No one can deny the fact that Microsoft has had a colossal impact on computing and on technology in general. Microsoft has maintained a reputation for hiring the best and the brightest young minds in the world. Their software engineers have built much of the software that has dominated personal and business computing for the last two decades. However, Microsoft finds itself in an interesting dilemma that has been exacerbated by the current global economic downturn. For the first time in its relatively short history, Microsoft may be on the verge of losing a firm hold on a position of global technological dominance. Microsoft's preeminent position is being assaulted from all sides by worthy opponents: Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome continue to erode Microsoft Internet Explorer's once seemingly indefatigable placement as the front running Internet web browser.

Linux, Mac OS X , and perceived deficiencies in the Windows Vista operating system have contributed to Microsoft Windows dropping below a 90% market share for the first time in more than 15 years. To make matters worse, the European Union has levied a total more than two billion U.S. dollars in fines against Microsoft for anti-competitive practices. Microsoft's flagellation in the European Union's pillory has attracted many of the company's competitors to pile on to their troubles. Google, Opera, and Mozilla are among the companies that have backed the European Union's antitrust proceedings against Microsoft. It seems that, right now, Microsoft might need a friend more than ever.


This makes the timing of Microsoft's decision to sue the makers of the Tom Tom GO gps navigation unit all the more questionable. this link has been removed as it is irrelevant

I just assume you recently switched to Linux...

A 0 poster, and a propaganda link? "Look at my website, everybody!"

There was a time when Wang had 80% market-share. Every law office in the world had one or more of their dedicated word-processing machines, and paid thousands of dollars a month in rent for every one. Vendors of daisy-wheels and ink-ribbons were looking real pretty, while vendors of carbon paper and typewriter correcting-fluid were just beginning to worry.

Microsoft has had its day in the sun ... its day when it claimed to have a monopoly on everything (and even cajoled a Federal judge into saying so). But it's being swept-away by Unix and Linux ... which run on many dozens of hardware platforms, and in so doing, enable software to run on all those platforms, too.

Does that mean that Microsoft is "going away?" Hardly. Many folks don't realize that they own a Unix-derivative too. And even so, the demand for their Windows products won't blow-away anytime soon. But the days of being able to "dictate terms to" the rest of the computer and electronics industry are gone for good... and that may well be the very best thing that ever happened to the company.

I have used Fedora since Fedora 1. Prior to that, I used Red Hat all the way back to RH 9. I am not particularly anti-Microsoft, but I was not happy when I heard about them suing Tom Tom yesterday. This article was my sincere response to that turn of events. As to the word "indefatigable", I use it, therefore it is still in use. Anyway, so as not to appear that I am spamming, I posted the entire article here.
By the way, I am currently a happy user of Fedora 10 on 2 computers, Opensuse 11 on a third computer, and Windows Vista on a 4th coumputer. I installed Christian Ubuntu 4 on four computers at my church; I am strongly pro-Linux. Enjoy the article below.



Microsoft at a Crossroads: Future Trend-Setter or Future Pariah?
by Acrossad.com

No one can deny the fact that Microsoft has had a colossal impact on computing and on technology in general. Microsoft has maintained a reputation for hiring the best and the brightest young minds in the world. Their software engineers have built much of the software that has dominated personal and business computing for the last two decades. However, Microsoft finds itself in an interesting dilemma that has been exacerbated by the current global economic downturn. For the first time in its relatively short history, Microsoft may be on the verge of losing a firm hold on a position of global technological dominance. Microsoft's preeminent position is being assaulted from all sides by worthy opponents: Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome continue to erode Microsoft Internet Explorer's once seemingly indefatigable placement as the front running Internet web browser.

Linux, Mac OS X , and perceived deficiencies in the Windows Vista operating system have contributed to Microsoft Windows dropping below a 90% market share for the first time in more than 15 years. To make matters worse, the European Union has levied a total more than two billion U.S. dollars in fines against Microsoft for anti-competitive practices. Microsoft's flagellation in the European Union's pillory has attracted many of the company's competitors to pile on to their troubles. Google, Opera, and Mozilla are among the companies that have backed the European Union's antitrust proceedings against Microsoft. It seems that, right now, Microsoft might need a friend more than ever.


This makes the timing of Microsoft's decision to sue the makers of the Tom Tom GO gps navigation unit all the more questionable. Microsoft announced that they are suing Tom Tom for violation of Microsoft patents. It has also been inferred that Tom Tom's extensive use of the Linux operating system in its products is part of Microsoft's motivation behind the lawsuit. At a time when Microsoft could use the support and friendship of fellow businesses, the company's actions may actually alienate the supporters that they have left. One thing that Microsoft may be failing to recognize about human nature is that people do not like to be coerced into a particular action; they prefer to make their decision based on the best information that they have. If Microsoft were to win its lawsuit against Tom Tom, how enthusiastic would Tom Tom be to use Microsoft technologies in the future? How enthusiastic would anyone be to use Microsoft technologies? The risk that Microsoft takes by starting down the road of suing other companies for violation of Microsoft patents is that EVERYONE may start to avoid any of Microsoft's technologies as if they were the plague. Microsoft's FAT32 and NTFS technologies became the de facto standards for file systems. However, if Microsoft starts enforcing patents on these technologies and forcing everyone who uses them to pay royalties, a likely scenario is that those file formats will disappear except in Microsoft's own products.


To find a historical precedent for the hypothetical scenario above, one needs to look no further back in time than the 1988 creation of the Micro Channel Architecture bus by IBM. The MCA bus was clearly superior to the ISA bus that was the standard bus for the computer's CPU to communicate with peripheral cards at that time. The MCA bus is also often considered to be superior to the PCI bus that ultimately prevailed after it was introduced in 1993. However, the MCA bus was doomed by the perception of pc manufacturers that IBM would charge them royalties to add MCA busses to their computers. The older ISA technology was royalty free, so computer manufacturers (except for IBM) completely ignored the MCA bus, causing it to fail miserably. If Microsoft expects everyone to pay them royalties to use their patented technologies, Microsoft may become a “technological pariah”, incapable of getting anyone to use their technologies, no matter how good they are. There are signs that this is already starting to happen in the mobile telephone sector. Apple's Iphone OS, Linux, Google Android, and the Symbian OS have cannibalized Microsoft's once respectable mobile os market share.


What can Microsoft do to reverse this bleak situation? Unfortunately, Microsoft's practices have made them a company that everyone loves to hate. Instead of focusing on innovating and making the best products, there is a perception that they have become a company that tries to brow beat people into using their products. To reverse this trend, Microsoft must stop trying to beat everyone that does something better than they do. They must acknowledge that there are some things that other companies simply do better than they are capable of doing. Google is better at Internet search than Microsoft is. Microsoft needs to form symbiotic partnerships with companies like Google that are beneficial to their core products: Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. If Microsoft made Google the default search engine for Windows, this would free Microsoft's resources to focus on adapting Windows and Office to the evolving technological landscape. In my opinion, Microsoft should drop ALL of the distracting side projects and focus on the products that bring in the majority of their revenue. As popular as Internet Explorer still is, how much actual revenue does it bring in to Microsoft? If Firefox became the default Windows browser, Microsoft would lose all of the research and development costs associated with Internet Explorer, and could then redirect those funds towards getting Windows to work well on netbooks, pcs, and cellular phones.


The best thing that may ultimately come from Microsoft's lawsuit against Tom Tom is that the entire criteria and regulations regarding patents may be reviewed and revised. I believe that Microsoft's pursuit of this lawsuit is, in fact, a distraction. They are chasing a red herring that will never yield any fruit. As time goes on, these distractions are dragging a once great company farther and farther down. I believe that if Microsoft does not throw all of their extraneous distractions overboard, their entire ship might eventually sink.



© Acrossad.com 2009

I recently saw some kind of report about Windows market share, which claimed to be based on actual data/ballmer's words, etc. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I saw it. According to graphs on that report, windows has 50..60% market share, then goes pirated windows (25..30%), then goes linux and mac os and linux is more popular.
The point of that report was that they considered pirates as their main rivals, and linux as the main rival after pirates.

This is linux forum, so I don't find information about Microsoft interesting or useful. Eventually every corporation will die and will be replaced by something else, so I'm not interested in "rise & fall" of corporation that doesn't develop my distribution.

I'm closing this. Weird how many people come to a discussion forum and post something and don't actually want to discuss anything. If anyone does want to discuss this, either create your own genuine thread here or pick one of the LXer stories. This thread will shortly be sanitised for your protection. Let is never speak of it again.....