Google versus Microsoft

The NYT reporta sobre los dos gigantes, en trayectoria inminente de confrontación, y las posibilidades de cada uno, y por qué

Extracto 1:

"It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives. Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices — a setup known as cloud computing. Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its desktop PC software. Therein lies the conflict..."

Extracto 2:

"“The fundamental Google model is to try to change all the rules of the software world,” says David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. If Google succeeds, Mr. Yoffie says, “a lot of the value that Microsoft provides today is potentially obsolete.”"

Extracto 3:

"Grand Prix was born when a Google engineer, tinkering on his own one weekend, came up with prototype code and e-mailed it to Vic Gundotra, a Google executive who oversees mobile products. Mr. Gundotra then showed the prototype to Mr. Schmidt, who in turn mentioned it to Mr. Brin. In about an hour, Mr. Brin came to look at the prototype.

“Sergey was really supportive,” recalls Mr. Gundotra, saying that Mr. Brin was most intrigued by the “engineering tricks” employed. After that, Mr. Gundotra posted a message on Google’s internal network, asking employees who owned iPhones to test the prototype. Such peer review is common at Google, which has an engineering culture in which a favorite mantra is “nothing speaks louder than code.”

As co-workers dug in, testing Grand Prix’s performance speed, memory use and other features, “the feedback started pouring in,” Mr. Gundotra recalls. The comments amounted to a thumbs-up, and after a few weeks of fine-tuning and fixing bugs, Grand Prix was released. In the brief development, there were no formal product reviews or formal approval processes.

Mr. Gundotra joined Google in July, after 15 years at Microsoft. He says that he always considered Microsoft to be the epicenter of technological development, but that the rise of cloud computing forced him to reconsider.

“It became obvious that Google was the place where I could have the biggest impact,” he says. “For guys like me, who have a love affair with software, being able to ship a product in weeks — that’s an irresistible draw.” "


¡Ops! (Now, I think Microsoft really is going down, don´t you?) El signo definitivo será si presenciamos un remake, con bombos y platillos, de la "IMAGEN CORPORATIVA"

PS Nunca me ha caido bien el Windows (remedo mal hecho y demorado del OS original de Apple) que se bloquea cada dos por tres, o pide parches de seguridad cada semana, ni los productos de Office que se hicieron a la fama monopolizando las ofertas de pequeñas compañías que eran mucho más innovadoras en su momento (Do you remember Visicalc? or WordPerfect?). Tampoco me gusta el Explorer (es mil veces mejor el Opera), etc., etc. (para ser claros)