Google-Sun Alliance Minimal Threat to Microsoft

The announcement from Google and Sun Microsystems that they are going to team up got many a pundits’ tongue wagging about the challenge the alliance poses to Microsoft’s market position. They could be further from the truth, but not by much. Microsoft will continue to control the operating system market for as long as a commercial OS business model remains viable. That, however, may not be permanent, but any change will come from consumers rather than suppliers of computer software.

In the interests of full disclosure, general honesty and answering the question of whose rice one eats, the Kensington Review generates a small stream of revenue from ads placed on this site by Google. In addition, this journal abandoned Microsoft products some months ago, and every edition is produced using Fedora Linux and OpenOffice.

According to the press release on Google’s website, “Under the agreement, Sun will include the Google Toolbar as an option in its consumer downloads of the Java Runtime Environment on http://java.com. In addition, the companies have agreed to explore opportunities to promote and enhance Sun technologies, like the Java Runtime Environment and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite available at http://www.openoffice.org.” [links in the original] Nice sentiments insofar as these are useful, but they are hardly enough to put Bill Gates in a welfare line.

What poses a much bigger threat to Microsoft is the fact that there is free software out there that will make a computer run. This is of particular importance in the developing world, where consumers are more likely to object to an extra $60 for an operating system over and above the cost of the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse and the actual guts of the machine. This is of even greater importance to governments and corporations based in the developing economies of the world. When someone needs 1,000 computers, that $60 per machine will mount up. Why pay for something that’s free?

Mr. Gates’ people will argue that Linux and other freeware offerings aren’t as good as theirs, and although they are wrong, free software doesn’t have to be as good. It must merely be functional; good enough will do. Sun and Google remain committed to turning a profit, and that is why their efforts will not amount to the great anti-Windows revolution. In the end, if there is to be such a thing, it won’t be enough to sell a different package. The entire business model must change because Microsoft is, economically if not legally, a monopoly capable of seeing off every challenge within its business paradigm.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
Produced using Fedora Linux.


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