Microsoft has started a beta test of the new Microsoft Sync Framework, technology that, like Google Gears, will let users keeps using web applications when they are offline. Google introduced Gears in June, five months ago, but has only enabled it in Google Reader (and with few third parties taking advantage of it), leaving the market wide open for someone else to come in with a competing product.
Microsoft’s Sync Framework allows developers to build a sync operation into their web applications, syncing the important data to your computer so you can run that application later without a collection to the internet. Relational databases can be synced to your local filesystem, as well NTFS/FAT file systems and RSS/Atom Simple Sharing Extension.
Offline access to web applications is an important next step in the rise of those web apps, removing one of (if not the biggest) obstacle to adoption by serious computers users. As is, no one has a successful product here, so anyone can come in and at least try to compete, but its the developer partners that are most important, not the strength of the framework.
Microsoft doesn’t want Google’s framework to succeed, because Google’s web apps will one day be big competition for Microsoft Office, and if Google owns this successful framework, that just makes Google Apps that much stronger. If Microsoft owns the framework, it can better position its own future web apps and Windows Live offline, and at least keeps Google from owning the “operating system” of the offline web.
WinBeta published links to these Sync Framework downloads:
- Microsoft Sync Framework CTP1
- Introduction to the Microsoft Sync Framework
- Sync Services for File Systems Whitepaper
- Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET v2.0 CTP1
- Introduction to Occasionally Connected Applications using Sync Services for ADO.NET
- Sync Framework CTP Books Online
(via Mary Jo Foley)
November 5th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Google, Windows |
no comments
ComScore’s search engine market share numbers for September reveal a pretty bad month for Microsoft’s Windows Live Search, as their slice of the pie shrunk about nine percent, lowering from 11.3% to 10.3%. Sadly, that’s exactly the level Live Search commanded in May, before the Live Search Club gains, which means Microsoft has lost the entire new audience as the promotion waned and not managed to retain any significant number.
Meanwhile, Google and Yahoo shifted about half a point higher each, and AOL traded 2/10 of a percentage point to Ask.com. Check out the Hitwise numbers at InsideGoogle, which are a tiny drop better.
October 23rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Yahoo, Google, Windows, Search |
2 comments
Comscore released what it is calling the first comprehensive worldwide report on search engine market share, and Microsoft, third place in the U.S., falls to fourth on the world stage behind Chinese powerhouse search engine Baidu.com. In fact, Google’s YouTube, if broken out from Google’s own data, would be the third most popular search engine and beat both Baidu and Microsoft, all by itself. That’s disheartening, as is this simple look at things:
Google: 37 billion searches (including YouTube)
Yahoo: 8.5 billion
YouTube: 5 billion
Baidu: 3.2 billion
Microsoft: 2.1 billion.
So, Google beats Microsoft about 17-to-1. Yoiks.
(via Todd Bishop)
October 10th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Google, Windows, Search |
no comments
ComScore’s latest numbers on the top websites in the United States are out, and Fox Interactive’s websites, including MySpace, still hold the top spot in pageviews, while Yahoo’s sites rule in unique visitors. Microsoft rose to #3 in pageviews, beating Google thanks to larger gains in August, while holding almost completely still with its #2 ranking in unique visitors.
September 17th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Yahoo, Google |
no comments
Nielsen/Netratings came out with its latest numbers on the most popular websites, dividing the numbers into two charts. On one, they list the top parent companies, that is the top entire audience served by a company across all its websites, domains and brands. On the other, they list the top brands, that is the biggest audiences under a single brand name. An example is that, on the first list, Microsoft and MSN/Windows Live are combined, while on the second, they are seperate, competing brands.
Microsoft did well on both lists, but took first place on the company list, with a 118 million person audience, beating Google by 1.1 million users. On the brand chart, Microsoft made third place with 95 million, falling short of Google and Yahoo by 15-17 million. Microsoft’s MSN/Windows Live unit also took fourth place, garnering 94 million users. In theory, this means MSN/Live’s 94 million audience ovelaps with Microsoft’s over 80% of the time, with 24 million users uniquely different between the two.
September 11th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Google, Windows, MSN |
no comments
I’ve got a long post over at InsideGoogle that should be of interest. Microsoft sent out this email listing ten questions companies should ask before thinking of switching to Google Apps, Google’s competitor to Microsoft Office. Some of Microsoft’s points are spot on, others questionable, and I’ve listed all ten and my own thoughts. Check it out.
September 11th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Office, Google, Applications |
no comments
Ars writes about how a federal judge has allowed Google to file a brief in Microsoft’s case to put an end to five year’s of government oversight. Google’s brief says that Microsoft’s antitrust decree should be extended because the company has failed to comply to Google’s satisfaction in regards to Windows Vista’s search functionality.
With the DoJ and 17 states’ attorneys siding with Microsoft on the matter, Google doesn’t seem to have much hope of pressing the issue in terms of Microsoft’s compliance with the consent decree. While Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s decision is largely procedural, it is another cog in the wheel of a dispute that will likely extend beyond the November expiration of complete DoJ oversight. Google has indicated in the past that it won’t give up the fight until it has run out of angles to pursue.
September 9th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Google, Law |
no comments
Microsoft’s 2002 consent decree that settled the federal antitrust case against the company is expiring at the end of the year, and the federal government and various state governments are trying to decide what to do next.
The federal Justice Department and a number of states, including Maryland, Wisconsin, Ohio and Louisiana, call the 2002 decree a success and that it accomplished its goals. Other states, including California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts and D.C., say that it was ineffective, and that it should be extended from a five-year decree to a ten-year one.
Their argument is that Microsoft still has high market share, which must mean it is still an evil monopoly.
Specifically, in the market at the heart of the antitrust case–that is, for Intel-compatible PC operating systems–Microsoft’s share has remained fairly constant, from 93 percent in 1991 to 92 percent in 2006, the filing said. In the Web browser arena, Redmond has seen its market share slip from 95 percent in 2002 to 85 percent in 2006, which the California group attorneys argue is “still well above monopoly levels.” And on the server operating system front, Microsoft has actually seen its market share climb from 55 percent in 2002 to 72 percent in 2006, the filing argues.
If you remember the antitrust case from when it was going on, you’ll know the “market share” argument, by itself, was never good enough, and that Microsoft was screwed on its business practice, not its sucess. The goal of the consent decree was to curb Microsoft’s evil ways, and it has succeeded more often than not. Microsoft has suffered the last five years, as:
- The company was too afraid to develop Internet Explorer, and let Firefox swoop in and embaress them.
- The company lost a lot of its fight, and let Mac OS X release version after version while it couldn’t get Vista out the door.
- The company stayed out of the music player game and certain other industries it could have made an impact in, partially because it was afraid that would be termed a monopolistic practice.
- The company has refrained from using lock-in in its products, even as its competitors are free to do so.
- Microsoft has sat back and watched Google dominate swaths of the online marketplace, and did not engineer Windows Vista to illegally defeat Google.
Ask anyone at Microsoft if the government held them back these five years, and they’ll tell you how many ways the company has been hamstrung by it. Yes, Windows is still very, very popular, but Mac OS is growing like crazy, Apple and Google are juggernauts, Microsoft is struggling in a number of industries and many of Microsoft’s other competitors have been screwing up to much to even compete with them. Market share proves nothing.
The next hearing is on 9/11.
September 4th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Apple, Vista, Google, Linux, Windows, Law |
no comments
Wired’s Michael Calore says that Adobe might be working on an office application suite to combat Microsoft Office. Over the last few years, Adobe has cemented itself as an application powerhouse, with creative works applications (Photoshop, Creative Suite, Production Studio) and online creative apps (Flash, Dreamweaver), and the time might be right to challenge the big dog in the application space: Office.
No one has mounted a formidable attack on Microsoft in many years. Currently, the only real competition Microsoft faces are from web-based and open source office applications, while former desktop competitors wilt away. The article says Adobe could use its Adobe Integrated Runtime to create web-based apps that also run when the user is offline, leaping past Google’s limited suite to take on Microsoft.
Right now, Google has the most attention in the online office space, but Google’s applications are limited, don’t look very good, and don’t work offline. Even though Google has a framework for running online applications offline, it hasn’t implemented it in Google Docs yet, so the market is open for Adobe to make a big splash. There’s room for a more mature package in this market, and Adobe could fill it.
Don’t forget something: Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure is coming, and when it does, it may fill that online office void in a unique and innovative. I fully expect it to.
(via Slashdot)
August 16th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Adobe, Office, Google, Windows, Applications |
one comment
Microsoft has finished its acquisition of aQuantive, so for the low price of six billion dollars, it now owns a major internet advertising firm. Microsoft completed the acquisition well ahead of Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, even though Google’s went through five weeks earlier, because Google is facing a pretty concerned Federal Trade Commission and Congress. Microsoft is even leading some of the lobbying efforts, saying Google’s actions are too anticompetitive, with no better evidence than its own giant, desperate purchase.
(via Tamar)
The FTC approved the acquisition only after shareholders of aQuantive voted to approve it. That vote took a real long time, all of six minutes.
The shareholder approval isn’t a surprise, considering the premium Microsoft is paying. Under the deal, Microsoft will pay $66.50 for every aQuantive share. That’s 85 percent more than the stock’s closing price before the deal was announced. As he was headed down the elevator afterward, I asked shareholder McDonald what he liked about the deal.
“The money part,” he said.
August 15th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Advertising, Corporate, Google |
no comments
IAC has dumped DoubleClick as the ad provider for many of its web properties, like CitySearch, Evite and Match.com. The future Google subsidiary was replaced by future Microsoft subsidiary Atlas, itself a division of aQuantive, the ad firm Microsoft is in the process of acquiring for a bajillion dollars. As Erick Schonfeld says, Barry Diller picked his poison, deciding that if they had to use a competitor, they should help Microsoft and not market juggernaut Google.
Seriously, IAC should buy a major online ad firm. Google did, Microsoft did, Yahoo did, and IAC could stand to do the same.
August 9th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Advertising, Google |
no comments
Danny Sullivan points out that both Google and Windows Live Search feature this photo of a raccoon attempting to subvert the laws of nature with a li’l dog:
So, what are search engines supposed to do? It’s a popular image for obvious reasons (it’s stupid), with probably a ton of places embedding it , so it’s only natural it would wind up making the image thumbnails that appear above search results, and there are a million examples of searches like this one. There really isn’t much to do since it is deserving based on the ranking algorithm, and it isn’t offensive, just silly. The SafeSearch filter would probably catch anything really bad, while the rest of us can enjoy our favorite woodland creature/house pet erotica.
August 9th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Google, Humor, Windows, Search |
no comments
This stunned me: Apparently, you can’t use Google Maps’ website on your iPhone because the gesture-based UI won’t allow for drag-and-drop. The UI interprets all drags of the finger as dragging the page, not elements on the page (even if those elements are designed to be dragged), making it impossible to use Google Maps, Windows Live Maps, any maps mashup, any Web 2.0 site that uses dragging, because they never coded the UI to be smart enough to know the difference.
Yes, the iPhone has a Google Maps application, but that doesn’t cover mashups, it doesn’t cover using a non-Google site, and it completely throws out the window the idea of the iPhone having a “real” web browser and showing the “real” internet. Apple’s given Google a monopoly on the device, hamstringing the ability to use better options, and removing choice –
Wait. Apple? Choice? Forget it, I’m just being silly.
But seriously, short of hacking, it is utterly impossible for a developer to release a Google Maps-like site on the iPhone. Why does Google get that monopoly? Did they pay Apple to lock out competitors? Wouldn’t the Justice Department want to know?
(via Digg)
July 30th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Apple, Google |
5 comments
A survery of 3,000 consumers by monitoring group Superbrands named Microsoft the top brand in the UK for the second year in a row, beating out Coca-Cola and Google. Interestingly, a parallel survey of marketing and media experts didn’t even put Microsoft in the top 10, which might show you how much these “experts” know about their target audience. I’m just surprised Microsoft did so well after the massive overcharging for Windows Vista.
The consumer top 10:
- Microsoft
- Coca-Cola
- Google
- BBC
- BP
- British Airways
- Lego
- Guinness
- Mercedes-Benz
- Cadbury
Lego? Man, people are weird.
(via The Raw Feed)
July 18th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Marketing, Google |
3 comments
Compete.com released search engine market share numbers for June 2007, and their numbers show Windows Live Search with a major gain. Live Search went from 8.4% market share in May 2007 to 13.2%, a gain of 67.3% in query volume and 48.4% in volume from June 2006. Microsoft didn’t just erase any losses of the last year; compared with numbers by other analytics firms, Microsoft erased their search engine losses of the last two or three years!
Now, we can’t draw any long-term conclusions for several reasons. First off, Compete has a growing reputation, but we’d need to see similar gains from the big three web analysis firms of Hitwise, Nielsen, and ComScore, before we can truly trust them. Also, a one-month gain, while spectacular, doesn’t matter if they don’t get to keep the market share next month.
And that brings the big question: How did it happen? Surprisingly, there’s a very direct answer that accounts for the entire gain: The Live Search Club. The site, where you play games for prizes, is contributing heavily towards bringing new searchers to Live.com. According to Compete, club.live.com had three million visitors in June, a ten-fold increase from May, and up from zero in April. The most popular game? Chicktionary, where you make words out of chicken eggs.
The reason Live Search Club is so effective: When you play a game, the top half of the screen is a game, the bottom half is Live Search. You almost half to use the search engine if you are stuck on a puzzle, and that exposes players to the search engine. If they like it, they stay.
I can’t wait to see the new numbers, because this seems to be the real deal. If this can be the beginning of the turnaround for Live Search, that’s amazing.
Microsoft’s gain came almost entirely from Google. Read about Google’s loss at InsideGoogle.
(via Danny, who provided the chart)
July 10th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Google, Windows, Search, General |
4 comments
The Financial Times is reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo plan to publicly reveal the data retention policies for their search engines, including concessions to European government concerns about how they treat the privacy of their users. The Article 29 Working Party, a European Commission group tasked with giving advice on privacy protectionof individuals, has been pushing Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to define and improve their privacy policies.
Google has recently clarified its privacy policies, under pressure from the Working Party, and has agreed to keep search data for no longer than 18 months. It has also agreed to shorten the life of “cookies” – identifier programmes it attaches to individuals’ computers – from 30 years to two.
So far, however, neither Yahoo nor Microsoft has specified any time limits on the data that they hold on users.
They say data are kept for as long as is commercially useful, which means, in practice, some data is stored indefinitely.
They are now expected to announce changes to their policies “within weeks” and to give clear guidance on how long data will be kept.
“We are talking to customers, to the industry and government officials about this, and intend to provide an update in the near future which will more directly give the time frame,” said Brendon Lynch, privacy expert at Microsoft.
July 10th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Corporate, Live, Yahoo, Google, Windows, Search |
no comments
Dave Naylor is reporting that Microsoft is running a pilot program testing out accreditation for MSN AdCenter. Dave was with the AdCenter team, and they explained to him about AdExcellence, which you can expect at adexcellence.com when it launches. He can’t say much, due to an NDA, but the AdCenter blog will have information. Expect it to be similar to Google AdWords’ Advertising Professional program.
(via Search Engine Land)
July 3rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Advertising, Google, MSN, General |
no comments
InformationWeek is talking about Microsoft’s giving in to Google’s plea to the Justice Department and analysts who say Microsoft is now being hindered and its ability to innovate will suffer. Microsoft gave in due to fear of endless litigation, not because it was wrong (and despite that, Google is still demanding more), and that means Microsoft is now no longer able to produce the best product it can because of this fear.
Microsoft was a very bad company ten years ago, no one denies that, but right now it is a company struggling to make good software, with tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of the economy resting on it. Microsoft does produce good software, no doubt about that, but Google has now forced the company to pull back on a feature that improves its operating system because Microsoft must apparently ensure that its competitors are able to innovate.
It’s a bad precedent, not just for Microsoft, but for the entire software industry. It says that Microsoft can’t innovate if it stops other companies from competing of competitively innovating, that Microsoft can’t add new features to Windows if similar products exist elsewhere. It means Microsoft can’t fix problems in their operating system if utility makers have fixed them, even if Microsoft does a better job. It means Microsoft can’t add features that Mac OS X has, if they already exist in any other company’s product line.
It’s a shame, but Microsoft is held to a different standard. At what point do the sins of the past stop hurting Microsoft like this? Will anyone in the federal government come out and fight for Microsoft? Probably not. Microsoft will just have to work as hard as it can, then cower in fear everytime a Google comes out and does this.
Does anyone think this is good for the industry?
Keith Hylton, professor of law at Boston University and author of a textbook on antitrust law, sees Microsoft’s decision to cooperate primarily as a calculated compromise to avoid costly litigation. “Google is a deep-pocketed firm and is capable of going into court and sticking it out as long as Microsoft is willing to keep litigating,” he said. “And there are still a few state attorneys general who want to bring a case, too.”
While a compromise may benefit Microsoft in the short term, “there’s a long-term cost,” Hylton said. “Microsoft’s Vista search function is an improvement on its own product. And if you say to a dominant firm like Microsoft, when you make an improvement to your product, you have to now protect the interests of rival firms, that’s going to reduce the incentives to make those improvements.”
“Traditional antitrust law hasn’t imposed a duty on firms to protect their rivals when they innovate on their own products,” said Hylton, acknowledging that what a company calls “innovation” may really be anticompetitive behavior.
June 25th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Vista, Corporate, Google, Windows, Law |
3 comments
