Having called Linux and open-source software a "cancer", "un-American" and "bankrupt", Microsoft will now stick to facts instead of emotions, the company's competitive strategist said yesterday.
"There were some emotional statements made before; we're now on a direction to talk about the facts," said Martin Taylor, who as the company's general manager of platform strategy drives Microsoft's thinking when it comes to Linux and other open-source products. Taylor was appointed to the job two weeks ago.
It took a few years, but Microsoft now appears to have changed its tactics in its battle with Linux. "It is not a religious discussion, it is a business model discussion," Taylor said "We kind of defaulted [to emotion] because we could not think about Linux in the right way."
Microsoft execs claim to want to change the terms of the Linux vs. Windows debate. But do they really - and, more importantly - can they? We've come a long way from the days when top Microsoft brass called Linux "un-American" and a "cancer." Or have we?
Microsoft's new point man on Linux, Martin Taylor, is making the rounds this week, informing folks that Microsoft is done with helping to fuel the never-ending Linux vs. Windows religious wars. Instead, Microsoft wants to focus on "facts," Taylor says, such as data provided by third-party studies (some of which will be funded unabashedly by Microsoft) designed to help customers evaluate open-source vs. Microsoft software.
Microsoft updated its corporate Web search technology this month with in-house software, its latest effort to catch up with innovations in the navigation tools market.
In a July 21 article on the software giant's home page, the company owned up to the fact that search was rated the No. 1 source of angst by visitors of its corporate Web site. As a result, the company said it developed an improved product and information search that's faster, more relevant, and "100 percent Microsoft technology."
"Microsoft Search has always run 100 percent on Microsoft technology," a company representative said. "This latest version (Search 3.0) simply takes advantage of the newest, most cutting-edge technology that Microsoft is developing."
Government and industry experts consider brewing hacker activity a precursor to a broad Internet attack that would target enormous numbers of computers vulnerable from a flaw in Microsoft's Windows software.
Experts described an unusual confluence of conditions that heighten prospects for a serious disruption soon. They cite the high numbers of potential victims and increasingly sophisticated attack tools already tested successfully by hackers in recent days.
The "end of Microsoft as we know it" crowd must face the post-antitrust reality that the software giant is more confident and stronger than ever.
In his 2001 book, "Pride Before the Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the Microsoft Era," John Heilemann wrote:
"We are already witnessing the end of Microsoft as we know it...with the dotcom boom, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft's position seems, if not tenuous, then increasingly peripheral. The real estate it controls, the PC desktop, remains the most valuable territory on the digital map. But, as everyone can see, with the rise of the Net, the universe of computing is expanding and exploding, while the desktop seems only to be shrinking in strategic importance."
That may have constituted the biggest rush to judgment since the Chicago Daily Tribune declared Thomas Dewey the new U.S. president in 1948.
A former top executive of US software giant Microsoft has traded his high-flying job to deliver books to remote villages in Nepal on the back of a yak. John Wood, a 39-year-old senior executive at the Washington-state based company quit his 300,000-dollar-a-year post and launched a charity in 2000 to boost literacy in remote Asian communities in countries such as India and Nepal.
"People thought I was crazy, but I think it's how you use your freedom that counts and I wanted to do something for other people," he said of friends' reaction to his transformation from executive to educator.
IBM is suddenly seeing conspiracy everywhere it looks, and if the computer giant is right, Microsoft and SCO--the owner of UNIX now attempting to exercise its intellectual property rights over companies that make Linux, which it says contains stolen UNIX source code--are at the heart of the problem. SCO, you may recall, sued IBM earlier this year for over $1 billion and then revoked IBM's UNIX license. And Microsoft, infamously, was among the first companies to license UNIX from SCO, a move many saw as a PR stunt aimed at helping SCO hurt Linux, Microsoft's arch-competitor. IBM, of course, has backed Linux as the cross-platform solution for all of its computer product lines, and the company has spent the past few years improving Linux steadily.
Attention start-ups: Don't go looking to Microsoft for the next round of cash. The software giant, which a few years ago was willing to invest billions in companies that could spur adoption of new software efforts, has changed its ways. The company, which has said it has no immediate plans to return its cash to shareholders, has become even more reticent to make strategic investments.
"That whole investment strategy is transitioning," said Dan'l Lewin, corporate vice president of business development for Microsoft's .Net efforts.
Microsoft said on Thursday it had given a dozen national governments access to its Windows source code in its battle to win lucrative public sector contracts and muffle mounting hype over rival software Linux. Earlier this year, Microsoft started a new initiative called Government Software Program that involved opening up its flagship Windows operating system to governments interested in tailoring the software to fit, primarily, their security needs. Microsoft said 12 countries, including Austria, Russia, China and the UK, had entered into the new deals, with another 35 in negotiation, since the program started in January.
Microsoft might be on the verge of its best office invention yet: a self-charging robot slave that goes to meetings in your place. Imagine the hooky-playing possibilities that Robie the Robot could create. You can control the robot from a personal computer, using its two-way audio and video technology to participate by proxy. You also could send Robie out to the water cooler to talk shop with co-workers' Robies.
Robie isn't even close to being sold at stores, but it was one of dozens of inventions on display yesterday at a research fair Microsoft hosted for hundreds of university faculty visiting the company this week.