In part three of TechCrunch’s interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, they discuss web browsers. Ballmer calls Chrome and Safari marketshare numbers a “rounding error,” and takes note of the fact that Google is going to be calling both its OS and browser “Chrome,” pointing out that in this modern era, “the notion of operating systems being independent of internet access and internet ability to render important things in the internet is kind of not a sensible concept.” In other words, he thinks it’s unfair to persecute Microsoft for tying IE to Windows. He discusses Firefox, and rags on Google’s OS strategy, and finished up on an evaluation of the Netbook/MID market and how Microsoft intends to compete there.
“the notion of operating systems being independent of internet access and internet ability to render important things in the internet is kind of not a sensible concept”
microsoft never understood the internet. and never will.
Edited 2009-09-29 15:48 UTC
microsoft never understood the internet. and never will.
Do you understand the internet?
Please explain it to us.
The Internet is a series of tubes with data carried in dump trucks.
They may not understand the Internet, but they understand people and how to sell to them.
…yet if you ever tried calling their tech support, you would wonder if they understood anything at all.
Can the EU prosecute Chrome OS for including the Chrome browser as default? or for making it to tied to the OS so is impossible to unistall?
Only if chromes is already a monopholy. You know, laws for monopholists are much tougher than for everybody else, this is how the law try to make them all play on same level, by applying harder laws on one side.
So we have to waith till becomes a monopoly? may be to late for that time, can’t the law be enforced now, prevent the problems instead of fixing them?
We could start by closing Microsoft entirely and putting all it’s employee behind jails as a preemptive move …
That would send a very clear message that monopoly are now illegal and that you can’t profit at all or enjoy the benefit of your criminal activity as a monopoly either.
Edited 2009-09-29 18:12 UTC
Anyone with a more civilized answer?
We could shoot Microsoft people at firing squad , hang them , behead them , guillotine them ( what’s good in a RMS discussion is good for Microsoft people right ? ) … That’s what we used to do before civilized people , like me, saw it better to jail them …
Anyone?
Monopolies aren’t illegal and for good reason.
Sometimes a company dominates because the consumers are satisfied and the profit margins aren’t high enough to attract competitors.
Or in the case of Microsoft they have a clear history of incompetent competitors as well as a lot of luck. Their main competitor (Apple) doesn’t even care about marketshare.
Monopolies are illegal, unless government mandated.
Dominating company are not a problem, at least you have some real competition.
Microsoft as a clear history of criminal and illegal activity that blocked any competition. Apple make it’s own hardware and is not there main competitor, GNU/Linux is, even Steve Ballmer admit to that.
It’s like saying Toyota is fearing porsche , witch is a niche automaker most people can’t afford the entry models of.
But I got to give you the incompetent competitor parts , BSD , BEOS , OS/2 and countless other OS where really incompetent in there marketing and distribution. Even GNU/Linux on the desktop.
So you advocate the government stepping in and unlawfully “closing” a company and imprisoning it’s employees? However, a government mandated monopoly is perfectly fine?
Sorry Mouli, that doesn’t fly in any free-market economy I know of. Perhaps you’d be happier in say, Venezuela? Or China?
It doesn’t need fixing if it’s not a monopoly.
I actually doubt a lot of applications will be running on Chrome OS, I think mostly just one the Chrome browser and nothing else. If that really is the vision of Google for Chrome OS, I don’t think they’ll get into much trouble. The OS is just their to allow the browser to function, as a support function. The main function is the browser not the OS. While in case of Windows the main function is the running of applications. Bundeling one applications per task/catagory up front means you are making it harder for competition to compete.
This is why I don’t understand why people even some go so far as to say: but aren’t the Linux distributions doing the same thing ?
Not really because they (in the case of the browser) the bundle several browsers and it’s really easy to switch.
This is also why it’s possibly good Ubuntu is now adding an appstore like system (if I understand it correctly ?) where I think Opera could add it’s browser. So they can also be installed just as easily.
Edited 2009-10-03 08:47 UTC
Microsoft enjoys this monopoly type of position because the government gave them the monopoly through excessive (long) intellectual property protection. Now the government is out to ‘break’ the monopoly.
Patents and copyrights are by definition government awarded monopolies. Their justification was to provide enough of an incentive for people to create immaterial value. Obviously something has gone too far here. This should be fixed and not people restricted in what products they can provide.
Why do Microsoft let this guy off the leash? Everytime he opens his gob, he spouts utter rubbish that shows how ignorant he is of diversity and the need for interoperability. This guy is an unbelievable discredit to Microsoft, even Bill Gates is more likable man.
Because he is a sales man, a salesman to sell a product tells the customer why he rules and why the others suck, Is like asking RMS to tell why propietary software should cohexist with free software, you’ll never hear that from him, propietary software should just dissapear to his eyes.
But in this answers you can clearly read why MSFT will _NEVER_ adopt Webkit (like you and Thom suggested in the podcast) as long as he still holds some shares (which is probably as long as he lives).
So better not wait for it.
I really do wonder if Moulinneuf is secretly a Microsoft employee hired to make the competition seem like a bunch of bat shit crazy nutjobs?
Moulinneuf=Glenn Beck of FOSS!
Edited 2009-09-29 19:10 UTC
I don’t get it.
Windows have 18 different versions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions) and I’m not counting the legacy ones! And with many compatibility problems. And he says google is wrong by having two different OSs? They MUST be different. One is for cell-phones, most of them with small touch-screen, etc, etc. The other one is for netbooks and PCs… totally different! But at the same time, they are similar. Both are based on Linux.
What he is saying is like if I say “hey, why a mobile windows? Just run Vista on the cell phone…”. Makes no sense to me!
Cya.
Perhaps you missed this one? http://htc-phones.net/htc-shift-smartphone-runs-vista.html
My ASUS 1005HA netbook rocks on computing performance in a small platform, but the Windows 7 browser stinks compared to Chrome!
I wrote a review of the ASUS 1005HA that provides some processor performance numbers which help Chrome work so well. http://bit.ly/44CHFm