Those 17 years old or younger (like my daughters) might recognize the reference to a recent Eminem song. But there aren’t likely many teenagers reading this blog post instead of updating their Facebook status.
The title refers to a couple of events that seem to suggest concern for the future of the flagship product of the world’s largest software company.
First, an item in the business news this morning about Google building their own operating system called Chrome – just like their browser. Despite the confusion about how that does or doesn’t intersect with the rather successful Android operating system on handhelds, when Google says they are jumping in, it’s worth taking notice. Although I remember the mid 1990’s and Netscape’s Marc Andreessen claiming they were going to reduce Windows to “a poorly debugged set of device drivers” and I typically dislike the claim that “this time it’s different”, but this time it could really be different given the size and scope of Google and the other significant changes in society and technology in the past decade.
Second, I continue to work my way through the book MacroWikinomics, this year’s follow-up to 2007’s massively popular Wikinomics . In both books, the authors, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, talk extensively about the power of the collective efforts of society, aided and abetted by technology. A specific example of this power, and significantly, some of the enabling technology itself, is open source software. I had always had a problem with the thought that people would continue to invest their time and effort into any endeavour simply for the fun of seeing the end product come to life. I have always felt that simple little needs like food and shelter would eventually win out and these able “volunteers” who create and sustain Linux and Wikipedia and others would either want to be paid for their efforts or have to go and get a real, paying job. But then it struck me that if you’re in the business of being compensated for efforts that thousands of other people are more than happy to do for free in their spare time, then you’ve got a tenuous business model at best. Newspapers, hard copy encyclopaedias and, similarly, operating system software are dangerous businesses to be in.
Andreessen’s threat turned out to be very, very wrong at the time and I would never underestimate Microsoft’s ability to create winning products and winning business models. All I can be sure of is that it will be interesting, and users of technology are assured to be the winners in all cases.