competition

As the day of the big game draws closer, households everywhere are planning menus, inviting guests, and figuring out just how many TVs it takes to actually host a successful Super Bowl party. However, some of us prefer to keep things a bit less extravagant, instead opting for a small gathering as opposed to an all-out affair. Years of study (42 to be exact) have shown that the optimum number of invitees for a Super Bowl party is eight people. Large screen or small, this number (which coincides nicely with the amount of previous games) is scientifically proven (or arbitrarily … Read more

In a hugely interesting Piper Jaffray research note reported in Barron's, analyst Gene Munster suggests a few strategies for Yahoo's incoming CEO Carol Bartz, among them that Yahoo should acquire a major media company like The New York Times (good idea), but also that it should outsource search to Microsoft.

Search has never been a core competency for Yahoo, and outsourcing will both generate short-term cash and allow Yahoo to focus on content.

Not core? If search hasn't been core for Yahoo, for whom is it core? Google, yes, with nearly 70 percent of the search market, … Read more

Sun Microsystems spent a decade getting pummeled by lower-cost, commodity Linux servers. It wants to spend the next decade doing the same to its storage rivals.

I spent time talking with Sun executives over the past few days and was surprised by the intensity and focus the Sun team is bringing to its storage commoditization play. For years Sun has been (often rightly) derided for lacking focus and being stuck in a proprietary UNIX past. It has reorganized its business units as often as some people change clothes.

But I genuinely sense a different Sun is in motion now. With … Read more

Back in 2002, as Roy Schestowitz calls out, Microsoft was desperately trying to figure out a response to Linux. The problem wasn't Linux as a product-level competitor. The problem, as its Windows chief, Jim Allchin, told a small gathering of Microsoft partners (PDF), is that Linux changes the nature of software competition with odd things like "community" and "GPL licensing," the latter of which Microsoft didn't like one bit :

We feel a huge threat from Linux. Maybe we shouldn't, which is a question you could answer from your perspective...There's Linux the community. We're going to learn from Linux the community. Incredible what they did...We're going to practice and practice and practice (to learn how to respond to Linux)...

GPL is the licensing model. We thlnk it's very bad...We don't think it's the same as public domain. Somebody wants to put in a free DSB(?), we don't have a problem with that, at least on licensing. But GPL, we think it's very bad basically for the world, but especially for the United States.

This is not surprising, given that Allchin had earlier deprecated Linux as "an intellectual-property destroyer" in 2001.

But name-calling was proving not to be enough, and for a reason that Allchin and Microsoft struggled to grasp, but one that its partners, which distribute the bulk of Microsoft's software, felt first-hand on the front lines. When Allchin later asked the participants what the biggest driver of Linux is, they didn't mention its modularity, high performance, or other characteristics. Back in 2002 (and, indeed, today, in many instances), one thing mattered:

Linux was free.

Sure, there was the cost of deployment, training, etc., and Allchin called out the work Microsoft was going to do to "educate" the market through IDC and other analysts about the "true" costs of Linux, but price was why these Microsoft partners were starting to defect, in some instances, to Linux.

Allchin's response?

We'll never meet free."

And that is why Microsoft has struggled against open source, and why it will continue to do so. Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth called it out well over a year ago, arguing that the difference between $0.00 and $0.01 is huge and game changing. Microsoft can halve its price, and Allchin talks in the transcript about doing just that. But free? That's not its business model.

Given Microsoft's difficulty in competing with open source's price, it's perhaps not surprising that Allchin hinted at another way of competing with Linux and open source: patents. Imposing a patent tax on open source is a viable way of raising its price tag beyond $0.00.

There's going to be a patent lawsuit on Linux. It's bound to happen...and the patent lawsuit won't really be about the license. It will be simply, "Hey, these guys took intellectual property." And whether the lawsuit comes from Wind River or in X, Y, Z, there's going to be one. Guaranteed. As I sit here today, I will guarantee you at some point there's going to be a challenge about the patents...… Read more

IBM is crowing about its increase in Lotus Notes licenses to 145 million, up five million in the past year. That's nice, but I'm willing to bet that Microsoft could issue a similar press release, and probably could claim even more Notes/Domino emigrants to Exchange.

In fact, for the past few years Microsoft has been doing exactly that.

If one looks to neutral analysts to be the line judge in this discussion, the water becomes even murkier, as eWeek points out:

Market share estimates vary widely for Exchange and Lotus Notes. Gartner Dataquest's most recent report … Read more

Apple may be the poster child for showing the industry how to compete effectively with Microsoft, but the company isn't free of Redmond's long arm just yet.

Despite spending years, and millions of dollars in research and development, on its own suite of productivity software, 77 percent of Mac users stick with Microsoft Office, according to a TechFlash report.

I love my Mac, but I couldn't use it without Office. In this, I'm sure I'm not alone, which must give Apple pause whenever it celebrates its rising Mac market share.

Perhaps this is why Apple … Read more

I suggested on Monday that Dell should acquire Red Hat to build its software business with open source. While there is a range of valid concerns about such a move, perhaps the biggest complaint was, "What if Microsoft doesn't like it?"

This concern seems to be all-conclusive for some, but I'm not sure why. In case no one has noticed, the days of kowtowing to Microsoft's desktop dominance are, or should be, over. Apple is the best example as to why.

The media is fond of calling out the Mac's rising fortunes against Windows, … Read more

The browser wars are heating up in earnest, with Google urging its customers to dump Internet Explorer 6 for the Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome browsers. Internet Explorer commands a 68 percent global market share, according to Net Applications, but a full 20 percent of that share is for IE6.

With Firefox apparently picking up 66 percent of all IE6 defectors, according to TG Daily, Google is effectively subsidizing the open-source Firefox at the expense of Microsoft. In sum, Microsoft is getting a taste of its own medicine from the company that increasingly looks and acts like Microsoft.

Funny how … Read more

Right now, the most famous classical musician on YouTube is arguably Nora the piano-playing cat. She, sorry to say, probably isn't eligible for "YouTube Symphony Orchestra," a new competition from the Google-owned video-sharing site.

Musicians from around the world (legitimate ones: I'm looking at you, Modded Guitar Hero Controller Guy) are invited to audition by submitting videos of themselves performing "Internet Symphony No. 1," an original piece written specially for YouTube by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon composer Tan Dun, in addition to a "talent video."

Judges come from the London Symphony Orchestra, … Read more