Bill Gates on Software Market: TINY Google Web Services Lag BIG Microsoft Business
Bill Gates has succeeded wildly in the personal computer mission he set out for himself in 1975 when he began Microsoft Corp. Nevertheless, the richest man in the world, and Microsoft Chairman, must continually defend his vision for the “magic of software,” as he did once again last week, at a “Media Roundtable.”
Gates laments that “no one pays attention to” the business computing market, not even, surprisingly, The Wall Street Journal. Ex-Microsoftie Robert Scoble concurs.
HEY, Bill and Bob, keep it HERE at Insider Chatter! I have been chronicling, reporting and analyzing the big, bad Microsoft vs. Google enterprise and Web services battle, big time. For recent example:
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Google Chokes with Postini: Billion Dollar Office Apps Giveaway
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Gates on who is seriously “revolutionizing” sofware:
Management software? Security software? Seriously, who do you think? The business computing market, which is way bigger than the consumer computing market, no one pays atention to it. It’s okay, but thank God for business computing, because it allows us to price our consumer computing stuff super cheap, and still pay the salaries of these wonderful researchers who like to be paid.
How much does Microsoft shell out to continue to “revolutionize” software? $7 billion in R & D in 2007.
Google is the one getting all the media love, however, because of its touchy-feely consumer spin, even in the enterprise.
Google is NOT succeeding in its quest for consumerization of the enterprise, though, and a (free) consumer Web services model is ALSO NOT the big market it is cracked up to be. Bil Gates:
Consumer services are basically big, big volume. They’re tiny businesses in a sense, but they’re very important for the population of users that you connect up to.
Gates acknowledged that Microsoft is “playing catch-up in Web search”:
We have categories where we need to match and exceed what a brilliant company has done.
Nevertheless, Gates believes the future of cloud computing is solidly in Microsoft’s favor, despite the brilliance of GOOG:
We think that by the way we’ll connect up to Windows in a rich way, we’ll be able to do something pretty dramatic there, but that awaits the next big wave that comes along.
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