Disrupting Innovation

According to Microsoft, Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

Actually, Silverlight is Microsoft's Flash competitor and Bill Gate's company is getting more and more serious about developer adoption. It is another example of Microsoft versus the open web world.
The story repeats itself: Microsoft has been using various standards body tactics to stall and block development of JavaScript since 1999. It's a long story that would take me several hours and articles to tell.

Silverlight is about making a part of the web 'off limits' to people who aren't running Microsoft's proprietary extension. We have something like this with Flash today, but Adobe is a fairly benevolent dictator; should Microsoft succeed in sucking the air out of Flash's business model, we would be left with a web whose rich content would be only accessible via Microsoft software.

I think this isn't a world we want.

Flash is also arguably positioned as an alternative to the open web, but most of the time is only used as a vector/media rendering engine for regular pages (e.g. as used in YouTube and Google Finance).

If the web's default programming model were not so woefully deficient when it comes to 'rich media' and vector graphics (SVG/Canvas notwithstanding as they're still unavailable on the vast majority of browsers), then the door wouldn't even be open to Silverlight. They're using this deficiency to promote an alternative to the whole stack, rather than addressing the single problem of media and graphics rendering.

I believe the best thing we can do to counter the Silverlight play is to promote reasonable 'open' alternatives to the real problems it's trying to address. Flash is imperfect, but provides a reasonable solution to rendering audio/video.

Yesterday morning, I received a newsletter from Forrester. One of the reports is titled "Microsoft Will Make Small Acquisitions: Its Size, Visibility To Antitrust Bodies, And Strategy Rule Out Big Deals.".
Am i missing something? I think Microsoft's bid for Yahoo is about $45 billion. And they call this a Small Acquisition ? :)

Do two losers make a winner? Analysts and basically anyone with a keyboard seem to agree that the timing for this acquisition couldn't be better, and the deal is expected to go through unless a surprise third-party pops up to intervene with a competitive bid.

Wonderful as Google is, the world and the entire Internet and media industry needs for its power to be countered and, if possible, matched. Without genuine competition everybody loses. That's what drives innovation. Even Google may benefit because if its share of search and online traffic grew much larger regulators would almost certainly begin to find ways of restraining it.

Today we've seen the beginnings of a bi-polar Internet, one that will influence and rearrange the competitive alliances and strategy of just about every company that aspires to a digital future.
But I have few questions in my mind which remain unanswered:

How long will an integration take?
How well will the integration go ? MS is a Web 1.0 company compared to Yahoo (huge cultural differences)
How much time will that give Google to widen its lead?
Which one will surive : Hotmail, Outlook, Zimbra or Yahoo Mail ?

But the bigger question is :
Will Google make a bid as well ?
If Google win the deal it will have destination properties beyond YouTube.
Google will get content.
Google will get newspaper partnerships.
Google will get more users.
Google will dominate display advertising with DoubleClick and Yahoo in the fold.
Google everywhere ...
But watch out: the Antitrust may ruin their dreams.

< Extract and mixed from various articles online >

Gates = Microsoft, Windows, security problems, nerd.
Jobs = Apple, iPod, sleek hardware, black turtleneck.

This is not always true.
I admire the philantropist Bill Gates because of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty.
Gates has done a multitude of work for charities over the past ten years, almost to the point that he may be remembered more for his philanthropy rather than his legacy at Microsoft.

I do not admire Steve Jobs for his intelligence, the Apple innovations and his keynote speeches. Jobs started a charitable foundation in the 1980s, but gave it up once he "discovered how time-consuming such business can be."

Who is the bad guy ?

We have all seen the famous Apple's ads "Get a Mac". They are funny and straight to the point, but have you ever seen the philantropist Bill Gates making fun of himself with Bono, Steven Spielberg and George Clooney ?



This is defintely innovative !