Get Off Microsoft

As Apple eats away at Microsoft’s market share on the consumer side of PCs and mobile devices, and Google chips at Microsoft Office’s share in business, Microsoft is caught in the middle and facing a two-front war.

What will change the landscape and make it possible for larger numbers of users, especially corporate users, to overcome Microsoft inertia? I’m tracking the development of software as a service, smartphones that don’t do Windows and don’t need to, Apple’s OS X that may some day run Windows XP apps, and Linux on the desktop, which is growing fast in overseas markets.

This is how Microsoft gets away with “interoperability” — co-opting proven standards (like XML) and turning them into Microsoft pseudo-standards, which are then set as defaults for the program while offering the real standards as options.

Google introduced Google Apps Premier Edition for $50 per account per year. The best thing about these types of Web applications (or Web services) is that the software is NYP — Not Your Problem.

It should come as no surprise to learn that the inventors of the spreadsheet and the first companies to market spreadsheet software were refugees from the Sixties counterculture. How often have you looked at a spreadsheet and thought, what were they smoking?

In countries and cities around the world, mandated or not, Linux desktop PCs are decisively replacing PCs.

Microsoft’s delay in providing Windows Vista to the general marketplace has sparked all manner of criticism and analysis. ‘ve addressed a number of questions from reporters and journalists and gathered them here, with paraphrased questions and my responses.

So, why not a cheaper Origami-like device from a manufacturer that runs Linux and Web services? And what about Microsoft’s own Origami becoming a leverage for Web services that eventually dethrone Microsoft Office?

Writely.com’s big advantage, besides offering a basic free service that works with most browsers on any computer, is that it makes collaboration on documents a lot easier than ever before.

Customers of Microsoft Office have one more reason to consider switching to an alternative before getting hit with a gigantic upgrade.