The beginning of the end for Microsoft

There are two main reasons why Microsoft is still a profitable company, irrespective of how many mistakes they make: Windows & Office. Even though Mac & Linux have tried for years to unseat (or even unsettle) Windows from its dominant market share, they have hardly made a dent. There are several reasons why they haven't been able to:

1. Apple made MacOS X a closed operating system without licensing it to anyone which means that it is tied to computers made by apple, which are pricey (and beautiful). The barriers for entry for anyone who want to switch are high. Apple refuses to acknowledge that most people grew up and own Windows PCs and does not accommodate them by making it easy. While BootCamp made it easier but still they weren't addressing their core concern: what can I do with my existing windows computers. With the iPhone, Apple has diverted its engineering resources on to that. Instead of addressing the core OS concerns, Apple is spending its time and resources trying to mimick Vista & Windows 7.
   
2. Linux & various other linux-like variants. There have been several notable efforts in the Linux front. Most notable being Ubuntu and the most recent effort from Intel, Moblin. I've gotta say Ubuntu is years behind from becoming an usable, mainstream, home operating system. There are so many issues with keeping it open-source and not being able to provide "proprietary" device drivers. There are just too many variants and ways to do the same thing and none being easy.

I think Google is spot-on in its post about the needs of a computer user:

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.

Everyday, I wait for about 5 minutes for my PC to become usable. Every year or so, I have to re-install Windows on my computers as it has slowed down considerably from when it was a fresh install. I have to use a myriad of programs to backup my computer. And have a myriad of hard drives and storage to move around my media over and over.

If (and that's a big if) Google is able to address all these concerns and make an Operating System that's secure, simple & fast, then they would own the home market in a few years. Cracking the enterprise market is much harder as it requires change of thinking & operating model for a lot of enterprise IT departments (which means re-training or even hiring new people) and that aint gonna happen in years - maybe in a decade or so.

But sure enough, Google has both the money and the engineering prowess to pull this off. Go Google ChromeOS!

India: Internet Bus Project

Kudos to Google for doing this:

Today, we launched the Internet Bus Project, an initiative designed to showcase the benefits of the Internet to the people across the cities of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Over the last few years, we've been witnessing a steady growth in Internet adoption, but we wanted to do more to directly engage the offline population of India. So we're hitting the road over the next month and a half to demonstrate how the Internet can make everyday tasks simple with tools like Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps and more.

To learn more about the project and get updates from the road, visit the Google India Blog or the Internet Bus Project website.

GMail Troubles?

I've been having on and off issues with GMail lately. And today I got this:


Temporary Error (502)?

Finally, Google Reader gets Search

Google Reader, which is my Feed reader application of choice just got way better today. One of my long time issues with it was that there was no way for me to search the feeds - yes, a Google application did not have search. Now, today that got fixed:

That makes it almost a perfect feed reader application. If you have not tried it, I'd suggest you give it a try.

Google Talk down?

I cant seem to login to my Google Talk for the past 6 hours or so and there doesnt seem to be any indications of this downtime anywhere. It could be just me and my dear ISP - Comcast. I get the following message:

Could not connect to the Google Talk service (error 10060)

This after the debacle of "vanishing" gmails over the last week or so and the fact that Orkut was down for more than 22 hours does not bode well for the overlord of the internet - Google. Maybe we shouldn't laydown and surrender all our life's information management to Google, huh?

Google Bombing for MLK

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Confused? Explanation here.

Google Search 2.0?

Looky here... When I was searching for "Santa Rosa" (No, not the City of Santa Rosa, but the upcoming Intel Centrino Platform), look what showed up in the search results:
I was able to collapse and expand the Map view of the City of Santa Rosa without refreshing (read: AJAX). It's nice to see that Google is finally doing some integration among its various services and using AJAX for it. Is this the start of Google Search 2.0?