RichEdit control. On
Linux it's something else. There is no API in existence that lets you do
anything outside of browser limitations.

JavaScript is only used to manipulate API of those controls, but not to
implement controls themselves. This means that "Office" part of Google Docs is
implemented by FireFox/IE/Safari, where google only provides storage for their
output.

I blogged about this "web apps nonsense" a few days ago:
[http://kontsevoy.blogspot.com/2008/02/web-vs-desktop-
nonsens...](http://kontsevoy.blogspot.com/2008/02/web-vs-desktop-
nonsense.html)

~~~
cstejerean
Everything in the browser eventually comes down to C/C++. But as far as I can
tell controls like the Yahoo UI Rich Text Editor are implemented in pure
Javascript. And by this I mean it modifies the DOM in Javascript (and the
browser handles rendering the updated DOM) as opposed to using browser magic
(like an ActiveX control in IE). If I'm wrong, could someone please point me
to documentation explaining exactly how these RTE's are implemented?

------
jmzachary
I agree, which is why I suggested in an earlier thread that Jerry Yang could
conceivably replace Ray Ozzie in a Microsoft/Yahoo merger. Ray Ozzie may be an
awesome programmer (but I've never used one of his programs), but he isn't
doing a very good job with Windows Live.

~~~
hello_moto
He's doing okay.

I'm using Windows Live Messenger (yeah, I know it's just MSN), Windows Live
Mail (I prefer to use this than Outlook. Thunderbird or GMail), Windows Live
Space (lots of my friends are using it too), Windows SkyDrive (hey, at least I
know MS isn't trying to sell the division like DivShare tried to do).

