Group items tagged

The IOWA Comes vs. Microsoft antitrust suit evidence is now publicly available. This ZDNet Talkback posts an extraordinary eMail from Bill Gates concerning the need to control MSOffice formats and protocols as Microsoft pushes onto the Web. The key point is that Chairman Bill understands that the real threat to Microsoft is that of Open Web formats and protocols outside of Microsoft's control. It's 1998, and the effort to "embrace and eXtend" W3C HTML, XHTML, SVG and CSS isn't working well. The good Chairman notifies the troops that MSOffice must come up with another plan. Interestingly, it's not until 2001, when OpenOffice releases an XML encoding of the OpenOffice/StarOffice imbr that Microsoft finally sees a solution! (imbr = in-memory-binary-representation) The MSOffice crew immediately sets to work creating a similar XML encoding of the MSOffice binary (imbr) dump. The first result is released in the MSOffice 2003 beta as "WordprocessingML and SpreadsheetML". XML was designed as a structured language for creating specific structured languages. OpenOffice saw the potential of using XML to create an OpenOffice specific XML language. MSOffice seized the innovation and the rest is history. Problem solved! So what was the "problem" the good Chairman identified in this secret eMail? It's that the Web is the future, and Microsoft needed to find a way of leveraging their existing desktop document "editor" monopoly share into owning and controlling the Web formats produced by Microsoft applications. MSOffice OOXML is the result. ISO approval of MSOffice OOXML is beyond important to Microsoft. It establishes MSOffice "editors" as standards compliant. It also establishes the application, platform and vendor specific MSOffice OOXML as an international "open" standard. Many will ask why this isn't a case of Microsoft actually opening up the MSOffice formats in compliance with government antitrust demands. It is "compliance", but not in the sense of what

2006 MSDN white paper that is the best overview I've found thus far of the bridges Microsoft is building between Office 2007 and the Microsoft cloud. 12 pp. Somewhat dated in the intervening two years. Describes the Microsoft "line of business" vision for vertical markets in some detail. "This white paper introduces Office Business Applications (OBAs), a new breed of easily customizable solutions that address real-world business problems through the 2007 Microsoft Office system. OBAs deliver people-centric, collaborative solutions to the enterprise through familiar Microsoft Office servers, clients, and tools. This document discusses today's business environment, identifies a "results gap" that contributes to reduced productivity, and shows that OBAs are an effective new approach that enables enterprises to achieve the "last mile of productivity." You will see that several key components of the 2007 Microsoft Office system can be used to develop Office Business Applications and that, when Line of Business Integration (LOBi) for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is released, it will further simplify the development of OBAs. Finally, if you would like to develop a collaboration-planning scenario using the 2007 Office system, just follow the steps outlined in this paper."

OSS Innovation and MS IPR :: OSS Interop vs. MS Interop :: OSS Profit vs. MS Profit

Adobe's Erik Larson introduces Acrobat.com. His blog comments echo his post in response to an article at ComputerWorld: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9091678 In the CW article, Guy Creese of the Burton Group holds the line, defending, as expected, the Microsoft alighnment of MSOffice, Exchange and SharePoint.

Review of Henry Blodgett's predicitve analysis that within the next year Google's search revenue will surpass Microsoft's revenue from Windows. MS still has MSOffice and the Exchange/SharePoint/SQL Server juggernaut. But Blodgett fearlessly predicts the beginning of the end fo rthe great monopolist. Great quote from Microsoft's Ben Slovika.

The Henry Blodgett article comparing Google and Microsoft. Excellent source!

Blodgett calls Windows a "natural monopoly," a term derived from the science of economics. But the view of Windows as a natural monopoly blinks past more than a few facts: [i] the monopoly at all times was firmly rooted in government-granted monopoly created by copyrights, patents, and trade secrets; [ii] even the 3.x versions depended mightily on antitrust violations involving DR DOS; and [iii] the dependence on antitrust violations to build, maintain, and extend the monopoly continue to this day. I see scant basis for labeling Windows as a "natural monopoly." Economic theory may blink past the antitrust issues on free market principles, but it may not blink past the government grants of monopolies in similar fashion..

I don't think Dan Farber gets it. ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML establishes MSOffice as a standards compliant web/cloud/WOA "editor" for client/Web-Stack/server systems. No need to try to squeeze all tha tcomplexity into a browser. Just use the MSOffice SDK OOXML <> XAML conversion component to convert rich, business process loaded, documents to a web ready format. OH my, XAML is proprietary and IE-8 does not support XHTML2, CSS3, SVG, XForms, RDF, SPARQL, SWF, PDF or JavaScript. Bummer. ISO has done the unthinkable and Microsoft can now break the web without worry of anti trust retribution. They are after all, simply implementing an open standard.