The word on the street is that Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, has lost a lot of weight recently. Perhaps he cannot sleep at night either, or perhaps, even more possibly, he is simply on a diet. I prefer to believe that he lost his appetite once he fully comprehended the fierce competition, which he reluctantly admitted to in a very recent interview on innovation (video in Windows-only WMV format, so see cocky comments instead). Microsoft have plenty of reasons to worry:

• Internet domination – Firefox and Google are slowly taking control of the Net. Software migrates to the Web and becomes more inter-operable. This by all means accumulates to more bad news to Microsoft.
• Mac and Tiger – Scoble of Microsoft has admitted that Mac OS is ahead of Window in terms of its capabilities. Eye candy is not the only advantage Apple have to offer.
• Security – Windows is still unable to cope with the many security flaws and viruses. The industry is getting fed up.
• Breaking proprietary – Samba has opened up network protocols, allowing file and printer sharing to be compatible with non-Windows operating systems and work in tandem. Open Office makes popular Windows formats readable under most platforms and continues to improve dramatically.
• Productivity and innovation – Longhorn offers only mere gains as all “three pillars” were conceded due to self-imposed time constraints.
• Open Source – Linux, being a source of free software substitutes, has become one of Microsoft’s biggest fears. It has gracefully been adopted recently. Michael Dell has given $100,000,000 to RedHat Linux and Fijitsu carry on with Linux, to name just a few examples that came up lately.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 1:28 pm and is filed under O/S, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.