Steve Ballmer Applauding Apple?
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, had some really positive things to say about Apple during a speech he was giving at the University of Washington, specifically hailing the company for it’s creation of the App Store.
“Apple’s done a very nice job that allows people to monetize and commercialize their intellectual property,”
Seattle Times columnist Brier Dudley took Ballmer’s mentions of the Big “A” as a sign that Apple just might possibly be looking at Bing into making it the default search engine on the iPhone OS and possibly Mac OS. When asked about the recent rumors about Apple and Microsoft teaming up to take on what they might consider a possible threat in Google and their recent ventures, Ballmer just smiled and said that he couldn’t answer that question, but he didn’t hesitate to address the matter passively, so to speak.
“Apple is coming off a tough divorce from its young search partner, which is now selling its own touch-screen smartphone and has floated concept designs of an iPad-like tablet device, so perhaps it’s natural Apple is reaching out to an estranged friend from the early days.”
Now, contrary to that comment, Ballmer was widely pointed at for laughing at the creation of the iPhone, basically stating that it wouldn’t gain traction in the market, only to see his theory AK47-thed out the sky by the tremendous iPod-like success and revolutionary standard it set while also seeing his own Windows Mobile platform nearly halted and the iPhone spreading like the Black Plague.
Apple and Google have been very very close partners for years, practically never going head-to-head with each other in…well anything. The two partnering tech titans usually hail one another’s work, such as Google highly commending the Mac OS platform as superior and Apple showing love to many of the services Google provides, like Steve Jobs’s mentioning that he loves and always uses Google Maps. However, since the FTC launching of the whole “anti-competitive acts investigation” fiasco against both Google and Apple, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, had to step-down off Apple’s Board of Directors. Since then, they have become highly competitive with each other. Google and Apple are now competitors in a number of markets in the tech sector. Google’s Android competes with Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Chrome browser is up against Apple’s Safari, Chrome OS is taking on Mac OS in the operating system department and both Apple and Google acquired advertising groups in AdMob and Quattro. The recent flexing of muscles came to public light when the Google Voice App was rejected from the iPhone App Store, Google stating that it was not accepted sheerly to prevent it from being used on the App Store while Apple said it was under review. However, many people speculate that Apple and Google are showing off their genius merely to keep the folks in DC from making noise, which also seems like a logical and tactical reason for sparring.
Whether or not Apple and Microsoft are teaming up, Microsoft will also pose as a direct competitor with Apple and Google after refacing their stagnant Windows Mobile platform with the recently introduced Windows Phone 7 (Don’t even ask about the name), putting them evenly in the battle between Google and Apple in the aforementioned categories except for mobile advertising.
Google done a terrific job and I respect them, if they come through and leave China or able to stay only on their terms. However, Google will make more and more enemies and loose sympathizers if they work on Wold domination in everything. As it is, I would not touch anything Google makes, except I am willing to use Google World/Maps and the search engine. Stay with these products, make them the best and get the hell out of everything else. If they don’t I will stop using their products altogether. I hate World Domination!!!
Yeah, hear you on that. I love Google and Apple. Google does really great work with their projects, especially with Google Maps and Google Voice. Android is wonderful, but still, is not as great as the iPhone. When it comes to software, I think your playing more on Apple’s turf than Google’s. Apple is one of the very few major software companies still around, aside from Microsoft and Google, but they make the best software, hands down. Apple is just too damn talented when it comes to software development. They think simple and innovative, and despite what the fanboys and their haters have to say about them, theres two things you have to say about the boys in Cupertino — They know software and they put innovation before anything.
If Apple chooses Bing as the default search provider for iPhone I will never again use the iPhone.
I don’t like Bing at all. I find it too glossy and it’s just not what I need out of a search engine.
I appreciate google, Microsoft is out of my list long ego, I liked apple but they have the same monopolizing mind and thats why they are teaming up with microsoft. Microsoft launched bing to beat google but google didn’t do anything crazy or said anything against microsoft which is good. I think there should be competitive and fair compitition in the market, which companies like microsoft and apple don’t like
@Darwin
It’s easy to play nice when you’re siiting on top of the market and is making a shitload of money. Don’t for a second think that Google is less about making money than the rest of the bunch. They have completly capitalized the market of search, and with their evergrowing palette of services, they are basically just extending their reach in selling advert space. Google might come off more “friendlier” because everything is delivered for “free” to the end-user, but make no mistake, someelse is picking up the tap.
So when Microsoft and Apple try to go against Google it is actually in the spirit of honest and fair competition. How much competition does Google really has? For years there’s been an outcry about the monopoly of Microsoft in the domain of operating systems, yet know one seems to mind that there is de facto only one search provider ruling the market of search….search which have become THE most important service tying the internet together.
I’m no Google hater, I love their services, but I don’t think it’s healthy for the sake of the openess of the internet if Google conquers every aspect of our digital lifes.
It will be very interesting to see how this pans out!
While many of these large IT companies dominate the market in specific areas, more and more they are expanding their services into each others areas.
However, while they may be fierce competitors in some of these areas they also seem to be in bed with each other in other areas – not to mention cross shareholdings and staff movements.
All this competition…they fight among themselves and we benefit with better products I guess.