What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

I have never met Mr. Starks, better known as Helios. Nor visited his educational charity, the HeliOS Project in Austin Texas. Yet, I was glad to be able to help. My job as a Linux system administrator, a debt-free life style, and great friends that I would have never met had I stayed loyal to Microsoft products have given me a life that is better that I deserve. Helios is an easy choice to invest in because he gives +1000% of himself to make free software available. When Helios gives away a computer because he believes it is a human right for a child to have such essential educational tool, more open source contributors are born. The census of non-Microsoft users will exponentially grow at a pace that tips the scale. On June 30, 2011 the change will be apparent.

Had Helios retired this summer, no one would blame him since he had already given back plenty.  Yet he steps it up a notch by giving back to his mentor., on his blog he writes…

I told them about how a global community came together and helped me heal from an illness that could have easily killed me.  I told them about a global effort to bring computing freedom to people who before now, had no idea they had a choice.

Open source is not just a methodology for releasing software for people like Helios and I. It is a way of life that we pay for by giving back in abundance with the resources we have to our avail. So, when Helios posted that the founder of the website that him understand Linux was dying, I was happy to help again. This way the website: brunolinux.com and the “Bruno Knaapen Technology Learning Center” will leave a legacy.

With open source, we all own the product of all of the contributions since the founding of UNIX in 1969. With Microsoft, one corporation owns the products such as Windows 7, Internet Explorer, or Office 2007. Quality software, when the code is freely available, lasts generations. Inferior software, when the code is proprietary, dies when the company who owns it no longer thinks it is profitable.

Many Microsoft products have died because they were no longer profitable to Microsoft. Here are some examples…

Microsoft Money was a household financial package. It has been replaced by online services such as mint.com, personal banking accounts with web access, Intuit products, Moneydance, and gnucash. All but Microsoft Money had options for MacOS and Linux users. Everyone is balancing their checkbooks without Microsoft. The world goes on.

Microsoft Encarta in its hay-day was the ultimate in hyper-linked encyclopedias. I even owned editions from the mid-nineties on CD. The release yearly paradigm is no longer useful in the information age. Going online, however, did not save Encarta, due to the popular community-contributed no-cost Wikipedia. One company could not hire enough writers and editors to compete with the Wikipedia’s massive almost 15 million article collection contributed by unpaid volunteers. The world is better served with over 200 languages without help from Microsoft.

Microsoft Works was Microsoft’s first office suite product combining a word processor, spreadsheet, and database. While Microsoft Office components such as Powerpoint can be purchased outside the suite bundle, Works was an all-or-nothing deal. While it came at a small enough price that computer manufactures could ship Works with a new computer, it could not compete with other office suites. While Works suffered from lacking a MacOSX version, Microsoft Office supports the modern Apple operating system. By favoring the more expensive product, Office, Microsoft customers will be looking elsewhere. In fact, Microsoft admits that OpenOffice.org is more powerful than Works.

As Microsoft product offerings decrease, the neighborhood of open source users increases. Each citizen of open source is doing their part when they they share with their friends, coworkers, and family the tools that have enriched their lives. Every contribution, no matter how small is an investment in a better world.

We will win. I promise.

Come June 30, 2011, the world will understand they do not need Microsoft.

This website and associated services has cost me over $350 for the full 2 years of service. I admit that it is a little silly

Some cold days ahead for Microsoft, thanks to radix999 on flickr

over a $20 bet. When some people make predictions, they say something without ever expecting any accountability. By being as public as possible, I have the opportunity to document the process. I celebrate both the journey and the eventual victory. Some people fly to Las Vegas for March Madness to place a wager on their favorite teams where the wager itself costs more than the trip. No matter how this goes, Nick and I are having a blast along the way.

Discussing the fate of Microsoft been so much fun, one commenter we only know as darryl wants in on the action. My hesitation is not about the money I will not bet you, darryl, 1000 United States dollars because I do not know you. Moreover, your IP address suggests you are from Australia so I don’t know how we could set up such an arrangement. By the way, you never answered my question regarding if you are a Microsoft employee.

In any case, this is my counter offer. I buy 33 shares of Red Hat. You buy 66 shares of Microsoft. Since both companies stock prices are about $30/share, we will accomplish the same idea as your proposal without ever having to meet.

For the record, I never said that Microsoft is evil. It is actually a little said says I, a Microsoft user since 1992 and a Linux user since 1999. Microsoft used to make products which made customers happy. That all changed with Vista. Without Bill Gates, Microsoft has been sinking in turbulent seas. So what is Microsoft doing about it? They’re hiring a “Competitive Marketing Manager.” and strangely, I meet the qualifications. Should I apply?

Nah… I will just stick to my wacky prediction:

Come June 30, 2011, Microsoft will no longer have majority market share.

Since I am footing the hosting bill of whatwillweuse.com, I invite you, the reader, to make your own technology prediction for 2010-2011 on my hosting dime by leaving a comment in this post. I promise to continue to host this post until at least January 4, 2012 to see what happens just for fun.

Here are some examples to get you started…

What will happen with the mobile market?

Will MySQL fork?

What will the clouds look like a year from now?

Will Steve Ballmer be fired?

How far will Apple’s market share grow?

I predicted last month that W3Counter would deliver a less-than-50% IE use on the February 2010 report thus winning 1/3 of the bet.

As I close this post, I wish to toast Microsoft itself, as your Windows have seen better days but bravo for shipping Windows 7 before calendar 2010….

The French roll down the Champs-Élysées with Thunderbird in their arsenal

We have only 575 days until Microsoft’s market share crumbles. Some may call me crazy since even more favorable market share counters like w3counter list Linux market share hovering close to 2% and MacOSX close to 7.5%. Why do I maintain big and bold claim that Nick will pay me $20 when Microsoft no longer has majority market share as soon as two summers from now?

Nick is scared he will lose the $20. It’s true. He has emailed me privately to try to back-out of the bet. The game has been changed by Google’s ChromeOS.  With a fast power-on to browser promise, ChromeOS is going to completely destroy the paradigm of what a computer really is.

All sorts of software-as-a-service applications will be at your finger tips in seconds after sitting down in front of your ChromeOS system. Meanwhile, Windows 7 will make minutes feel like an eternity in comparison while installing those updates before you are even allowed to login.

But what will be the “killer application”  that makes everyone drop exactly what they are using an go ChromeOS? Everybody just wants to get to the top three internet websites we all use now.

1. Google for search, Google docs, and gmail.
2. Facebook for social networking and games.
3. Yahoo! for search, mail, games, news, and flickr.

Nick fears that the Internet itself will be the killer app to bring Microsoft to tremble.

A killer application makes everyone drop the tool that they are using because another brand’s troll brings a more attractive results. Everyone could see why 8-bit gaming was more fun than Atari’s games with Ninendo released Super Mario Brothers, the most sold game record for over 15 years. It caused people to not care if they owned a gazillion Atari cartridges already, Nintendo was where all of the serious gamers were. Then, everyone wanted Mario and Nintendo-branded games, even those who owned zero home video game consoles. Nick fears that everyone will want ChromeOS and Linux systems in order to get to the internet faster than what Microsoft can offer.

The truth of the matter is Gandhi-Con4 has already started.  Brazil, the 10th largest world economy and growing, dumped Microsoft in favor of Linux years ago in a desire for transparency and has been tickeled pink ever since. The French Army just quit Outlook in favor of the open source email client, Thunderbird. It does not stop there, remember, countries in every corner of the world have ordered One-Laptop-Per-Child netbooks that run Linux. Tax-payers of the world will see this trend and get sick and tired of seeing that Microsoft is on their corporate welfare dole.

With killer applications abound, Microsoft will not hold majority market share come June 30, 2011.

What will we use now has a twitter account: wwwuse

The amount of links that people have sent me over private email and facebook have been overwhelming. If you have breaking news to bring to our attention, please leave it in the comments or tweet it. Please tag things that talk about Microsoft’s market share as #wwwuse or put it to our attention with @wwwuse.

EDIT: Or @bethlynn if on Identi.ca

On 21:35 eastern standard time, I attempted to execute a search with bing, but I could not. Why? The host www.bing.com could not resolve. For every minute after that until 22:15 I saw the same error as seen in this post. Many other folks I know online could not reach bing either for this time. It returned to service without any explanation. The issue was present on many different operating systems and web browsers.

This yet another reason why Microsoft can not compete in the software-as-a-service market. Will we bing on June 30, 2011? I bet not.

during outage

After the outage like nothing happened

Update: BBC reported that the outage was only 30 minutes due to a configuration change gone bad.

Update2: There was a story on the bing blog the morning afterward concerning the outage. Thank you Microsoft for approving my comment.

Yesterday when I got home from the office supply store, my husband asked, “Do you want to go to the mall?” This time we went to South Hills Village Mall which is not the same mall where I picked up my Droid. Just three weeks ago, my Droid was purchased one day after its release. My husband lovingly realizes that I am thrilled by gadgets as some girls would be thrilled by jewellery and agreed to make it my birthday present. I am still wowed by the Droid. My husband suggested that we go to the Verizon store to see if there were any Droid accessories available. They were sold out. Within line of site to the Verizon store there is a Droid display which will be staffed every holiday weekend. Yes. A whole display just for one telephone product. There were many people who stopped by to play with the many Droids on display but all but one booth employee were too shy to pose as I excitedly took a photo with my Droid. The picture you see in this post was immediately uploaded to facebook and flickr.com. No need to sync the phone with my desktop at home. This is when I realized that I was already living in the cloud.
Cloud computing that is. Google stores my calendar and contacts so I do not need to worry about backing that up to my PC. Flickr.com, a Yahoo! site, stores my photos. Facebook makes it crazy easy to share my picture that I just took on my phone with all my friends… all of this without leaving the mall. The Droid is not exactly forthcoming about being a product built on Linux and to some, this is a good idea. Still, if they would mention Linux in even a quarter of their advertising and posters, they would be by far the single marketing campaign of Linux product: far beyond the tux500. Google, Motorola, and Verizon have marketed the Droid phone as the anti-iPhone. In one TV commercial they pointed out that Google encourages open development for its “market” of apps. This is important because it allows and even encourages individuals and even competitors like Yahoo! to make applications for the Android platform. Why not go on to boast that they are built on the stability of an 18-year old operating system called Linux? The power of the Android Linux open platform is the whole power behind DroidDoes. Think that this open source mobo-jumbo can not effect the consumer, why in the world won’t Apple let Google implement voice search? Anyhow, Android Linux phones will be holiday gift giving favourite. Want your own Droid? Get it dropped straight to your back yard. My mother has already bought a phone, the Android-based Moment because she is a loyal Sprint customer. I played with it for 5 minutes and it had many of the Droid features but it was slow in comparison. Mom still intends on buying two more Moments for her sister and her brother-in-law.

At least in one corner of the South Hills Village Mall, Microsoft lacks majority market share on November 28, 2009.

A "Demotivational Poster" for Microsoft: "Regrets Those were the droids you were looking for"

So what do you have to say for yourself Microsoft?

As Chairman, Bill Gates stayed pretty silent on the Android issue at the November 19, 2009 stockholders meeting. Steve Ballmer, the current CEO of Microsoft, decided to discuss the issue instead.

“We have greater market share to Google Android. Our objective is to have a leading position among these competitors,” Mr. Ballmer said.

Well, when we have the 4th quarter numbers for SmartPhone market-share, I believe that the Linux-based phone share will be above Microsoft. I do not even think that Nick would bet me another $20. Oh, by the way, Nick has an Android phone. He has been using it since June 2009.

Mr. Ballmer also boldly made another ten year prediction on November 19, 2009.

“When we meet back here in 10 more years, we will look back and say, ‘Wow, wasn’t technology really primitive in 2009? Computers didn’t recognize our speech, they didn’t recognize our gestures .. we didn’t have instantaneous access to the world’s information, we still used pen and paper.’ … Microsoft is investing to be at the forefront of these changes.”

Sorry, Microsoft, you blew it. The Droid already does all that thanks to Google. These were the droids we were looking for.

You had all of the resources to make it happen in 1999:

• You had three of your founders as the richest men in the world. The MSFT stock had peaked at $119 (US $60.928 adjusting for splits) that year. If the 3 billion in research was not enough, you could have found the money somewhere. Now you are only about half of the company value you were ten years go. Where did all the money go? You still do not have a competitive product to show for it. Pink will not pan out. Vaporware is the kindest way to put it. Your own employee put it much more harshly. Success can not be bought.
• You had over ten years between Mr. Gates’ June 15, 1999 testimony and November 6, 2009 Droid release date. Time was on your side as you were already a giant name in computing when Google was a start-up under your radar.
• You had just secured over a hundred licensing agreements for all sorts of “intelligent devices” like personal digital assistants.
• Your company head-count has doubled over the past ten years yet suffers from a brain drain of engineering talent according to this another anonymous Microsoft employee.

How did you let a couple of kids from Stanford who just announced their little search company start-up in the summer of June 1999 beat you to your own Congressional promise?

You a great excuse: you were in court the entire time.

First you had to convince the Unitied States Department of Justice that you were not being monopolistic when it comes to the desktop operating system and web browser. You sited Apple, Linux, and Netscape as competitors in this space. You lost but later you settled with the United States while litigating Netscape to death. Your 750 million settlement with AOL/Netscape bought you browser market share. Even though you supposedly out of court by 2003, you were funding SCO in hopes of killing Linux. Now that SCO is bankrupt, you are busy defending your office suite in court with the Word patent suit and Novell is still suing you over Word Perfect. Do you still find it profitable to sue smaller companies that use Linux in their talking-devices based on the Linux kernel like the TomTom?

You have failed in court.

You fail to profit.

You fail to buy your competitor, Yahoo!

Your corporate ally, Best Buy, is tanking too.

The ultimate problem for you, Microsoft, is that you can not buy and/or sue open source out of business. Sourceforge does not even scratch the surface at 32 million visitors monthly.That’s right are are millions of us who passionately support non-proprietary software that we use. Is that why you have sponsored the open source census? Face it: you can not innovate faster than open source either. With 2 million of user/developer accounts on Sourceforge alone, your 93,000 person company seems really small. PCWorld asks: Has Microsoft Lost the War against Open Soruce? The answer is yes. Some say you died in 2005.

No matter how you look at it, the facts remain. You lost…

• The kernel behind Google Android phones like the Droid is Linux.
• Netscape is now the open source browser Firefox. There have been over 400 million downloads since I made the bet with Nick in June 2009.
• Sun Microsystems, one your targets via SCO suits, is still sponsoring Open Office. In a few short months, you will have lost majority market share to the Open Office suite.
• The Google/Ubuntu hybrid web-optimized Linux system called ChromeOS will hit your operating system, browser, and office suite market share hard.

Think your cloud computing product, “Azure”, can help you? Your lack of attention to high performance computing has sunk your top500.org market share down to an embarrasing 1%. Why should the world trust your ability to perform under a cycle renting paradigm?

It is all over. You failed your users, your government, and your former CEO’s vision. Your market share is tanking and will be less than half by June 30, 2011. Nick will pay me $20. This personal wager made at the South East LinuxFest in June 2009 has enough interest to attract over 12,000 readers in just a few months. A world with significantly less Microsoft is afoot and this website gives people a forum to talk about it.

This is the beginning of the end for you Microsoft.

“On June 30, 2011, Microsoft will lack majority market share,” says Beth Lynn Eicher.

For a few months I have considered what my next phone will be. I knew that it had to be either Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint since other carriers do not have a good reputation for quality coverage in my area.

I also knew I wanted a SmartPhone which gave me several operating systems options (in order of 2qtr market share):
A. Nokia which runs a platform which is striving to be open source: Symbian OS, AT&T was the only carrier for them but I did not see any for sale at the store I visited.
B. Blackberry which runs the closed-source platform: RIM, was available in many models and carriers but the lack of availability of 3rd party applications kept me away.
C. iPhone which runs the BSD-based platform produced by Apple has a significant amount of popularity due to the App Store. I passed because I did not want something that was defective by design.
D. Microsoft Mobile based phones are around but decreasing in relevance. The reviews totally tank it.
E. Android is an Linux-based operating system from Google which is the most open Linux-based commercially available phone on the market is the one I picked because it seemed to have the most welcoming developer community.
F. Palm is currently in transition to the Linux-based OS called “Palm PRE.” I doubt that the developer community will keep up with the Android and iPhone communities.

On Saturday November 7, I went to the poshest shopping mall around town to make sure that my options were the best that money could buy. Let’s face it, I am a Linux enthusiast and the idea of buying a Linux phone had me thrilled. Decked out in my Google Open Source Programs Office t-shirt, I knew I was going Droid. The Motorola “Droid” model is the newest Android phone for the Verizon 3G Network. None the less, I had intended to go to all three stores: Verizon, AT&T and Sprint but there was not a Sprint store in that mall. At the AT&T store I observed no Microsoft phones but several iPhones for sale. There were not any customers there beside me at the AT&T store yet nobody tried to sell me an iPhone. It is like nobody cares about the iPhone anymore. Then I quickly moved onto Verizon store where there was a line of people just to touch one of the two Android phones they had on display. There was one Windows phone on display but everybody ignored it despite it being right next to the Droid. Since I already have a contract with Verizon, the process was simple. I gave my phone number and account PIN to the sales clerk and the Droid was mine. As an added bonus, the clerk explained that I would pay less than I was paying for my monthly service because I wanted to use gmail instead of a Microsoft Exchange email account. While my Droid was configured for my account, I continued to browse the store and ended up buying a mifi too which is a portable access point that does not care what operating system I use.

The Droid itself is amazing. What really knocks my socks off is the phone is tied in with Google Voice so I can make all of the calls I want for free without going into my calling minutes. It also ties in well with all sorts of software-as-a-service websites, not just Google’s cloud.

As I was using the Droid, it reminded me of Bill Gates’ Congressional testimony ten years ago….

I’ve waited for ten years for Bill Gates and Microsoft to deliver the innovation that was promised in the “not too distant future.” Ten years and 3 billion dollars later you have no product to show for it, Microsoft. I bought a product produced by Google, a company that will destroy Microsoft’s market share now through June 30, 2011. Should I wait for Microsoft to catch up? I am sorry Mr. Gates, I am afraid I can’t do that. I’ve already gone for the 2010 Linux Odyssey.

A little over 3 months ago, I blogged about how Yahoo! and how the continue to compete and do well where Microsoft falters. When other bloggers speculated that Microsoft was going to acquire Yahoo!, I assured you all that Microsoft was in no position to buy Yahoo! The next day, when the 10 year Microsoft-Yahoo! deal came down. I did not call doom to Yahoo! Instead I said, “In this deal, Microsoft will do the expensive work of maintaining a search engine and Yahoo will monetise.” on my July 30, 2009 post.

Yodel Anecdotal of Flickr

I recently heard new facts from Yahoo insiders about what the Microsoft
deal is really about.

• The deal only pertains to searches executed on http://www.yahoo.com Other Yahoo! web properties such as shine, games, mail, video, finance, or flickr are unaffected.
• Yahoo! will still execute the search.
• When Yahoo! searches, it will pass the query to Bing who will return a targeted ad on http://www.yahoo.com
• Yahoo! takes Microsoft’s money for 10 years.
• With the making money off of search problem out of the way, Yahoo! can focus on monetising it’s other web properties.
• Yahoo! will get back to the business of integrating on-line communities and selling advertising.

Microsoft desperately asked Yahoo! to let Microsoft be a contractually committed Yahoo!’s loyal customer for 10 years.  I don’t blame Yahoo! for accepting this deal. Instead, I applaud them for taking Microsoft’s money while the checks still clear. Also, I predict that Yahoo!’s search results will be better quality since they will not worry about keeping the advertisers happy. It sounds like a sweet deal for Yahoo!

What does that mean for Yahoo! users? Yahoo! will succeed because they listen: Yahoo! will focus customizing your internet experience at http://you.yahoo.com

Microsoft will continue to mock their own users and deny their own failures with expensive marketing campaigns like “Windows 7, that’s my idea”

Yahoo! listens to bloggers too. CEO Carol Bartz just said so. Ms Bartz believes consumers look to blogs when making up their minds about a product.

Could this blog be making a difference?  We have been writing about the downfall of Microsoft only five months and we now have 12,000 readers, more than half of which do not use Microsoft products for their operating system or web browser. This is evidence of a real market trend that internet giant and software-as-a-service pioneer Yahoo! needs to watch.

Guess what folks, Yahoo! has asked me if I would like to come work for them. They happen to be looking sysadmins who can handle working with open source technologies in large scale deployments. While I feel flattered by the invitation to apply, but I am quite happy where I am.

Yahoo! happens to have 23 positions currently for top-notch system engineers who can work with monumental scale. They particularly need perl/python systems programmers who can engineer solutions for the unique level of complexity the user communities demands. If you would like to help Carol Bartz build awesome technology and communities that will keep Yahoo! a fierce Microsoft competitor, I urge you to apply for a Yahoo! job as a Senior Production Engineer, Service Engineer, Grid/Haddoop Engineer, and Cloud Service Storage Engineer. Serious and intelligent individuals can contact Mr. Long Phung, a Yahoo! technical recruiter. His user name on the yahoo-inc dot com domain is his first initial and last name without any punctuation. Additional openings are available at http://careers.yahoo.com.

This is an unpaid endorsement opinion of Beth Lynn Eicher.

Just to clarify, if execute a search on any other Yahoo! website besides www.yahoo.com, it was not brought to you by Bing. Furthermore, if you see a Microsoft ad on any Yahoo! site, it is because Microsoft opened their pockets independent of the deal at hand. Go ahead Yahoo! and soak Microsoft dry on all fronts.

Like Bill Gates, I too coveted mobile hardware that I could connect to all of my favorite online resources. Ten years ago I was low on cash since I was a college junior who was still living with Mom. At the end of that summer, I bought my first Linux desktop with what little I could earn from the internship. Surely I thought that Mr. Gates would beat me to it, with the 3 billion he swore he would spend on making such a device.

Two years later, I went back to full time work. Then I decided to buy the best solution that I could afford: a Samsung SCH 3500. This thing had a “microbrowser.” Microbrowser did not even begin to describe the experience of trying to experience the world wide web via a 1″ monochrome LCD. Most websites, were downright painful to use but Yahoo! had made their search, maps, and email usable: as long as you could tolerate numberpad word-bubblesort text entry.  The data was crazy expensive too with no monthly quota. The cool thing is that you could tether it with a Handspring Visor with PalmOS. When the Samsung and the Handspring were connected, you could use the phone as a serial modem to dial out to any dialup isp. On the wonderful 3 inch monochrome Handspring screen, I could browse the web and even IRC with with the sudo-handwriting PalmOS Graffiti. Sure it was ugly but it was bleeding edge. Microsoft was no where to be found in this market space in 2002. Yahoo! was doing software as a service on the mobile platform long before Google was even dreaming about it.

I really loved this hardware. Sadly the Samsung died in 2004 and I moved on to other phones, continuing to covet the dream of voice-activated computing which would give me access to all of my information in my pocket.

Five years after Bill Gates’ fateful promise, Microsoft still lacked any market in software-as-a-service voice-activated pocket computing area. Likewise, on June 30, 2011, Microsoft will lack majority market share.