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Windows Server Lost the Internet and So Will Windows (on the Desktop/Mobile)

Acid 3 for Internet Explorer 8.0
Acid3 results for Internet Explorer 8.0



Summary: Why Microsoft's erosion in the server side (usage-wise, not revenue-wise) is likely to further motivate erosion on the desktop

HE WHO controls the back room will also dominate the client side, be it cellphones and desktops or whatever. It's a well known fact and one that must really worry Microsoft.



Major Microsoft outages may lead to ASA intervention for false advertising. There is this new article about the Hotmail outage, sent to us yesterday by a reader. This whole downtime mess helps demonstrate what happens when one relies on Windows and other Microsoft products. Just watch how Microsoft fails to tackle ARM compatibility issues, even in the mythical Vista 8 which lacks support for browser plugins and is likely to suffer a backlash similar to Vista's when it's out in 2 or more years. It has been advertised since April 2009, 4+ years in advance (a time period throughout which a GNU/Linux distribution might have 8+ new versions released).

Going back to Web services, this is where GNU/Linux is clearly winning as we noted some days ago. The Inquirer has this to add:

Microsoft's IIS webserver is the second most widely used webserver daemon after Apache. While it never occupied the top spot, at one point in 2007 it was starting to get close to Apache's hugely popular webserver software. However since 2008, its market share plummeted and while it still manages to hold onto second place, there's the best part of 50 percentage points difference between Apache and Microsoft's IIS and the Vole's IIS apparently is back to the level of market share that it saw in 1997.

Apache's HTTPD webserver is popular for two reasons. It runs on just about every operating system out there, and it can be implemented in other products such as Oracle's own application server products. Microsoft's IIS, on the other hand, is closed source and runs only on Windows, so it's no surprise that it lags behind Apache's more robust and flexible sofware offering.


Microsoft failed so badly that it decided to just hijack Yahoo and eventually iinstalled a henchwoman there. Microsoft might be preparing to formally scoop up Yahoo! and maybe Nokia too, at least at a later stage (when it becomes cheap). Check out the news following Microsoft's passage of Nokia's patents to patent trolls (an antitrust issue):

Finnish mobile phone company Nokia has been deleted from the Stoxx Europe 50 index, a benchmark index owned by Deutsche Börse and the SIX Swiss Exchange Group that tallies the top 50 largest European corporations.

Late in August, Stoxx announced that Nokia would be delisted from the Stoxx 50 index, along with three banks: Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit from Italy, and GRP Societe Generale from France. Meaning the former powerhouse mobile phone maker is no longer big enough to be considered one of Europe's biggest corporations.


Steve Ballmer keeps talking about Windows phones that don't exist yet (see articles in the the previous post) and Microsoft is trying to make people think of about mythical versions of Windows rather than today's version of Windows. What does that tell us?

"In the face of strong competition, Evangelism's focus may shift immediately to the next version of the same technology, however. Indeed, Phase 1 (Evangelism Starts) for version x+1 may start as soon as this Final Release of version X."

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]



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