Summary: Encouraging developments as put in the words of some Windows users who see Microsoft suffering; Desktop GNU/Linux market share up 0.3% in the past month, according to W3Schools

ONLY days after the word about the death of "KIN" had come out, Microsoft announced another round of layoffs [1, 2]. Even Microsoft boosters like Gavin Clarke couldn't put lipstick on this pig. He decided to write:

If killing the KIN after just two months was bad for Microsoft, what happened next is far worse – especially for its corporate captains.

This single act has blown the lid off what appears to be smoldering frustrations inside the consumer products group and divisions between that group and the rest of the company.

Allegations have been flying of autocratic leadership, incompetence, ignorance of what it takes to build consumer products, and an uninvolved and indifferent senior management. These have mingled with demands that heads must roll in the wake of KIN's death.

The shouts and claims have been posted on the Mini Microsoft blog, a notoriously reliable source of insider information from anonymous company insiders.

[...]

Some have attempted to mitigate the failure of KIN. While some reports claim just 500 KINs were sold, others have claimed the number is more than 8,000. But how many phones are in circulation is irrelevant: the phone was killed after just six weeks, having cost Microsoft "billions".

Dana Blankenhorn brings Linux into it:

For decades Microsoft has lived by Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). Now, in an ironic twist of fate they’re being strangled with it, and by a Linux distro.

That’s what Chrome OS is, you know. A Linux. Google’s strategy has always been to use Chrome against Microsoft’s desktop monopoly, and through a series of selective leaks that strategy appears to be coming together.

[...]

That is precisely what Google is engaged in here. And what’s the headline from Redmond while all this is going on? Lay-offs.

Blankenhorn also criticises Google for not yet deviating from Microsoft's enablement of tyranny [1, 2].

Forget the fig leaf of the Hong Kong work-around. China beat down Google, because Google got no support from its government for uncensored search.

Google could do more to suppress a suppressive regime, but Google is a business. That whole scene it made in China was a good PR move.

In any event, Google's Android helps put Linux in the pockets of another million or so people per week. As Pogson points out, the market share of desktop GNU/Linux is climbing too:

There are more signs of cracks in the monopoly these days:

* share of web stats keeps dropping (87.8%) * mercy-killing of KIN as Android overtakes that other OS in smart-thingies * grumbling in the ranks about KIN and leadership/openness to new ideas

[...]

Now, I don’t take web stats for gospel especially when there is clear bias in favour of that other OS and Apple, but if consistently calculated the same way each time, I find them useful indicators of trends. Clearly the share of that other OS is shrinking and much of the fall-off of XP is going to GNU/Linux and MacOS. From May to June, W3Schools shows XP down 0.7% of share and GNU/Linux up 0.3% and MacOS up 0.1%.

It's probably the trend that matters. ⬆