The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
If one traces the history of the PC industry, realisation dawns that you can't really produce a good product and expect that it will become the market leader. Microsoft has gained its market dominance by indulging in tactics that, in many cases, border on the illegal.
Such tactics were possible in a day and age when those who were supposed to provide oversight were unable to, or ignorant of how they should, police this kind of tactic. Now, especially after the financial turmoil, regulators are much more careful. If Google did try such tactics now, they wouldn't work.
To compete against Windows, Google needs applications, compelling ones. Where are these going to come from? I wouldn't give up my Debian GNU/Linux PC but seriously I would never attempt to say that the GIMP is a replacement for Adobe Photoshop. All these years, open source programmers have been working on applications but what do they have to put up against Photoshop?
We also need to bear in mind the fact that applications like Office work as they do due to the fact that they have deep hooks into the operating system. There is no clear demarcation between kernelspace and userspace in Windows; as a a result you can do many fancy things, but your security and stability is shot to pieces. By violating this fundamental rule of design, Microsoft has got people addicted to features that should never be available in the first place.
Would Google be able to follow suit? No, and I think the company is well aware of it.
When has Google ever announced a product before it is almost ready for prime time? You think the company is suddenly changing its tactics, the very tactics that have made it the 800-pound gorilla of search? You think the company is going to abandon a method that has taken it to number one in just a decade or so?
Does that even begin to make sense?
No, dear reader, this is a curveball from left field. A diversionary tactic so that Microsoft, the most paranoid company on the planet, starts looking at ways to protect its operating system patch, and forgets about its new toy, Bing.
The folk at Google must have laughed all the way to the bank after the announcement. They know the publicity that will erupt, they know the ignorance that exists and the welcome which the announcement will be accorded. They are fiendishly clever and they know that they are calling the tune, not the mob in Redmond.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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