Google

Google and Microsoft trading places in mail

So, Google wins a big, prestigious $7.2 billion email account –for 30,000 Los Angeles municipal workers . Google Apps Premier is displacing Novell Groupwise there.  But Google beat out the Microsoft Exchange-Outlook combo even though by most accounts the dollar difference between bids was itty bitty.

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Top five IT channel lessons for the quarter

VARs remain extremely cautious on public cloud computing and are obsessed with which vendor giants will remain standing after more expected M&A activity. Those are but two highlights of this quarter’s SearchITChannel.com Advisory Board call. But there more below:  

1: Fear the cloud: Okay, that verbiage may be overkill, but the VARs said they spend a lot of time educating customers about when and if public cloud computing will really meet their needs. Vendor hype aside, board members said public cloud scenarios run counter to HIPAA and other compliance regulations.

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Still waiting for the Microsoft vision

A former colleague, who has worked the tech beat for more than 20 years, had some interesting thoughts the other night on the new-look Microsoft under chief software architect Ray Ozzie.

His rant went something along the lines of: “Geez, [expletive deleted] where’s this vision we hear so much about? What’s the next big thing? All we’ve seen is me-too stuff about the cloud. What’s beyond the cloud? What’s next?”

There was a gut instinct to defend Ozzie, home-town and Lotus Notes hero. After all, it’s hard to blaze a trail into the future while protecting a huge installed base of products, customers and partners. 

But then again, the rant rings true.

In tech everyone gets caught up in the latest thing–to such an extent that they may ignore or miss something truly exciting. Obviously, Microsoft can’t avoid the cloud, but is its Google fixation blinding it to other opportunities?

Microsoft has always played catchup to early innovators–to Apple, to Lotus, to WordPerfect, to NetScape, to Apple again, now to Google. As a current colleague said in Microsoft’s defense: “At least they’re playing catchup now on cool, cloud stuff.”

But when it was chasing NetScape Navigator, that was cool stuff. Ditto the Mac OS. Ditto iPhone.

Is that good enough for this self-proclaimed innovator?

What do you think? Send email to: Barbara Darrow.

Report: Microsoft tries to sell Razorfish

Microsoft is reportedly trying to sell off Razorfish, the digital ad service to a large consortium of advertising agencies. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is trying to offload Razorfish–but with the condition that the acquiring company buy ads on Microsoft properties.

The news comes as Microsoft kicks off its annual partner conference–where many of the companies old-line partners think it is unduly fixated on Google and online ad services at the expense of some of its core technology businesses.

Microsoft: Google Apps’ Outlook sync breaks Outlook

You could see this coming down the pike.

Last week, Google announced Outlook synchronization for Google Apps–a very important addition for business email users. This week, Microsoft takes to it’s Outlook blog to say that Google’s Outlook sync breaks Outlook. Or at least disables the search in Outlook.

From the blog:

The installation of the Google Apps Sync plugin disables Outlook’s ability to search any and all of your Outlook data. When a Google Apps user installs the sync plugin for Outlook, the plugin modifies a registry key which disables Windows Desktop Search from indexing and providing search functionality for all Outlook data, not just the Outlook data being synchronized from GMail. Because Outlook search relies upon the indexing performed by Windows Desktop Search, Outlook search functions are broken as a result. It is also important to note that uninstalling the plugin may not fix the issue.

 

This tidbit comes just as Microsoft gets some of the first good news its had in search in, well, in years. Search-numbers freak Comscore reports once again that Microsoft’s Bing search engine–oh, that’s supposed to be decision engine–has increased the company’s Web search popularity for the second straight week!

Microsoft’s search penetration in the U.S. hit 16.7% for last week, up 3 points from the prior week, according to Comscore. In Bing’s first week on the job, Microsoft’s U.S. search penetration hit 15.8%, up from 13.7% for the last week of the PB (pre-Bing) era.

Sneak peek at Dell Android phone?

Want a blurry peek at Dell’s long-rumored cell phone? Here it is courtesy of PDAfans via Engadget. This picture must have been taken with the Barbara-Walters-soft-focus cam. But hey, it’s something.

Reports of this work in progress have circulated long and hard. You gotta hand it to Google, it’s drummed up Android rumors to a fever pitch. Positively Microsoftian.

Back to the future: Ellison eyes netbooks

I can’t remember who said it but  around the time Oracle launched its big Sun Microsystems buyout plan, one industry pundit snarked that it was only a matter of time before Oracle CEO Larry Ellison would rechristen netbooks as NCs and declare victory. (If you kids don’t know what an NC is, ask your parents. Or read this.) Continued »

OS choice for netbooks expands

First there was news that Hewlett-Packard, Dell and possibly other hardware makers would consider slapping Google Android on netbooks.

Last week, Intel said it’s jumping into the netbook OS market as well with Moblin, it’s own take on a Linux-based netbook OS. 

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Google fails; panic ensues

The reporters in my row are agog as the Google news outage continues.

Folks wanted to know which  alternative search engine to use. The consensus winner was Ask.com, although Altavista and Yahoo got a few votes. Note the lack of clamor for Microsoft Live Search. That is probably not an anomaly.

Ballmer’s white board magic

Last month, the New York Times brilliantly reproduced Steve Ballmer’s white boarded vision of the company’s cloud services plan. It depicts the company’s “software plus services” vision with Azure at the center of the universe, making use of SQL Server services, Exchange services etc etc. Continued »