Zaheda Bhorat, Google’s manager of open source programs, is urging international delegates to vote to reject Microsoft Office 2007’s Open XML as an international standard when the ISO votes this week. Google is firmly behind ODF, the document format backed by Microsoft’s enemies at Sun and IBM, who hope to use it as a wedge against Microsoft Office’s market domination.
Google’s open-source programs manager, Zaheda Bhorat, posted a blog on Monday urging those delegates to vote against Open XML because Google believes that it is an “insufficient and unnecessary standard, designed purely around the needs of Microsoft Office.”
Bhorat said Open XML should be subsumed into the existing standard–OpenDocument Format, or ODF–which is backed by Microsoft rivals, including Google.
…
In a document more thoroughly laying out its position on Open XML, Google says the core problem with the specification is that it’s redundant with ODF. The company also says it’s too specific to Microsoft Office and that it’s of insufficient quality.
“Submitting such a proposal makes a mockery of the standards process,” according to the Google assessment.
February 27th, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Office, Google, Open Source, Applications |
3 comments
Yahoo’s board is trying any port in a storm to find a way out of getting bought by Microsoft, looking to partnership deals with Google and News Corporation. Yahoo’s attempt to outsource its search business to Google in return for the financial stability to hold off Microsoft appears to have failed, with Google backing out to avoid mounting antitrust concerns, but an eight-month old News Corp deal is moving again.
Under the old deal, News Corp would deal MySpace and IGN to Yahoo in exchange for 30% of the company’s stock (stock created by a secondary public offering), valuing MySpace/IGN at $12.3 billion and the new Yahoo at $49 billion. The new deal would likely offer News Corp 19.9% of Yahoo, or $10-11 billion, with the 19.9% number chosen for some really scummy reasons: Any deal under 20% of the company doesn’t need to be approved by shareholders.
While the job of a company’s board is supposed to be to create shareholder value, Yahoo’s ruling class has made it clear that they want to save the current incarnation of the company, whether or not that is good for investors. This proposal would deal away almost a fifth of the company, specifically designed to sneak in beneath rules designed to protect shareholders.
If Yahoo’s board wants to make it clear to investors that it doesn’t have their best interests in mind, this deal would do it. If Microsoft pushes ahead for a hostile takeover, Yahoo shareholders are going to have some really good reasons to side with the Redmond giant.
According to Valleywag, the MySpace deal is being held up by disagreement of the value of MySpace, which makes sense. If MySpace was worth $12.3 billion eight months ago, when Yahoo was less desperate, would it really be worth $2 billion less now, when Yahoo’s board wants it more than anything?
February 14th, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Yahoo Acquisition, Corporate, Yahoo, Google |
no comments
Compete’s latest search engine market share numbers are out, and, as usual, Google is a winner, Microsoft’s Live Search, Ask and AOL hold steady, and Yahoo is bleeding out. Yahoo’s market share fell another third of a percentage point, now down six full points, or over 25%, in the last year. Google went up over half a point, pulling almost seven percent higher on the year.
Most interesting are the marks for search volume. The number of searches on all the major search engines are way, way up from last year; all, except Yahoo:
|
Percentage gain |
| Google |
51% |
| Ask.com |
49.4% |
| AOL |
46.7% |
| Live Search |
32.7% |
| Yahoo |
0.3% |
Yeah, Yahoo doesn’t need anybody’s help.
February 11th, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Yahoo Acquisition, Yahoo, AskJeeves, Windows, Google, Search |
2 comments
The OpenID Foundation announced today that a bunch of major tech companies have joined up with them, furthering, in theory, the goal of single sign-in for all internet sites. Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and, curiously, IBM, joined the corporate board of the foundation, donating money, and in the case of Microsoft, legal resources.
What they haven’t done is pledge to enable OpenID as a login option for their websites. No part of the announcement says Microsoft will be integrating OpenID into the Windows Live ID system, or even letting users of Live ID login to other OpenID sites. Neither have any of the others (though IBM has no authentication system to speak of, as far as I know). While OpenID has some nice support, it really needs one of these guys to step up as partners in order to get some real traction.
(via TechCrunch)
February 8th, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Yahoo, Google, Windows |
no comments
Hitwise has a look at the visitor statistics for Yahoo and Microsoft’s websites, showing just how much market share in the United States the combined company would have. Total market share for all Yahoo is 13.2% of all of U.S. internet traffic, with MSN having just 2.4% and Google 7.7% Combined, they would have 15.6%, over twice as much as Google.
Thanks to the growth of Live Search over the last year, Microsoft/Yahoo would have 31.75% of the search market, fully half of Google’s position, with room for that growth to accelerate. Yahoo’s frontpage has an amazing 71.4% market share, 86.8% with MSN. Yahoo Mail has 54.6%, 80% with Hotmail, almost 84% with Yahoo Address book, leaving just 5.51% for Gmail.
Yahoo News (7.4%) plus MSNBC plus Yahoo Weather owns 13.3% of news and media. Yahoo Finance (29.15%) plus MSN Money equals 39.3%. Yahoo Maps (12.84%) plus Live Maps equals 16.59%, behind Google’s 22.64%. Yahoo Movies (8.33%) plus MSN Entertainment-Movies equals 15.44%. Yahoo Games (5.5%) plus MSN Games equal 7.68%.
And, let’s not forget Flickr, with 12.01% of the Photography market, #2 in its category, and Yahoo Music with 6.52% of Music, #1 in its category.
Hitwise also has a comparison of market share in the U.K.
Follow all the news on Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo on this page.
February 6th, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Yahoo Acquisition, Yahoo, Google |
no comments
Microsoft has decided to be the market-breaker, working on a version of Windows Live Messenger that will be able to communicate with Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ. They’ve already completed the GTalk portion of the integration, and are working on AIM and ICQ. Considering that LiveIM already interoperates with Yahoo Messenger, Microsoft would be the first mainstream free client to connect all the major network protocols. How exciting!
How will the rest of the market react? Considering how long it takes Yahoo Messenger to release anything, and how Google Talk is being mismanaged by Google, Microsoft could be at the top of the heap for many months. I know that the second GTalk interoperation is released, I’ll stop using GTalk, and I suspect I’m not the only one.
UPDATE: Apparently, the article Mashable linked to is based on a LiveSide post from two months ago. I suggest reading the post, which does talk about possible Google Talk/AIM integration, though not as definitively, and several other very interesting things.
December 27th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Live, Messenger, Yahoo, Google, Windows |
4 comments
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
