24th
2004,11
In the vacation I spent sometime to review several desktop technologies. Even though as a Microsoft Employee I have to say : Microsoft exactly is in trouble in some fields such as desktop search, IM and free mail service.
Desktop Search Engine
Google has launched Google Desktop Search (BETA) for Windows 2000/XP in last month. Hereby Microsoft promised the similar MSN desktop search should be released in the upcoming year ends instead of the unbelievable 2006 within Longhorn. Moreover various desktop search tools are coming up in the market such as Yahoo! Etc… It is interesting that before installing the wonderful tool I had to remove ISA client morosely, because it conflicts with some DLLs of Microsoft ISA client.
Google Desktop Search provides most of features I expect. Undoubtedly its’ usability outshines Windows OS searching function. Will the upcoming similar Microsoft offering be better than the leading Google tool? It is hard I guess.
Instant Messaging Tool
The current version of MSN messenger I am using is 7.0.0425 (BETA).MSN team added some disgusted functions in this version like auction & community on left sidebar. What the damn thing! MSN messenger fell down to be a stodgy toy like OICQ against the simple professional IM tool as it once to be.
Along with rapidly increasing user number, it seems that MSN supporting system has been out of case. In fair over 25,000 servers’ maintenance work is certain hard. I met unexpected MSN interruption for too many times recently. On the other side the fearful enemy Google is saying hello to IM market.
Free Mail Service
Over 200 millions people have hotmail email addresses, most of them provided with a only 2M sized box. What a pity! Today google Gmail is no longer a news. Even the Yahoo! Mail and SINA also launched Giga-level sized email box. Microsoft had to select some hotmail users to increase their email box size to beat back the competition. The shift doesn’t work I guess, even if there is a pending privacy issue plaguing Gmail.
Google has built foothold in internet users’ mind by their search engine, as to their other tools desktop search, mail service and adsense… each one is consumers’ love. I heard of Google developing web storage sytem. Foundation of a upcoming web OS ? Google has profound understanding of internet business and is becoming the killer-level competitor of Microsoft. No matter what who will be final winner of the compain, I am certain of that various products will be work out soon by the two titans.
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