Kicking IE's Ass

A few days ago Google announced that they would pay $1 for each referral to Firefox with Google Toolbar. According to the four activists, Google set the stage for Firefox to literally "take back the web" and go from 11 percent of browsers to over 50 percent.

Referrals is a feature of Google AdSense that allows website publishers to increase their revenue while increasing their users' awareness of useful products and services. By adding a referral button to a site, publishers can direct users to products like AdSense and Firefox with Google Toolbar.

When a referral connects a user to AdSense or Firefox, Google pays the publisher, who can introduce their visitors to services that will help them monetize their websites or improve their web browsing experience, and earn more revenue.

Explorer Destroyer has some free scripts that one can put on their website to encourage users to switch to Firefox from Internet Explorer. The scripts will detect whether a visitor is running Internet Explorer, and if they are, it will either show a splash page telling them to switch or it will put a big switch banner at the top of the page. If one signs up for Google's referral program, he/she can make $1 for each person that switches.

Killbillsbrowser.com. is a parody site with jokes about Internet Explorer, but it's also a medium to convince people to switch. The site has the colors of Quentin Tarantino's film Kill Bill and lists 13 reasons, like "Mozilla has never made a talking paperclip" and "Your computer won't spend its free time telling the world about Viagra soft tabs" - why people should switch to Firefox.

The letter goes on to say that, "There's a big chance right now to switch people to Firefox and it might not last very long - Microsoft has a new version of Internet Exlporer on the way and lord knows what they'll be doing in Vista to force people to use it. Firefox has to get a big foothold right now. "

The letter goes on to say, "Mozilla built us a wonderful tool. Google gave us a carrot. Now take the stick and beat IE's ass."

Microsoft vs. Google and Firefox

By most measures, Firefox has had a pretty good year. The upstart browser celebrated its first birthday this week, less than a month after marking its 100 millionth download. Devoted followers have trumpeted its 8.65 percent market share, mostly at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

The response from the Windows empire has been largely a collective yawn. That could change quickly, however, given that Google seems to be sidling up to Firefox, a relationship that could bring back some bad memories for Microsoft veterans.

In the 1990s, Microsoft was obsessed with Netscape's Navigator because the company believed that the browser could displace Windows as the first screen people saw when booting up their computer, an enormous advantage in controlling desktop real estate. If Google increases its interest and influence in Firefox--and the rest of the open-source software world that it came from--Microsoft could again have its hands full with "disruptive" changes.

Microsoft's Web. 2.0 Draws Skepticism

Marketing ramps up, but does Microsoft yet 'get' the Web?

Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

Friday, November 11, 2005

Though the powers that be at Microsoft seem to have finally grasped the impact of the Internet on the future of packaged software, industry observers and a key rival said the company still must prove that its plan to compete in the Web 2.0 marketplace is more than just hype.

Web 2.0 is a name given to the Web's transition from a collection of static Web sites to a computing platform providing Internet-based applications, or services, to end users. Richard MacManus, a freelance Web analyst and writer, acknowledged that Microsoft may always lag behind in its move to embrace this new era of the Internet. But now, with its Live Software plan and executive memos that herald the adoption of new services model to combat Google, the company at least is talking the talk when it comes to the new wave of Internet-based services, he said.

Still, Microsoft has a long way to go to make its services strategy successful, he said. "I think they are making the right noises about Web 2.0 technologies, but there's a difference between what they announced and what they've actually developed," said MacManus, who writes the popular Read/Write Web log, in an e-mail Thursday.

He used a new service announced at Microsoft's Live Software launch last week as an example. Live Software is Microsoft's plan to offer a set of Web-based services, built on Microsoft software, that users can access no matter what Internet-enabled device they use. One of the first services is Office Live, which Microsoft said will integrate collaborative services such as document sharing with customer relationship management (CRM) and business analytics for consumers and small businesses. But the service "is simply vaporware at the moment," MacManus said.

Scrutinizing Strategy

Though Microsoft plans to release Office Live in beta in early 2006, a company memo by Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie, made public in various news outlets Tuesday, implies Microsoft still does not know what final shape Office Live will take, MacManus said. "Ray Ozzie's memo indicates that Microsoft is still internally questioning the approach for Office Live," he said.

The way Microsoft made public Ozzie's memo outlining the company's comprehensive software-to-services shift also shows that Microsoft is behind the times on Web 2.0, said software guru and blogger Dave Winer.

Winer, who writes the Scripting News blog, hinted that the way Microsoft provided Ozzie's memo to the print media first rather than to bloggers shows it still may not fully understand the impact of the Web. He chided Microsoft in a blog entry Wednesday for tipping off The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times first about the memo rather than letting more Internet news sources break the story.

"Microsoft is talking about getting in the loop on the Web, and they're feeding the story to print people?" Winer wrote. "Surely there was one person inside Microsoft who felt that it was just a bit too ironic to try to get the new message out through the old guys." Both the Journal and Times have Web sites that are updated throughout the news cycle.

Frank Shaw, a spokesperson for Microsoft's public relations firm Waggener Edstrom, said Wednesday that he did not know who within Microsoft revealed the memo to the press.

Slow to Market

Another pioneer of Web-based services, Salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff, blasted what he views as the elephantine pace at which Microsoft has embraced the next generation of the Web marketplace. Salesforce.com, which offers a hosted CRM service and platform, has built its business over the last several years on the notion that hosted services would eventually replace packaged software.

In a memo viewed by the IDG News Service and sent to Salesforce.com employees Wednesday, Benioff said Microsoft's recent realization that Web-based services will eventually replace a traditional software business model is too little, too late.

"The era of the traditional software 'load, update and upgrade' business and technology model is over," Benioff wrote. "It is time for 'The Business Web.' ... Just as mainframe companies struggled for relevance in the client-server era, Microsoft finds itself in a worse position today, facing not just the obsolescence of a technology model, but a business model as well."

How Google Killed the Microsoft We Knew and Loved

Thought this morning's coverage of MS by JOHN MARKOFF in the NY Times was interesting... Here's the full text of the story, based on Ray Ozzie's new internal memos. Sounds like Ozzie is trying to shake the house up. Good for him!

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 8 - Microsoft must fundamentally alter its business or face being at a significant competitive disadvantage to a growing array of companies offering Internet services, according to memorandums written by two of the company's top executives.

Last week, Microsoft, the largest software maker, announced that it would offer two new Internet services - Windows Live and Office Live - in response to companies including Apple, Google, Salesforce.com and Yahoo that have created new businesses based on direct Internet connections with users.

In separate memos distributed internally to senior executives on Oct. 30, Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, and a chief technology officer, Ray Ozzie, warned that the new "Internet services" era could be significantly disruptive for the company.

The memos were obtained on Tuesday afternoon by The New York Times. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed their authenticity, but would not comment on their substance.

They point to a variety of threats to Microsoft's Windows and Office franchises, from advertising-supported Internet businesses like those being pursued by Google and Yahoo to, as Mr. Gates notes, a new "grass-roots adoption and popularization model" that has made it easier for start-up companies to reach large audiences at low cost.

The document written by Mr. Ozzie, titled "The Internet Services Disruption," criticizes Microsoft for moving too slowly to capitalize on technologies it developed and for failing to capitalize on industry trends.

He cites Microsoft's failure to adequately pursue a technology known as Ajax - which makes it possible for Internet-based applications to mimic the appearance and responsiveness of desktop PC programs - as a clear case of company sluggishness.

He also noted that the company was slow to move ahead on Internet searching, even after Mr. Gates gave a speech in 1991 predicting "information at your fingertips."

"We knew search would be important," Mr. Ozzie wrote, "but through Google's focus they've gained a tremendously strong position."

The memo acknowledged an earlier effort by Microsoft to shift its strategy that led to the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit of the late 1990's.

"We will design and license Windows and our Internet-based services as separate products, so customers can choose Windows with or without Microsoft's services," Mr. Ozzie wrote, indicating that the services would have software connections so that "competing services can plug into Windows in the same manner as Windows services."