BeerFiles is a sometimes irreverent blog concerning all things to do with IT, technology, people and the media from the point of view of a hard boiled technology journalist and commentator. Stan has been in the IT game for about a quarter of a century. He has seen and written about the rise and fall of more than a few IT players and made many friends, some of whom he has even crossed swords with on occasions. Everything in this blog is purely Stan’s opinion so if you agree, wish to expand upon, correct a post or tell Stan he’s a clueless know nothing, please feel free.

Ballmer sees Google, Apple and open source as main competitors

by Stan Beer

Thursday, 12 October 2006

Page 1 of 2 In an exceptionally frank interview with BusinessWeek, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed himself to be on unsteady ground when it came to valuing the new Web 2.0 companies. However, he was crystal clear on where Microsoft can expect to get serious competition. Featured Whitepaper 5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support After humming and hahing as to whether YouTube was worth US$1.65 billion or Facebook is worth US$1 billion and ruefully discussing how Microsoft got outbid on MySpace, Ballmer got down to tin tacks and named Microsoft's main competitors. Obviously a US$40 billion a year software company is not going to be scared too easily by another software company. However, Ballmer sees Microsoft's main competitors as the paradigm shifters - the companies attacking Microsoft from outside its traditional market space. Namely Google, Apple and the open source software movement. According to Ballmer, open source is a new business model that Microsoft has learned to cope with by adding extra functionality or - as he put it - "extending our value". However, Ballmer admitted that open source will continue to be a thorn in Microsoft's side and that the giant software company will be forced to compete with it "for the rest of time". Ballmer was loathe to name Google as the second major threat to Microsoft's business, preferring to label the competition as advertising. However, he admitted that the market equates the online advertising model with Google. As Ballmer says, advertising looks cheaper to the consumer that paying for software, so Microsoft intends to embrace (read copy) the Google model. How Microsoft intends to do this without butchering Microsoft's existing business model, Ballmer didn't say. << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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