I disagree that all you need is money to compete. Here's a recent choice quote from Steve Jobs obout R&D:

"I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If that were the case, Microsoft would have some great products."

Bob - you trotted out the "Reagan outspent the Soviets" canard without even checking it, didn't you? At the very least, cite a Wikipedia entry when you justify some nonsense like that.

Most historians will assert that while economics played a role in the fall of the USSR, that statements like this are erroneous in the extreme. Political reforms and resurgent nationalisms had far more to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The saw about "Reagan outspending" is pure shinola, ginned up by partisan hacks to legitimize Reagan's spending habits with the cold War threat.

It's ironic that and IT company has poor IT systems; ordinarily you'd wonder how they can sell IT solutiosn to customer without having their own house in order. As an additional data point (from first-hand experience), Sun Micro also has a terrible portfolio of internal IT applications and processes. Shouldn't these companies be leading the way instead of hobbling along with lame applications and, worst of all, hiding them?

I think you are right about IBM and LEAN. Maybe LEAN really has little to do with the layoffs and maybe the business is in more trouble than we know. IBM's greatest problem is in not confiding in its workforce. There is a huge part of the workforce that could and would retire early for the good of the company. There is another huge part of the workforce that would forgive the lack of pay, benefits, etc and give IBM the time it needs to get back on track. As long as there is a real plan and everyone is treated fairly, IBM's workforce could be a huge asset to the company. Keeping them in the dark is a terrible mistake.

A few times in the past Mr. Cringely has written columns about competing with Microsoft. When it comes to Google, maybe Microsoft and Yahoo could learn from that message. Does everyone really need to have a comprehensive search engine? Seriously. In the early days Yahoo had a search tool that was more "data type" oriented. It was quite nice, I remember. The problem was it good too big. In a given week I spend as much time at Yahoo as I do Google. My email is with Yahoo. My address book and photo album is there too. I monitor my investments at Yahoo. Yahoo maps have become much better lately. My point is a simple one. We don't need another Google. Yahoo, Microsoft, and the other major firms would be wise not to try to become one. I want and need a Yahoo that will provide its services with the best possible quality.

One of the smartest deals of recent time was the SBC/Yahoo partnership. I understand SBC/ATT now wants to do it themselves. Let them. Yahoo, it was still a great idea. Seek out the other ISP's and set up partnerships with them. I know you can provide services for them cheaper than they can do themselves. If you focus on quality, you can also provide them better services too.

I recently started using OpenDNS. So far its been a very good experience. Not too long ago Mr. Cringely wrote a column entitled "Just Say No." Having tried OpenDNS, I can now appreciate how many problems could be fixed by having a responsible DNS and Internet Naming. Yahoo, you could do this! By OpenDNS and implement David Harrison's good ideas. There are a LOT of problems on the internet. Search is not one of them. There is plenty of room for firms like Yahoo to move in and fix things. Please do so!!!

IT companies have bad internal IT for one simple reason. Anyone with talent is billable.

Bob opines, irrelevantly: "No president could spend money like Ronald Reagan could spend money. His greatest legacy, in fact, was spending so much on defense projects like his "Star Wars" anti-missile system that the USSR was torn apart economically by simply trying to compete, thus ending the Cold War."

And yet, somehow, you're far richer today, with a far higher material standard of living.

Guess those "voodoo economics" really worked, huh?

Better name for the combined Microsoft-Yahoo!:

YIKES!!!

I believe dubya has outspent RR, the difference being to very poor outcomes.

As a long time reader of The Pulpit I usually agree with much of Bob's analysis but on this one he seems rather anal about the value of a Microsoft name change. A name change wouldn't change anything, even perception. This is superficial thinking at best. Okay, I'm going to drive off in my Datsun 280Z now.

Even better name if Google dominates the way Bob predicts: Microwho?

Google's universal search STILL doesn't do what I want (and explain about on my website). It will be universal when I can give Google a picture from my phone cam, and have it tell me what the name for that bird is, etc.

Last fall at Company 'F', IBM was messing up. Delivery for X-series computers were weeks overdue, and worse yet - were coming in partial shipments when they did show up. I was tasked with getting to the bottom of this, and had an IBM VP come to Dearborn to explain it all. Seems that they were switching to a new system (from the old mainframe one), and of course it was an all or nothing switch - one day they just pulled the plug on the old system and started the new one. Orders went into the system nicely - but like the Roach Motel, they never came out.

IBM assured us that we were the only ones affected and that the problem was over. They had (in desperation) started using spreadsheets to track the shipments - and any freight systems to overnight the pieces.

If IBM can't even get a simple ordering system working for themselves - why would you want to use them as your IT vendor?

The title debate RESOLVED in only three syllables:



"Yah-Mo-Soft"



;^D




(Hope Michael McDonald isn't TOO upset with me .... )

"Say it effectively dilutes the text search results."

If Google is concerned with that, it should be quite easy to address it at low cost. The "Advanced Search" function already allows one to restrict the search by language and document type. They could easily add a data type choice, for image, text, news, whatever. Most people would never use it or, probably, even know about it. If it were available as a preference (as result language is), those who were really fussed about text-only search could have it.

2) Microsoft needs an identity change and corporate personality transplant in order to get its stock price up where it deserves to be based on company financials.

Microsoft's stock price is exactly where it should be based on it's financials. It was once higher because of its aggressive growth. Wall Street is nothing if not forward looking.

Microsoft once had plans to dominate the embedded market, the server market, and all developing world markets. Wall Street believed this and msft had a P/E of over 30.

Wall Street has now figured out that Microsoft is hemmed in in all three of these areas by the same enemy. You know the one. It begins with a "Lin" and ends with an "ux".

Universal search does not appeal to me. It's true google could backpedal (google classic) if people don't like the new service. But it makes an opening.

No big deal, but in retrospect I'm not sure there was even that much of an opening when google was starting out - there were already too many big name search engines.

Maybe they should offer universal and classic as choices - but will that goof up their famous algorithms?

Better to end the Cold War by outspending them, than fighting when both sides have nukes.

Now if Universal Search includes the movie's torrent link...

I'm not too excited about mixing the search results together either. I've found that when I search Google I know exactly where I'm trying to go about half the time. I just use Google as the quickest way to get there. I can usually put in a query that will bring the desired site to the top. In those cases mixing in results from other types of sites just dilute the result. If their algorithms are smart enough they may correctly predict what I want and put it on top, but if there's much dilution I'll go back to creating giant lists of bookmarks (shudder).

Sam brought with him all the cultural baggage of the old IBM??? ROTFLMAO!!!

What baggage??

Full employment? NOT!
Respect for the individual? NOT!
Striving for excellence? NOT!
Best possible customer service? NOT!

Sam has done nothing good for the customers, nothing for the stockholders (look at the stock price and puny dividends during his reign), and certainly nothing good for employees. He DID manage to enrich himself.

Or perhaps a better name for the merger of Microsoft and Yahoo might "Yasoft."

How about: HooSoft?

I wish Google's searches could be limited to country, and eventually a state, county, or city. If I'm trying to price out a new camcorder, I don't need to see prices for sites in England, Austrailia, etc.

(I tried to make that funny, per the ground rules, but got nothing. Sorry.)

"This is really a class issue: the executive class constantly reaps benefits while the bottom feeders do all the work."

Welcome to the world of business.

In fact, welcome to humanity - the species that takes primate hierarchical society to its ultimate state of self-destructiveness.

You want to know what "Original Sin" is? The fear of death.

Which expresses itself in human society as: "If you're right, I'm wrong. And if I'm wrong, I'm dead - and that can't be allowed. So you're wrong and I'm right."

Which results in class distinctions - as in mistresses are better than regular whores who are better than crack whores. Humans will subdivide the categories down to the last atom as long as it leaves them on the right side of "Right".

And when you give chimpanzees power, the current business and political and religious world is what you end up with.

And that isn't going to change until the human body and brain is remolded to something less controlled by neurochemicals evolved from primates 100,000 years ago.

Even though Google is a public company, they still work for love not money. I have talked with many Google employees and they are consistently positive about their jobs, company and overall organization.

There is no way that Universal Search was created without careful thought on how it would impact their users. It may fail, but more likely it will be changed and evolve as search evolves.

The day Google stops caring about their customers IBM is the day their corporate soul, and stock price, dies.

Or how about "Yahoo-soft"?

I hope this is a good move for Google, because I'm rooting for them. I won't way they are "good," but they are less "evil" than Yahoo, AOL, or Microsoft.
I also hope they back off from their new PC "bundling" strategy with Dell, which seems to have been copied directly from those three awful companies. They inflict Google Desktop Search upon every new Dell, exacting a big performance hit. This lumps them in with the other crapware pushers, paying a kickback for an (often unwanted) presence on the new PC.
Google, keep being good... stop pushing so hard!

Yack-ro-soft.

I have been a witness/participant of a merger of the sorts that would be Microsoft and Yahoo. The end results is one of the parties ends up being the dominant force, leaving many unhappy employees and a diluted sense of purpose for all.

In that vein, how about: MicrHooEeeeeeewwwwww!!!

How about Chaotic Firm Soon, yo.

(An anagram of Microsoft Yahoo Inc)

If they don't care for that, there's always A moist cocoa if horny...

idiosynchronic - As a matter of fact, the Wikipedia article for Reagan specifically mentions that SDI played "a major role in ending the Cold War".

And the article that they link for supporting evidence directly states that "Reagan's defense buildup and SDI ... pressed Gorbachev, while his economy was collapsing ... which contributed to the unraveling of his empire."

If you're going to take Bob to task, at least check the sources that you yourself are suggesting before posting.

Great metaphor, but factually untrue. Reagan did not bring down the soviet union through massive defense spending. the soviet union brought down itself through decades of instutional neglect and bureaucratic paralysis. So maybe it is a cautionary tale for google after all

asdfasdfa

Ok, the forum finally works. This is better at least.

The only reason Soviet Union has failed is that oil prices went down and the government didn't have money to buy goods and stuff on the West. Everybody went hungry and then angry and then there was an attempt for revolution and that was it. America played zero role place in that crash. Don't tease yourself.

Second, Soviet Union had plenty of bombs -- enough to destroy US and the world several times all over. What was the reason to build more???

Third, Microsoft has more money and resources to compete with Google. And while Google is talking about universal search, Microsoft is doing it -- go to http://search.imagine-live.com/ and try it now.

And last, but not least -- Google still has no idea how to make money. They are just buying and copying others. And I clearly do not see why you people are so happy with them. They have no ideas to make money, no resources and no guts. And soon the brightest people will leave them just because FYIFV.

Pretty boring.