Hacker News Reader

Comment by no_gravity | Hacker News Reader

"Microsoft services, sending data to and from every networked device in the world"

There already are servers sending data everywhere. For example the servers of Google, Facebook and Wikipedia. How would Microsoft convince those guys or new companies to get rid of their solid, free and open stack and pay for Microsofts closed stuff?

This is much different from "A computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software". Back then, there where no computers on desks and homes to begin with.

View on HN

Depends on what you mean by data.

Google/Facebook mean social and crudely document shaped data. Wikipedia means data that looks like encylopedia pages.

Microsoft mean ANY data you want to shift with the same languages and tools across all platform form factors which is why people buy into the ecosystem. Even going back to 2004, I could knock out an app (in C++/C#) that worked on the desktop, on the web and on mobile devices. In fact I did and it's still in use today managing private couriers with minimal code changes.

How would Microsoft convince those guys or new companies to get rid of their solid, free and open stack and pay for Microsofts closed stuff?

They don't have to. They can keep on using their free and open stack, but moving to Azure instead of using Google compute engine or AWS.

Then Microsoft would be just another provider of virtual servers. I dont think thats a good future goal for a 300 billion dollar company.

Conversely to Gruber, I see Microsofts future in client software and hardware. Apple and Google have put computers in every pocket. But only the consumption part of it. The race for the production tablet has just started. And with the Surface Pro, Microsoft has the first product out there.

Just like Amazon they are adding their own custom services to the package which is easy to consume.

This can be storage, authentication, federation, messaging, queueing, etc.

And like Amazon they are building their own services (like AD in the cloud, Xbox Live, hosted exchange, Office 365, etc) on top of this infrastructure, so like for Amazon, the infrastructure they are selling literally comes for free.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com