{"id":590,"date":"2006-11-22T08:48:33","date_gmt":"2006-11-22T15:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/wp\/?p=590"},"modified":"2006-11-22T08:48:33","modified_gmt":"2006-11-22T15:48:33","slug":"eric_schmidts_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=590","title":{"rendered":"Eric Schmidt’s tough talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been coy in discussing his company’s ambition to create an online alternative to Microsoft Office. Just a few days ago, at the Web 2.0 Summit, Schmidt “played the semantic game” in discussing office suites, reported<\/a> Dan Farber. Schmidt claimed “that Google is developing applications for just ‘casual’ use. ‘We don\u2019t call it an office suite. It’s not targeted at the [Microsoft] Office \u2013 we never made that claim.'”<\/p>\n

But a very different, and much more aggressive, Eric Schmidt appears in the Economist’s new “World in 2007” issue. Schmidt contributes an article<\/a> titled “Don’t bet against the Internet,” in which he makes a striking prediction. Next year, he writes, “we\u2019ll witness the increasing dominance of open internet standards.” These standards “will sweep aside the proprietary protocols promoted by individual companies striving for technical monopoly. Today\u2019s desktop software will be overtaken by internet-based services that enable users to choose the document formats, search tools and editing capability that best suit their needs.”<\/p>\n

Suddenly, a seemingly modest goal of promoting the “casual” use of online office applications has become a tsunami that is about to “sweep aside” the proprietary protocals and formats “promoted by individual companies striving for technical monopoly.” (Yes, he’s talking about Microsoft.)<\/p>\n

This marks a revealing rhetorical shift for Schmidt, who’s been careful (and, I think, wise) in avoiding a head-on attack on Office. Google Spreadsheets, for instance, was introduced mainly as a complement<\/a> rather than a competitor to Excel, one that could extend the functions of the Microsoft product by maintaining compatibility with Microsoft’s proprietary protocols and formats. Google was avoiding Netscape’s failed strategy of confronting the Colossus of Redmond directly. Instead, it appeared content to try to eat away at the Microsoft franchise from within, to play, at least temporarily, by Redmond’s rules.<\/p>\n

That pretense has been abandoned with the Economist article. Now, Schmidt is making it clear that the goal is to topple Office – and soon: “Today we live in the clouds … Simplicity is triumphing over complexity. Accessibility is beating exclusivity.” 2007, apparently, will be the year that Google takes off the gloves in the fight for the future of personal business applications. Not coincidentally, it’s the same year that Microsoft will be pushing customers to upgrade to a new version of its traditional Office suite.<\/p>\n

Schmidt includes Microsoft Live at the tail end of a list of the kinds of new Web-based services that he says are redefining computing. But that’s just to twist the knife. The new world, he says, is built on open-source software (the Linux-based “LAMP” stack), and in it Microsoft is just another company, if not an also-ran:<\/p>\n

\n

Sophisticated browsers and technologies like LAMP or AJAX … are critical in this new world. They are the kind of technologies that transform audio, video, text and digital data into intuitive, easy-to-use services. They make Google, MySpace, YouTube, Gmail, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live possible, and they haven\u2019t even entered adolescence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Schmidt’s right about the future of computing. We are, as he says, seeing “a profound technological shift in computer science” that will end the dominance of the “client-server computing architecture.” (It’s what I’ve termed the shift from the second to the third age<\/a> of computing.) The question is, is he right about the timing? Is 2007 the tipping point – the year Office begins to implode – or has Schmidt allowed confidence to become overconfidence? The answer to that question may well determine who becomes the dominant supplier of basic business applications.<\/p>\n

Competition is intensifying, Schmidt writes, and that “ensures that products improve faster and become cheaper. If they don\u2019t, users go to a new entrant offering free or better versions.” That’s not a promise; it’s a threat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been coy in discussing his company’s ambition to create an online alternative to Microsoft Office. Just a few days ago, at the Web 2.0 Summit, Schmidt “played the semantic game” in discussing office suites, reported Dan Farber. Schmidt claimed “that Google is developing applications for just ‘casual’ use. ‘We don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}