Steve Gillmor doesn’t need Windows
I listened to the latest Gillmor Daily podcast today while walking with Satch.
I agree with so much of what Steve says, it’s important to note when I think he’s nuts.
While I agree we are moving to a world where the Desktop doesn’t matter as much, it seems crazy for Steve to make little of the leverage that the installed Windows base gives Microsoft.
Does it mean Microsoft will win Steve? (whatever that means)
No, and maybe they didn’t invent the distributed model, but you can’t tell me there are no advantages to owning the desktop.
I’ll give you one. Most people can’t help but think of Microsoft just by powering up their computer. That’s revs pretty high on the “Attention” meter.
Steve then goes on to make a big deal of GTalk as a new type of platform.
Of course he forgets to mention it only runs on Windows.
It interops with Jabber. That’s great. The others will have to open up eventually becaus ethey broke that open. I agree here.
So, the conclusion is that Microsoft needs to change in order to prosper in years to come.
It’s like that old Bud and Lou skit. (and Lon Chaney Jr.)
“tonight, I’ll turn into a wolf.”
“yeah, you and 20 million other guys.”
Everyone is being forced to change.
So they need to embrace open protocols like everyone else.
So, would you rather have to get millions of users to download your new “open” platform , or just include it in your next shipment or upgrade.
We all use the desktop less, Steve contends.
True. But he used it to produce that Podcast(on an Apple with Audacity, no doubt). He needed get at local memory somehow.
It’ll be years and years before bandwidth and remote horsepower oust Microsoft or an open OS from being in most people’s face. Maybe part of the change is opening Windows up in the future.
They need to change. You might say they need to change now. But you could also argue they have some time.
[…] This looks great. Suddenly I’m defending Microsoft. No one can deny they’re providing some really cool tools lately like SSE. I’m hoping this functionality will be available to scripting folks as well as Window’s application developers. Something like a Greasemonkey API. Common Feed List looks really cool for the OPML community. It allows you to share your Feedlist among apps and computers locally or across the web! We’ll see. Feb 01 2006 09:53 pm | RSS and SSE and OPML and microsoft | […]