The gorilla in this nascent market is Google. It has been spending billions of dollars to build huge data centers, or "server farms," around the world, enabling it to run all sorts of consumer software and store enormous quantities of personal data. Combine that processing muscle with the company's dominance of web searching and advertising, and you have a juggernaut capable of redefining the software business on the media model.
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ODF useless for Microsoft needs - Google: OOXML 'insufficient and unnecessary' - Talkback a... - 0 views
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ODF's limited spec can't support all MS Office features unless Microsoft goes on a major entending trip.
ODF and OOXML are standards in name only - Google: OOXML 'insufficient and unnecessary' - T... - 0 views
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Both ODF and OOXML flunk that test badly. Their interoperable implementation neither has nor can be demonstrated. Both are designed for the waging of feature wars, not for interoperability. Both attempt to legitimize market-leading companies embracing and extending their own formats. They are standards in name only. What we are watching is a contest to decide which big vendor formats will be allowed to undeservedly claim the title of "international standard."
Microsoft bids big for Yahoo - $44.6 Billion |Techworld.com - 0 views
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Microsoft has offered to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6 billion (£22.4 bn) in cash and shares.
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The offer is 62 percent above Yahoo's closing share price on Thursday
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I hope the anti trust police are awake.
Look what Google can do now: OOXML! - 0 views
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Instead of dialing 411 on your phone and paying the service fee, dial 800-GOOG-411
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Send the name of the business and the city or the ZIP code to GOOGLE. (Type GOOGLE into the address or number field, like you would if you were using a phone number.) Google will text you back with the address and phone number.
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All in all, this series is an accurate assessment except for one thing; they don't credit the strength of Microsoft's monopoly position and their ability to leverage the desktop monopoly into a full fledged "business" Web monopoly. MOSS (Microsoft Office - SharePoint Server) system is kicking ass, and the world is worried that browsers like Opera are not getting a fair shake on the desktop. Microsoft is a platform player, and you can't fight that at the application level.
Connecting the desktop platform to backend relational and transaction servers defines the 1995 monopoly. Connecting the desktop platform to the Web platform will define the next big monopoly play. The EU has got to get off the application layer and out of the open standards vendor consortia if they are to stop this juggernaut.
The reason they need to get out of the standards consortia and write/demand their own "advanced recommendations" - like WebKit, is the cleverness of Microsoft's "duality" approach. The target has to be that of restoring competition at the high end of collaborative Web computing, where Microsoft's proprietary WPF-.NET technologies rule. Any format, protocol, or interface used to connect platforms, applications or services must be open and available to all - including the reverse engineering rights.
So far the EU has left me less than hopeful. I do however believe that WebKit can get the job done. It would be nice if the EU could at the least slow the beast of Redmond down.
~ge~