back to article How Google became Microsoft: A decade of hits, misses and gaffes

For the tech industry, The Noughties were very nice indeed. Except when they weren't. During the first decade of the millennium, it goes without saying that computing has changed in a big way, becoming cheaper, easier to use, more mobile, and - in the words of the Mountain View Chocolate Factory - more "webby." But it should …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Bryce Prewitt
    Heart

    Nice article.

    One correction, though:

    Microsoft were never as evil as Google are.

    Still, a great read and a very nice summation of this decade. Every other magazine in the world is deriding the 2010s as the worst decade since WW2 and its very nice to see that IT didn't quite follow that trend.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Are you sure about that?

      Which companies did Google bribe/blackmail to provide only their products at the explicit expense of others?

      When did Google get shafted in court over anti-competitive practices?

      Just how much handy software/services has Microsoft just given away compared to Google (and I'm thinking Google Maps, Streetview, Sketchup, Earth, and the list is a lot longer).

      Being very successful is not being evil, that's "business".

      I would agree that Google are far from perfect but M$ were definitely the bad boys of the last 20 years or so.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    ??? (title)

    iPhone?

    Most disruptive?

    Should it be:

    Most creative

    1. Windrose
      Grenade

      Creative?

      Do you refer, honestly, to the "smart" phone which removed pen-based input in lieu of finger-painting?

      Creative? Really?

      If the iPhone fit your needs, great. But "creative" is so very subjective, and I, for one, does not welcome our old Apple overlords.

  3. svarghese

    the end of the decade - surely not?

    as happened at the time of y2k - when world+dog were proclaiming the year 2000 as the start of the new millennium - you chaps have ended the decade a year early.

    the first decade of the noughties ends with 2010, not 2009. and the next decade begins in 2011.

    as captain alberto bertorelli was prone to say in 'allo 'allo, "what a mistaka to maka."

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge
      FAIL

      Oh christ...

      Crawl back under your rock, will ya?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Casll me crazy but...

      ...a decade is defined as a period of 10 years.

      Dunno about anyone else but with this fact in hand I see it as 2000 being year one of the naughties and 2009 being the 10th?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Y2K

      The start of the new millennium was defined in reality by the majority of people, as opposed to the pedants, as when the first number on the digital clock moved for the first time in their lives. That was what the celebrating was about. And if you want to complain that they should have used a different word because 'millennium' was already spoken for, there was a time when if I called you gay it would have meant you were happy, while now it means you're glad to be happy, regardless of what I or millions of others might want. And the choice of year to celebrate as 'the New Millennium' had sod all to do with what a bunch of saddo Viz characters think. TFFT and tomorrow is Friday.

    4. Doc Spock
      FAIL

      @svarghese

      The _start_ of the new Millenium was the point at which 1999 became 2000. Therefore, 2000 was year 1 of the noughties. A little math then tells you that 2009 is the 10th year, thus the article is correct and it is you, good sir, that is mistaken.

      I believe someone once said, "what a mistaka to maka."

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @ Doc Spock and others

        New millennium didn't start in 2000 but in 2001. If it did as you want it, then first "millennium" would have had only 999 years. That's because there's no such thing as year zero- so year one is first year of the millennium and year 1000 is last. 1001 starts new millennium and so on.

        I know I'm being anal here and it's very tempting to celebrate round numbers, but then we get stuck with first "millennium"/"century"/"decade" being one year short.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          No, it's not 'anal'

          Psycholanalysis has been long discredited. You _are_ being 'pedantic'. Sometimes it has a point. Other times it is merely 'revealing'. It implies a powerful need to be governed by absolute rules such that nothing else matters, as though if the pedants were running the world it would be like clockwork, as in 'mindless', as though perfection would be to eliminate consciousness. You pedants don't appear able to really see yourselves.

  4. Steve McIntyre

    More google bashing

    I have to wonder sometimes - did somebody at Google run over the El Reg cat at some point??

    1. Reverend Brown
      Grenade

      Nonsense.

      I've seen the vulture side itself with Google before. Once. Okay, just today, even.

  5. Allan George Dyer
    Pirate

    Worms

    The "scale and the intensity of the problem" now might not be headline grabbing, but the malware problem is worse. ILOVEYOU and Slammer had a large impact in a short time, but a malware family like Conficker is in for the long haul. The malware developers are going for criminal gain, as part of an underground economy: trojans compromise machines, bot herders control them and rent them to spammers, phishers and DDoSers. Headlines don't steal cash, so they don't want an internet-stopping incident. The move to criminal gain is the biggest change in malware over the decade.

  6. slack

    a good read

    Thanks for that round-up, it was rather interesting.

  7. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

    OLPC's XO

    Netbooks did not come out of nowhere - they were a response to the problem of small cheap computers. Notebooks had become so expensive that they were too valuable to risk using in public. People had to buy an extra license to have the same software on their notbook as their desk top and they needed an expensive power hungry CPU to run it.

    OLPC demonstrated that a useful computer could be sold for $200, and that people would buy them even if you made them jump through hoops to get them. They also demonstrated that the biggest profit centre for laptop distributors (proprietary software) could be entirely replaced with reliable free software.

    Manufacturers were dragged kicking and screaming onto the small cheap computer bandwagon (each afraid that the others would get there first). Distributors refused to sell the Linux versions because they would not be able to shift profitable MS Office and crapware with Linux machines. Even so, small cheap computers sold because people would jump through hoops to get them and efficient distributors entered the computer market.

    The term "small cheap computer" has been replaced with Netbook just like "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk drives" changed to "Redundant Array of Independent Disk drives". Removing the word "cheap" allowed prices to rise to the point where people will not risk using a Netbook in public. Manufacturers and distributors hope this will stifle sales to the point where they can claim Netbooks were fad people experimented with during a recession.

    Perhaps they are right, and they can go back to their traditional segmented market. The next bump on the road map is the work AMD has done for ARM and MIPS CPU's. Investigations into how Intel kept AMD out of the market are starting to reach conclusions. If the regulators prevent Intel's anticompetitive behaviour, AMD will not be the only company to benefit. ARM laptops will not mysteriously disappear after a quick demonstration at a trade show.

    The time has come for a new marketing name. I propose "laptop" for a silent computer that will not catch fire if you use it on your lap, uses a non-x86 CPU to keep the cost low and battery life high and has a pixel qi screen so you can read in sunlight. (Pixel Qi was started by the people who made the low cost daylight-readable display for OLPC's XO.)

  8. Steve Evans

    the iPhone has nabbed 50 per cent of worldwide smartphone usage

    Do we have to debunk your figures yet again?

    Honestly I trust HM Govts usage of statistics more than El Reg at the moment!

    1. foo_bar_baz
      Dead Vulture

      Metrics and representation

      The Reg really goes out on a limb on this one. I find it difficult to believe it's accidental either, and as a regular Reg reader this makes me sad.

      The figures in the report are from downloaded ads by a single advert broker. But smartphone usage is not the same as smartphone Internet browsing.

      "AdMob also serves mobile ads into iPhone and Android applications. The traffic from these applications is included in the Metrics report".

      Think about it a moment. What a surprise that iPhone and Android come out tops. Half the downloads were also in the USA. Final quote from the report:

      "Representativeness - AdMob does not claim that this information will be necessarily representative of the mobile Web as a whole or of any particular countrymarket."

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Short memory?

    "Imagine the world without MySQL and JBoss. That world existed just last decade, when you handed over tens of thousands of dollars per CPU for a database or application server from IBM, Oracle, or BEA Systems."

    Dudes, has everybody already forgot TomCat, Gaujos and the like? And the fact that Postgre was there before MySQL?

    1. Sellotaped to Insanity
      Thumb Up

      Indeed

      Tomcat is one of the pillars upon which JBoss was built

  10. StooMonster
    Stop

    Political colours

    "It has dismissed privacy concerns with the conviction of a committed Tory saying anyone who has a problem with intrusion online must have something to hide."

    WTF? Isn't it authoritarian nanny state Labour party behind ID cards, national identity register, massive rise in (pointless) CCTV, local councils spying on people via "anti terror" legislation, assuming every adult is a peado unless they pay for a check, etc?

    And haven't the Tories stated they are going to scrap ID cards etc?

    Tory's might have been known as the "nasty party" but at least they weren't the most evil party this country has ever seen.

  11. goggyturk

    You sure...?

    "But only now - 2009 - is the end in sight for Windows XP"

    Let's see if you repeat that one in another ten years time.... long term support until 2014 gets you half-way there.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Netbooks not such a good idea after all...

    It seems that for Acer, the NetBook was the proverbial goose with the (tiny) golden eggs.

    But for every other manufacturer, especially the big brand names in the States, they were a quick way of selling zero-margin machines to customers who then would think thrice about upgrading their existing kit.

    I myself have bought a Dell Mini 9 for €300. It has gone back for repairs twice. I hardly think Dell could have made nay money off of it. With my mobile computing needs looked after, I am in no hurry to go out and buy a bigger laptop. I have a desktop at home, which now features more as a media centre, so no real need to upgrade that either.

    When the Boxee box comes out, I might be interested in buying it.

    Point being, your analysis that Apple's hubris caused them to "miss out" on this netbook bonanza is somewhat off the mark. Given that their sales are up 21% and they may even reach 3 million units sold this quarter (and that's proper machines with fat margins, mind), I fail to understand how you could fault them for neglecting the netbook market.

    It all comes down to the myopic attention to market share, which is a pointless metric anyway.

  13. hammarbtyp

    One technology missing...

    Good article, however one important one missing - Virtualisation

  14. mmiied

    slight correction needed

    "from thumbnail storage that started at 256Mb and grew quickly to gigabits"

    the first usb pen drive I say was 16mb and Is till own some 128mb ones

  15. Tweets
    Alien

    WorldCom?

    I'm a little surprised that the near bankruptsy of WorldCom didn't actually make it into your list, considering the 70 BILLION dollars worth of fraud that was subsequently uncovered... cost thousands of IT bods their jobs and ended up in one of the biggest IT near-collapses ever!

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon
      Flame

      I like traffic lights

      Good point - Bernie still owes me £10k worth of lost shares the robbin' bastard.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    With the conviction of someone who thinks new labour is a football team

    "It has dismissed privacy concerns with the conviction of a committed Tory saying anyone who has a problem with intrusion online must have something to hide."

    I think you'll find the Tories are the ones trying to roll-back NewLabours database state - you're Google-quote is more analogous to something Wacki-Jacqui (who *should* be committed, that ill agree with!) would come out with rather than one of Camerons boobs.

    I think as politics go, f***ed up doesn't even begin to describe this decade; but as other posters said this has been a great year for technology even if it doesn't seem like it at times.

    I found this article a great read and a rare gem - nice one (apart from the Tory slagging).

    Its hard to believe not only the progress that has been made technology wise since I first cut my teeth on computing 10 years ago - and not all of it good - but also the entire business world that has eclipsed in a couple of decades industries that took over 100 years to build.

    Heres to another, even better, 10!

  17. jake Silver badge

    And the rest of us ...

    Quite simply keep plodding along, providing RealWorld[tm] solutions to today's IT problems, using today's IT tools, as best we can. It ain't exactly rocket science ...

  18. Noobius
    Thumb Down

    Ubuntu, really?

    The distro that thinks good user policy means "Simon Says"? No wonder it's so popular...it's windows in disguise.

    http://xkcd.com/149/

    1. Captain Thyratron

      sudoers

      Noobius is not in the Simon Says file. This incident will be reported.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thanks

    Very enjoyable article.

    @svarghese

    The nineties started in 1990. The noughties started in 2000. But yes, the third millennium started in 2001.

  20. Cod
    Megaphone

    What, nothing about commodity x86 virtualisation!?

    Surely that's got to be worth a paragraph or two? Nevermind the ongoing discussions on whether or not it's the panacea for our datacentre woes - it has been a game-changer.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Outdated notion of political dynamics

    Overall, Interesting but

    "With the conviction of a committed Tory saying anyone who has a problem with intrusion online must have something to hide"

    I too feel this is obviously wrong statement. Whilst you could argue that the Tories would do the exact same thing. The Labour party has or is trying to:

    Collect all of our DNA

    Use Deep packet inspection to monitor all of our on-line communication

    Register with relation to working (for a very limited time) with children

    Force ID cards on us

    Collect biometric data from us

    Define what porn made by consenting adults we can watch

    Force us to decrypt our hard drive on their demand

    Other things I can't remember ?

    (All this why they tried to keep their expenses secret)

    I personally think its about time people stopped thinking of Labour as for the people and the moral choice because they are not. The last decade has proved that. (I don't know if the Tories will be better, but I know what Labour has done and is trying to do)

  22. John Sanders
    Megaphone

    Oy!

    "has put the iPhone in classrooms, barrooms, and boardrooms"

    And the bathroom, never forget the bathroom!

  23. Christian Berger

    The netbook was not surprising

    I mean everybody wanted smaller, portable and cheap computers back then, it's just that the market didn't provide them. The OLPC was the first actual device that was close to what we wanted.

    If a company would just ask around what people wanted, they could easily be years ahead of the competition. Currently it's just trial and error.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tories

    Nasty part indeed. I can only think the posters are too young to remember.

    For the record if you check the voting on things like

    DNA retention

    Force you to register when working with children

    Collect biometric data

    Define what you can view

    Force you to provide encryption keys

    etc etc ... The tories were there lock step with the government of the day. As a party in opposition there was bloody little oppostion. They will continue the control of the public space and to my mind put even more pressure on the private space (where we still have many more rights)

    Just like they removed the right to congregate

    Nobody will ever remove these new "responsibilities" they are with us to stay and to expect the tories to correct the drift is really living in cloud cukoo land.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Expenses

    LOL .. you lot are a laugh a minute. The whole house didnt want us to view their expenses but if you break it down the tories were by far the biggest claimers.

    New duck pond anyone.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Dash it!

    Why do the best posts always seem to run "This post has been deleted by a moderator"?

    1. pslam
      Thumb Down

      Re: Dash it!

      Yeah I've noticed the better posts get deleted - possibly just fanbois clicking the 'report' button on anything they disagree with. Can we please raise ourselves above the 'Google is Evil' meme that's popular at the moment? They may be a huge company with lots of data but they haven't done anything wrong with it. It's all very well throwing the words 'antitrust' and 'privacy' around a lot in a story, but 100 irrelevant pieces of information and circumstance still does not add up to a single fact. Come on, you guys should be better than bullies - where's the real dirt, if there is any?

      I wonder which company in the 2010s will be the new easy target meme? I'd wager on 'Ubuntu is Evil' by 2012, which gives it maybe half a year of rampant defamation before the end of the world.

  27. The First Dave
    Badgers

    File Sharing

    "big media won't let you run an illegal file-sharing site"

    Actually, that should read:

    big media won't let you run the largest file-sharing site of the day.

    Plenty of smaller sites are surviving just fine.

    With regard to USB, I can't believe you didn't mention that it was Apple that really popularised it.

    1. Chris Lovell
      Stop

      Er, no...

      Curious, I could have sworn that Apple preferred to promote their patented Firewire alternative, which they earned a nice amount on due to royalties, but manufacturers chose to go with USB because it was cheaper, and Apple had no choice but to follow suit.

  28. Ash!

    Sub-laptops

    No mention of Libretto? Shame on you.

  29. Gav H.
    Thumb Up

    A good read

    I thoroughly enjoyed that.

  30. Peter Kay

    JBoss? Since when?

    I've rarely heard of anyone - commercial or otherwise, using JBoss for anything notable. I'll grant that MySQL is quite popular, although personally I prefer PostgreSQL as it was designed a proper database first and serving websites fast second..

    It's entirely true that for the most part handhelds have been replaced by phones, but it's more accurate to say that the iPhone introduced something that's basically usable into a market that was fairly moribund. Palm have repeatedly failed, even when they had the market to themselves. Symbian have failed to capitalise on Psion's legacy and Microsoft have produced an uneven set of Windows Mobile releases.

    Tthe iPhone is only the most disruptive device (in the mobile segment : not full stop) because there's little competition, and even then it's not exactly a fully functional phone, either.

    It's also highly incorrect to say that recession was the much needed correction of the decade. The dotcom boom and subsequent bust largely fucked over companies that did not have a viable business model and was entirely predictable to anyone with a brain. The legacy of it was a reduction in ridiculous valuations (not an elimination, sadly, otherwise Facebook should have floated at a couple of million maximum).

    This ongoing recession was perhaps also predictable to some, but had entirely different causes. It affects many more people than those related to dotcom enterprises and despite the major corrective actions and supposed safeguards put in place, there is every appearance that vested interests are being maintained and this will happen again at some future point..

  31. Efros
    Paris Hilton

    Twat of the decade

    Type your comment here — plain text only, no HTML

  32. Steven Hunter

    Just stop it. Stop it right now!

    FFS stop calling this last decade the "Noughties".

    First of all it's spelled "Naught". Second of all it sounds *unbelievably* stupid.

    @svarghese - The decade starts counting at zero, just like computers do.

  33. J 3
    Headmaster

    Good...

    Fun read, but a pedantic point -- or an over-J's-head point, choose.

    Kleptomaniac? As far as I know that refers to people who can stop themselves stealing stuff, even when they do have the money to buy it in the first place. I'm no fan of Oracle, but I'd say they bought everything you mention there, or did I miss something (the sarcasm, maybe?). Shopaholic would probably be the more accurate description there, methinks.

    1. James O'Brien
      FAIL

      Id have to say

      That you missed the buss by a mile on the sarcasm on this. Typical though what with your rampant BS on most comments. Sure they bought the place but what then happened to the companies? Not to mention how many did they muscle out and get for a dirt cheap price?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Pot, meet kettle.

        ...there we were, rolling along, bit of banter here and their, no real petty name calling or insults, and the James O'Brien roles up with his usual polemics. You forget to have a go at Apple, James, you're slacking! Merry Christmas!

    2. pladys
      Grenade

      Shopaholic

      I can live with shopaholic, but kleptomaniac is just a step too far.

  34. longshot
    FAIL

    reimagined

    The worst buzz word of the weakest concept of the decade.

  35. Big-nosed Pengie
    FAIL

    @Steven Hunter

    "The decade starts counting at zero, just like computers do."

    No, the decade starts counting from 1, just like computers don't. Our Lord Jezuz Krise was born in Year 1 (whenever that happened to be), so that was when it started. Apparently Jehova must have willed it that way.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Tombo

    Cracked agrees that the "Noughties" is a stupid moniker and prefers the "Dorkade" which cracked me up.

  37. Efros

    @ Steven Hunter

    nought [nɔːt]

    n also naught ought aught

    (Mathematics) another name for zero: used esp in counting or numbering

    n & adj & adv

    a variant spelling of naught

    [Old English nōwiht, from ne not, no + ōwiht something; see whit]

  38. raving angry loony

    not really.

    Google is NOT Microsoft - not even close. I can, in fact, choose to not use Google products. I can block all Google IP addresses and still go about my business (or have my clients go about theirs).

    Unfortunately, in today's world, I CANNOT choose to not use Microsoft products. Microsoft is a persistent, invasive virus that has infested every corner of the business world over the last 30 years. I literally cannot extirpate Microsoft from the infrastructure of all my clients. I try, HOW I try, but the infection is just too widespread. I can minimize the damage by putting Microsoft-only applications in virtual machines and letting the clients run other operating systems, but I CANNOT completely get rid of Microsoft. Yet, anyway. Meanwhile, a succession of governments (US and others) have continued to let it get away with anti-competitive behaviour that continues those unethical and anti-competitive practices, and have continued to allow Microsoft to bribe or force downstream "clients" (serfs?) to force Microsoft on THEIR clients. Witness the still huge number of websites out there that REQUIRE the use of I.E. - even government websites - or the sheer bulk of specialist applications that ONLY run under Microsoft, when ALL these websites and programs could be done as platform independent programs. Every single one of these businesses that I've talked to and who were actually candid with me has received some form of incentive from Microsoft (or one of its coterie of "partners") to make their products Microsoft-only.

    So no, Google has a long way to go before it's another Microsoft. Hopefully it won't be allowed to get that pervasive. I won't hold my breath. The USA just adores monopolies, especially when those monopolies are held by American corporations.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    @raving angry loony

    "I CANNOT choose to not use Microsoft products."

    Yes you can, but if your clients choose to use Microsoft, or don't care less if they do, then that's your tough titties.

    Much as I have had issues with Microsoft, let's remember that they WERE the David fighting Goliath and had they not succeeded then we'd all be pissing around doing not much useful via an IBM or Sun mainframe. At least through their dominance and greed they made a huge difference to countless millions of people in a very positive way.

    Yes they may have over-extended themselves, got really lazy, stole ideas, etc, etc, but credit where credit is due. Inevitably their success means they are almost all pervasive....but yes you can choose the next overlords in Apple or Google or Linux as you wish, and yes you need to respect your clients wishes as well, instead of whinging!

  40. Mark Jonson
    FAIL

    Clarity Fail

    "This after Redmond had laughed off the iPhone as something ill-suited for serious use and refused to bring touch to Windows Mobile."

    Windows Mobile and its predecessor so-to-speak, Windows CE, has had touch capabilities since version 1.0 came out on November 16, 1996; over 10 years before the iPhone ever saw the light of day. If you meant multi-touch support, then you should say so. Because that technology didn't exist in any device back then. I know it's popular for journalists to take easy jabs at Microsoft, but at least get your facts right when you do.

  41. jnievele

    USB storage

    USB thumbdrives didn't start at 256MB. I still got my 2001-vintage Trek Thumbdrive with a huge 16MB and that wasn't the smallest they sold back then.

    Mind you, it even needed a driver to work under Windows 98 or 2k, but with the 2k driver it STILL works under Vista :-)

  42. o0splitpaw0o
    FAIL

    Time Warner's purchase of bucket-shop ISP AOL in January 2000...

    Uhm, got to correct you on this... AOL bought TW

    In 2000, a new company called AOL Time Warner, with Steve Case as chairman, was created when AOL purchased Time Warner for US$164 billion.[11] The deal, announced on 10 January 2000[12] and officially filed on 11 February 2000,[13] employed a merger structure in which each original company merged into a newly created entity. The Federal Trade Commission cleared the deal on December 14, 2000,[14] and gave final approval on January 11, 2001;

  43. Mark Randall 1
    Alert

    USB Size

    USB sticks started much lower than 256MB. I have an old 32MB IBM stick around somewhere, and that was the largest of several offerings when I got it (circa 2001).

  44. Ritesh Tendulkar
    Thumb Down

    VMWare?

    No mention of VMWare?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like