FE Editorial : 7, heaven?

Thu, Oct 22 11:41 AM

It's been said that Microsoft started on the ground while Google was born in the sky. One has also heard Microsoft's founder called PC genius, Internet fool. When Bill Gates released Windows 1.0 in 1985, the ad campaign featured Steve Ballmer shouting at the camera: "How much do you think Microsoft Windows is worth?" The answer was $99 and many thought that was an absurd price, absurdly high. Many years and much inflation later, the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade costs only $120, even though Windows runs 90% of PCs. That sounds like Microsoft is holding on to the strongest possible wickets, except it's also offering steep discounts—US students will pay just $30 for the Home Premium version through January 3. This time around, the ad line goes: "More happy is coming." You hear Europe's The Final Countdown in the background. So, how does one explain the discounts and why does the company still seem to be sporting a defensive posture? One answer is Vista. "Wow starts now" went that campaign, but it fizzled out faster than the product itself. Reports of users downgrading back to predecessor Windows XP rose as fast as negative reviews of Vista itself. In contrast, Windows 7 has gotten positively fawning reviews. Plus, it's the first Microsoft operating system to have been released with fewer features. Why? The answer lies in cloud computing and all that gives Google an edge over Microsoft, all that Gates couldn't figure out when he retired.

Cloud services include Web-based e-mail, social networking and online games—everything that transposes services from PCs to virtual data centres. Their rise means not just complicated things, but also that simple tasks like word processing and spreadsheets are migrating online. Google hosts these services and makes money from them, handling more than 75% of search-related advertisements in the US. In order to compete, Microsoft has chased down a deal with Yahoo! with tenacity. But it knows that there is a tough fight ahead, not just with Google and Apple, but also with competitors whom we can't yet identify. Remember, Google wasn't on the horizon when Microsoft won its last big win in the early 1990s, beating down IBM and Apple for mastery of the PC. On the India front, we need a good broadband spread to fly the clouds. But recent Trai numbers suggest that penetration is still at a lowly 6.8 million subscribers. It's not just the usual suspects, but also countries like Slovakia and Tunisia which are doing much better. Topliner Finland has, of course, made broadband Internet a right by law.

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