The only reason google looks good in this article is because it is compared with microsoft. google is the new microsoft, I would be cautious when it comes to partnering with them.
Justifying a lack of trust in Microsoft because of 'karma' isn't a correct analysis, I feel. The author completely fails to discuss .NET -- a very powerful and complete software platform that many companies rely on and use effectively.
The crucial point is the one that he glosses over in the last sentence in the second-to-last paragraph; that Microsoft's incentives aren't aligned with Zoho, while Google's are. Google has every incentive in the world to get more people on the Web and make the Web a more powerful platform. In the end, Google has an incredibly powerful, benevolent brand, but they act in the way any rational corporation will.
The article doesn't discuss the technical merits of each company's offerings, rather their approaches.
.NET might be a very powerful and complete software platform that lots of people rely on.. but it's still a proprietry piece of technology that requires (and maybe even demands) putting a great deal of trust in Microsoft's hands.
He makes this point clear in his discussion of Silverlight. He's not dismissing it on technical merit (where it may have plenty) but on the different approaches Microsoft and (in a hypothetical world) Google would take to it.
Microsoft was to other OS and software vendors in the past, what Google is to Microsoft now. They're just using more open policies for some of their products to gain an advantage for their core business.
Don't get me wrong, i'm not calling either company good or evil.
I'm also undecided whether a company can be good or evil. There's illegal and unethical, sure but good and evil just depend on how you view a company's motivation.
Microsoft's goal is to keep you in their ecosystem, Google's goal is to sell your eyeballs to the highest bidder.
Microsoft's goal is to keep you in their ecosystem, Google's goal is to sell your eyeballs to the highest bidder.
Here's a thought.
Msft know their goal: Keep you in their ecosystem. This has been their goal forever. The market for OS/Office & the rest of their old products, was pretty much destined to grow over 20 years. Keep your 90% share of a growing market and you grow.
Google don't know their goal. They make money on search. Search works and they still have power. They're still not making much from platforms or webapps or online publishing or any of the other noteworthy things they do good work on.
The search business is pretty much at perfection right know. But the odds that search will be (a) as important in ten years and (b) exclusive Google property in ten years is not a 1/100 bet. The strategy for increasing the odds in Google's favour is not clear. While they might imporve the monetisation slightly, I don't think the search market will grow that much. Keep your 90% share of a flat market and you don't grow much grow. You can still lose market share though.
Maybe this accounts for part of the difference between the two.
Agreed. Anyone that tells you a sufficiently large corporation is untainted from the effects of human greed is either a) horribly naive and asking to be taken advantage of, or b) trying to use said naivete to their advantage.
In Google's case, promoting their "Don't Be Evil" allows them to keep a pristine rapport with the media,which in turn helps to promote their eye-ball centric products. In Microsoft's case, selling the "developers developers developers" ideal allows them to keep their lock-in of a vast share of the enterprise software market.
What do folks here think?