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Microsoft has been the 800 pound gorilla in software for two decades, but Google is clearly gaining weight and Microsoft's latest product announcement indicates that Bill Gates is ready to challenge Google on its home turf: The Internets.
Outlining what it said was its biggest strategy change in five years, the Redmond, Washington-based company told analysts and reporters on Tuesday that it would deliver many of its key products and services online, some supported by advertising, as well as by selling subscriptions or licenses for software installed on computers.
Windows Live and Office Live will give users some of the basic features of the software giant's two most-profitable products, but without the complexity of installing and maintaining the software in computer hard drives.
"We are trying to put a 'services plus software' mentality into many many of the product groups inside Microsoft," said Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect.
TechCrunch.com has lots of details about Windows Live, which they describe as "more than an AJAX desktop.":
Microsoft has added plenty of new features that add a lot of value to the product. Among them are email integration, a new instant messaging client, and skype-like features that allow outgoing calls to normal POTS phones. Windows Live is also extensible via “gadgets”. After what I saw today, I despair for many a silicon valley startup. Seriously.
Love or hate them, Microsoft has definitely shaken things up with this announcement.
This Microsoft service competes with Salesforce, which has hundreds of companies developing custom applications and sharing them with others over a similar small-business system.
Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff dismissed the moves, saying that Microsoft's relevance was waning a decade after Gates declared that the company's future lay with the Internet in a milestone strategy speech on December 7, 1995.
"The real innovators on the Internet: Amazon, eBay, Google, Salesforce.com -- have all succeeded because Microsoft has let us down on innovation," Benioff said.
In a related story, a 19 year-old Russian hacker calling himself "Kinta_Mast0rz" announced the release of "r00tkit L!v3. At a press conference in his mother's basement, flanked by posters of t.A.T.u. and Paris Hilton, the youth declared, "I pwn j00 Micr0soft L1vexxorz!"
Outlining what it said was its biggest strategy change in five years, the Redmond, Washington-based company told analysts and reporters on Tuesday that it would deliver many of its key products and services online, some supported by advertising, as well as by selling subscriptions or licenses for software installed on computers.
Windows Live and Office Live will give users some of the basic features of the software giant's two most-profitable products, but without the complexity of installing and maintaining the software in computer hard drives.
"We are trying to put a 'services plus software' mentality into many many of the product groups inside Microsoft," said Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect.
TechCrunch.com has lots of details about Windows Live, which they describe as "more than an AJAX desktop.":
Microsoft has added plenty of new features that add a lot of value to the product. Among them are email integration, a new instant messaging client, and skype-like features that allow outgoing calls to normal POTS phones. Windows Live is also extensible via “gadgets”. After what I saw today, I despair for many a silicon valley startup. Seriously.
Love or hate them, Microsoft has definitely shaken things up with this announcement.
This Microsoft service competes with Salesforce, which has hundreds of companies developing custom applications and sharing them with others over a similar small-business system.
Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff dismissed the moves, saying that Microsoft's relevance was waning a decade after Gates declared that the company's future lay with the Internet in a milestone strategy speech on December 7, 1995.
"The real innovators on the Internet: Amazon, eBay, Google, Salesforce.com -- have all succeeded because Microsoft has let us down on innovation," Benioff said.
In a related story, a 19 year-old Russian hacker calling himself "Kinta_Mast0rz" announced the release of "r00tkit L!v3. At a press conference in his mother's basement, flanked by posters of t.A.T.u. and Paris Hilton, the youth declared, "I pwn j00 Micr0soft L1vexxorz!"