What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

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.

The short answer is that it is the default search engine of Internet Explorer. This outage made people realize, at least for 40 minutes, that there are tools out there other than Microsoft.

The claim that Microsoft has majority market share within the browser market is a myth that I have been silently collecting data to debunk. In this post I will reveal some of the reasons I see this as true and discuss the Bing/Internet Explorer market share connection. When you ask people what is the best browser, people seem to vote for Firefox hands-down. Yet, month after month, browser market share reports come out and the results are all over the charts but always in favour of Internet Explorer. The Counter reports just shy of 70%. W3counter reports just a little north of 51%. Meanwhile, “Market Share” by Net Applications reports 63.63% for November yet it has been shedding 1% for many months now. The Counter, W3Counter, and Market Share by Net Applications are analytics services that tell website owners who is visiting their site.

Quick tanget and un-paid endourcement…

Only W3Counter offers this service cost-free as only as you have only one site to watch that get less than 5,000 page views a day. Since W3counter is so accessible to anybody with a website, I declared W3Counter the official market share report of this blog. I was so impressed that I opted to pay for their pro $39.95 per 6 month account even though I already pre-paid for two years of Google Analytics. I prefer the way that W3Counter parses the data for me and how it integrates well with Wordpress, the open source blogging software that runs whatwillweuse.com. If you are using anything else other than W3Counter, please give them a try.

OK, back to Internet Explorer and Bing.

A common market share assertion I hear when it comes to operating system and web browser market share is “Microsoft’s market share is high because that is what came with the computer and people do not switch due to interia.”

People just use what is there. To a certain extent, I will have to agree with that point. But if most people just used what Microsoft put in front of them, I would expect far more than 8% search market share out of Bing, the default search on Internet Explorer. Yahoo! Fiance reports that Bing’s market share is shrinking. Why would people choose to not use a product that they did not have to pay for and is delivered to them from the very first time they turn on their computer?

Change is risky and fearsome, especially those new to computer. Despite the fact that Internet Explorer 6 is an eight years old browser, 12.57% of the web browsing population still uses it. That is why Internet Explorer 6 has one thing going for it though, those with Windows XP have had it installed by default. A Vista system that keeps up with patches runs Internet Explorer 8 and this is why it has a respectable market share at 21.21%. Meanwhile there are 17.36 running Internet Explorer 7. I do not know how Microsoft can deliver a competitve free as in cost product while maintaining all of these versions. Even though Microsoft is working on releasing Internet Explorer 9, they are obligated to continue to support Internet Explorer 6,  a product. Together these numbers add up to 51.14% although only 8 percent, and shrinking, are using IE browser’s default search engine.

I assert three things given the interita theory…

Go Chrome

1. Microsoft Internet Explorer users are primarily using Google and Yahoo! instead. When they visit http://www.google.com they are greeted with an invitation to download Chrome. At least 2% will take Google up on the offer and push Internet Explorer below 50% in less than three months.

2. Perhaps 8% bing usage is a reflection of how many people prefer Microsoft’s products, given the choice. Maybe these Internet Explorer users are small businesses who lack full time IT staff who have permission to install software like web browsers. They may use Internet Explorer in the office because they have to but at home they use Firefox because they want to. Web analytics services that release market share reports will give more merit to the 8 hours of the day that people have opportuntiy to use the browser at their desk instead of the 3 hours of the day they might be able to use their browser at home. This would also explain why people overwhelmingly vote for Firefox when asked about their browser of choice yet market share reports continute to favour Internet Explorer.

3. Those 8% loyal Microsoft customers saw Microsoft not deliver a service that they are pouring millions of dollars in American TV ads to support. They were left asking themselves the question, “what will we use?” and the answer, according to Internet Explorer and Bing, was Yahoo!

Come February 28, 2010, Microsoft will no longer have browser market share.

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.

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.